Path: iraf!irafmail-gateway From: Vassilis.Charmandaris@obspm.fr (Vassilis Charmandaris) Newsgroups: adass.iraf.sources Subject: xiraf - A convenient way to start your IRAF session Date: 9 Dec 1997 11:19:39 -0700 Organization: IRAF Project, National Optical Astronomy Observatories Lines: 213 Sender: daemon@iraf.noao.edu Message-ID: <199712091817.TAA05124@mesunb.obspm.fr> NNTP-Posting-Host: tucana.tuc.noao.edu Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Hello there, I would like to make available to everyone who is interested a couple of scripts I developed over the past few years. I think that they simplify considerably the start-up of an IRAF session, as well as the initialization of the necessary files (i.e. login.cl) for any user. They are available at: http://wwwusr.obspm.fr/~vassilis/xiraf Assuming the one has in his/her workstation IRAF, X11IRAF, SAOimage and/or SAORD (which includes the new SAOtng) the scripts create a login.cl for the user if he/she does not have one already and start IRAF in the following way: $ xiraf -h :Show command options $ xiraf -help :Show command options $ xiraf :Start IRAF in an XGterm using the default image display $ xiraf -ximtool :Start IRAF in an XGterm using XImtool for display $ xiraf -saoimage :Start IRAF in an XGterm using SAOimage for display $ xiraf -saotng :Start IRAF in an XGterm using SAOtng for display $ xiraf -rebuild :Rebuild the login.cl file of the user. This should :be used ONLY in the case of major IRAF version updates. The "xiraf" script can be used by a single IRAF user in a stand alone IRAF distribution. I can also be placed by the system manager to the standard PATH of the users in a set-up were the same IRAF binaries are available in a cluster of workstations. These scripts do not interfere with the existing IRAF distribution. They have been tested on clusters of Sun/Solaris, Dec-Ultrix and Dec-Alphas, with both Network Filesystems and Andrew Filesystems. A more detailed description and sales-pitch of the scripts is appended at the end of this e-mail Cheers, Vassilis Charmandaris \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Vassilis Charmandaris Observatoire de Paris, DEMIRM e-mail: V.Charmandaris@obspm.fr 61 Av. de l'Observatoire phone: +33 1 40512346 F-75014 Paris fax: +33 1 40512002 France web: http://wwwusr.obspm.fr/~vassilis /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Problems with the default IRAF start-up Fist the good news: IRAF is a great package, probably the best in the market, and above all one can get it for free in nice pre-compiled binaries with easy to follow installation instructions. Then the bad news: Once you have it in your system and if you want to serve many users problems arise. More specifically: For the System Manager (SM) * The SM has to create and maintain the common fifo files (/dev/imt1o and /dev/imt1i) on each machine of the local cluster of workstations he/she wants to have IRAF running. * The SM has to create an IRAF login.cl file for every user since many do not quite understand what the command mkiraf does. For the Novice User To use IRAF (version 2.10 or later) to its full potential (nice graphics, colors etc) the user had to do the following steps. * Open an xgterm instead of the usual Unix xterm after having read its proper Xresources. * Working on the xgterm the user has to go to the directory where his/her IRAF login.cl is located. * The user has to start the IRAF cl command on that directory. * Finally, the user has to choose the image display client (SAOimage, XImtool, or SAOtng) he/she prefers and start it with the proper options. This can be done using the task xray.xplot.ximtool. Another option is to start the image client externally from another window.. This procedure is time consuming and not very obvious to someone who starts learning Unix, astronomy and IRAF at the same time. Frustration may also appear when: * the user does not start IRAF in the directory of his/her login.cl file and as a result does not find all the installed packages. * the user encounter problems trying to run IRAF on a machine which access the IRAF binaries but for some reasons does not have the public fifo files installed. * the user has exited the IRAF environment ("cl>" prompt) but left an SAOimage session running which prevents him/her to view his/her images when he/she restarts IRAF and an new SAOimage * .. your own sad story ... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- So why should one use the script xiraf ?! Well, all of the problems presented above can be solved if the scripts xiraf and start-iraf (which is being called internally by xiraf) are installed together with the IRAF distribution. When a user executes the script xiraf for the first time, xiraf creates a set of personal fifo files, and then runs mkiraf, to create the login.cl file of the user. Subsequently, the script opens an XGterm with the selected image display client and starts IRAF inside this new XGterm. When a user wishes to finish his/her session and issues the IRAF command cl>logout the image display client, the IRAF session and the XGterm close keeping everything nice and tidy... If the user has already a login.cl file file then the script simply starts IRAF in a new XGterm, as well as the selected image display program. The script also allows the user to select in a transparent way the program he/she wants to use to see his/her IRAF images. As far as I know there are three in the market. First it's the old but reliable SAOimage. Then we have XImtool the X-window resurrection of the old Sun Imtool which comes as as part of the X11IRAF package. Finally, there is SAOtng ( SAO The Next Generation) which, as Eric Mandel once told me, ... is much more than a simple image display program... . The web sites from where one can down-load the latest versions of all three programs are provided at the end of this page. The syntax of the new command is : $ xiraf -h :Show command options $ xiraf -help :Show command options $ xiraf :Start IRAF in an XGterm using the default image display $ xiraf -ximtool :Start IRAF in an XGterm using XImtool for display $ xiraf -saoimage :Start IRAF in an XGterm using SAOimage for display $ xiraf -saotng :Start IRAF in an XGterm using SAOtng for display $ xiraf -rebuild :Rebuild the login.cl file of the user. This should :be used ONLY in the case of major IRAF version updates. These scripts do not interfere with the existing IRAF distribution. They are just simplifying the intermediate steps. Users who don't like them do not have to use them. They can run IRAF in the usual old way. Technical Note: Other than having a set of options to automate things the xiraf script forces the user to start his/her IRAF session with private fifo files. This is done using the environment variable IMTDEV. In principle private fifos are only necessary if one has multiple users running SAOimage on the same workstation. XImtool and SAOtng do not have this problem. However, my experience has shown that the public fifos (/dev/imt1o and /dev/imt1i) are not by default present in all workstations systems. So using personal fifo files makes the system manager of a cluster of workstations accessing the same IRAF binaries happier... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Set-up Requirements The scripts can be used either by a simple user who just wishes to simplify his/her IRAF start-up process (by placing them somewhere in his/her directory) or they can be installed in a global way for all IRAF users. In the second case the System manager has to get the scripts xiraf and start-iraf provided at the end of this page and place them in the standard executable Unix PATH of the users. A series of site-dependent environment variables have to be defined in the xiraf script,in trivial self-explanatory way. Minimum system requirements are: IRAF version 2.10 or later, as well as the X11IRAF software package which includes the xgterm and ximtool executables. The IRAF commands cl and mkiraf should be in the PATH of each potential IRAF user. The location of all the other executables and programs called is defined within the script. Any potential IRAF user will simply have to type xiraf to start IRAF for the first time. The script will prompt the user to define his personal IRAF directory using an environment variable called USERIRAF and it will take care of all the rest... The scripts have been tested under IRAF versions 2.10.4 and 2.11, in a cluster of DEC-Alphas and DEC-Ultrix as well as in a cluster of Sun machines running Solaris version 2.5. It has been used in sites which use either NFS (=Network File System) or AFS(=Andrew FileSystem) or mixed filesystems. The image display packages used were: XImtool ver. 1.1, SAOimage ver. 1.20, and SAOtng ver. 1.7.1 The two scripts follow: * xiraf (13.8 Kbytes) * start-iraf (2.7 Kbytes) Both scripts have plenty of comments so it's rather trivial to understand their function. If you've managed to get IRAF running in your workstations and you already have X11IRAF you'll be able to customize the script in your system in 10min, or your money back .... If you find these scripts useful send me an e-mail and let me know about it. This way your institution will be proudly displayed in the list found at the end of this web page. I would appreciate even more if you send me an e-mail with comments or bugs you find. I would like to acknowledge once more the help Mike Fitzpatrick who checked the scripts in their early form. Vassilis Charmandaris December 4th 1997 Paris, France ----------------------------------------------------------------------------