Softimage install fails "mkdir: cannot create directory...Permission denied"

[licenses]

Short description of my issue:

I'm looking for a way to tell the Softimage 2014 installer to use "/home/j/joesmith" instead of "home/joesmith" so that it can successfully complete it's installation.

More detail:

Softimage 2014 for LINUX

Fedora 17

My install of Softimage 2014 is failing. According to the /usr/Softimage/Softimage_2014/SetupFiles/install.log their is a mkdir command that the installer is tripping up on:

“... /var/opt/Autodesk/Adlm;mkdir -p "/home/[username]/"; chmod 777 "/home/[username]/";mkdir -p /usr/local/share/macrovision; chmod -R 777 /usr/local/share/macrovision;) > /dev/null] Error during the installation”

I also found this in the Softimage installation console log, the last entry before the installer quits with the message "Installation of SoftImage 2014 has failed":

"...package adlmflexnetserver-7.0.51-0.x86_64 is already installed

package adlmapps7-7.0.51-0.x86_64 is already installed

package Composite_2014-2014.0-862715.x86_64 is already installed

package MatchMover2014_0_64-2014.0-450.x86_64 is already installed

mkdir: cannot create directory `/home/[username]/': Permission denied"

It seems that the installer wants to write something in the local /home/[username] dir. However, on our Fedora systems, our "/home" is linked to a network share and user's home directories have a slightly different path: /share/home/[a-z]/[username]

Thus, in our environment, the /home directory does not contain the user home dir the Softimage installer is expecting, and furthermore our "/home" is read only, which is why the installer fails.

I tried looking at the Softimage installer script (/usr/Softimage/Softimage_2014/setup) to see if that line might be modifiable. I was thinking I could just replace the line "/home/[username]" with "/home/j/joesmith". Unfortunately, the script just calls an executable (/usr/Softimage/Softimage_2014/_setup) that I cannot manipulate.

[jeremy.h]

Hi,

You can't change the path in the installer, but you should be able to get this to work by creating a symbolic link for /home/[username] that points to /share/home/[a-z]/[username]. Something like this:

ln -s /share/home/[a-z]/[username] /home/[username]

[licenses]

Thanks for you response Jeremy, but this isn't a viable solution for us. In LAIKA's LINUX environment our /home directory is a mount point for all our user's home directories; each user's home directory is then linked to a subdirectory that is alphabetically organized. So, for example, if you had a LUNIX system here at LIAKA the path to your home dir would be /home/j/jhanson. Part of our administration strategy here is to lock down /home as 'read only' in order to keep things organized and prevent clutter. We do now want to make an exception to our user/system administration strategy just for the installation of this particular piece of software. Since Autodesk has decided to discontinue development of Softimage anyway I think we will have to consider finding a different tool to use.

Thanks,

Franklin Scheu
System Administrator,
Information Technology, LAIKA Inc.
+1 503-906-5393 desk
+1 503-709-0971 mobile