TOPSPIN 1.3PL10 ICON-NMR hiccup
When we start ICONNMR, from within Topspin, the interface comes up but when we attempt to start an automation run, it gives an error that says, in a nutshell, that the common library file : libssl.so.2 is not accessible. We have encountered similar 'share library deficiency' problem in the past, in the context of making TS2.1 run on a Fedora platform.
The shared library in question is evidently related to TLS/SSL, since this error message is triggered in the first place, by trying to access /opt/topspin/prog/tcl/libtix/tls1.5/libtls.so. From my understanding thus far, the TLS/SSL will play a role most probably when serving the Icon information via the in-built web server, where there is an option to turn on 'https' access to the same instead of 'http'. This is important from the security viewpoint since, in principle we can filter the access to this Icon web interface based on password authentication and this will be the PAM recognizable password, indeed. Even if the content is not so serious to be protected against, the password supply in the authentication step poses a big security hole as the former typically gets transmitted as plain text. It is imperative that you turn on the 'https' mode or simply allow read-only access to the content without asking for any password transmission.
Coming back to the shared library, I solved the problem as below. This is where the older hard disk with its contents in tact came in very handy. I now created a link such as : ln -sf /lib/libssl.
When we restart ICON now, the above error message goes away but it still complains about another file in the same location as before : libcrypto.so.2.
The remedy turned out to be a step very similar to what we did above for the libssl.so.2 case. Do a : ln -s /lib/libcrypto.
With these two done, ICON launches and functions without errors. As a history, this problem of libssl being not there, is possibly linked to the ssl library update that Richard did when he reinstalled the distro. after a disk crash, though I am not totally sure about it.
