[daip] COMLNK in MNJ

[Eric Greisen]

Joseph Lazio writes:

 > We have some users who run multi-day jobs.  For them the MNJ can be a
 > headache if it updates a task they are using in the midst of the job.
 > (This affects primarily CALIB and IMAGR.)
 > 
 > If I change the call to COMLNK in $SYSUNIX/UPDCOMLNK to be 
 > 
 > COMLNK @COMLNK.AT SAVE >> COMLNK.LOG
 > 
 > will that preserve the binaries that the users are using?  (Should my
 > version of UPDCOMLNK then go in $SYSLOCAL?)
 > 
 

Several thoughts.

1. Any change you make in the cvs-controlled areas will get wiped out
or worse "merged" which usually makes a non-functional module.  cvs is
very smart and basically checks your entire aips tree against the
standard one every time.  Use $SYSLOCAL or a file actually in
$TST/$ARCH/UPDATE both of which are not under cvs control.

2. The next MNJ still comes along and does an rm $LOAD/*.OLD.  The
real problem is NFS.  If a user accesses the IMAGR.EXE directly on his
machine, then the file does not go away until he is done with it, even
if the $LOAD version changes.  Thus, a user with a long job who wants
to worry about this should make his own copy of IMAGR.EXE and
IMAGR.HLP in his disk area and run that.  You could also run the MNJ
only on Monday at 5am or some such.  Then people can plan around it.

3. The SAVE might work for a bit but I think it won't be reliable.

Eric