Installing Octave 4.2.0 on Ubuntu 16.04

Installing Octave 4.2.0 on Ubuntu 16.04

1. Download Octave 4.2.0 source:
   • Through terminal emulator:

     wget https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave/octave-4.2.0.tar.gz
     

   • Extract Octave:

     tar -xvf octave-4.2.0.tar.gz
     

   • Or download via browser.
2. Install dependencies:

   sudo apt-get install gcc g++ gfortran make libblas-dev liblapack-dev libpcre3-dev libarpack2-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev epstool libfftw3-dev transfig libfltk1.3-dev libfontconfig1-dev libfreetype6-dev libgl2ps-dev libglpk-dev libreadline-dev gnuplot-x11 libgraphicsmagick++1-dev libhdf5-serial-dev openjdk-8-jdk libsndfile1-dev llvm-dev lpr texinfo libgl1-mesa-dev libosmesa6-dev pstoedit portaudio19-dev libqhull-dev libqrupdate-dev libqscintilla2-dev libqt4-dev libqtcore4 libqtwebkit4 libqt4-network libqtgui4 libqt4-opengl-dev libsuitesparse-dev texlive libxft-dev zlib1g-dev autoconf automake bison flex gperf gzip icoutils librsvg2-bin libtool perl rsync tar
   

3. To ensure all linked libraries support 64-bit variables, download OpenBLAS here:
   • OpenBLAS GitHub Repository
   • Extract it, go to the OpenBLAS directory, then open the Makefile.rule file.
   • Remove the # from BINARY=64 and INTERFACE64=1, then save.
4. In the terminal emulator:

   make
   sudo make install
   sudo apt-get install libopenblas-base
   

5. Navigate to the extracted Octave folder:

   ./configure JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-amd64 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/OpenBLAS/lib CPPFLAGS=-I/opt/OpenBLAS/include LDFLAGS=-L/opt/OpenBLAS/lib --enable-64
   make
   sudo make install
   

If the following error appears:

octave-cli: error while loading shared libraries: libopenblas.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Solution:

sudo apt-get install libopenblas-base
octave --force-gui

Then set it to the launcher.

If an error occurs when running the command above, the solution is to change the owner from root to user:

sudo chown -R user:user /home/username/.config/octave/

If ctrl + c causes a crash, run this in the terminal:

export OMP_NUM_THREADS=1

Sources:

• Octave for Debian systems
• OpenBLAS GitHub Repository
• OpenBLAS Installation Guide