Preparing Cygwin for NS2

Things getting easier these days as there are references out there. Though, I had to spend several days to get this NS2 running. I have Windows XP SP3. And went to cygwin website and downloaded setup.exe. Then created a cygwin setup folder and put that setup.exe in it.

1. Cygwin version is 2.573.2.3.


2. I chose "Download Without Installing" so that I can install/reinstall cygwin files in a few minutes.


3. Locate the folder to store downloaded files.


4. Choose the correct option according to the Internet connection.


5. Choose the top one unless you have a good one.


6. Then, the program starts downloading package-list.


7. The following screen will be shown when package list is downloaded. Though, it is needed to change View to Full by clicking View button.


8. There is a list of default packages checked to be downloaded. However, they are not sufficient to run NS2, mainly NAM. Some packages are needed to added. The list is below the screenshot.

• iffutils
• gcc
• gcc-core
• gcc-g++
• gcc-mingw-core
• gcc-mingw-g++
• make
• patch
• perl
• w32api

And files related to X11.

• WindowMaker
• X-start-menu-icons
• X-startup-scripts
• XFree86-lib-compat
• xorg-x11-base
• xorg-x11-bin
• xorg-x11-bin-dlls
• xorg-x11-bin-lndir
• xorg-x11-devel
• xorg-x11-etc
• xorg-x11-f100
• xorg-x11-fcyr
• xorg-x11-fenc
• xorg-x11-fnts
• xorg-x11-fscl
• xorg-x11-fsrv
• xorg-x11-libs-data
• xorg-x11-man-pages
• xorg-x11-man-pages-html
• xorg-x11-nest
• xorg-x11-vfb
• xorg-x11-xwin
• xterm
• xwinwm

There is something important while choosing X11 packages. When I was about to download files, I looked for websites which I can refer to. I only found pages those refer to download XFree86-base, XFree86-bin, XFree86-prog, XFree86-lib, etc. As XFree86 related are not available in the list, X11 must be chosen. So, I checked above packages to download. It is possible that it is not needed to download some of the packages from X11. For me, I would not bother testing this as this configuration works. =)

9. Finally, click next to download the files. Sometimes, there might be a Yes/No dialog box saying the download is not complete, whether you want to download again or not. Just say Yes.

This is the downloading part of cygwin and the installation part will be followed.