Hi Emmanuelle, Thanks -- that helps... and it does look like the binary installer is not working as expected. For what it's worth, the installer should install perl modules to /Library/Perl, not /System/Library/Perl. Can you look there as well? If there's nothing under /Library/Perl, then that would definitely be a problem. But it sounds like it's a different problem than that. Here's another thing to try that will help us. It sounds a little complicated if you don't normally use the Unixy part of OS X, but it's not too bad: 1. Open a Terminal. (in Applications->Utilities) 2. At the prompt, type: ~> ifeffit and read the result. 2a. If the ifeffit starts and you get a banner message 'Ifeffit 1.2.8 ....' and a new prompt that says Ifeffit> then go to step 3. 2b. If you get tcsh: ifeffit: Command not found. then type 'source /Applications/Ifeffit/bin/iff_init.csh' and go back to step 2. 2c. If you get one of sh: ifeffit: command not found bash: ifeffit: command not found then type '. /Applications/Ifeffit/bin/iff_init.sh' and go back to step 2. And yes, that command begins with a '.' followed by a space, and that is important. 3. If running 'ifeffit' never runs or gives some other message, let us know what it is. Anything having to do with "command not found" or "permission denied" is probably due to the set up of your shell and/or PATH settings. If you have a Unixy person around, see if they can help. 4 Once (or if) the command-line ifeffit runs, quit it (type 'quit' at the Ifeffit> prompt) and start X-windows by typing at the Terminal prompt: ~> open -a X11 That will start the X-Windows system (it might take awhile to launch). If it does not start, you might need to install X11 (from the installation discs??? I think that's the case for 10.4). 5. Once X-11 starts, run ifeffit and check that it plots: type 'ifeffit' at the Terminal, then Ifeffit> testplot at the ifeffit prompt. If a plot comes up, you're set. If it doesn't, you probably got some error messages to send. 6. Finally, once ifeffit runs and plots, type 'quit' at it's prompt and then try 'athena' from the Terminal. If athena doesn't run, it will probably spew messages about missing libraries.... send these along. Hope that helps. Really, my guess is that it will be easier to get a binary installer that works than to try to install from source. --Matt