[daip] AIPS TV queries

[Eric Greisen]

David Titterington writes:

 > We are running AIPS 31DEC04 maintained by the midnite job, on a cluster of
 > Sun Solaris and Redhat Linux workstations.  Several of our users have Sun
 > Ray 1 clients as desktop workstations, and typically start AIPS asking for
 > a Unix socket TV server from a window on one these devices, with DISPLAY
 > set to something like ":3.0" or "localhost:3.0":
 > 
 >   > echo $DISPLAY
 >   :3.0
 > 
 >   > aips tv=local:0
 > 
 > The startup dialogue includes:
 > 
 >   Will start a new Unix Socket based TV
 >    
 >   Starting TV servers on mraosv asynchronously
 >    - WITH Unix Sockets (new instance) as requested...
 >   Assuming TPMON daemons are running
 >   Starting up 31DEC04 AIPS with normal priority
 >   Begin the one true AIPS number 1 (release of 31DEC04) at priority =   0 
 >   AIPS 1: You are not on a local TV device, welcome stranger
 >   AIPS 1: You are assigned TV device/server  32
 >   AIPS 1: You are assigned graphics device/server  32
 >   AIPS 1: Enter user ID number
 >   ?UNIXSERVERS: Start TV LOCK daemon TVSRV8 on mraosv
 >   UNIXSERVERS: Start XAS8 on mraosv, DISPLAY localhost:3.0
 >   TVSERVER: Starting AIPS TV locking, Unix (local) domain
 >   XAS: ** TrueColor FOUND!!! 
 >   XAS: Using screen width height 1270 924, max grey level 255
 >   9
 >   AIPS 1:                          31DEC04 AIPS:
 >   AIPS 1:      Copyright (C) 1995-2004 Associated Universities, Inc.
 >   AIPS 1:            AIPS comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY;
 >   AIPS 1:                 for details, type HELP GNUGPL
 >   AIPS 1: This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
 >   AIPS 1: under certain conditions; type EXPLAIN GNUGPL for details.
 >   AIPS 1: Previous session command-line history recovered.
 >   AIPS 1: TAB-key completions enabled, type HELP READLINE for details.
 >   AIPS 1: Recovered POPS environment from last exit
 >   
 > 
 > Mostly, this all works fine, but we have two persistent gripes:
 > 
 > 1) Very often, when using 'tvpseudo', dragging the cursor through the
 >    boundary of the window (not the image) will cause AIPS to crash:
 > 
 >   >tvinit
 >   >tvlod
 >   >tvpseudo
 >   AIPS 1: Hit button A for RGB color triangles
 >   AIPS 1: Hit button B for loops in hue
 >   AIPS 1: Hit button C for color contours
 >   AIPS 1: Hit button D to exit
 >   AIPS 1: Cursor X position controls break between low & high colors
 >   AIPS 1: Cursor Y position controls color intensity (Gamma)
 >   AIPS 1: Hit button A to cycle starting color
 >   AIPS 1: ZABORS: signal 8 received
 >   AIPS 1: ABORT!
 >   Illegal Instruction

        I am suspicious that XAS is returning a very erroneous cursor
coordinate when you exit the window and that no software checks for
this.  I have just added limit checks and rebuild AIPS and the other
TV interactive tasks.  Please let me know if this helps.

 > 
 > 2) Always, even when 'kleenex' is used to finish, the TV-lock daemon will
 >    remain as an active process and will have to cleared explicity later
 >    using 'kill'.  What's the recommended procedure for closing down the
 >    TV device cleanly so that the ./TVSRV daemons don't accumulate on the
 >    server?

This is curious.  XAS has the power to kill the lock daemon and does
so on command, on ESC typed in the XAS window, or on aborts so long as
they are not at the level kill -9 which inhibits the abort handler.
So far as I know it works reliably for us but almost everyone here
uses the Inet form and they also use the default visual :0.0 ratrher
than the fourth visual.  I can't think that the latter should matter,
but I am grasping at straws here.

Eric Greisen