source irafuser.csh leads to undefined variable Unbuntu

Khary Richardson wrote on Jun 23, 2011

Hi all. I am new to unix as well as IRAF so please bear with me. I was following the directions for Unbuntu install found here

http://geco.phys.columbia.edu/~rubab/iraf/iraf_step_by_step_installation

everything was going fine until I got this step.

cd /iraf/iraf/unix/hlib

source irafuser.csh

I changed directories and typed

source irafuser.csh

which gave this error message

iraf: Undefined variable.

I tried typing the full path name after source and got the same message. I then tried

sudo /home/iraf/unix/hlib/irafuser.csh

and got a : command not found error. Can someone explain to me where I am going wrong.
thank you

---

Mike Fitzpatrick wrote on Jun 23, 2011

Try doing a

setenv iraf /iraf/iraf/

(trailing '/' is required) before the source command. To simply use iraf you don't need to do either of these steps, they are mostly needed for development or e.g. to build external packages. I think your 'sudo' command is failing because you used the /home/iraf path instead of /iraf/iraf

---

Khary Richardson wrote on Jun 23, 2011

Fitz

I tried

 /source irafuser.csh 

as well as

 ./source irafuser.csh

as well as what you suggested. When I did the setenv nothing happened at all, and I got the error messages when I retried source.

I am using /home/iraf/ because earlier in the install when I tried

sudo chown -R iraf:iraf /iraf

I got

chown: cannot access `/iraf': No such file or directory

but

 sudo chown -R iraf:iraf /home/iraf

worked

---

Khary Richardson wrote on Jun 23, 2011

I just looked at the setting under users and groups, and it looks like I set /home/iraf as the iraf home directory.

---

Mike Fitzpatrick wrote on Jun 23, 2011

If /home/iraf is where you actually unpacked the files then that is what you should use. 'source' is a C-shell command and is used to load the definitions in the irafuser.csh file, however this presumes that you are using a C-shell at the time and not a Bash shell. If this is the problem, type 'csh' before running the source/setenv commands.

---

Khary Richardson wrote on Jun 23, 2011

I will give it a try. How can one tell if it is a C-shell or Bash shell? Thanks

---

Mike Fitzpatrick wrote on Jun 23, 2011

Try "echo $SHELL" Or, if you get lots of errors or a 'command not found' message from doing the 'source' then you're probably in a Bash shell.

---

Khary Richardson wrote on Jun 23, 2011

nothing seems to be happening. this is what I typed

ubuntu:~/unix/hlib> csh
ubuntu:~/unix/hlib> source irafuser.csh
ubuntu:~/unix/hlib>

then tried

ubuntu:~/unix/hlib> source /home/iraf/unix/hlib/irafuser.csh
ubuntu:~/unix/hlib> 

---

Mike Fitzpatrick wrote on Jun 23, 2011

That's all normal -- there is no output, all it does is define some environment variables. Like I said, its not needed for simply using the system by most users.

---

Khary Richardson wrote on Jun 23, 2011

fitz

Try "echo $SHELL" Or, if you get lots of errors or a 'command not found' message from doing the 'source' then you're probably in a Bash shell.

I got

/bin/tcsh

which I now remember is what the instructions I am following said to set it as

---

Khary Richardson wrote on Jun 23, 2011

fitz

That's all normal -- there is no output, all it does is define some environment variables. Like I said, its not needed for simply using the system by most users.

okay thank you.

---

Khary Richardson wrote on Jun 23, 2011

It says that the script must be run as root for changes to take effect. To do that I just type

root ./install

correct?

---

Khary Richardson wrote on Jun 23, 2011

never mind remembered what to do

---

Last post on Jun 23, 2011