Core dump on AIX machine

Question:

On an AIX machine I get: Illegal instruction (core dumped)

Example:

> 	Today I tried installing the IBM binary for Ferret on a
> RISC/6000 running AIX version 4. After going through the steps
> detailed in the installation guide, I started running ferret
> and encountered failure with the following message
>
> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
>
> ibm580_1]  # ferret
>         NOAA/PMEL TMAP
>         Program FERRET (GUI)
>         Version 4.45 - 01/17/97
>          4-May-97 22:44
>
> yes? go tutorial
> ... setting up demo environment ...
> Illegal instruction (core dumped)

Solution:

Check your LANG environment variable. Before running Ferret, it has to be set to C. That is, you need to do "setenv LANG C". Right now it's probably set to "en_US", or something similar. This problem affects some pre-compiled programs out there, Netscape being another one.

Contributed by Daniel Robitaille: Centre for Earth and Ocean Research - University of Victoria
Last modified: May 28 1997