Archive for May, 2011

Common commands of Scisoft and Starlink

Posted May 5, 2011 By grigoris

Scisoft includes a number of Starlink programs but not all. So perhaps someone (in this case me!) needs to run something that it is not included in the Scisoft (like DIPSO). So, nothing wrong to go on and install both. But in this case that someone has to be careful not to mix the commands.

As the Starlink programs are not available from the beginning within the setup script of Scisoft, some initial work has to be done [how to do it?]. If an alias is selected then its names for the environment and the program has to be different than what Starlink uses. In the example of setting up FIGARO through Scisoft we used “FIG_DIR” and “figaro” as the alias in the .bashrc, which conflicts with “figaro” of Starlink. The best way is to name them differently (like “SCIFIG_DIR” and “scifigaro”). By that we have available both programs, either the Starlink version by typing “figaro” or the Scisoft version by typing “scifigaro” (may be different versions depending on the Scisoft/Starlink releases).

Installing Starlink

Posted May 5, 2011 By grigoris

Installing and running Starlink is pretty much straightforward. Firstly, get the latest release (Namaka, when this post was written) and extract the file wherever you want. Then select which shell you want to use and follow the post-installation run-up or the info given below (supposing it was downloaded and extracted in /home/user/soft/star-namaka/).

Bash case:

Open the .bashrc file (found at the /home/user/ directory) and add these lines:

export STARLINK_DIR=/home/user/soft/star-namaka/
. $STARLINK_DIR/etc/profile

In this case the Starlink programs are available with the start of the bash shell.

If you don’t want this to happen (don’t ask me why…) then you should define an alias, so type instead:

export STARLINK_DIR=/home/user/soft/star-namaka/
alias star='. $STARLINK_DIR/etc/profile'

Now, in order to start Starlink after the start of the shell type “star” (or whatever you have chosen to name it).

Tcsh case:

The case of a tcsh shell (or csh) is more or less similar by defining the environment and sourcing the necessary files ( login and cshrc under star-namac/etc/). Open the .tcshrc (or .cshrc, at the home directory as previously)  and type:

setenv STARLINK_DIR /home/user/soft/star-namaka/
source $STARLINK_DIR/etc/login
source $STARLINK_DIR/etc/cshrc

So, starting a tcsh shell will automatically initialize the Starlink programs.

Happy processing !!