Pathway Tools System Requirements

• Operating System
  • MacOS X 10.14, 10.15, 11, 12 (runs on Intel and M1 (Apple Silicon) Macs)

  • Microsoft Windows Windows 10. Requires Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Package to be installed. Installer will prompt for permission if not installed.

  • Linux on any Intel or AMD-based processor that uses a version 4.4 or higher kernel and glibc 2.23+
    Known to work on:
    • Debian Linux version 10 (tested) and Ubuntu derivatives. It works on Ubuntu-16.04 and later, though we recommend upgrading to a supported version (e.g., Ubuntu 18.04-20.04 / Debian 10).
    • The Redhat family. CentOS 7 has been tested. We haven't tested with RedHat Enterprise (RHE) but a user reported that current versions of pathway tools work on RHE 8, but not RHE 6.
    Library dependencies:
    • Requires X11 libraries installed
      • Ubuntu (18.04 and later) and Debian (10) need the package libmotif-dev installed - libmotif-common doesn't include all the libraries required by Pathway Tools
      • RHE/CentOS 7 needs the motif package installed.
    • Requires OpenSSL 1.0 or 1.1 (preferred).
      • Ubuntu (18.04, 20.04) and Debian (10) have an acceptable OpenSSL by default.
      • Ubuntu 22.04 has the correct libraries, but under the wrong names. The installer will finish with an error. After the installer completes, please make links to two SSL libraries as follows:
        cd ~/pathway-tools
ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcrypto.so.3 libcrypto.so
ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libssl.so.3 libssl.so
If you have installed pathway-tools somewhere else, cd to the appropriate directory.
      • Oracle Linux (8.4) has version 1.1 of OpenSSL by default
      • CentOS 7 has version 1.0 of OpenSSL by default. RHE 6 does not.

  • Hardware
    • Processor: Minimum requirement = 2 GHz

  • Memory (RAM) recommended. Generally, we recommend that the machine on which you run these images have an amount of RAM of at least the executable size. Adding more memory than the recommended amounts will increase performance. The swap space of your operating system should be configured to accommodate your RAM space.
    • Tier 1 (2 PGDBs, EcoCyc and MetaCyc): 6GB RAM

    • Tiers 1+2 (up to 50 PGDBs): 8GB RAM

    • Tiers 1+2+3 (3+GHz 4-core CPU required): 128GB RAM
      NOTE: For Tier1+2+3, please adjust two user/system parameters (see your OS docs for exact parameter names):
      • max open files should be bumped up to at least 8k for the userid running the web server.
      • stack size limit should be bumped up to at least 8MB

  • Disk space: Minimum requirement ranges from 2 GB (Tier 1 only) to 4 TB (Tiers 1+2+3)

  • For Web server mode, it's recommended that you clear out the files in /tmp after a version upgrade.
    /tmp should have at least 32GB of free space for web server operation.