[daip] Problems with Install Wizard

[Alan Chipperfield]

Hi,

As a member of the UK's 'Starlink' project, I have been asked to provide
some front-line support for UK university astronomy groups using AIPS. I
am a complete novice with AIPS and as a first step I am trying to install
it on the three platforms we support, namely Alpha, Solaris and Linux.

I would like to report some errors I had recently when trying to install 
AIPS 31DEC99 for the first time, from scratch, on an ALPHA using the 
install.pl wizard. I have now got the 31DEC00 version and the problems still 
exist.

1. In the test for the presence of gunzip (I do not have gnu tar on the
   alpha machine) the command `gunzip --version 2>/dev/null` always
   produces an empty string as the version number is output to stderr not
   stdout. The wizard therefore thinks it cannot unpack the tarball.
   I got it going by using the command:
       $gunzok = `if gunzip --version 2>/dev/null; then echo OK;fi`;
 
2. The gunzip command needs a -c flag in order to output to stdout and
   thus into the tar command.

3. AIPSROOT.DEFINE complained that it did not have write permission for
   the shell scripts in AIPS_ROOT.  It seems that the code is written
   (using rm -f) to allow the files to be overwritten but it never gets
   that far because it has tested for write permission and bailed out
   because it doesn't have it.

4. On my system, the uname command used to find the value of $THISHOST
   returns a full machine name + domain. This resulted in data area
   names which were not detected when AIPS was run because HOSTS.CSH
   sets $HOST to the name without the domain.  I fixed this by using
   the HOSTS.CSH recipe in install.pl (maybe hostname -s could be used instead)
   but I am uncertain if this may cause problems in networking by writing
   the shortened name into other files. Can you advise?

5. Finally, for the moment anyway, The keys I got back having registered
   were not accepted by SETPAR, maybe because I had re-run install.pl
   attempting to correct the various problems between the time the
   registration was sent and the time I got the reply.  I also noticed
   that typo in the address I gave - can I re-register?

Your advice would be appreciated.

Regards

--
Alan Chipperfield                     Email:  ajc at star.rl.ac.uk
CCLRC,                                Phone:  +44-1235-821900 ext 6165
Starlink Project,
Rutherford Appleton Lab.,
Chilton, Didcot, OXON, OX11 OQX
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