Installing NS2 on Cygwin

Download NS2 package from http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/. For me, I just downloaded the allinone package. And the version is 2.33. Recently, 2.34 is released on June 17, 2009.

After downloading the file, put it under C:\cygwin\home\username. Then open bash shell by running the shortcut from the desktop or from the start menu. Go to home\username and run the command, "tar xvfz ns-allinone-2.33.tar.gz".

After extracting files, run ./install.

When the installation finishes, the files can be checked by using the command, ./validate.

Finally, .bashrc is needed to be changed a bit to add environment variables. It is located under C:\cygwin\home\username\.bashrc. I added the following lines at the end of the file.

# LD_LIBRARY_PATH
OTCL_LIB=/home/username/ns-allinone-2.33/otcl-1.13
NS2_LIB=/home/username/ns-allinone-2.33/lib
X11_LIB=/usr/X11R6/lib
USR_LOCAL_LIB=/usr/local/lib
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$OTCL_LIB:$NS2_LIB:$X11_LIB:$USR_LOCAL_LIB

# TCL_LIBRARY
TCL_LIB=/home/username/ns-allinone-2.33/tcl8.4.18/library
USR_LIB=/usr/lib
export TCL_LIBRARY=$TCL_LIB:$USR_LIB

# PATH
XGRAPH=/home/username/ns-allinone-2.33/bin:/home/username/ns-allinone-2.33/tcl8.4.18/unix:/home/username/ns-allinone-2.33/tk8.4.18/unix
NS=/home/username/ns-allinone-2.33/ns-2.33/
NAM=/home/username/ns-allinone-2.33/nam-1.13/
PATH=$PATH:$XGRAPH:$NS:$NAM

And that's it.

References

• Running Ns and Nam Under Windows 9x/2000/XP Using Cygwin
• The Network Simulator ns-2: Building Ns version 2
• How to install Cygwin & NS-2 2.27
  
• Installing Cygwin/X