[daip] AIPS on MAC OSX

[Eric Greisen]

Dr. Sylvie F. Beaulieu writes:

 > I just installed AIPS on a MAC OSX (Darwin version). The machine
 > is a "stand-alone" so I do not have to worry about multiple users
 > and a tapedrive.

     Did you do the binary installation?

 > 
 > Usually, on a Linux system (also "stand-alone") I install AIPS in
 > "root". Pat once told me that it is good practice to install AIPS
 > in a separate account like "aipsman" or "aipsmgr". So, for this
 > MAC, I did that.

    We now forbid installation by root or any account that has root
group privilege.  It is a bad idea.  Instead one should use an account
that has the same group as the users.

 > 
 > On this machine there is three users: joncas, admin and aipsman.
 > When I start aips as the "user=joncas", all seems to start ok 
 > (with the three windows TVSERVER, MSGSRV and TEKSRV) but I get 
 > and error:
 > 
 > "FAILED to remove /Users/aipsman/AIPS/31DEC06/MACPPC/LOAD/TPMON1"
 > 

     Curious that it should want to remove this - it should be the
same data as TPMON.EXE and so a new link file should not be needed.
This is a privilege issue and is unimportant.

 > but aips starts anyway and I was able to read a disk file with 
 > FILLM.
 > 
 > But then, I noticed that the messages that FILLM produces when 
 > processing the file is dumped in the aips window, and not in the 
 > AIPS MSGSRV window, as it should be. 

    We have been having lots of trouble with message servers but
usually they do not come up.  Note that a left over message server may
even be a creation of a window manager - in other words a terminal of
some sort named MSGSRV rather than a true xterm actually running
MSGSRV.EXE inside it.  In that case of course messages will not reach
it and the tasks will use your input terminal instead.  Make sure that
all TEK, MSG and XAS are gone before starting new ones (verb KLEENEX
in aips does this as an alternative to EXIT).

 > 
 > I cannot find a way to create an "aipsman" group. I was told that 
 > on a MAC, the file /etc/group is different than the one on a 
 > Linux/Unix system e.g. when I looked at that file to see if I 
 > could add my user "joncas" as a group member of aispman", there 
 > was no entry either for "joncas" "admin" or "aispman". Maybe the 
 > problem lies there i.e. the system is unable to relate joncas 
 > and aipsman as group members.
 > 
 > So, is there a solution to these two problems? maybe there is 
 > something missing in my installation.

The Mac experts are debating tools to play with groups but suggest
that you could destroy your computer with a minor typo in those tools
so I think we should let them debate for a while longer.  The message
server bit is not due to group privilege.  That privilege might cause
trouble in the $DA00 area ($AIPS_ROOT/DA00/$HOST) where the system
parameter and other control files are found.  If you have been running
normally other than the message server - then group stuff is simply
not a problem.

This reply does not contain a clear answer for the message server -
does the TV work?  Does TKPL work?

Eric Greisen