Re: st: Stata 9 on MacOS 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

["Eric A.Booth" <ebooth@ppri.tamu.edu>]

Stata 9 is a 32-bit application and SL has a 64-bit kernel, which is  
why you are probably hesitant about the upgrade.
In reality, SL boots into 32-bit mode to maintain compatibility with  
non-64bit programs, you have to configure your machine to boot into 64- 
bit by pressing "6" and "4" when you boot the machine or by typing  
"boot-args="arch=x86_64" into Terminal.

I've never tried this with Stata 9--because I don't have a copy--but  
if you were in a situation where Stata 9 wouldn't work in SL, you can  
press Cmd + i to open the Info panel and change the setting to either  
(1) run in 32-bit mode or (2) run using Rosetta (which is used for  
programs built on the old PPC architecture rather than in Intel  
Universal Binary--I don't know which one Stata 9 uses).

I've got several programs running in 32-bit or Rosetta in SL without  
any problems after I pressed Cmd+i and changed their settings.

Also, another consideration is whether your machine is built recently  
enough that it has the 64-bit compatible firmware.  If it's got the 32- 
bit firmware, you're not going to see any of the 32-bit to 64-bit  
conversion issues after switching to SL (and you won't get much of the  
performance boost out of SL, but it will still run).  To see what kind  
of firmware you have,  type the following into Terminal:

ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi

If will display whether the EFI (firmware) is 32 or 64 bit compatible.


Eric

__
Eric A. Booth
Public Policy Research Institute
Texas A&M University
ebooth@ppri.tamu.edu
Office: +979.845.6754


On Oct 11, 2009, at 9:29 AM, Davide Cantoni wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I wonder if anyone has tried to run Stata 9 on Snow Leopard (MacOS
> 10.6), and if it runs smoothly. A lot of applications seem to have
> minor or major troubles with the new system (LyX, SPSS 17 etc), so any
> first-hand reports are highly appreciated.
>
> Best, Davide
>
> PS.: Why am I not using Stata 10, which is said to run fine on Snow
> Leopard? Because of this issue of inputting a variable twice when
> hitting the space bar
> (http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/mac/varwindow2.html), which
> literally drives me mad.
> *
> *   For searches and help try:
> *   http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
> *   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> *   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/

*
*   For searches and help try:
*   http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
*   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/