[daip] AIPS on laptop

[Eric Greisen]

N.M.Nagar writes:
 > 
 > Hi AIPS  (Patrick? et al.),

    Pat Murphy no longer works in the group although he lurks on
daip at nrao.edu.

 > Greetings from the Netherlands (new postdoc, new machine,
 > new AIPS installation...ouch).
 > A quick question regarding AIPS on a laptop which is not 
 > addressed in the AIPS manager FAQ.

     I had better change that with info about laptops.
 > 
 > How does one handle (w.r.t AIPS, i.e. HOSTS.LIST etc) the
 > constant change of laptop name? 

     Run your MNJ, then follow the instructions I will append.  This
adds code to recognize laptops or try to.  Then in HOSTS.LIST add
LOCALHOST.  In say $AIPS_ROOT/DATA add links to your real data areas
called LOCALHOST_1, LOCALHOST_2, etc and add these file names to
DADEVS.LIST and NETSP.

   Your MNJ was prepared as a script ~/do_daily.hostname and you may
have to rename it to whatever the host now is.

     In the LOGIN.SH and LOGIN.CSH files you will prepare (see below)
change LAPTOP to "YES".

 > I installed AIPS on my laptop while on the net with hostname  
 > visitor3 at rri.res.in  (and used HOST=visitor3 during the 
 > installation).
 > Now I'm either off the net (with name  localhost.localdomain)
 > or on the network here (with name  xxxx.astro.rug.nl) and

    The xxxx should not vary but should be a real name that you
specify.  That name and the data areas associated (again link files in
$AIPS_ROOT/DATA w names like XXXX_1 will allow that name also to be
known.

 > so expectedly I can't get AIPS to work. Is there a quick 
 > solution? Will I have to pretend that each new hostname
 > is a completely new AIPS host instead of just a name change.
 > (apologies if this is linux related instead of AIPS related).

Eric Greisen

I have made a change that should allow stand-alone AIPS installations,
primarily laptops, to avoid a painful problem.  AIPS has assumed that
the host name for Internet and AIPS purposes may be determined with 

uname -n

For laptops that plug in to LANs at a variety of sites and locations
within sites, the result of uname -n has often been a name such as

dhcpxxx-yyy-nnn

or some such.  This requires that the aips user add this name to
$AIPS_ROOT/HOSTS.LIST and make a link file by this name in $NET0
pointing at the actual AIPS control files for that computer.

The change is to the files in $SYSUNIX names START_AIPS, HOSTS.SH,
HOSTS.CSH, LOGIN.SH and LOGIN.CSH among others.  The above five files
must now be copied from $SYSUNIX to your $SYSLOCAL and then edited to
insert the correct AIPS_ROOT for "DEFINE_ME".  Also copy two new files
names SETNAME and SETUNAME from $SYSUNIX to $AIPS_ROOT.  Of course, if
you have special local modifications of these scripts, then those
modifications will need to be moved into the new versions.

There is a logical called LAPTOP in LOGIN.SH and LOGIN.CSH.  If this
is changed to "YES" from "NO" - or if the current uname -n produces
dhcp* - then $HOST will be set to LOCALHOST and the default TV
location will be localhost.  You will need to add LOCALHOST to your
HOSTS.LIST and make a link file in $NET0 pointing to the control files
you want to use.  Thus, if my laptop is called primate when it is not
connected to a LAN, then I want to enter
   cd $AIPS_ROOT/DA00
   ln -s PRIMATE LOCALHOST
The data areas also need setting up - either by adding LOCALHOST_n
links to the PRIMATE_n data areas or by adding da=primate to the aips
command line every time.

Eric Greisen