Testing the Installation

The following simple commands allow you to test the installation of Wolfram. Running these commands does not guarantee that the installation was successful, but a failed command can indicate that a serious problem occurred during installation.
You should run these tests from a regular user account and not from an account with administrative privileges.
To run Wolfram using a network license, both the client machine and the license server must be on the network and MathLM must be running.
If you run into problems when doing these tests, see the troubleshooting tips in "Troubleshooting the Wolfram System". If you do not find the answer there, check the Technical Support website at support.wolfram.com/mathematica.
To Test the Front End:

1.  Launch Wolfram using the appropriate procedure for your platform.

On Macintosh, the Wolfram icon will begin bouncing on the system dock while Wolfram launches. On other platforms, a splash screen with initialization information appears briefly. Afterwards, the Welcome Screen will appear. Choose Create New Notebook to create an empty notebook.

2.  Type N[Pi,20]. Then hold down the Shift key and press Enter to evaluate. This should send the command to the kernel and return the same result as before. The In[1] and Out[1] labels are prepended once the evaluation is completed.

In the notebook window, there should be a horizontal line across the notebook; this is the horizontal insertion bar. If you do not see one, move the pointer until it becomes a horizontal I‐beam and click once to see the insertion bar.

3.  Press the Esc key. You should see three small horizontal lines in a column (Esc). Type int and press Esc again. You should see an integral sign (∫). As an additional font check, typing ∖[CheckmarkedBox] and ∖[CirclePlus] should print the symbols ☑ and ⊕, respectively. If the symbols show up correctly, the fonts have been properly installed.

4.  From the Help menu, choose Wolfram Documentation. The Wolfram Language & System Documentation Center should appear.

On Unix and Linux, you can test the X front end remotely, provided the ssh server on the remote machine allows X forwarding. You must be running X on the local machine to do this. In a shell, type ssh -X hostname /usr/local/bin/wolframnb. (The exact pathname could be different depending on how Wolfram was installed.) This command will launch Wolfram on the remote machine hostname. When the splash screen appears on your screen, follow step 2 and step 3 in the previous instructions.