[daip] question about aips installation

[Eric Greisen]

Alfonso Trejo wrote:

> XAS: Using screen width 1430 height 778,
>      max grey level 8191 in 16 grey-scale memories
> Shared memory id failure: Invalid argument

This has a solution that is described on our AIPS Manager FAQ page:


If you see this on a Mac, congratulations; you have one of the larger 
display screens. The default Mac system limits shared memory pages to 4 
Mbytes. When XAS starts it tells you that it is making a screen x pixels 
by y pixels. The memory you will need is at least  4 x y  bytes. For the 
new large screens this is more than 8 Mbytes. On 10.3 and 10.4 systems, 
you can change this limit by changing (as root or admin) the rc file in 
/etc, adjusting the kern.sysv.shm* line to

          #Setting the shared memory to something a bit more reasonable.
             sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmmax=10485760
             sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmmin=1
             sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmmni=32
             sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmseg=8
             sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmall=4096


If you are really lucky and have a 30-inch screen (2550 by 1500 pixels) 
then you will have to make the shmmax line even larger

             sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmmax=16777216


On the latest "leopard" systems, /etc/rc is gone and creating it will 
have no effect. You need to create an /etc/sysctl.conf file and put the 
values in it,

             kern.sysv.shmmax=10485760
             kern.sysv.shmmin=1
             kern.sysv.shmmni=32
             kern.sysv.shmseg=8
             kern.sysv.shmall=4096


You should use the values you had when you were running tiger. Those 
could be in /Previous\ System/etc/rc, assuming you have "Previous 
System". So three different OS upgrades and three different ways to 
adjust the default shared memory. Note: You will need to reboot the 
system for the change in shared memory to take place. You can check if 
the shared memory changes happened by typing "sysctl kern.sysv" in a 
terminal or xterm window. Look for the kern.sysv.shm* values. If the 
values have not changed, make sure you haven't inadvertently left in 
"sysctl -w" in the /etc/sysctl.conf file or mis-typed one of the values. 
If the /etc/sysctl.conf file is not properly formatted, or shmmax is not 
an integer multiple of shmall, the shared memory will not be adjusted 
after the reboot.

On older Jaguar systems (X 10.2), you can change this limit by changing 
the SystemTuning file in


             /System/Library/StartupItems/SystemTuning


Look for the lines

             sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmmax=4194304
             sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmall=1024

      Change the 4194304 to 10485760 (for 10 Mbytes) and change the 1024 
to 4096 (allows 16 Megabytes). You must then re-boot the computer to 
have these changes take effect.

I will forward the full contents of your message to out Mac expert.

Please use daip at nrao.edu henceforth.  It goes to more people incl that 
expert and I will be on vacation soon.

Eric Greisen