[daip] Question about AIPS catalog sizes in the context of custom programming

[Samuel R Conner]

To whom it may concern,

    I have a recent installation of AIPS (31DEC04 frozen version) which is
also extensively customized (special verbs and some modified tasks) running on a
very low-end FC3 linux box. My customizations include enlargement of the array
sizes declared in $INC/PKSZ.INC and special verb names so that my ME files are
different in size and content than standard AIPS ME files.

     I had a lot of trouble getting my custom hacks working; for some reason I
kept damaging the AIPS system files when I tried to update the ME files with my
enlarged POPSDAT.HLP. Eventually I deleted all the compiled/linked modules and
added my source code and include changes to the bare source installation, and
then the wizard installed everything nicely, not distinguishing between the
original code and my additional local modules.

     But now I have another problem:

     I find that when the image catalogue exceeds 100 entries within a
particular data disk, AIPS suddenly becomes extremely slugglish and eventually
stops entirely (I think; I have been killing it after tens of minutes seemingly
idle). I think that I recall the wizard running FILAIP or FILINI with 100
entries per data disk --- or maybe I did that later; I can't recall. Whatever
the origin of this, it appears to me that my catalogs are not extendable.

     I have forgotten what needs to be done to repair this (I think I may have
known some years ago), and I'm afraid to experiment because of my bad
experience
meddling with FILINI/FILAIP when I first tried to install my local hacks.

     Is there a detailed documentary description of what to do to convert fixed
length catalogs to extensible catalogs? If need be, I can empty my data areas
with little inconvenience.

    Thanks for your time and patience,

Sincerely yours,

Sam Conner