System Requirements
You must have Perl installed, but probably all Linux distributions will have this installed already by default. For 64-bit and non-x86 platforms, see the notes under "troubleshooting" below.
Installation Procedure
Download Diogenes to a convenient location and unpack the .tar.bz2 file either with your graphical file manager or at the command line (tar xf filename). The resulting directory, "diogenes-3.x" has a file in it called "linux-installer.pl". Run it at the command line or by double-clicking it and opting to run it in a terminal.
Now Diogenes is installed, and you may delete the file you downloaded and the directory that resulted from unpacking it. Type "diogenes" at the command-line to try Diogenes. The first time you try to access each of the databases (tlg, phi, etc.), you will be prompted to give its location.
With luck, there will be an entry for Diogenes in your main applications menu (it works for Ubuntu, at any rate). If not, you can create your own launcher for "diogenes" (or "/usr/local/bin/diogenes"). Alternatively, at the command-line, type "diogenes" for the graphical interface, and "dio" for the command-line interface.
Troubleshooting
Your installation of Diogenes includes a 32-bit x86 binary application. This binary will run on an amd64 platform if the usual 32-bit compatibility libraries are installed (see the note below). It will not run on non-x86 platforms, however, but there are several easy workarounds available.
It is also possible that you may get an error when running the "diogenes" binary if your x86-linux installation has very old system libraries. This problem seems to affect older "stable" Debian systems especially.
If you find yourself in this situation, Neel Smith has posted a nice description of the several possible workarounds. It is an account of installing Diogenes on Linux-PPC, but the information should apply to any Unix-like system:
Note for AMD 64-bit
The executable for the graphical interface to Diogenes is a 32-bit application, so on a 64-bit machine you will need to have the relevant 32-bit compatibility libraries installed. Once this is done, Diogenes should work without any problems (Diogenes is developed on an amd64 machine running Ubuntu).
However, if you have an outdated version of Debian/Ubuntu, and you get fatal errors to do with "Pango", you may need the following workaround (which is not needed for more recent versions of Ubuntu):
Create a file at /etc/pango32/pangorc with the following contents:
[Pango]
ModuleFiles=/etc/pango32/pango.modules
[PangoX]
AliasFiles=/etc/pango/pangox.aliases
Now, instead of typing "diogenes" to run the program, use the following command line instead:
PANGO_RC_FILE=/etc/pango32/pangorc diogenes
The Last Resort
If all else fails, you can just run the server by hand and connect to it with an ordinary web browser, such as Firefox. Run
/usr/local/diogenes/perl/diogenes-server.pl
and look at the message it prints out, something like:
Startup complete. You may now point your browser at
this address:
http://127.0.0.1:8888
Copy and paste that URL into your browser and bookmark it. Whenever you want to use Diogenes, you need to start the server before navigating to the link. You could set up your system to start the server automatically on boot-up.