All NRAO workstations run some version of the Unix operating system, Linux on PCs and Mac OS/X on Apple
products. Unix systems are intrinsically sensitive to the difference between upper and lower case. Be sure to use the
case indicated in the comments and advice given in the following notes. 
itself is case-insensitive, however;
conversion of lower-case characters to upper-case occurs automatically. (Unix systems have a variety of characters
for the prompt at monitor (job-control) level, and allow users to set their own as well. We will use $ as the prompt
in the text below.)
The versions of on all NRAO PC systems are kept up to date continually with the master versions on the
Socorro Linux PC called dave. This is achieved by automated jobs that start running at very antisocial hours of the
early morning. Any changes formally made to the TST version of are copied to the relevant computers and
recompiled/relinked. Midnight jobs run in Charlottesville, Socorro, Green Bank, and many other sites around the
world.
Color printers are, these days, simply printers that understand the color extensions to the PostScript language used
to describe plots. The NRAO owns several Tektronix color printers, two public ones in Charlottesville (ps1color in
the Caige and ps3color in the Library) and two at the AOC in Socorro (aoc213c on the ground floor and
aoc324c upstairs in the former library). You may display your PostScript file on the printer in Socorro simply by
typing
$ lpr -Paoc324c filename C R | where filename is the name of your file. |
The paper size is 8.5 × 11 inches, which is the default for tasks TVCPS and LWPLA. To have the file
printed on transparency paper use queue aoc324c/trans. Full control over this complex printer is
available with the multiprint command; type multiprint --help C R for information. If you do
not wish to save the plot as a disk file, you may also print it directly from within . The color
printer is one of the printer choices when you start up AIPS, but you probably want to select a regular
PostScript printer as your default printer. You can change your printer selection with the verb PRINTER; use
PRINTER 999 C R to see what your choices are and then PRINTER n C R to choose the printer numbered n.
print routines will re-direct PostScript files that actually contain color commands to the first
PS-CMYK printer in the list, but will not re-direct ordinary print jobs to some printer other than a color
printer.
To obtain a color hard-copy of what is on your screen, there are several software options you can choose. These include TVCPS, xv, and import. Having created a PostScript (or other format) file, you can print it on color printers at the NRAO or copy the file via e-mail, scp, or ftp to some other site.
The TVCPS task in will create a color Encapsulated PostScript file from whatever is displayed on the
TV server (XAS). If you use the OUTFILE adverb, this file is saved with whatever name you specify (see
§3.10.1). If you specify a black-and-white output to TVCPS, then the output can be sent to any PostScript printer.
Color PostScript must be sent to a color printer. You can, of course, edit the saved file (if you are a
PostScript wizard or use HELP POSTSCRIPT) and can insert the file (since it is encapsulated) in another
document.
The xv program is a Unix utility program available on most systems at the NRAO. It is mainly intended for image display of GIF, JPG, TIFF, and other format files. When you start xv, click the right button mouse anywhere in the xv window to bring up the control window. One of its features is a screen grab which is controlled by the “Grab” button in the lower right corner of the control window. Before you press this, arrange your windows and icons so that you can see exactly what it is you want to grab (e.g., the XAS server). Now press the “grab” button. A window with instructions will appear. Move the cursor to the top left of the area you want to grab. Then press and hold down the center mouse button, and drag the mouse cursor until it is at the bottom right of the area you want to grab. As you do this, you will see a box pattern on the screen outlining the area selected. Once you are done selecting the area, release the mouse cursor. When xv has finished grabbing the screen, whatever you grabbed will appear in the main xv window. You can now use the “save” button of the control window to save this as any format you want. One nice feature of this is the “save as Postscript” option. It allows you to scale, rotate, and position the image in relation to the page. Its user interface is better than most image utilities.
Finally, the import program provides similar functionality to the “grab” feature of xv, with many options about output formats and much more. Enter import -help C R for a summary of the options. For example, enter import -quality 100 outfile.jpg C R. The cursor will change to a plus sign. Position it at the top left corner of the area you wish to grab, hold down a mouse button, and drag the cursor to the bottom right of the area you wish to capture. When you let up on the button, the file outfile.jpg will be written in jpg format. Alternatively, position the cursor inside the window you wish to capture and click the left mouse button. The entire window will be captured. The file extension determines the format, so .eps will produce encapsulated PostScript.
The so-called “designated AIP” is now Eric Greisen at all times (except when he is on vacation). He assists local and
remote users with their problems, providing quick advice or simple fixes to bugs, More complex problems
may require some time and may even require receipt of the user’s data in order to debug the problem. Contact the
designated AIP (and all members of the group) at the e-mail address daip@nrao.edu. The “my.nrao” web portal lets
you into the “helpdesk” which has an department. Management prefers if you use this approach to request
assistance.
Suggestions and complaints entered on all computers with the GRIPE verb (see §11.1) are sent immediately by
e-mail to daip and thereby to all members of the group. All traffic via daip from 2000 to the present is archived at
https://listmgr.nrao.edu/pipermail/daip and is well-known to Google. You might try Googling your
error message to see if you get something useful. We stand willing, and are now able, to respond to user
problems and requests on a timely basis.
The Gripes database described in Memo No. 88 used to be maintained, but appears to have
disappeared.
Below are details specific to NRAO systems for handling some of the problems which may arise in
.
Modern workstations, especially the powerful PCs and Macs, are complex Unix systems which may have remote
users within the NRAO and guests from elsewhere on the Internet. Users should never attempt to boot the system
on their own. If the machine appears to be dead, find or call one of the people listed on the bulletin boards in the
Caige for this purpose.
Check the output messages that appeared shortly after you submitted your print job, whether it be from
PRTMSG or LWPLA, or some other task. You should see the output of the Unix command to show the printer queue
status. If anything went wrong with the print submission, an error message should be obvious. If not, check the
output of the lpq command, see what print queue was involved, and check it again from the Unix command level
(not from inside AIPS).
AIPS will delete spooled files about 5 minutes after they are submitted. If the print queue is stalled (due, say, to a jammed printer) or backed up with a lot of jobs, it is possible that the file was deleted before it was gobbled up by the print spooler. This time delay has been made a locally-controlled parameter, so it is possible to set it to values higher than 5 minutes.
Finally, check to see if the printout was (a) diverted to the “big” printer (psnet in room 213 at the AOC or ps3dup in the Charlottesville library) because it was too long for the smaller printers, (b) you forgot which printer you had selected on aips startup, or, at the AOC, (c) someone has taken the output and filed it in the “today” file bin (at the AOC this is on the left side of the post directly behind the psnet printer).
To find out what jobs are in the spooling queue for the relevant printer, type, at the monitor level:
$ lpq C R | to list default print queue |
$ lpstat C R | to list default print queue under Solaris |
or to display a specific queue
$ lpq -Pppp C R | to show printer ppp |
where ppp might be psnet at the AOC or ps3dup in Charlottesville. If the file is still in the queue as job number nn, you can type simply
$ lprm -Pppp nn C R | to remove the job |
lprm and cancel will announce the names of any files that they remove and are silent if there are no jobs in the queue which match the request.
Unfortunately, it is now very difficult to stop long print jobs. The large memories of modern printers mean that
more than one print job can already be resident in the printer while your long unwanted job is being printed.
Therefore, turning off the printer is not an option. Try to be more careful and not generate excess printout in the first
place (save a tree). tasks now check the size of print jobs that will go directly to a printer and ask if you
really mean to print them.
A nice option available for most print tasks or verbs is adverb OUTPRINT which allows you to divert the
output to a text file. Then you can use an editor like emacs to examine the file in detail before printing. The Unix
command wc -l file will count the number of lines in a text file called file for you; note that -l is the letter ell,
not the number one. provides a “filter” program to convert plain (or Fortran) text files to PostScript for
printing on PostScript printers. The command
$ F2PS -nn < file | lpr -Pppp |
|
will print text file file on PostScript printer ppp. The parameter nn is the number of lines per page used inside ;
it is likely to be 97 if direct printing comes out in “portrait” form or 61 if the direct print outs come out in
“landscape” form.
The last process placed in the background via CTRL Z can be brought back to the foreground by typing fg C R in response to the monitor level % or $ (or whatever) prompt Alternatively, the user can type jobs C R, which displays all background processes associated with the current login and can bring a specific process to the foreground by typing fg % m C R, where m is the job number as displayed by the jobs command as [m]. For example, if a user initiated his AIPSn by typing aips new pr=4 C R and:
| CTRL Z typed by accident (or intentionally). |
Stopped | aips new is put in the background as “stopped” and user is returned to the Unix level. |
$ jobs C R | to display status of background jobs. |
[1] + Stopped aips new | info from Unix, where [1] means job 1, “Stopped” is job 1’s state and “aips new” is the command used to start up job 1. |
$ fg m C R | to return job m to the foreground. |
aips new | appears on the screen just to tell the user to which job he is talking (i.e., it does not re-execute aips new). You should now be talking to your AIPSn again. |
| C R
| to get AIPSn > prompt. |
The message write failed, file system is full will appear when the search for scratch space encounters a disk or disks without enough space. This is only a problem when none of the disks available for scratch files has enough space, at which point the task will shut down. Use the BADDISK adverb to avoid disks with little available space.
If at some point during your work you find you are prevented from reading or writing files on a data
disk, it could be that your number does not have access to that area. If you encounter the
message:
AIPS 2: CATOPN: ACCESS DENIED TO DISK 8 FOR USER 1783
it means that user 1783 has not been given access to write (or read) on disk 8. This can be seen, in the AIPS session,
by typing FREESPAC to list the mounted disks. If you see a data disk listed with an access of Not you, it means your
number has not been enabled for that disk. If you feel that you should have access to that
particular disk, see the data analysts (at the AOC) or an Manager about enabling your user
number.
