[daip] AIPS: solaris vs. redhat

[Eric Greisen]

Skinner Steve writes:

 >   I will soon be replacing my Sun workstation
 >   with a Dell Precision 370n PC running RedHat
 >   Linux (RedHat Enterprise WS 3.0).
 >   We will attempt to install AIPS under
 >   Linux. The actual AIPS install will likely
 >   be on our Linux server (RedHat Enterprise WS 3.0)
 >   and I will attempt to run AIPS from my
 >   Dell 370n client (.... we dont know yet if this
 >   will work - hopefully it will).

    We have a single copy of the aips source code here and run it from
about 100 computers.  There are two - soon to be three - copies of the
binaries as part of this tree.  In other words, it should run fine if
the clients can mount the server's disks.  We recommend having the
data areas on the machine that is doing the computing since nfs can be
slow.  This includes the (nfs has file locking foibles) the control
files.  In other words, in $AIPS_ROOT/DA00 we have files named for
each host that are in fact link files to a disk area on that host.  In
other words we ln -s /home/primate/AIPS/DA00 PRIMATE where primate is
my computer.

 > 
 >   Assuming we can get AIPS running under RedHat,
 >   will it be possible to transfer my Sun Solaris
 >   AIPS files over to the RedHat system, and read
 >   these files into the RedHat version of AIPS
 >   and then manipulate them with AIPS without
 >   recalibrating from the raw data?

You may transfer all files but you must do it by writing them out as
FITS files and then reading them back in.  AIPS files in the data
areas are binary and so are affected by the opposite byte order.  FITS
files are also binary but have a defined byte order and so can carry
the data between architectures.  We provide procedures to help with
this

RUN WRTPROCS
help wrtdisk
help readisk

for info

 > 
 >   Specifically:
 > 
 >   1. Will I be able to transfer clean map
 >      files (.ICLN) that were generated under
 >      SunSolaris onto the RedHat LInux machine,
 >      read these into AIPS on the Linux machine,
 >      and make flux and/or position measurements
 >      off of the .ICLN files using the RedHat
 >      version of AIPS?
 > 
 >   2. Will I be able to copy sorted UV files
 >      (.UVSRT) from SunSolaris onto the RedHat
 >      Linux machine, read these into AIPS under
 >      RedHat, and generate new cleaned images from
 >      them using AIPS under RedHat?
 > 
 >   .... or (worst case scenario)
 > 
 >   3. Are the existing .UVSRT and .ICLN files
 >      that were generated using AIPS on the
 >      SunSolaris machine going to be incompatible
 >      with the AIPS RedHat version?

The only files that cannot be transferred are plot and slice files.
All of the uv data, calibration tables, images, clean component tables
etc will transfer niucely.

Eric Greisen