How to install NCL and Ferret on Ubuntu

I have started to use Ubuntu a few months ago. I want to install 'Ferret' and 'NCAR Command Language' to my computer but I don't know how. Are there any way to install them on Ubuntu?

Before I started to use Ubuntu I used Fedora for a while and on Fedora I could install them easily. Am I doing something wrong or they are just not working on Ubuntu? These programs are important for me because I'm a meteorological engineer student and I'm using these programs frequently.

5 Answers

Now you can install ncl through apt-get in Ubuntu 14.04. It has a bug though. Bug . You have to do some linking.

sudo apt-get install ncl-ncarg
sudo ln -s /usr/share/ncarg /usr/lib/ncarg

And you can start using ncl inside 14.04.

For Ferret, this guide gives detailed (and probably outdated) installation instructions. Unfortunately, it seems no .deb files are available.

To get you started:

1. Download the source code
2. mkdir ferret_install; cd ferret_install
3. tar -xvzf ../fer_source.tar.gz
4. cd FERRET
5. less README_build_ferret (and read installation instructions).

Alternatively, you could download .rpm package and install it using alien.

sudo apt-get install alien dpkg-dev debhelper build-essential
sudo alien rpm_filename.rpm
sudo dpkg -i rpm_filename.deb

Probably at least some dependencies will fail, and you have to install those manually.

For NCL, Debian packages are available. Download appropriate package (either 32bit or 64bit), and install it with dpkg -i package_filename.deb. I couldn't test this as they require registeration before downloading is allowed.

Ferret is now on main Ubuntu Repository. It can be installed as:

sudo apt-get install ferret

This is not the ferret you are looking for. The visualization package is 'ferret-viz' so:

sudo apt-get install ferret-viz

'ferret' in Debian/Ubuntu is GNU Ferret, a different package.

rgds Alastair McKinstry, ferret-viz and NCL maintainer.

The ferret software available under Ubuntu's apt-get is different from NOAA's Ferret.

Here is a short guide to installing Ferret and PyFerret on a Linux system. Install following first (In Fedora using dnf or Ubuntu Synaptic Manager)

PyQt4.x86_64
PyQt5.x86_64(python-qt5.x86_64)
gcc-gfortran.x86_64
scipy.x86_64
numpy.x86_64
java-1.8.0-openjdk
libgfortran
libcurl
pango
cairo

Go to the link and get the link of the required version of pyferret.

mkdir -p ~/pkgs
cd ~/pkgs
wget
wget ftp://
wget ftp://
wget ftp://

Move them to the following directory.

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/pyferret
sudo mv pyferret-7.2.1-RHEL7-64.tar.gz /usr/local/pyferret
sudo mv fer_*tar.gz /usr/local/pyferret
cd /usr/local/pyferret

Extract them all

for f in *.gz
do
sudo tar -zxvf $f
done

Run Finstall

cd pyferret-7.2.1-RHEL7-64
sudo ./bin/Finstall

Answer for the first query

/usr/local/pyferret/pyferret-7.2.1-RHEL7-64

Answer for the second query /usr/local/pyferret

Answer for the third query /usr/local/pyferret

Type s for bash linking

Type python2.7 as desired version of python

source /usr/local/pyferret/ferret_paths

keep this path in .bashrc if needed.

Now for installing ferret

cd /usr/local/pyferret
sudo ./bin/Finstall

/usr/local/pyferret is the answer to all the questions except for ferret_paths directory which is

/usr/local

source /usr/local/ferret_paths

keep this path in .bashrc if needed

Now both ferret and pyferret commands should be working.

Troubleshooting:

1. Had problem with libgfortran.so.3 not being found by pyferret. Problem is, in fedora27, the latest gcc-gfortran 7 only gives libgfortran.so.4. I could not install any version of gcc-gfortran so that if gives libgfortran.so.3 (using rpms wrecked some existing packages). I took libgfortran.so.3 and libgfortran.so.3.0.0 from another system (Ubuntu 16.04.3) directly and kept them under ~/pkgs/libs and then pyferret worked with following command. export LD_PRELOAD=~/pkgs/libs/libgfortran.so.3:~/pkgs/libs/libopenblas.so.0;pyferret -nojnlyou can put an alias in as alias pf='export LD_PRELOAD=~/pkgs/libs/libgfortran.so.3:~/pkgs/libs/libopenblas.so.0;pyferret -nojnl'

2. If some package versions differ, try liking the required one in the following way.

   sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/libreadline.so.7.0 /usr/lib64/libreadline.so.6 sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/libhistory.so.7.0 /usr/lib64/libhistory.so.6

3. Some more packages may be required(apt-get in case of Ubuntu)

   sudo dnf install libpng15.x86_64 sudo dnf install libpng12.x86_64

4. Add LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your ~/.bashrc

   export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/:/usr/lib64/:/usr/local/pyferret/ext_func/libs/:/usr/local/pyferret/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pyferret/