FAQ

The required storage per year can be calculated based on the expected annual sample volume in case of using the Holotype kit. Since the sample and result sizes can vary in a much wider range when other kits are used we cannot provide sufficient advice in this case. Contact Omixon support to receive a calculation.

Omixon licensing relies on physical properties of a machine – like the machine ID under Linux or the MAC address on a Windows machine. Due to this virtualization is not supported at the moment, however if you can guarantee that these properties will not change there is no theoretical problem with running Twin or Explore on a virtual machine. In case one of these properties changes the database will be lost which means you need to obtain a new license and re-create user accounts to overcome this issue. Results are not affected by this.

By default the application allocates only 5GBs of memory for itself. In order to allow it to take advantage of the available resources you can assign more memory using the Memory Settings option which is available under the Application Settings page. Important note: please do not allocate all the available memory to the software. The operating system and other applications running in the background also require resources. The ideal amount is around ⅔ of the available memory  if you intend to run Twin or Explore analyses only. Examples: allocate 5GB out 8GB, or 12GB out of 16GBs, 24GB out of 32GB.

Omixon HLA Twin and Explore supports 64-bit operating systems – Windows, Linux and OS X. There are no restrictions in terms of version for Windows – Windows 7, 8 and 10 are all supported and the same goes for the various Linux distributions available. For OS X there is one limitation – a Mac machine can be used as a client or a desktop but not as a server.

Start the installer and on the first screen of the Setup Wizard you will be presented with two options – one of them is “Yes, update the existing installation”. In this case you have an existing installation that has been recognised by the installer and you can upgrade this installation by selecting this option and proceeding with the installation without modifying any folder names or paths during the installation. If you select the other option – “No, install into a different directory” – you can create a new, separate installation of the software by modifying the folder names or paths presented to you during installation. Please note that this latter method is not suitable to “move” an existing installation from one location to the other. It will create a new, separate installation without overwriting the previous one.

Startup the software and look at the title of the application in the top left part of the title bar. If you see “Omixon HLA Twin RUO” or “Omixon HLA Explore” – you are using the desktop application. If you see “Omixon HLA Twin RUO – using XYZ server” or something similar where the name of the server is included then you are using a client application connecting to a server.

This happens usually when you used a shortcut to startup the software. During installation it sometimes happens that the client shortcut that is created does not point to the actual client but to another executable available in the installation directory. The easiest way to resolve this is to navigate to the installation directory and startup the client executable manually. Once you verified that the software starts up as expected you can delete the faulty shortcut from your desktop and create a new one from the actual executable.

If there are no firewalls between the server and your machine you should be able to connect without any specific configuration. Simply click “Add new server” and save the connection as is. Afterwards you can click “Connect” to connect to the server. In case there is a specific IP address or hostname configured for the server or if there is a firewall in between please refer to the Client-server configuration part of the FAQ.

Prior to Twin 2.1.0 and Explore 1.3.0 Omixon HLA software installers came in bundles – this means that if you have a Desktop installation you will also have a Client available in the installation directory. You simply have to make sure that you start the omixon-hla-twin executable when you want to run the standalone application and use the client executable if you want to connect to a server.

In case you downloaded the installer to a Windows machine using Internet Explorer the file extension has most likely been removed from the executable due to security restrictions. This can be resolved by locating the file that you downloaded and renaming it to have the “.exe” extension. Simply add “.exe” to the end of the filename and it will be ready to run.

You will receive an Omixon license by email. You can right click on the link from which the license is available for download and use the “Save link as..” option to save the license to a suitable location. Please make sure that the license has a “.lic” extension and is not saved as a txt file. If it has been saved as a “txt” or as a “lic.txt” please rename it to have a “.lic” extension.

Start up the software and go to Application Settings. Use the “Display Hardware key” option available in the left hand “Administration” menu to display the hardware key. Since certain letters are indistinguishable based on a screenshot – for example “l” and “I” – we strongly recommend using the “Copy to clipboard” option available on the popup window which copies the hardware key to the clipboard from where you can easily paste it into an email.

Omixon HLA Twin and Explore use the machine id file, to generate a hardware key – a unique machine identifier for the Omixon application. The file must be accessible in /var/lib/dbus/machine-id, and it is a randomly generated by dbus-uuidgen, typically invoked by the post-install script of a D-Bus package. It can also be a symlink to /etc/machine-id, but the file has to be present in either way on the path above. In some Red-Hat distributions this path does not exist.
To fix it, run
$ dbus-uuidgen > /var/lib/dbus/machine-id
If you don’t have dbus-uuidgen , it’s in the dbus package, which can be installed by issuing
$ yum install dbus .

The most common cause of this problem is an outdated or missing video card driver. Twin and Explore require OpenGL 2.0 support from the video card to be displayed. If you want to use it on your own machine check if your video card supports this and if it does upgrade the driver and restart the application. If you are using Twin or Explore via Remote Desktop or X please note that these don’t forward the OpenGL support so while you can technically startup the application remotely – you will not be able to see it. To work around this – startup the application locally on the machine and then you can access and use it via Remote Desktop or X.

Another potential problem is when the application has been installed using a user account with administrator access and now you are trying to use it with a user account that does not have this privilege. Full access needs to be granted to the application folders which have been defined during installation – database folder, installation folder, and temp folder.

BitLocker on Windows can also prevent the application from running as it detects and prevents executables from running within a user profile. Configure BitLocker to allow this and the application will start up.

Since Twin 4.1.0, a running MySQL server is also required, without the MySQL server the Software can not start.

The user manual is located in the “doc” folder within the installation directory. The basics of setting up the configuration are detailed in the user manual so you can refer to that to get started.

There can be a number of issues preventing the connection – the two most common are different versions and firewalls. Please make sure that when you upgrade the server you upgrade all clients as well – to the same version. There are a number of ways to check the software versions – the first of them is to ensure that you used the installers with the same version number. If you don’t have the installers anymore you can check the client version number on the splash screen that pops up when you start the client. In case you don’t have a sufficient graphical display on the server, you can check the “server.log” of the server, located in the “logs” folder within the installation directory. Alternatively, feel free to send the logs to support@omixon.com for confirmation. When it comes to firewalls there are a number of test steps that can be executed to determine whether the firewall is preventing the connection – please see the “Client-server (TWIN 3.X.X AND EXPLORE 2.0.0) troubleshooting guide” for the detailed description.