A-Z Index of IT Support

If you're using "Relion" on your Mac (see http://www.bioch.ox.ac.uk/relion) then you may well want to use CTFFIND with it. Here are the steps to get it up & running


1   Install the XCode comand-line tools

If you haven’t already installed XCode, run this from the terminal by copying & pasting:
 
xcode-select --install


2  Install the "Homebrew" package manager

If you haven't already, install the “homebrew” package manager by copying & pasting the following terminal command:
 
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)”


3  Use Homebrew to install the following dependencies

Run the following one by one from the terminal:

brew install wxmac
brew install fftw
brew install gsl


4  Download the CTFFIND source code

Download ctffind-4.1.8.tar.gz from this page:
 
 
At the time of writing, this version definitely works on Mac OS


5  Carefully copy and paste these terminal commands

Assuming you've downloaded ctffind-4.1.8.tar to your "Downloads" folder:
 
cd ~
tar -xvf ~/Downloads/ctffind-4.1.8.tar
cd ctffind-4.1.8
mkdir build
cd build
../configure CXXFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include -L/usr/local/lib”
make
make install
 
(If the ../configure line fails, try:
../configure CXXFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include -L/usr/local/lib" CC=/usr/bin/gcc)


6  Test to see if it's running

Test it’s working by simply typing “ctffind” - the program should launch in interactive mode in the terminal. Quit with ctrl-c

If you get an error message at this stage, try unzipping and dropping these compiled binaries and associated files into /usr/local/bin

If you're using with Relion, you'll want to plug in the path to ctffind (/usr/local/bin/ctffind) as in the following graphic:



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