FITTP under Linux

[Pat Murphy]

Several AIPS users with Linux systems have discovered (the reoccurence of)
a bug in FITTP whereby the program seemingly gets into an infinite loop,
never writes the file and never returns.  As I indicate, this was a known
problem as of a couple of years ago, and we had tracked it down to the
rather innocuous routine ($APLSUB/FILL; it just fills an array with a
constant) that misbehaved when optimized too much under Linux.

Despite having the correct setting for FILL in the $SYSUNIX/OPTIMIZE.LIS
file: 

   FILL               LINUX            0           0

and despite an apparent normal COMRPL/COMLNK when generating the binaries
that were released for Linux with 15APR97, the FITTP.EXE that was released
(and the one on our master system here in CV) continued to misbehave by
going into the endless loop.  

A few minutes ago, I rebuilt FILL and FITTP on Linux in 15APR97 *without*
changing anything else in the AIPS setup, and now the binary works.
Before doing this, it hung.  The versions of f2c and gcc have changed
slightly on my system in the interim; perhaps this is responsible for the
improved behaviour.  I am running gcc 2.7.2.1 and "FORTRAN 77 to C
Translator, VERSION 19951025" (according to strings /usr/bin/f2c) on a
Linux 2.0.30 system.

So, if you have a 15APR97 version of AIPS under Linux, and you:

    *   did a from-source install, please try COMRPL $APLSUB/FILL
	and then a COMLNK $APGNOT/FITTP to regenerate, or if that fails to
	work, try getting the binary (see next item)

    *   got the binaries from aips.nrao.edu via ftp BEFORE Thursday,
	September 25, 1997 15:00 UT (note universal time), please now
	get /aips/15APR97/LINUX/LOAD/FITTP.EXE.gz, gunzip it and place the
	resulting FITTP.EXE in your $LOAD/ directory (15APR97/LINUX/LOAD/).

My apologies to all of you who encountered this bug.  If anyone
experiences problems with the new binary, please let me know.

				- Pat

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