[daip] Install help

[Patrick P. Murphy]

On Fri, 21 Sep 2001 16:54:09 +1000 (EST), Melinda Taylor
   <melinda at phys.unsw.edu.au> said: 

> I have just completed my first ever AIPS instaall for a user. I myself
> have never used AIPS, it appears to startup just fine, all the Tv servers
> appear but we are having trouble with the data disks. The machine is
> a PC running redhat 7.1

You may wish to get and print out a copy of the AIPS cookbook before
proceeding.  It's available as a series of PostScript files on our web
site <http://www.cv.nrao.edu/aips/> in the documentation section.

> DADEVS.PL: This program is untested under Perl version 5.006
>   (Using global default file /AIPS/DA00/DADEVS.LIST for DADEVS.PL)
>    Disk 1 (1) is /home/vminier/data

This is fine.

> which all looks ok. The user has copied all his data 

In what format?  FITS?  AIPS raw catalog files?  It matters.

> to the /home/vminier/data

That's not the way AIPS works.  Please have your user copy the files to
the $AIPS_ROOT/FITS/ subdirectory instead.  Then the FITLD task can be
used to read the FITS files into AIPS internal format.

If your user has copied raw AIPS data files (not in FITS format) from an
older version of AIPS (i.e. the catalog files), that may not work; it
depends on the version.

If the data is copied from a Sun, HP, SGI, IBM RS6000 or other big-endian
byte order system, you cannot use those files on a Linux (or Alpha)
system, period, no matter what version of AIPS is used.

> Does aips read normal standard fits file (like one
> you could manipulate within iraf) 

Yes; use FITLD (or the older UVLOD or IMLOD programs).  Have the user read
the HELP file for FITLD, and check the cookbook.

> I also read somewhere that it had to be all in CAPS is this correct?

The INFILE adverb for the FITLD (and UVLOD and IMLOD) task(s) specifies an
(uppercase) filename.  It can be preceded by an environment variable thus:

            > INFILE = 'MYAREA:FOO.FITS'

and the MYAREA environment variable can be, e.g. /home/vminier/fits/cont/

> there is only one user (user ID 1?) using the system

It would be wise to use another ID; 1 is the AIPS manager and has a few
extra "powers".  See the DOC/TEXT/USERNO.LIS file for a list of currently
assigned IDs.

> I read somewhere that the user has to "export MYAREA=`pwd`"
> which I also tried in the /home/vminier/data area before starting
> aips. Does this need to be done?

Yup.  Otherwise the AIPS process and its forked child processes cannot
know about the environment variable.  Note that in INFILE, if you omit the
"MYAREA:" part, the default is whatever the FITS environment variable
points to. 

> Also I am not even sure of how to start aips? I just setup an alias
> alias aips='/AIPS/31DEC01/LINUX/SYSTEM/AIPS1/aips'
> is this correct?

No.  The best way is to have a single line in the user's login scripts
(.profile for bash, ksh, zsh; .login for csh/tcsh I think) that does:

          . /home/vminier/aips/LOGIN.SH        # bourne like shells
or        source /home/vminier/aips/LOGIN.CSH  # c-like shells

This will alter the PATH variable so that you can just type "aips" (and
more importantly, "man aips").

I'm technically no longer in the AIPS group, but as it's a fairly quiet
saturday, nobody else has yet answered (AFAIK), and your message somehow
got into my Inbox I figured you deserved a reply.  You should address
future questions to daip at nrao.edu, but I still strongly recommend that you
get a copy of the AIPS cookbook for reference.

				- Pat
-- 
 Patrick P. Murphy, Ph.D.              Division Head, CV Computing, NRAO
 Home: http://www.chien-noir.com/    Work: http://www.nrao.edu/~pmurphy/
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