Installing MEME

(version 4.6.0 or later)

Table of Contents:

Quick Install (for Linux, OS-X and Cygwin systems)

  1. Type the following commands and then follow the instructions printed by the configure command.
    $ tar zxf meme_VERSION.tar.gz
    $ cd meme_VERSION
    $ ./configure --prefix=$home/meme --with-url=http://meme.nbcr.net/meme
  2. Edit your shell configuration file to add
    $home/meme/bin to your shell's path.

Notes:

  • This installs only the command-line versions of programs. Refer to Installing from a tarball if you wish to install your own MEME Suite Web Application as well.
  • This will overwrite any previously existing $home/meme directory you may have. You can set the directory to something different in the configure command using the --prefix option.
  • The HTML output of programs will contain buttons that send your data to http://meme.nbcr.net for additional processing when clicked. Refer to the Installing from a tarball if you do not want this feature.

Introduction

The MEME Suite consists of several command line programs and an optional web site. The web site is implemented using static HTML pages, CGI scripts, and SOAP services. The SOAP services are provided through Tomcat, and Opal. Building and installing the command line programs is very straight-forward. Installing the web site requires more detailed configuration information.

Prerequisite software

Most of the software mentioned here is standard on many UNIX systems. To build MEME Suite you will need:

  • Perl (v.5.10.1 or higher) is needed to run some scripts. See http://www.perl.org for download and installation instructions.
  • The following perl modules: (there are others but they are typically already available as part of the Perl installation.)
    • HTML::PullParser
    • HTML::Template
  • Python (v2.5.1 up to v2.7.x) is needed to run some scripts (including Dreme). See http://www.python.org for download and installation instructions.
  • Psyco, the Python Specializing Compiler, is highly recommended because it gives 2 - 3 times speedups for running Dreme. See http://sourceforge.net/projects/psyco/ for download and installation instructions.
  • Bourne compatible shell
  • Make utility
  • C compiler
  • Gzip/gunzip utilities

If you are installing the web site you will also need:

  • A web server supporting CGI. Apache is a common choice.
  • Version 5.0.30 or later of the Apache Tomcat servlet container and web server. Version 5.5.25 is recommended because it supports CGI, and allows Tomcat to host the entire MEME Suite web application. MEME Suite has not been tested with version 6.
  • Version 2 of Opal SOAP wrapper servlet.
  • The following perl modules: (there are others but they are typically already available as part of the Perl installation.)
    • HTTP
    • HTML::PullParser
    • HTML::Template
    • LWP
    • SOAP::Lite
    • XML::Simple

Optional software:

  • Version 2.6.0 or later of the libxml2 library. If this library is not available the MEME Suite will build a copy for its own use, but having this library already installed will greatly speed up the build process.
  • Version 1.1 or later of the libxslt library. If this library is not available the MEME Suite will build a copy for its own use, but having this library already installed will greatly speed up the build process.
  • The convert program from the ImageMagick package is needed to convert logograms from EPS to PNG format .
  • A Linux cluster running Rocks (see http:www.rocksclusters.org ) or similar cluster environment. Rocks provides all the required and optional software.
  • If you want to run parallel version of MEME you will need an MPI implementation and a batch scheduler. For MPI, one of the following: For batch scheduler, one of the following:

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Getting the source

The current version of MEME is 4.5.0 and is available from http://meme.nbcr.net/downloads/.

Note: MEME has undergone many changes in version 4.0.0. It is optimized and configured for running on Linux servers. It hasn't been fully tested on other platforms, and your feedback is greatly appreciated. If you'd like to wait until all the kinks to be worked out before trying the current release, please use the previous version (use version 3.5.7) from http://meme.nbcr.net/downloads/old_versions. Installation instructions for version 3.5.7 are different and are specified in the README file included in the release distribution meme_3.5.7.tar.gz.

The software is distributed as a source tarball meme_VERSION.tar.gz. For each file there is a corresponding file with the MD5 checksum: meme_VERSION.md5sum. When downloading the software, please make sure you download the corresponding checksum file and verify that the checksum information is correct. Depending on a platform and available software, the verification command can be different. Here there are 3 possible ways to do verification:

  1. Using md5sum command, usually available on Linux.
    $ md5sum meme_VERSION.tar.gz
  2. Using md5 command, usually available on Solaris.
    $ md5 meme_VERSION.tar.gz
  3. Using openssl command, usually available on any UNIX.
    $ openssl dgst -md5 meme_VERSION.tar.gz

The output of the command (numerical part) should be exactly the same as one provided in the checksum file. Here is the checksum information for available MEME versions:

File md5sum
meme_4.3.0.tar.gz please see meme_4.3.0.md5sum
meme_4.2.0.tar.gz please see meme_4.2.0.md5sum
meme_4.1.0.tar.gz please see meme_4.1.0.md5sum
meme_4.0.0.tar.gz please see meme_4.0.0.md5sum
meme_3.5.7.tar.gz please see meme_3.5.7.md5sum
meme_3.5.4.tar.gz please see meme_3.5.4.md5sum
meme_3.5.1.tar.gz please see meme_3.5.1.md5sum
meme_3.5.0.tar.gz cb552052c82c40ce3111c95f1e9697eb
meme_3.0.14.tar.gz f18bacdce60c11bff4cde650da296228

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Getting and installing the patches

The distribution may have patches associated with it. They are available from http://meme.nbcr.net/downloads/. Patch files are located in a directory named VERSION.patches, for example, meme_3.5.4.patches. Patch file have names like: VERSION.patch_SERIAL_NO, for example, meme_3.5.4.patch_3.

To install a patch, download the patch file from the URL given above. Then perform the following commands to install it:
$ cp PATCH_FILE VERSION
$ cd VERSION
$ patch -p1 < PATCH_FILE
$ make install
$ make test

For example, to install the first patch to version meme_3.5.4, you would perform the following commands:
$ cp meme_3.5.4.patch_1 meme_3.5.4
$ cd meme_3.5.4
$ patch -p1 < meme_3.5.4.patch_1
$ make install
$ make test

You must install all of the patches for a specific version in serial number order. For example, if you wish to install patch number 3, you must first have installed patches number 1 and 2 for that version. This is easy to do. Just download all the patches for your current version, copy them to your current version's directory, and then install them in order by repeating the patch, command above, with each patch file. You only need to run the install and make test commands once, after the last patch command.

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System Requirements

MEME has been used successfully on the following platforms

  • v 4.0.0
    • Redhat Enterprise Linux, release 5
    • Fedora Linux 7
    • MacOS X 10.5 (Leopard)
    • Cygwin (DLL 1.5.19-4.) running under Windows
  • v 3.5.7
    • Redhat Enterprise Linux, release 4
    • MacOS X 10.4.4 (Tiger)
    • Cygwin (DLL 1.5.19-4.) running under Windows
  • v 3.5.1
    • Redhat Enterprise Linux, release 4
    • MacOS X 10.4.4 (Tiger)
    • Cygwin (DLL 1.5.19-4.) running under Windows
    • SunOS 5.9
  • v 3.5.0
    • SunOS 5.9
    • Redhat Enterprise Linux, release 4

Disk use:

  • Minimal installation including only command line tools: 2.7 MB
  • Full web site (not including sequence databases) 23 MB

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MEME Suite Directories

Installation of MEME Suite will create the following directories: 

                bin/    db/    etc/    lib/    LOGS/    web/

The directories contain:

bin/
MEME Suite executables and scripts
db/
this directory or DIR specified by --with-db=DIR option is created. Initially, the database directory is empty, and is filled with the sequence databases after running update_db command.
doc/
Supplementary documentation for some of the MEME Suite tools.
etc/
contains the following files
  • db_*.csv - sequence database information listed as comma separated values. Used for running update_db command
  • mast.doc, meme.doc - text files used by a few commands to provide usage info
  • prior1.plib, prior30.plib - these files are used by MEME
lib/
contains common Perl modules
LOGS/
directory for temporary files created by mast or MEME when jobs are submitted via web
web/
contains static HTML and CGI scripts needed for a web-based access to the MEME Suite programs. This directory is only created if the MEME Suite web site is installed.

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Installing from a tarball

It is recommended to create a meme user prior to installation. Put the tarball you obtained from the web site in a directory where you want to build the software. If the software distribution was obtained via SVN access please see section Installing from an SVN repository.

Four steps are required to install the MEME Suite from a distribution tarball:

  1. Unzip and untar the distribution
  2. Configure the installation using the configure command.
  3. Build MEME Suite using the make command
  4. Install MEME Suite using the make install command

1. Unzip and untar the distribution:

Use the commands:

$ tar zxf meme_VERSION.tar.gz
$ cd meme_VERSION

to expand the tarball and move to the root directory of the distribution.

If there are patches associated with the VERSION please see section Getting and installing the patches that explains how to download and install the patches.

2. Configuring the installation

The configure script is found in the root directory of the distribution and used to set installation parameters. For a list of all available configuration parameters see section Customizing configuration below. Here we will discuss the most common configuration settings. The general form of the configure command is:

$ ./configure [parameters here]

Basic configuration parameters

When invoked without any parameters, only the command-line versions of the MEME Suite tools will be installed and none of the web components. The MEME Suite directories will be created under $HOME. The buttons and hyperlinks in the HTML output of the tools will not work if you use this command (unless you also install a MEME Suite web server on the same host). This is safe (you won't be able to send your data over the internet accidentally), but not very useful. However, if this is what you want the simplest command is:

$ ./configure

MEME Suite tool output files contain buttons that will send your results over the Internet when clicked. This is a very useful and powerful feature of the MEME Suite tools. If you want the buttons and hyperlinks in the HTML output of the tools to access the MEME Suite web server at NBCR, the simplest configuration command is

$ ./configure --with-url="http://meme.nbcr.net/meme"

The installation root directory can be specified using the parameter prefix. For example,

$ ./configure --prefix=your-install-path --with-url="http://meme.nbcr.net/meme"

This will install only the command-line versions of the MEME Suite tools and none of the web components. The MEME Suite directories will be created under the directory specified by the prefix option. The buttons and hyperlinks in the HTML output of the tools will link to the MEME Suite web server at NBCR. This is probably the most common use of configure.

The MEME Suite depends on the libraries libxml2 and libxslt. If these libraries are already installed, MEME will use try to use the installed versions. Otherwise, MEME will build its own copies of these libraries. If for some reason you want to force MEME Suite to build its own copies of libxml2 and libxslt, you can do so by using the enable-build-libxml2 and enable-build-libxslt parameters. For example,

$ ./configure \
--prefix=your-install-path \
--enable-build-libxml2 \
--enable-build-libxslt

This will cause the MEME Suite to build its own copies of libxml2 and xslt.

Configuring installation of the MEME Suite Web Application

Four parameters are needed to completely configure the MEME Suite web application:

  • the URL for the web site hosting the static HTML pages and CGI scripts
  • the URL for the web site hosting the MEME Suite SOAP services
  • the name of the directory where the static HTML pages and CGI scripts should be installed
  • the name of the directory containing the Opal build file for configuring the MEME Suite SOAP service

In many cases you will be able to take advantage of the default values for these parameters.

The parameter with-url was introduced in the previous section. It sets the URL for the web site hosting the static HTML pages and CGI scripts. If you are installing your own MEME Suite web application you will almost certainly want to set this parameter.

The parameter enable-web turns on installation of the MEME Suite web site. It can also be used to specify the URL for the MEME Suite SOAP services. The default URL for the MEME Suite SOAP services is http://ws.nbcr.net/opal2/services. For example,

$ ./configure \
--prefix=your-install-path \
--with-url=url-for-meme-on-your-web-server \
--enable-web

would install the MEME Suite command line tools and the web application under your-install-path. The web application would use the MEME Suite SOAP services at http://ws.nbcr.net/opal2/services. to process requests.

An explicit value can also be passed for the enable-web parameter. For example, to explicitly specify the value for the MEME Suite SOAP services on the NBCR server:

$ ./configure \
--prefix=your-install-path \
--with-url=<url-for-meme-on-your-web-server> \
--enable-web=http://ws.nbcr.net/opal2/services/

The parameter with-webdir configures the installation step so that the static HTML pages and CGI scripts will be copied to a particular directory. It defaults to <your-install-path>/web. For example, to force the static HTML and CGI files to be installed in /var/www/meme you would use the command:

$ ./configure \
--prefix=your-install-path \
--with-url=<url-for-meme-on-your-web-server> \
--with-webdir=/var/www/meme

Alternatively you can use a symbolic link to mount the web directory in the web servers directory tree (see step 4 below).

If you wish to build and install your own MEME Suite SOAP services you must have successfully installed and configured Tomcat, and Opal.

You must set the environment variable CATALINA_HOME to the path to the root directory of Tomcat:

$ setenv CATALINA_HOME tomcat-path # for csh, tcsh
or
$ export CATALINA_HOME=tomcat-path # for bash, sh

The parameter enable-webservice is used to specify the location of the ANT build file for Opal.

For example, to install the website and build and provide using your own MEME Suite SOAP services:

$ ./configure \
--prefix=your-install-path \
--enable-web=http://<base url for your Opal installation>/ \
--enable-webservice=path-to-your-build-opal.xml

3. Building

To build simply type while at the top directory:

$ make

You can run tests to make sure the MEME Suite programs are working correctly. The test will check MEME Suite output against known valid output:

$ make test

If there are errors, the output files from each test will be kept in tests/results/ and can be compared to files in tests/. When tests pass without errors the results/ with the output files is removed automatically.

4. Installing

To install the software in the directory tree specified by prefix run the command:

$ make install

Configuring apache web access

This part requires root access to create a symbolic link from the document root directory to the web directory in MEME installation. For example, if meme software is installed in /home/meme, and the HTTP DocumentRoot is /var/www/html, then create a link:
$ ln -s /var/www/html/meme <install.path.here>/web

The URL for web access is typically http://your.host.name/meme/. Virtual hosts may be configured accordingly.

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Installing from a SVN repository

The process of configuring, building, and installing MEME Suite from an SVN repository is the same as installing from a tarball, but with two extra, initial steps: you must check out the repository, and you must build the configure script.

Access to the SVN repository is granted at this point only to the MEME developers. We provide the tarball distribution of the latest version on the ftp site.

If you have SVN access, you can check out the source code with the command:

$ svn checkout svn+ssh://meme@summit.ucsd.edu/meme/SVNROOT/trunk

Once you've checked out the source code you need to build the configure script:

$ cd trunk
$ ./bootstrap

You can now follow the configuration, building and install steps from installing from a tarball.

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Parallel MEME

By default, configure will establish if your system has the right software to produce parallel version of MEME. Parallel compilation is disabled if mpicc is not found or if queue status program qstat (part of the SGE or PGS scheduler) is not found. Both must be present on the system. Please see section Prerequisite software for information where to get the software. Currently, parallel version of MEME is known to work with:

MPI distributions Batch Schedulers
LAM MPI SGE
MPICH PBS
  • If your mpicc is installed in non-standard place, use --with-mpidir=MPIDIR option when running 'configure' to specify the MPI installation directory.
  • If you have a custom version of mpicc (for example, one from Sun HPC ClusterTools) that provides wrappers use --with-mpicc=MPICC option to specify mpicc or its wrapper by full path. The configure looks by default only for names 'mpicc' and 'mpcc'.

Once mpicc and qsub are located by configure, the parallel version of MEME, called meme_p is compiled and installed automatically via commands make and make install.

MEME currently does not support Open MPI.

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Customizing configuration

Customization is done via the command line arguments to configure. To find out a list and the syntax of the configurable arguments, execute: $ ./configure --help

The general syntax for all the options is one of the following:

  • Include a feature:
    --enable-feature
    or
    --enable-feature=yes
  • Do not include a feature:
    --disable-feature
    or
    --enable-feature=no
  • Set a specific feature to a value:
    --with-feature=value

The following table provides a list of parameters available for configure:

Option Needed for Default value
--prefix Provide the installation location path. $HOME
--enable-build-libxml2 Forces MEME Suite to build and use libxml2 code included in MEME Suite distribution. disabled
--enable-build-libxslt Forces MEME Suite to build and use libxslt code included in MEME Suite distribution. disabled
--enable-debug Produce an executable with debugging symbols. no debug
--enable-opt Produce an executable with optimization. compiler and OS dependent.
--enable-serial Produce only serial version of MEME, do not build parallel version. disabled
--enable-web[=http://url.to.meme/webservice] Build web site applications. Must point it to MEME Suite web services exposed via Opal. Defaults to http://ws.nbcr.net/opal2/services/ disabled
--enable-webservice=/path/to/build.xml Deploy MEME Suite web services utilizing an existing Opal installation. Must point to the build file for the Opal installation. disabled
--with-contact=EMAIL Set email of web site administrator. $USER@$HOSTNAME
--with-convert=path-to-convert-binary Set location of ImageMagick convert application. As found in PATH
--with-db=DBDIR Set path to databases. install-path/db/
--with-dot=path-to-dot-binary Set location of Graphviz dot application. As found in PATH
--with-logs=LOGDIR Set path to logs. install-path/LOGS/
--with-maxtime=TIME Set wall time limit (sec) a web-submitted job started by the web server may use. 7200
--with-mpicc=MPICC Set MPICC to use. found mpicc
--with-mpidir=MPIDIR Set MPI installation path. path of found mpicc
--with-perl=path-to-perl-binary Set location of Perl interpreter. As found in PATH
--with-python=path-to-python-binary Set location of Python interpreter. As found in PATH
--with-procs=numproc Set number of processors to use for parallel jobs. 2
--with-url=URL Set url for the MEME Suite web site used by buttons on the output of MEME Suite tools. http://$HOSTNAME/meme
--with-blocks-url=URL Set url for the BLOCKMAKER web site. http://blocks.fhcrc.org/blocks-bin/process_blocks.pl
--with-goserver-url=URL Set url for the AMIGO web site. http://amigo.geneontology.org/amigo
--with-webdir=DIR Set path to MEME Suite web site directory. install-path/web/

Note 1: see Parallel MEME section for details.

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Installation Examples

  1. Example 1: installing MEME command line programs without any web components in /opt/meme. Buttons in the MEME output will submit to the default remote server: NBCR.
    $ tar zxf meme_4.3.0.tar.gz
    $ cd meme_4.3.0
    $ ./configure --prefix=/opt/meme
    $ make
    $ make test
    $ make install
  2. Example 2: installing MEME command line programs without any web components in /opt/meme. Buttons in the MEME output will submit to the URL: http://meme.imb.uq.edu.au/.
    $ tar zxf meme_4.3.0.tar.gz
    $ cd meme_4.3.0
    $ ./configure --prefix=/opt/meme --with-url=http://meme.imb.uq.edu.au/
    $ make
    $ make test
    $ make install
  3. Example 3: installing MEME command line programs and the static HTML and CGI scripts, but not the SOAP services. The URL for the MEME web site will be http://host/meme and buttons in the MEME output will submit to that URL. This installation will use the MEME SOAP services on http://ws.ncbr.net/opal2/services.
    $ tar zxf meme_4.3.0.tar.gz
    $ cd meme_4.3.0
    $ ./configure --prefix=/home/meme --enable-web --with-url=http://host/meme
    $ make
    $ make test
    $ make install
  4. Example 4: installing the full MEME Suite including all the command line programs, the static HTML and CGI scripts, and the SOAP services. The static HTML, CGI scripts, and SOAP services will all be served by an installation of Tomcat. http://host/meme.
    $ tar zxf meme_4.3.0.tar.gz
    $ cd meme_4.3.0
    $ export CATALINA_HOME=/home/meme/tomcat
    $ ./configure \
    --prefix=/home/meme \
    --enable-web=http://host:8080/opal/services
    --enable-webservice=/home/meme/opal/build.xml \
    --with-url=http://host:8080/meme \
    --with-webdir=/home/meme/tomcat/webapps/meme
    $ make
    $ make test
    $ make install
  5. Example 5: installing the full MEME Suite including all the command line programs, the static HTML and CGI scripts, and the SOAP services. The static HTML, and CGI scripts will be served by an APACHE web server. The SOAP services will all be provided by a separate installation of Tomcat.
    $ tar zxf meme_4.3.0.tar.gz
    $ cd meme_4.3.0
    $ export CATALINA_HOME=/home/meme/tomcat
    $ ./configure \
    --prefix=/home/meme \
    --enable-web=http://host:8080/opal/services
    --enable-webservice=/home/meme/opal/build.xml \
    --with-url=http://host/meme \
    --with-webdir=/home/meme/Sites/meme
    $ make
    $ make test
    $ make install

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Setting Up MEME Web Application Under Tomcat

Note: This procedure was tested with Tomcat 5.0.30.

1. In $CATALINA_HOME/webapps, make a symbolic link to the MEME web installation directory. For example
$ cd $CATALINA_HOME/webapps
$ ln -s $MEME_INSTALL_DIR/web meme

2. In $CATALINA_HOME/conf/Catalina/localhost, create a new file meme.xml with the following contents.
<Context path="/meme" docBase="meme" debug="0" allowLinking="true">
</Context>

3. In $CATALINA_HOME/conf/web.xml, uncomment the block of code just below "Common Gateway Includes (CGI) processing servlet, which supports...". Set param-value to cgi-bin. In addition, uncomment the block of code right below "The mapping for the CGI Gateway servlet".

4. Rename $CATALINA_HOME/server/lib/servlets-cgi.renametojar to $CATALINA_HOME/server/lib/servlets-cgi.jar.

5. Restart Tomcat.

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Uninstalling

You can unistall MEME Suite by giving the command:
$ make uninstall
in the root of the build directory. This will remove all the files installed for the MEME Suite, but won't remove any directories that may have been created.

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Using MEME Suite

Set the environment variable PATH to newly installed MEME Suite executables:
$ setenv PATH your-install-path/bin:${PATH} # for csh, tcsh
or
$ export PATH=your-install-path/bin:$PATH # for bash, sh

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Running regression tests

There is a suit of tests that can be run to test MEME Suite output against known output. These tests can be run during the installation process. A quick "smoke test" can be run using the command:
$ make test
A more complete set of tests can be run from the tests subdirectory of the build directory:
$ cd tests
$ ../scripts/runtests
This full set of tests can take a long time to run. The output files from the tests go into the newly created directory tests/results/. If the tests pass without errors this directory with its output files will be deleted. If there are errors the output files are kept and can be compared to files in tests.

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Installing sequence databases

If you have installed MEME Suite web site (using the --enable-web option in the ./configure command), you may optionally define a collection of sequence databases. This will define what sequence databases the associated MEME Suite web services will maintain and allow users to search. If you do not do this, you will not be able to use the sequence search tools on your website.

  1. Firstly, you must create the list of sequence databases on the web site using the commands:


    $ cd etc
    $ get_db_csv -db GENBANK -class Bacteria > db_genbank_bacteria.csv
    $ get_db_csv -db GENBANK -class Fungi > db_genbank_fungi.csv
    $ get_db_csv -db ENSEMBL > db_ensembl.csv
    $ get_db_csv -db ENSEMBL_ABINITIO > db_ensembl_abinitio.csv
    $ get_db_csv -db UPSTREAM > db_upstream.csv
    $ cat db_general.csv db_other_genomes.csv db_ensembl.csv db_ensembl_abinitio.csv db_genbank_fungi.csv db_genbank_bacteria.csv db_upstream.csv > fasta_db.csv
    $ make install

    You should rerun the above commands periodically in order to have the latest list of available sequence databases.

    You can also edit the fasta_db.csv file to add or remove sequence databases. (Place a "#" in the first position of a line to remove a sequence database.) Alternatively, you can create your own fasta_db.csv by hand using a spreadsheet program. The meaning of each column is given in the first line of each of the db_*.csv files included in the distribution.

  2. Next you must update (download) the sequence databases on the MEME Suite web services host (where you installed the web services using the --enable-webservice option in the ./configure command).

    The possible commands to update the sequence databases are:
    $ update_db > dblog.txt
    $ update_db -upstream > dblog.txt
    $ update_db -upstream -noclobber > dblog.txt
    These commands update, respectively, 1) all sequence databases that do not end with the suffix '_upstream'; or 2) all sequence databases including '_upstream' ones; or 3) all sequence databases plus '_upstream' ones that have not yet been downloaded. Note that to use '-upstream' you must create the link 'your-install-path/lib/perl/RSATWS'. This link should point to the RSATWS perl module library available from http://rsat.scmbb.ulb.ac.be/rsat/web_services/RSATWS.tar.gz.

    The resulting files in the db/ directory may be many gigabytes, depending on the contents of the fasta_db.csv file on the web site host (not the one on the web services host). It can take time to download all the sequence databases, and the connections to some sites from which files are downloaded may be not always available. Check the output of the script (dblog.txt) for error messages. If there are errors, the command to install the sequence databases will need to be repeated. The script will skip downloading 'normal' sequence databases that are current with the database source, and 'upstream' sequence databases that have already been downloaded if '-upstream -noclobber' is specified.

    In order to keep the sequence databases current, you can place one of the above 'update_db' commands in a chron job that runs at regular intervals.

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Installing GOMO databases

GOMO uses additional databases which need to be downloaded and installed.

  1. Download databases for GOMO from here.
  2. Extract the databases from the gziped tar:
    tar xzf gomo_databases.X.tgz
    where "X" is the version number of the GOMO databases file
  3. Copy the file gomo_databases/gomo_db.csv to the source etc directory and proceed though the normal installation steps until you have run:
    make install
    If you have already done this step just run "make install" again.
  4. Move the extracted databases folder (or create a soft link) into the installed db/ directory ensuring that the folder (or soft link) in the db/ directory is named gomo_databases.

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Installing motif databases

TOMTOM uses additional databases which need to be downloaded and installed.

  1. Download the motif databases from here.
  2. Extract the databases from the gziped tar:
    tar xzf motif_databases.X.tgz
    where "X" is the version number of the motif databases file
  3. Copy the file motif_databases/motif_db.csv to the source etc directory and proceed though the normal installation steps until you have run:
    make install
    If you have already done this step just run "make install" again.
  4. Move the extracted databases folder (or create a soft link) into the installed db/ directory ensuring that the folder (or soft link) in the db/ directory is named motif_databases.

Note:Due to copyright restrictions, some motif databases may be absent from the file you downloaded in step 1. You may "comment out" the line in the gomo_databases/motif_db.csv file for a missing database by adding a "#" in front of the line for that databases using a text editor. This will inactivate that motif database. Alternatively, if you own a license for a missing database, you can convert the database to MEME format using a command-line script provided with the MEME Suite. These scripts are documented under "motif database conversion utilities", and have names that begin with the motif database name and end with 2meme.

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Known issues

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Reporting problems

Make sure first that you really have a problem:

  • 1. Check your environment
    Did you change it recently? Did you upgrade to a new version? Is your operating system supported? Are you using latest versions of tools required?
  • Look for the answers.
    Check the INSTALL and README files that came with the distribution. Check the MEME user forum if your problem has been reported and there was a solution. Check the release notes for possible bug fixes and other version-dependent changes.
  • Are you asking in the right place?
    If your problems are related to the prerequisite software installation, your OS, or compiler, check relevant mailing lists, do Google search, talk to your sysadmin.
  • Verify what you did.
    Often, the problem is a result of the wrong execution of the commands or typos in the commands. Check if you executed the commands in the right order and if they were typed properly.
  • Report the problem.
    If all fails and you still have the problem, go ahead and email to meme@nbcr.net. Here is a guiding list of what to put in your email:
    • Use meaningful and specific email headers
    • Write clearly and be precise about your problem. Give as much information as possible, yet avoid dumping large volumes of data.
    • Essential information to include: your OS version, the software version you are trying to install, your compiler version, autoconf version ...
    • Describe the exact problem symptoms, and whether they are reproducible. Provide the relevant output from running configure or make that indicates what the error was.

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