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Central Processing News

This page informs the users of the Central processing facilities about latest developments and changes. Questions about issues mentioned here can be send to Teun Grit (system administration, grit 'at' astron.nl) or Arno Schoenmakers (offline software, schoenmakers 'at' astron.nl).

Please note the following:

  • Starting November 30, the old cluster hardware (listfen, lifs nodes) will be phased out

The Casa Package has been upgraded to 3.0.1. See this NRAO page for more info on this release.

The daily build of LOFAR offline pipeline components to also includes the AOFlagger by Andre Offringa.

Following a request by Anastasia Alexov, the USG daily build now also includes the pulsar module. Modules that we now build are therefore: DAL, Pulsar.

Initialization of DAL and Pulsar is done through use LUS (for Lofar User Software; by L. Baehren).

We upgraded the Casa package (distributed by NRAO) to version 3.0.0. This is from NRAO mailing:

  • The release and helpdesk can be obtained from http://my.nrao.edu. Versions are available for Linux and Mac OSX 10.5 and 10.6.
  • Details about the release including new capabilities, release notes, and the full user reference and cookbook can be found at the CASA home page: http://casa.nrao.edu
  • We are also pleased to announce the creation of a new CASA wiki with fully annotated tutorials and tips: http://casaguides.nrao.edu. More guides covering a wider range of data possibilities will be added over time.

We have made available a new Python package, called Aipy. (http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/~aparsons/aipy/aipy.cgi). The installed version is 0.9.1. See lofar_packages for more info.

We have made available two new python packages on the cluster nodes:

These packages are initialized with use Pythonlibs. See lofar_packages for more info.

Cheers, Arno Schoenmakers

Some time ago a new package LofIm was set up, that contains combined and interlinked builds of the packages:

  • casacore
  • casarest
  • pyrap
  • LOFAR offline software
  • askapsoft (cimager)

The LofIm package is build daily (see lofim for some details). We have stopped building the individual subpackages separately, but the initialization scripts are still there.

To prevent users from activating outdated versions of these subpackages, I will remove the initialization scripts for these, today. All users that want to make use of one of the subpackages, will have to activate the entire LofIm package by typing 'use LofIm' on the command line, or by adding 'LofIm' to your $HOME/.mypackages file (assuming you are using our login scripts).

If a build of LofIm fails, you can revert to an earlier build; see the Wiki page for details.

Let me know of any mishaps or problems you encounter when using the LofIm package, so we can fix things asap, also on behalf of all other users..!

With kind regards,

Arno Schoenmakers

New package: LofIm, to replace casacore, pyrap, Lofar, casarest, askapsoft. See this page for more info.

  • Last modified: 2010-04-21 07:23
  • by Arno Schoenmakers