Sage FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions

• QUESTION: Does sage contain a function similar to Mathematica's ToCharacterCode[]? That is, I'd like to covert something like "Big Mac" to ascii numerals for further processing. Thanks

• ANSWER: Yes, use ord, e.g., map(ord,'abcde') outputs [97, 98, 99, 100, 101].

• QUESTION: Is there anything so Sage can be made to automatically execute commands on startup?

• ANSWER: Yes, just make a file $HOME/.sage/init.sage and it will be executed any time you start sage.

• QUESTION: My Sage upgrade failed with missing gmp symbols on OSX 10.4. What can I do?
• ANSWER: Moving a sage install on OSX 10.4 and then upgrading anything that is linked against NTL leads to link errors due to missing gmp symbols. The problem is the link mode with which the dynamic NTL is created. I have a fix, but I am currently verifying that it really fixes the issue. Everything that is linked against NTL needs to be recompiled, i.e. singular and cremona at the moment. To add to the confusion: This is not an issue on OSX 10.5. A fix for this issue went into 2.8.15, so please report if you see this with a more current Sage release.

• QUESTION: Sage fails with the error message restore segment prot after reloc: Permission denied. What is wrong?

• ANSWER: The problem is related to SELinux: http://www.ittvis.com/services/techtip.asp?ttid=3092. We are currently tracking this issue at http://www.sagetrac.org/sage_trac/ticket/480.

• QUESTION: Upgrading Sage went fine, but now the banner still shows the old version. How can I fix this?

• ANSWER: Try doing sage: hg_scripts.merge() followed by sage: hg_scripts.commit(). As an alternative, you can simply try hg_scripts.pull().

• QUESTION: How do I run sage in daemon mode, i.e. as a service?

• ANSWER: We currently do not have a ready-to-go soliution. There are several possibilities: Use screen, nohup or disown. We are tracking the issue at http://www.sagetrac.org/sage_trac/ticket/381 - so stay tuned.

• QUESTION: I downloaded a Sage binary and it crashes on startup with Illegal instruction. What can I do?

• ANSWER: The binaries have been built for a newer architecture than you have. We want to acquire an older machine and install a bunch of minimal Linux images on it for building Sage binaries to avoid this, but it hasn't happened yet. The solution is to build from source until then.

• QUESTION: I just downloaded version 2.8.15 for Mac OSX and tried to run notebook() and dyld is unable to load libintl.3.dylib. I don't have a libintl.3.dylib in usr/local/lib and I didn't find it in $SAGE_ROOT/local/lib. Is there a workaround?

• ANSWER: Yes, put the libintl3.dylib from http://sagemath.org/SAGEbin/apple_osx/intel/10.4-extra_files/ in SAGE_ROOT/local/lib/. Future binaries will contain that library.

• QUESTION: I am using Mac OSX. Where do I put the jsMath "font" directory to eliminate the red box?

• ANSWER: See http://www.math.union.edu/~dpvc/jsMath/download/jsMath-fonts.html where it says "For Mac OS X users: download and unpack the archive, then drag the fonts to your Library/Fonts folder (or to the FontBook, or just double-click them and press the "install" button).".

• QUESTION: May I use Sage tools in a commercial environment?
• ANSWER: YES! Absolutely! Basically the *only* constraint is that if you make changes to Sage itself and redistribute this changed version of Sage publicly, then you must make these changes available to us so that we can put them into the standard version of Sage (if we want). Otherwise, you'll free to use as many copies of Sage as you want completely for free to make money, etc., without paying any license fees at all.

• QUESTION: I want to write some Cython code that uses finite field arithmetic but cimport sage.rings.finite_field_givaro fails. What can I do?

• ANSWER: You need to give hints to Sage so that it uses C++ (both Givaro and NTL are C++ libraries) and it also needs the GMP and STDC C++ libraries. Here is a small example:

# These comments are hints to Sage/Pyrex about the compiler and
# libraries needed for the Givaro library:
#
#clang c++ 
#clib givaro gmpxx gmp m stdc++

cimport sage.rings.finite_field_givaro

# Construct a finite field of order 11.
cdef sage.rings.finite_field_givaro.FiniteField_givaro K
K = sage.rings.finite_field_givaro.FiniteField_givaro(11)

print "K is a", type(K)

print "K cardinality =", K.cardinality()

# Construct two values in the field:
cdef sage.rings.finite_field_givaro.FiniteField_givaroElement x
cdef sage.rings.finite_field_givaro.FiniteField_givaroElement y
x = K(3)
y = K(6)

print "x is a", type(x)
print "x =", x
print "y =", y
print "x has multiplicative order =", x.multiplicative_order()
print "y has multiplicative order =", y.multiplicative_order()
print "x*y =", x*y

# Show that x behaves like a finite field element:
for i in range(1, x.multiplicative_order() + 1):
    print i, x**i


assert x*(1/x) == K.one_element()

To find out more, type sage.rings.finite_field_givaro.FiniteField_givaro. at the Sage prompt and hit tab, then use ?? to get more info on each function. For example:

sage.rings.finite_field_givaro.FiniteField_givaro.one_element??

tells you more about the multiplicative unit element in the finite field.

• QUESTION: How do I make the VMware appliance for Windows automatically login as "sage"?

• ANSWER: Follow http://ubuntu-utah.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=303319. Short version: put in the file /usr/local/autologin the text

/bin/login -f sage

and make this file executable; then edit /etc/event.d/tty1, comment out

respawn /sbin/getty 38400 tty1

and add

respawn /sbin/getty -n -l /usr/bin/autologin 38400 tty1

Now every time the appliance reboots, it will automatically load directly to the sage: prompt. Warning: This will make it nearly impossible to get a terminal prompt! So only do this if you don't plan on any further management.

ToDo

• QUESTION: Compiling Sage makes my computer beep and shut down.
• ANSWER: Most likely wonky hardware.
• QUESTION: Sage fails to compile on OSX 10.4
• ANSWER: Most likely resource issue.
• QUESTION: Notebook doesn't work
• ANSWER: networking issues, firewall blocking, proxy setting screwed up

• Individual FAQ entries should be referable by a URL, possibly http://wiki.sagemath.org/faq?someid=something

• You can do that with page anchors: [http://wiki.sagemath.org/faq?#something]. MoinMoin [http://moinmo.in/HelpOnLinking can insert page anchors] but it doesn't seem like that facility is turned on for this installation. If we could get that enabled, we could insert anchors for all the questions on this page.