[daip] Re: AIPS installation questions

[Eric Greisen]

Samuel Conner writes:
 > Dear Dr. Greisen,
 > 
 >   THanks for your reply to my prior inquiry.
 > 
 >   I have installed 31DEC03 from CD to a laptop running the current release of RedHat Linux, which they call "Professional Workstation". 
 > 
 >   THere was a hiccup on installation. In particular, the CDSETUP & install.pl scripts did not compile most of the source code (I answered "n" to the "install linux binaries" query). I don't know perl and am afraid to try to debug the script. The script compiled and linked the XAS program and then exited, saying that AIPS had installed successfully. But there was nothing in the $LOAD directory except for XAS.EXE and one other .EXE . ALso, install.pl did not update etc/services (I found the needed parameters from an old installation guide).
 > 

     I have little familiarity with the CD method of installation.  In
particular, we do assume that you will copy the binaries to disk or
use them from the CD without modification.  That is a bias I suppose
but we assume that ftp of the tarball and normal installation will be
done by those planning to do very much.

What other .EXE?

install.pl does not update /etc/services since that requires root
privilege and it is always a mistake to install aips from root.


 >   I subsequently simply installed the binaries, and AIPS and the services seem to be working, though I have not yet run the DDT.
 > 
 >   3 questions
 > 
 > 1)  assuming that DDT succeeds, I will have a working AIPS
installation. But if I want to recompile the programs (for example, to
increase the size of the AP in DAPC.INC), I don't know what to do.

     I do not know what you now have on disk.  Are there full sized
files named $LIBR/*/SUBLIB ?

cd $AIPS_ROOT
source LOGIN.CSH
$CDTST
cd $LIBR
ls -l */SUBLIB

If so then things are simple although you should check the files in
$SYSLOCAL called CCOPTS.FH, LDOPTS.SH, and FDEFAULT.SH to make sure
that they point at your versions of gcc and g77.

You edit the file $INC/NOTST/PAPC.INC   to set the AP size.
COMRPL $APLGEN/ZDCHIN
COMRPL $QOOP/*.FOR $QPSAP/*.FOR
COMLNK $AIPNOT/SETPAR
COMLNK $QPGM/*.FOR $QPGNOT/*.FOR $QOOP/*.FOR
COMLNK $QYPGM/*.FOR $QYPGNOT/*.FOR

and then RUN SETPAR and set the AP size to the largest that it will
allow (answer 9999999 to start with and it wil tell you).
 > 
 >   Is the failure mode I describe in install.pl something that has been seen before? 

    I do not believe that installing from CDs is supposed to
recompile.although I did find a bug in install.pl that might affect
utility programs in $SYSLOCAL.

 > 
 >   If I cannot get install.pl to work, it is possible to use the INSTEPs ? These are still present, though the CD liner warns against them.
 > 
   You do not need INSTEP2 and INSTEP4 to change the AP size.  They
should work okay if you know how to use them.
 > 
 > 2)  there are some custom modifications to some of the routines that I would like to propagate to my current installation. Is it safe for me to assume that COMRPL, LIBR, COMLNK are still functional? 
 >   
         They should be.

 > 3)  It appears to me that my gcc suite is not EGCS (I did try to run INSTEP1 after multiple install.pl non-compilation failures, and before INSTEP1 crashed, it informed me of the non-EGCS character of my compiler suite).
 > 
          EGCS is a very old version of compiler.  do
g77 --version
and see what it says.

 > a)   Are there significant performance differences between EGCS and
non-EGCS versions of gcc?

Minor ones - there may be major failure modes instead in some versions
of g77.
 > 
 >     By the way, it is not obvious from the compiler comments on the AIPS page at www.nrao.edu that older gcc versions cannot be used with later revisions of Linux.
 > 
        People have used 2.95.3 with new versions of Linux but I
normally recommend a more recent version.  2.95.3 produces faster code
however.
 > 
 > b)  I seem to have an f77 compiler in /usr/bin. Is it better to use
this than g77? Are there recommended compiler switches for this compiler?

     Find out what version.  In general the optimzation should be -O2
but this should appear in your FDEFAU:T.SHG file in $SYSLOCAL.

Eric Greisen


 > 
 >   I thank you for bearing with these questions.
 > 
 >  Respectfully yours,
 > 
 > Sam Conner
 >