OUT OF DATE as of 2008-11-01.
xfig, a figure drawing program, is now installed at /usr/share/astro . The executable is called xfig. The Imakefile I used to compile and install this program can be found a /etc/secret/Imakefile.xfig
If this ever needs to be compiled again, download the source and follow the directions to compile located in the README, using my Imakefile
As of this post date, arcturus is now a functioning workstation in the Astro network (no longer has any trace of being a server).
As of this post date 2007, the Astro network syncs thuban’s sudoers file to the other workstations, just as it does with user accounts. Please contact fullerj with any problems regarding sudo.
This is an entry to explain how IDL 6.4 was installed.
First we received an email telling us to upgrade our licensing to IDL 6.4. We followed the website instructions to upgrade our 3 licenses from 6.3 to 6.4. The newly upgraded license files were then emailed to Joel who forwarded them onto me(Josh).
I downloaded the tar file from the ITT website through Joel’s login.
I then went to /usr/local and created a directory called itt. I unpacked the 6.4 software in this directory using the command: tar -xvzf idl_linux.x86.tar.gz
Next, run the install binary by typing ./install if you are in the ITT directory or /usr/local/itt/install if you need the absolute path. You will be prompted a few times, just hit yes to install the software and yes to create the symbolic links. Ignore the web server questions just by hitting enter. IDL 6.4 is now installed.
However, in order to use the software, you must now do the licensing correctly.
I placed a copy of all 3 licenses in one flat file in /etc/secret/license.txt.
Copy license.txt and edit it so that the license for the machine you are installing to is the only entry in the file. Then rename the file license.dat.
Move this file to /usr/local/itt/license/
Then restart the license manager on the machine by typing:
/usr/local/itt/idl64/bin/lmdown
followed by:
/usr/local/itt/idl64/bin/lmgrd -c /usr/local/itt/license/license.dat
This will then restart the license manager with the new license for IDL 6.4
Now, make sure the license manager is starting at boot time. To do this, simply look in /etc/rc.d/rc.local.
If this command is not there, add it to the end of the rc.local script: /usr/local/itt/idl64/bin/lmgrd -c /usr/local/itt/license/license.dat
Added by JMW 07/2007: Note that idl without the goddard routines is like a fish without a bicycle. As of July 2007, they must be manually copied on all three computers from the old idl’s lib directory to the new idls lib directory. crude! (See goddard libe entry below for more details, but basically root has to do a cp -r.)
Finally test and finish.
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The final step is to make sure you have overwritten any environment variables you have set up in your .tcshrc or .cshrc.
To do this, look in your .cshrc and if you have the line:
source /usr/local/rsi/idl_6.3/bin/idl_setup
Make sure you change it to:
source /usr/local/itt/idl/bin/idl_setup
(Joel supplied the above July 29, 2007. note that rsi->itt and idl_6.3->idl (assuming idl dir is linked to idl64 and future ones) )
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OUT OF DATE as of 2008-11-01.
Here is how to set the path or add to the path for all users when they log in. The procedure depends on whether the users’ shell is tcsh (usual case) or bash. (To determine if your shell is tcsh, type ‘printenv SHELL’.)
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TCSH:
For tcsh users, the file to modify is /etc/csh.login. (Also note that other startup conditions can be set for all users in /etc/csh.cshrc). To add an environment variable simply type
setenv JAVA_HOME /usr/java/1.3.1
To append to the Path in say YOUR OWN .cshrc, type:
setenv PATH “${PATH}:/path/to/be/added”
(This will append your new desired path to the path set for everyone in /etc/csh.login)
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BASH:
For users that like bashrc, you can modify /etc/bashrc to add the necessary path or variable. To add a variable, for instance java’s home directory, simply type
export JAVA_HOME=”/usr/java/jdk1.3.1″
If you wanted to add an extra path to sys set up path in YOUR OWN bashrc, type:
export PATH=$PATH:path/to/be/added
this nice simple plot program is at /usr/share/astro/sm
if you put /usr/share/astro in your path, all you have to do is type sm
list device tells you what graphics devices are set up. i recommend x11 or postscript, for screen or paper, respectively.
OUT OF DATE as of 2008-11-01.
For our systems, we want to use the network time protocol put in place by the college. Therefore, we do not set the time manually but rather, have it sync from the Carleton Network Time server. To do this follow these easy steps.
As root, under the Applications menu to the right of the little red hat, click on System Settings/Date and Time.
Click on the Network Time protocol tab. Under this tab you should see a place to add and delete network time servers. Delete any servers that are there.
Then type ntp.carleton.edu and click the add button. ntp.carleton.edu should then appear as a server on the list. Click OK and wait a few moments for the machine to sync with the server.
Double check the time to make sure it is accurate. Your system should now have the correct date and time.
the following are examples of useful commands inside idl:
print, !path will print out the value of the idl path variable
? will start up help browser
?size goes to help browser to find fnc size (it’ll search for closest name to that)
help, /source brings up compiled procedures, compiled functions
help, pola tells you a lot about the variable pola
help, hdr,/st ditto on structure called hdr
print, size(pola) gives a buncha numbers which can be used by idl or deciphered by ?size
doc_library, ‘readcol’ gives documentation of nonnative fncs, like unix man
$ls executes unix ls command
Also see post entitled idl documentation and help commands from drew
we found that there were two incompatible versions of juldatetoLMST.pro
one is Phil’s arecibo routine, which defaults to arecibo
one is a GBTidl modification to it that defaults to GBT and that has an optional extra parameter.
in order to avoid future confusion, we renamed each routine so that the right version must
explicitly be called:
juldaytoLMSTarecibo.pro
juldaytoLMSTgbt.pro (in /usr/share/astro/gbtidl/pro/toolbox)
NOTE ADDED JUNE 2008: NOTE THIS IS A GBTIDL INCOMPATIBILITY,
NOT A GODDARD LIBE INCOMPAT!
This week we experienced some login failures with the astro network. The symptoms were as follows. The user could not log in as himself/herself under our linux boxes. However, root login continued to be successful. Errors in /var/log/messages indicated an error which suggested the ldap server could not be contacted.
To fix this problem, we first looked at /etc/ldap.conf which had a line like “host 127.0.0.1″ which was not the proper configuration for our network(the ldap server is ldap.carleton.edu”.
To fix this we reinstalled the carletonldapauth rpm located in /etc/secret/RPMS/.
However, this did not fix our error. The error we were now getting in /var/log/messages was an invalid credentials error when trying to bind with the ldap server. After calling ITS admins to see the logs on the server side of things we noted that our astro machines were trying to bind to the ldap server as root. This is incorrect. After discussing the matter further we determined that a newer version of carletonldapauth had been created which was not on the astro network.
This should have been installed automatically by our scripts that we run on the astro network. However, ITS had recently changed the cert on the server which broke our updates. After installing the new cert(located in /etc/secret/RPMS), installing some missing packages on some of the machines(openssl-perl) and installing the new carletonldapauth everything is back to normal.