[ns] HELP!!

[Ishan Mandrekar <ishan@io.ece.drexel.edu>]

Hi every1,

I'm new to NS simulator and was trying to install it on one of our lab
servers. The installation process went fine (atleast there were no error
messages popping up), but I'm having problems when I try to run a test
script (the 1st ex in Marc Grei's tutorial) I wrote. There is
a lot of screen scrolling and then the program aborts with the following
message:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
: no value given for parameter "text" to "checkout_executable"
    while executing
"checkout_executable PERL  perl "\
When configured, ns found the right version of perl in\

but it doesn't seem to be there anymore, so\
ns will fall b..."  
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
What could be the problem here?

Would like to know whether there's a sure fire way of checking if I've
installed everything properly. I tried to run validate, but here too I get
incessant screen scrolling.

Would highly appreciate any comments/suggestions.

Thanks,
Ishan.

P.S: What is the recommended server configuration (in terms of
processor speed, memory etc.) to run NS simulator