[daip] transferring AIPS

[Eric Greisen]

Kristina Nyland wrote:
> Hi Eric,
> 
> I am a grad student at NMT with Lisa Young and I understand you are an 
> AIPS expert.  The current linux machine that I have been running AIPS on 
> for the past couple years is in severe need of a hard disk replacement.  
> I'm trying to figure out the best way to transfer my data to the new 
> hard disk with the least trouble.  I know I can write everything out to 
> fits with FITDISK, store it on an external hard drive, and then read it 
> back onto the new hard disk on my computer, but I have about 40 GBs of 
> data spread over 30-some user ids and this would take quite awhile 
> (plus, I'm not sure I trust my old hard disk to write out all of those 
> fits files correctly).   I am planning to mirror the old hard disk onto 
> the new one when I install it which will make transferring most files 
> and software easy but is there anything I should know about how AIPS 
> will handle hard disk mirroring?  If there is a way to mirror the 
> software and all of my data that would be ideal.
> 
> Any advice is greatly appreciated - thanks!
> ~Kristina Nyland

If you simply mirror the aips directories, data and code, to the new 
machine you should be alright except for one thing.  In the $AIPS_ROOT 
area there are a number of files that contain the path to the 
$AIPS_ROOT.  If you cd to the directory and execute the script 
AIPSROOT.DEFINE it will take your current directory as the default and 
will update all files that need correcting.  If your path is not set the 
full path to that function is $AIPS_ROOT/31DEC10/SYSTEM/UNIX/AIPSROOT.DEFINE

The FITSDISK route used to be required if you were changing computer 
architectures rather than simply replacing an aging disk with a new and 
presumable much bigger one.  Now you can even use a program (outside 
AIPS itself) called REBYTE to do that operation should you switch from 
an old SUN or MAC PPC to an Intel machine such as LInux and the new MACs,

Cheers,

Eric Greisen