VMS/IRAF Installation and Site Manager's Guide

VMS/IRAF Installation and Site Manager's Guide

2.1. Prepare the root IRAF directory

2.1.1. If updating an existing IRAF installation...

If you are updating an existing IRAF installation, you will be replacing IRAF by the new version and IRAF should already have an account and root directory on the desired host system. You should first log in as IRAF and save any locally modified files before deleting the old system. Ordinarily the only directories containing files you may wish to save are dev, hlib, and local. The safest and easiest way to do this is to save the entire contents of those directories. For example:

$ set default [iraf]
$ rename dev.dir,local.dir,[.vms]hlib.dir [directory]
This would physically move (not copy) the dev, local, and hlib directories to the named directory, which must be on the same disk device as [IRAF]. Many variations on this are possible. The destination directory should be somewhere outside the [IRAF...] directory tree, else it may get deleted when you delete the old system.
Although it is probably simplest and safest to save entire directories as in the example, in practice only a few files are likely to have been modified. These are the following:

[iraf.dev]tapecap.
[iraf.dev]graphcap.
[iraf.dev]termcap.
[iraf.dev]hosts.
[iraf.dev]uhosts.
[iraf.dev]irafhosts.
[iraf.dev]devices.
[iraf.dev]devices.hlp
[iraf.vms.hlib]motd.
[iraf.vms.hlib]login.cl
[iraf.vms.hlib]extern.pkg
[iraf.vms.hlib]install.lst
[iraf.vms.hlib]irafuser.com
[iraf.vms.hlib]zzsetenv.def
[iraf.vms.hlib.libc]iraf.h
[iraf.local]login.com
Having temporarily preserved all the locally modified files, it is now time to delete the old system and read in the new one. If you are the cautious (prudent?) type you may wish to first preserve the entire existing IRAF system on a backup tape. Using only the standard VMS utilities, the old system may be deleted as follows (assuming IRAF owns all the files in [IRAF...]).
$ set default [iraf]
$ delete [...]*.*;* /nolog/noconfirm
$ set protection=(owner:wd) [...]*.*;*
$ delete [...]*.*;* /nolog/noconfirm
    (repeat delete command with <ctrl/b> until done)
It is normal for the delete command shown to generate lots of messages during execution warning that it cannot delete directories because they are not yet empty. When the command finally executes without any warning messages this means the directory tree has been fully deleted.
Once the old system has been deleted you are ready to install the new one, as described in
§2.2. It is important to delete the old system first to avoid creating junk files or directories when the new system is installed (due to file or directory name changes or deletions). Once the new system has been restored to disk, do not merely restore the files saved above, as you will need to carefully merge local changes into the versions of the files supplied with the new IRAF release.

2.1.2. If installing IRAF for the first time...

If you are installing IRAF for the first time then the first step is to set up a new account for the user `iraf'. This is necessary for IRAF system management, which should always be done from the IRAF account. Having an IRAF account provides a convenient place (the IRAF system manager's login directory) to keep scratch files created during system configuration.

System management policies vary from site to site, so we do not give specific instructions for how to create the account (e.g., $ run sys$system:authorize), but the account itself should be structured as follows:

*A rooted logical might be something like local_disk = dub4:[local.], with the IRAF disk set to local_disk. This will not work.