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DS9 on Iraf for FC6

gianluca perini wrote on Mar 13, 2007

hello
how can i install Ds9 on iraf? I could not find the help file in the download pages for this package, just the Ds9.
Sorry for noise :!:

greetings
john

Mike Fitzpatrick wrote on Mar 13, 2007

DS9 is installed by simply moving the binary to some directory (e.g. /usr/local/bin or /usr/bin) already in your path. It must be started manually before you try to display anything, either outside the CL or from the prompt with "cl> !ds9 &" to run it in the background. I've updated the downloads area with the latest version binaries.

-Mike

gianluca perini wrote on Mar 13, 2007

Thanks!
When i start DS9 i have this warning "XPA unable to verify host name". Ok, i have not yet set my internet conn. on FC6, hovever host name is my "local domain" or what is XPA? :?
Regards
John

Mike Fitzpatrick wrote on Mar 13, 2007

XPA is the "X Public Access" mechanism, its a messaging system in DS9 that allows e.g. host scripts to load images or control the display. These are a set of separate binaries you can get from the SAO site and install in the same directory. For now, you can ignore the message.

-Mike

Emilliano Gregori wrote on Mar 13, 2007

I have the same problem on a Gentoo 2007.0 (x86) system...
It seems that ds9 cannot start the xpans name server... but I have installed the xpa binaries in /usr/local/bin, the same directory where is ds9.

If I set the environment variable: XPA_METHOD=local then ds9 will start without error messages (and xpa access to ds9 will work). Looking at running processes with ps, I can see:

 4325 pts/0    S      0:00 ds9
 4326 ?        Ss     0:00 /usr/local/bin/xpans -e -f /tmp/.xpa/xpans_unix -l /tmp/.xpa/xpans_unix.log


that is ds9 can start xpans using local unix sockets instead of inet sockets...

Now on a Mac OSX 10.4.9 (Intel) system, I have no problems at all: if I run ds9 without any XPA environment variable set, ds9 will correctly start the xpans using inet sockets, as I can see from ps:

 2567  ??  S      0:00.39 /Applications/SAOImageDS9.app/ds9
 2568  ??  Ss     0:00.00 /usr/local/bin/xpans -e -p 14285 -l /tmp/.xpa/xpans_14285.log


in both cases I'm using the same version of ds9 (4.12) and xpa (2.1.7b2) as downloaded from SAO website (I downloaded the prebuilt binary packages.

Emiliano

[EDIT]: I'm looking into ds9 source...and if the XPA_METHOD is not set to "local", the error message seems related to a failing checkdns() TCL function... and this function calls the C standard library gethostbyname() function.

I looked into my /etc/hosts , and I found only the aliases for localhost:

# IPv4 and IPv6 localhost aliases
127.0.0.1       localhost
::1             localhost


Since my hostname is "gentoo-vm", I added the following line:

127.0.0.1               gentoo-vm


Now, ds9 starts with no errors, and will start the xpans with the right inet sockets. Also, ds9 access points are registered in the xpans:

$ xpaget xpans
DS9 ds9 gs 7f000001:3962 emiliano


So you have two ways to solve the problem:
(1) set XPA_METHOD=local (and use xpa with unix sockets), or
(2) tweak the /etc/hosts

Cheers,
Emiliano.

zabot wrote on Mar 13, 2007

After an upgrade from kubuntu 7.04 to 7.10 (feisty to gutsy) I had
the same problem.
Solution (1) worked great!

Cheers,
Alexandre Zabot

H.J. van Heerden wrote on Mar 13, 2007

Hi there

On the subject of DS9 in FC6 and XPA. There is a "XPA" distributed package available in the Fedora repositories, just do a search for it using yum...! It then also keeps the xpa system updated to the most current. Just a small bug to take note of is that the xpa system gets messed up somehow with each new kernel update. Reinstalling xpa, or updating fix this problem.

I installed ds9 to a defined external directory in the iraf file system as "/iraf/extern/", where I installed all the external packages that I use in IRAF, also locally developed ones....thus it is "part" of the IRAF system. (For system managing purposes, and etc)

DS9 can then be initialized by using a "loginuser.cl" file, and closed by using a "logout.cl" file that is defined in the home directory where the "login.cl" file is installed/created.

Hope this helps.

P.S. There are posts on calling DS9 from within the *.cl scripts.

Cheers
Pat

Last post on Mar 13, 2007