Micro Focus Visual COBOL 2.3 Update 2 for Eclipse (UNIX) > Welcome > Product Information > Installation > Basic Installation > Installing the software

Installing the software

Note: Micro Focus offers two types of installers on UNIX and Linux - a proprietary Micro Focus installer for installing Visual COBOL on UNIX and Linux and a standard RPM (RPM Package Manager) installer for installing Visual COBOL on Linux.

These are the steps to install this product:

Give execute permissions to the setup file:

chmod +x setup_visualcobol_deveclipse_3.0_platform

Run the setup file with superuser permissions:
```
./setup_visualcobol_deveclipse_3.0_platform
```
If you don't run this as superuser, you are prompted to enter the superuser password during the install.

The COBOL environment is installed by default into /opt/microfocus/VisualCOBOL, (COBDIR). A full version of Eclipse, with the Micro Focus plugins already installed, is present in the $COBDIR/eclipse directory.

To install in a different location use the -installlocation="Location" parameter to specify an alternative directory location. For example:
```
./setup_visualcobol_deveclipse_3.0_platform -installlocation="full path of new location"
```
Note: You can use variables or the tilde syntax for the path for –installlocation. For example, the following examples are equivalent:
```
-installlocation="/home/myid/installdir"
```
```
-installlocation="~myid/installdir"
```
```
-installlocation="~/installdir"
```
```
-installlocation="$HOME/installdir"
```
You can see details about which additional parameters can be passed to the install script if you enter the -help option.
Note:
- The installation of this product could affect the SafeNet Sentinel licensed components running on your machine. During installation licensing is shutdown to allow files to be updated. To ensure the processes running on your machine are not affected, you need to use the -skipsafenet option, which skips the installation of SafeNet:
```
. /setup_visualcobol_deveclipse_3.0_platform -skipsafenet
```
- To protect the SafeNet Sentinel installation from accidental updating you can create an empty file named SKIP_SAFENET_INSTALL in /var/microfocuslicensing/ as follows:
```
touch /var/microfocuslicensing/SKIP_SAFENET_INSTALL
```
  While the file is present, the SafeNet installer does not make changes to the installation or shutdown the running license daemons. If licensing needs to be updated later, remove the file and install Sentinel RMS server manually.