[daip] AIPS install

[Eric Greisen]

Tim Robishaw wrote:
> 
> Hi there Eric,
> 
> Thanks a ton for the pointers!  Everything is up and running and working 
> smoothly.  I've attached the detailed notes that I took for getting this 
> up and running here, just in case they're of any use.  A few questions 
> came about from these, but nothing that's preventing us from using 
> aips... these are just questions that I wasn't able to find the answer 
> to in the cookbook or install pages.
> 
> * What is the difference between the DA00 and DATA directories?  I 
> wasn't able to parse why the DATA directory needs to exist.  I have 
> placed symbolic links to multiple drives in the DATA directory because 
> that seems to be what the installation guides suggest, but I don't fully 
> understand why I couldn't just keep links to all DATA areas in DA00.  
> This has been really mysterious to me throughout the process.
> 
The DATA areas are the disk directories that acually hold the images and 
UV data sets and they need to be large.

The DA00/<host> directories hold a variety of small control files which 
are needed to let AIPS tasks run and talk to each other.  They are so 
logically different that we keep them separate.

> * The SPACE file was the root of all my problems; I did see that I 
> completely missed this important note on the Manager's FAQ.  Thanks for 
> sorting this out.  So, after running SYSETUP and creating SPACE, aips 
> will now start but it complains about not finding the file 
> "MSD001000.001;" so it has to be copied manually (from the disk space of 
> the HOST on which I installed aips).  Don't know what this file is, but 
> should/can it be included in the TEMPLATE directory?  And a blank SPACE 
> file for that matter?

The MS file you mention is the AIPS Manager's message file.  The 
starting messages in aips do not know what user number to use and so 
start with 1.  The file does not have to exist although making it exist 
eliminates the error message.  Start aips and run as user 1 (password 
AMANAGER) once and the file exists.

> 
> * I've set 8 0's in NETSP for each user data area, so a user with any 
> user number can access these drives.  Now that I've done this, a user 
> can type any old user number when they enter aips and all will work 
> since the drives aren't restricted.  However, should we be using unique 
> assigned aips user numbers among us, and, should each user be using the 
> same aips user number each time?  Empirically, I'd imagine I'd find out 
> pretty readily if varying the user number causes problems, but it would 
> be good to know what to do before I goof anything up.

User number matters when there are multiple users on a specific computer 
- as we have here with our visitor machines.  However, on my desktop 
machine I use a variety of user numbers in order to separate my various 
projects.  AIPS' file system is rather flat without that strategy.

Eric Greisen