Revision as of 20:28, 8 March 2010

Using geWorkbench

Q. How can I run geWorkbench on a 64-bit Windows system (or other system for which no installer currently is distributed)?

A. The windows installer version of geWorkbench has been tested on a 64 bit Windows Vista machine. For other platforms, please also try the installer versions first. If you encounter problems, we recommend you try the Generic version. It can be used on any operating system supporting Java, including 64 bit systems. Instructions are found on the geWorkbench releases notes at the GForge distribution site: https://gforge.nci.nih.gov/frs/?group_id=78

Q. I get a Java error when I try to start geWorkbench.

A. This is almost always caused by the Sun Java 1.5 JRE not being installed or not being found. Try reinstalling the Java 1.5 JRE and then reinstall geWorkbench. geWorkbench must be installed after the JRE.

Q. Where can I obtain the latest annotation files for my microarray platform?

A. Affymetrix annotation files can be downloaded from their support site, at www.affymetrix.com, either at

1. Support->Support Documents, and choose your platform and type "Annotation files", or
2. Support->Technical Documentation->Annotation Files ([1])

The annotation files for the HG-U95 platform are no longer stored at the main download location. Instead, go to "Products and Services" (http://www.affymetrix.com/products_services/index.affx) and under 3' arrays, in the "Human Arrays" dropdown, select the "Human Genome U95 set". Then select the "Tools and Data" tab. The annotation files are located under the heading "Current NetAffx Annotation Files". For the BCell-100.exp data set used in some of the tutorials, the array type is HG-U95Av2.

The file format required is CSV (comma separated values).

Q. How do I increase the amount of memory available to Java to run geWorkbench?

A. It depends on how you are running geWorkbench.

1. If you are running a packaged distribution of geWorkbench (created using InstallAnywhere), there is a file in the geWorkbench root directory called UILauncher.lax. There is a line there which specifies the Java heap size:

lax.nl.java.option.java.heap.size.max=640678989

Here it is shown set to about 640 MB. You can experiment with increasing this, subject to the amount of memory in your machine and demands on it from other applications.

2. If you are running geWorkbench from the source distribution using Ant, you can edit the build.xml file found in the geWorkbench root directory to alter the memory requested using the variable jvmarg:

<target name="run" depends="init" description="Runs geWorkbench.">
    <java fork="true" classname="org.geworkbench.engine.config.UILauncher">
       <jvmarg value="-Xmx512M"/>
       <jvmarg value="-Djava.library.path=lib"/>
       <arg value="all_release.xml"/>
       <classpath refid="run.classpath"/>
    </java>
</target>

Here it is shown requesting 512 MB.

Q. How do I turn on logging in installer-based versions of geWorkbench?

Copies of geWorkbench installed using the InstallAnywhere-generated install file contain a configuration file in their root directory called UILauncher.lax. Make the changes like the following to turn on logging to files:

#   LAX.STDERR.REDIRECT
#   -------------------
#   leave blank for no output, "console" to send to a console window,
#   and any path to a file to save to the file

lax.stderr.redirect=log/stderr.log

#   LAX.STDOUT.REDIRECT
#   -------------------
#   leave blank for no output, "console" to send to a console window,
#   and any path to a file to save to the file

lax.stdout.redirect=log/stdout.log

Q. How can I download the geWorkbench source?

A. You can download the development version from the NCI SVN site (https://ncisvn.nci.nih.gov/svn/geworkbench/).

• For just checking out the code, you can use the username and password of anonymous/anonymous.
• To commit changes, you must be a registered member of the geWorkbench development project and logged in using an NCI LDAP account.

Whichever method is used, this is a source distribution which you will need to compile yourself:

• you must have the Java JDK 5 (or higher) installed on your machine - see http://java.sun.com, under the "Java SE" link.
• you must make sure that the value of the environment variable JAVA_HOME is the directory where the JDK is installed.

Note that Sun recommends adding the Java JDK bin directory to your machine's PATH variable. Under Windows, "Typically this full path looks something like C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_<version>\bin." Full instructions can be found on the Java site.

If you have Ant installed on your machine, you can just type "ant run" in the geworkbench root directory and the program will be built and run. Ant can be downloaded from http://ant.apache.org/. Note that installing Ant involves manually adding the Ant bin directory to the PATH variable, setting the ANT_HOME directory, and optionally setting the JAVA_HOME directory.

If you do not have Ant, you can just execute one of the provided launch scripts, also found the in geworkbench root directory. They are:

• Windows: launch_geworkbench.bat
• Linux/Unix/Mac: launch_geworkbench.sh

Q. How can I reference geWorkbench in a publication?

A. You can use the following statement:

"Analysis was carried out using geWorkbench (http://www.geworkbench.org), a free open source genomic analysis platform developed at Columbia University with funding from the NIH Roadmap Initiative (1U54CA121852-01A1) and the National Cancer Institute".

Q. Is there a shortcuts menu for available commands?

A. Yes! - on the PC, you can use F12.