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Carleton Astronet Admin Log Posts

where files really are on thuban2: /var/share (But not so fast for /usr/share/astro/ !)

Published by admin-joel on 2022-08-04

e.g.  /var/share/data/psrdata

and /var/share/home/jweisber
(note that when I first log in to thuban2, I go to a wrong  /home jweisber  )

–joel 20220804

(But not so fast for mirzam’s /usr/share/astro/ “real” location on thuban2:

when I did a “mount” command on mirzam on 20231231, I discovered that

/usr/share/astro/ on mirzam is really on thuban2’s /var/share/astro_centos7/    !  )

–joel 20231231

tl;dr:  this stems from our upgrade from centos6 to 7. The directory still occupying thuban’s
/var/share/astro/ is a carcass from centos6 days!

To edit much of IDL source incl say coyote: must be on thuban2 on root and centos7

Published by admin-joel on 2022-07-05

Because mirzam was down tonight I used idl on canopus instead. In trying to run some idl galactic magnetic field idl programs on canopus, I kept hitting an obscure error on coyote’s cggreek routine which makes greek letters for plots.  Googling it I found that an idl 8.6.1 (as on canny) error prevented old cggreek from working.  (It worked ok forever on mirzy, which has I think idl 8.7)

So I installed the new cggreek from github to thuban2’s /var/share/astro/idleshare/coyote.  but this didn’t work!  why?  because i had to install it onto /var/share/astro_centos7/idleshare/coyote   Note because of access issues, one can not install directly onto /usr/share/astro on mirzy or canny, but must instead go to thuban2/var/share/astro_centos7/ as above (and see below).

by the way i used su cp etc etc on thuban 2 to overcome permission issues on canny or mirzy themselves, but prev post shows that su – on thuban2 might be easier

adjusting screen lock duration

Published by jweisber on 2022-01-02

in very top right of screen, on banner is an icon that is a circle, broken on top with a dot in middle of break.  hit it!  >>Joel Weisberg (or your name here)>>Account Settings.
Look on far left of resulting popup at the “Details” column which has a left arrow next to it.
Hit the left arrow to open up the “settings” column and scroll ‘way down to, and select “privacy.”
Then hit <cntrl>screenlock and you can select from a menu of “lock screen after blank for
<? minutes>.

–Joel. (Yes what a pain! This was really hard to figure out because it is so buried.)

idl idlde show line numbers! whew!

Published by jweisber on 2021-07-10

in idlde, go to window>>preferences>>General>>Editors>>text editors and place a checkmark on “show line numbers” and then go to bottom and apply and save

 

very hard to find this –googling and manuals did not help  –joel

IDL print two arrays side by side

Published by jweisber on 2021-06-28 
Solution from: 
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25167780/output-2-array-values-to-a-text-file-using-idl

IDL> x = findgen(10)
IDL> y = findgen(10) * 2
IDL> print, transpose([[x], [y]]), format='(2F)'

--Joel

IDL Color Plot Procedure Problems and Tentative Solutions

Published by jweisber on 2021-06-27

In our galactic magnetic field project,  color plots seem to fail sporadically, leaving plots with blank places where there should be colored symbols or lines.  Very frustrating!  I am finding this with AO_ATNF_Pulsars_RM_Sag_Region1a.pro

So I tried manually to play around with this from the IDL command line, basically trying to duplicate it.  Note that the above program uses cgcolor multiple times to set up definitions of say red to then be used in plot procedure (without quotes, e.g. plot,x,y,red ). Note comments in above
say we needed to use cgcolor because regular idl colors
were not working. Note all this is with plot procedure, and
newer plot function may not have any of these probs! New programs should use the latter.

From command line, if I do the following:

x=findgen(10)
y=findgen(10)
set_plot,’ps’  (I think needs it only once)
device,filename=’help.ps’ (puts the file in home directory)
Red =cgColor(“Red”, !D.Table_Size-4)  (stolen from pgm, and cgcolor is a coyote routine [there are such calls for every color used])
plot, x, y, color=red (makes every bit of plot red)
device,/close

The above made a red plot in the file ~help.ps .

And then FWIW when I reran the AO_ATNF . . . Sag..1a.pro,
the two plots’ colors were there. I’m not saying cause and
effect, but at least in this case a rerun after above jimmying
brought the colors back.  I am guessing that somehow I
am not properly totally initializing colors when I run the
program, so if something color-related  is left in a funny
state by a previous run, then the next program run does
not automatically fix it.

Coyote has some suggestions at
http://www.idlcoyote.com/color_tips/redps.html   ,
including:

    Set_Plot, 'PS'    
Device, DECOMPOSED=1, COLOR=1, BITS_PER_PIXEL=8, filename='help.ps' 
(Joel added the filename part.)

and he claims that all the above are needed for color to
work, so maybe the program’s lack of such a full Device command is the problem. However the above advice is old and I’m not
sure if today’s idl might need say 24 bits per pixel???? But
the color=1 command sounds like it is turning on color!  Decomposed=1 turns on decomposed colors which I think means R,G,B are expressed separately. That is documented here and there but I’m not sure if our cgcolor routines expect that value, so, be careful!

Sorry I don’t have the definitive fix but hopefully the user can create a workaround with some subset of above, if she suddenly loses color on plots that were colored in previous program runs!

–Joel

For new/upgraded idl, manually set up at least one link updated 20241105 for antares

Published by jweisber on 2021-05-15
I needed to put a “version” of idl_setup into the new host’s /usr/local/bin/   :
Obsolete from 2021:
{canopus.physics.carleton.edu}:{jweisber}:/usr/local/bin>
sudo ln -s /usr/local/harris/idl/bin/idl_setup .
New for 20241105 for antares, idl90:
{antares.physics.carleton.edu}:{jweisber}:/usr/local/bin>
sudo ln -s /usr/local/nv5/idl90/bin/idl_setup .
The final dot means link it into the current directory.
–Joel
There are lots of similar links and maybe they were also all manually created:
{canopus.physics.carleton.edu}:{jweisber}:/usr/local/bin> ls -als idl*
0 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 29 Apr 6 12:39 idl -> /usr/local/harris/idl/bin/idl*
0 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 31 Apr 6 12:39 idl86 -> /usr/local/harris/idl86/bin/idl*
0 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 31 Apr 6 12:39 idlde -> /usr/local/harris/idl/bin/idlde*
0 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 33 Apr 6 12:39 idlde86 -> /usr/local/harris/idl86/bin/idlde*
0 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 33 Apr 6 12:39 idlhelp -> /usr/local/harris/idl/bin/idlhelp*
0 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 35 Apr 6 12:39 idlhelp86 -> /usr/local/harris/idl86/bin/idlhelp*
0 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 32 Apr 6 12:39 idlrpc -> /usr/local/harris/idl/bin/idlrpc*
0 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 34 Apr 6 12:39 idlrpc86 -> /usr/local/harris/idl86/bin/idlrpc*
0 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 35 May 14 23:36 idl_setup -> /usr/local/harris/idl/bin/idl_setup*
0 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 39 Apr 6 12:39 idltaskengine -> /usr/local/harris/idl/bin/idltaskengine*
0 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 41 Apr 6 12:39 idltaskengine86 -> /usr/local/harris/idl86/bin/idltaskengine*

kate text editor “feature” under konqueror centos7: hard to open more than one file simultaneously

Published by jweisber on 2021-04-11

JMW uses Konqueror rather than nautilus file manager under centos7. This “feature” may appear only with above config, but anyway:

if I open a file with kate it’s fine.

if i open a second, the first disappears.  only one shows on desktop and on bottom bar listing all open files.  I can toggle between them on the document tab of left sidebar, but only one at a time!

FIXES:

  1.  View>>split view and then in the document tab on left sidebar, select  each of the TWO (max) files to show in a SINGLE split window.
  2. After opening one, click on new window (control n) and a second (empty) independent window will open up. In that second empty window, you can then navigate with file>>open menu  to second desired file and open it.  This will be my favored approach

I spent a good length of time reading the manual (useless – it tells what kate can do but not how!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and some blogs and it looks like there is no way to make it automatically put every document in a separate window.  So one of the above “features” will have to do.

–Joel