[daip] installing aips

[Patrick P Murphy]

Eric forwarded your note to me.

On Mon, 10 Dec 2001 12:18:30 +0100 (MET), Pedro Montero <montero at sissa.it>
   said: 

> I have added those lines to the /etc/services

Good; that will eliminate one of the many problems (plural) that are
evident from your startup messages.

> After that is asking me an ID and a password which I don't  have.

Yes you do.  If you read the documentation (see our web pages), you will
see that "AMANAGER" is the as-shipped password for user number 1 (AIPS
uses user numbers to allow multiple users to use a shared Unix account and
keep their AIPS data separately; this may or may not be a good idea
depending on your environment, but for historic reasons it was the way
NRAO and in particular the VLA operated for years).  User #1 is the AIPS
"manager" and is a special userid.  Other user numbers have no password
set and you can use them.  See 31DEC01/DOC/TEXT/USERNO.LIS for the
"assigned" user number list for all observers of the VLA.

> How do I set up the ID number and passwd for the users??

Pick a number, and have the user set their own password (use of a password
inside AIPS is optional).

> Note:  nslookup is deprecated and may be removed from future releases.
> Consider using the `dig' or `host' programs instead.  Run nslookup with
> the `-sil[ent]' option to prevent this message from appearing.

Ahh.  I didn't see that before.  It appears we will need to modify the
START_AIPS script[1].  It needs a way of translating an IP address into a
hostname (in the case where you're remotely logged in using the secure
shell) to figure out what host you're actually sitting at, so it can fire
off a command to that remote (local to you) system to start the AIPS TV
services on it, not the current host.  If you don't want this behaviour,
please read the manual page on AIPS (man aips) to see how to start up AIPS
with the TV where you do want it.  You might want, e.g.

     aips tv=rigel

to force the TV to start up on host RIGEL and use whatever DISPLAY is set
to.  See below[2] for excerpts from the man page for AIPS; this is an
important concept (separation of TV servers from where AIPS runs) to
understand. 

				- Pat

[1] The line:
         WORKST=`nslookup $WORKST | grep '^Name:' | awk '{print $2}'`
    in START_AIPS will need replaced with something like this:
         WORKST=`host $WORKST | awk '{print $NF}'`
    (untested, but should work).  However, this line will FAIL on systems
    that have the older version of the bind utilities, such as stock
    Solaris systems, older OSF1/Alpha systems, and likely many more.

[2] excerpts from "man aips":

AIPS(LOCAL)                                           AIPS(LOCAL)


NAME
       AIPS - Astronomical Image Processing System

SYNOPSIS
       aips [OLD, NEW, or TST]
            [TV=[disp][:][host]]
         or [TV=local[:n]]
         or [NOTV]
            [TVOK]
            [DA=host[,host,...]]
         or [DA=default]
         or [DA=all]
            [TP=tphost[,tphost,...]]
         or [TPOK]
            [pr=#]
            [REMOTE or REM or TEK]
            [DEBUG[=prog][:aips]]
            [LOCAL] [NORL] [NOEX]

       TV=[tvdisp][:][tvhost] or TV=local[:n]
               TV  display  server  to  use instead of the default.  The
               AIPS startup script tries to deduce which host  the  user
               is  sitting  in  front of (this may not work; it is often
               difficult or impossible to determine  this  information).
               This  may not be the same as the machine on which AIPS is
               to be run if, for example, the user has  remotely  logged
               in  to another machine within a terminal emulator window.

               The "TV=local" option allows use of  Unix  based  sockets
               for the TV and other servers.  If you choose this option,
               you MUST run the XAS server and any  AIPS  sessions  that
               will  use it on the same host, though the DISPLAYs can be
               the same or different.  Also,  no  remote  AIPS  sessions
               will be able to talk to this local TV.

               If you instead use "TV=local:0", it will attempt to start
               a new instance of the TV and ancillary servers.  This can
               be  used  to  have multiple TV's on the same host, and is
               useful in a compute server environment with X  terminals.
               If  you  have  multiple  Unix-socket  based  TV's already
               started, you can choose which one a new AIPS session will
               use by, e.g. "TV=local:2" to choose the second one.

               NOTE: The default TV behaviour is to use INET or Internet
               based sockets, as the scripts have been doing since 1992.
               The  "local"  Unix  socket  based  functionality does not
               change this.

               For the default use of internet sockets, the full  syntax
               of  the  TV=  option is TV=tvdisp:tvhost, where tvhost is
               the name of the machine on which the  TV  display  server
               (usually  XAS),  Tektronix graphics server (TEKSRV), mes­
               sage server (MSGSRV), and TV Lock server (TVSERV) are  to
               run,  and  tvdisp indicates the machine to which the DIS­
               PLAY environment variable should point for XAS.   Do  NOT
               specify  TV=hostname:0.0!   Both TVHOST and TVDISP can be
               different from the machine that AIPS  itself  is  running
               on.  See the section on X Window System servers below for
               more information on how to control the servers.

               The default behaviour of  this  option  if  only  one  of
               tvdisp and tvhost is specified is

               TV=tvhost   tvdisp defaults to tvhost.

               TV=tvdisp:  tvhost  defaults  to the host AIPS is running
                           on.

               For  the  remote  TV options to work, you must be able to
               use the rsh or remsh command; see the notes on  it  under
               the tp= heading below.  Also see the notes on environment
               variable AIPSREMOTE.  By default, if you do  not  specify
               any  tv=  option,  you will only get a TV if your current
               TERM environment variable matches sun*, *xterm*, *hpterm,
               dtterm,  or  iris*.   The DISPLAY environment variable is
               used if set, otherwise the who am i (on HP-UX,  with  the
               -R  option) is used to make a guess at "where" you really
               are.


       NOTV    Prevents automatic activation of the  TV  servers  if  no
               display  is  wanted.   This option also disables the Tek­
               tronix graphics server, the message  server  and  the  TV
               lock  server.  See the section on X Window System servers
               below for information on how to control the Tektronix and
               message servers.


       TVOK    Assume  that  the TV display servers are already running;
               the particulars (display, host) are still worked  out  --
               from  the TV=... argument (see above) if necessary -- but
               no servers will be started.