Sun/IRAF V2.11 Installation Guide

Sun/IRAF V2.11 Installation Guide

2.2. Install the files

If you are installing from tape skip forward to §2.2.2. If you are installing from a network distribution (i.e., from disk) continue with the next section.

2.2.1. Installing from a network distribution

Sun/IRAF is available over the network via anonymous ftp from the node iraf.noao.edu (140.252.1.1), in the subdirectory iraf/vnnn/SSOL, where "vnnn" is the IRAF version number, e.g., subdirectory iraf/v211/SSOL for V2.11 Sun/IRAF.

If IRAF is being installed from a network distribution or CD-ROM all the architecture independent IRAF files for both the core IRAF system and the NOAO packages will be in the distribution file as.ssol.gen. This "file" is stored in the archive as a directory wherein the large distribution file has been split into a number of smaller pieces, e.g.,

% ls as.ssol.gen
CHECKSUMS           as.ssol.gen.Z.12    as.ssol.gen.Z.26
FILES.Z             as.ssol.gen.Z.13    as.ssol.gen.Z.27
as.ssol.gen.Z.00    as.ssol.gen.Z.14    as.ssol.gen.Z.28
as.ssol.gen.Z.01    as.ssol.gen.Z.15    as.ssol.gen.Z.29
as.ssol.gen.Z.02    as.ssol.gen.Z.16    as.ssol.gen.Z.30
as.ssol.gen.Z.03    as.ssol.gen.Z.17    as.ssol.gen.Z.31
       (etc.)

Assume that the directory as.ssol.gen as shown above has been recreated somewhere on the machine on which IRAF is to be installed. We can restore the main IRAF source tree as follows.

% whoami
iraf
% cd $iraf
% cat /path/as.ssol.gen/as.* | uncompress | tar -xpf -
After the above finishes the root IRAF directory should appears as follows (this is for V2.11).
HS.SSOL.GEN    bin.ffpa      dev          math         sys
IS.PORT.GEN    bin.generic   doc          mkpkg        tags
bin            bin.sparc     lib          noao         unix
bin.f68881     bin.ssun      local        pkg
The files bin.ssun and bin.sparc are links to the IRAF BIN directories (for binary executables), which probably do not exist yet. The bin file is a symbolic link to the empty bin.generic directory indicating that the system is configured "generically" (i.e. not for development on a particular architecture), this link should NOT be changed by hand as it is needed by the system. Binaries for the various architectures will be found automatically by the system at runtime. Configuring the BIN directories is discussed in section §2.2.4.

2.2.2. Installing from tape

If you have not already done so, log into the IRAF account so that the files when restored will belong to IRAF. Mount the distribution tape, which may be a cartridge tape, a 6250 bpi 9 track tape, a DAT tape, an Exabyte, or whatever.

IRAF distribution tapes consist of multiple files separated by tape marks, with a TOC (table of contents) file as the first file on the tape. To find out what is on the tape, rewind it and read out the TOC file as follows (the actual device name will likely be different than that shown in the examples).

% mt -f /dev/rmt/0hn rewind;  cat /dev/rmt/0hn
This should cause a TOC file to be listed similar to the following, except for the file names which will vary depending upon what type of distribution you have. The example below is for a distribution of Sun/IRAF.
0   Table of Contents

1   AS.SSOL.GEN   27.9Mb   IRAF, NOAO packages and Solaris sources
2   IB.SSOL.SUN   19.6Mb   Solaris binaries for IRAF core system
3   NB.SSOL.SUN   15.2Mb   Solaris binaries for NOAO packages
4   IB.SSOL.SOS   14.3Mb   SunOS binaries for IRAF core system
5   NB.SSOL.SOS   12.5Mb   SunOS binaries for NOAO packages
Here, the first column is the file number on the tape, the TOC file being file zero (the first distribution file is number one), the second column is the name of the tape file, the third column is the file size in megabytes (this tells you how much space will be needed to unpack the file on disk), and the last column is a description of the file contents.

There are three types of tape files in the example shown: the AS file, which is all the IRAF sources (the core IRAF system, NOAO packages, and the Sun/IRAF host system interface), the IB files, or IRAF core system binaries, and the NB files, or NOAO package binaries. The NOAO package sources are included in the AS file since most people requesting IRAF are expected to want the astronomical reduction software, although IRAF can be configured without this if desired. All of the file objects are UNIX tar format files, with the exception of the TOC file which is a simple text file. The distribution files may be compressed if this was necessary to fit all the files on a tape.

The following commands would suffice to restore the main IRAF system to disk, given the distribution tape described by the TOC file in our example above. Once again, the tape device file and block size shown in the example will very likely have to be changed to whatever is needed for the tape device being used.

% whoami
iraf
% cd $iraf
% mt -f /dev/rmt/0hn rewind;  mt -f /dev/rmt/0hn fsf 1
% tar -xpbf 126 /dev/rmt/0hn
After the above tar file read operation, the tape is left positioned to just before the EOF of the file just read, since tar stops reading the file data before reading the physical EOF. Hence, an mt fsf will be required to position to the next file on the tape. Any combination of fsf (forward skip file) or bsf (backward skip file) operations may be used to position to a file on a 9 track tape. On a cartridge tape, it is best to plan things so that only forward file skips are used, using a rewind and forward skip if it is necessary to position to an earlier file on the tape.

Once the main system, containing only sources, is installed it is possible to create one or more empty BIN directories for the executables, then compile and link the full system. More commonly one will merely read the precompiled executables off the distribution tape, as we discuss in the next section.

2.2.3. Installing from CD-ROM

At the time of this writing the CD-ROM distributions of IRAF are snapshots of selected areas of the network ftp archive. Installing from CD is very much like a network distribution except that the CD may be mounted as a local filesystem and accessed directly when unpacking the files. There is no real reason to copy the files to a local disk before installation, simply use /mount/iraf/vnnn/SSOL as the path prefix when accessing the AS and BIN distribution files. Details on how to unpack the distribution file are covered in §2.2.1 when discussing installation from a network distribution.

2.2.4. Configuring the BIN directories

In IRAF all the files specific to any particular architecture are contained in a single directory called the BIN, or "binary", directory. To run IRAF you must install not only the AS (all-sources) directory tree, but the BIN directory for each architecture. The IRAF core system and the NOAO packages have separate BIN directories.

The BIN directories for the IRAF core system or a layered package (such as NOAO) are located, logically or physically, in the root directory of the IRAF core system or layered package. Every layered package has its own set of BIN directories. In the distributed V2.11 system you will find the following BIN files (directories or symbolic links) at the IRAF root.

link         bin -> bin.generic
directory    bin.generic
link         bin.ssun -> ../irafbin/bin.ssun
link         bin.sparc -> ../irafbin/bin.sparc
If the IRAF directory structure is set up as described in
§2.1.2, with $iraf located at /iraf/iraf and the BIN directories stored in /iraf/irafbin, then these links will not have to be modified. If a different directory structure is used you will have to modify the links accordingly.

The bin link and the bin.generic directory are required for the correct operation of the IRAF system software (mkpkg) and are maintained automatically by the IRAF software management utilities. Under no circumstances should "bin" or "bin.generic" be modified or deleted. It is a very common error to manually delete the bin link and manually set it to bin.ssun or some other architecture. The bin.ssun link can be modified as desired but bin and bin.generic should be left alone.

Assume that the bin.ssun directory has been created somewhere (e.g. in the /iraf/irafbin directory) and that the ib.ssol.sun distribution files for the core IRAF system solaris binaries have been downloaded from the network archive or will be taken from the CD-ROM. We can restore the solaris binaries with the following commands.

% cd $iraf/bin.ssun
% cat /path/ib.ssol.sun/ib.* | uncompress | tar -xpf -
Similarly, to restore the NOAO package solaris binaries:
% cd $iraf/noao/bin.ssun
% cat /path/nb.ssol.sun/nb.* | uncompress | tar -xpf -
A similar sequence can be used to restore the SunOS binaries for both the core system and the NOAO package.

The procedure for restoring a BIN directory from a tape distribution is similar to that described in §2.2.2 for the core system. For example,

% cd $iraf/bin.ssun
% mt -f /dev/rmt/0hn rewind;  mt -f /dev/rmt/0hn fsf 2
% tar -xpbf 126 /dev/rmt/0hn
would restore the core system bin.ssun directory from a cartridge tape containing an uncompressed ib.ssol.sun as file 2 on the tape.