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Hello,

I have installed IRAF v2.16.1 in Fedora 20 and used it to calibrate standard star fields as usual (I've done this before with previous IRAF versios without any problem). However, now I am stumbling upon an error while trying to run mknobsfile. Error message is the following:

ERROR: Abnormal termination of child process 'noaobin$x_photcal.e'
"verify=verify, verbose=verbose)"
line 102: photcal$mknobsfile.cl
called as: 'mknobsfile ()'

The parameters I've defined are (following Massey & Davis 1992, A User's Guide to Stellar CCD Photometry with IRAF):

photfiles = "standstuff" The input list of APPHOT/DAOPHOT databases
idfilters = "10,1" The list of filter ids
imsets = "standstars" The input image set file
observations = "test" The output observations file
(wrap = no) Format output file for easy reading ?
(obsparams = "") The input observing parameters file
(obscolumns = "2 3 4 5") The format of obsparams
(minmagerr = 0.001) The minimum error magnitude
(shifts = "") The input x and y coordinate shifts file
(apercors = "") The input aperture corrections file
(aperture = 1) The aperture number of the extracted magnitude
(tolerance = 5.) The tolerance in pixels for position matching
(allfilters = no) Output only objects matched in all filters
(verify = no) Verify interactive user input ?
(verbose = yes) Print status, warning and error messages ?
(mode = "ql")

I'm clueless on what's wrong and how I can overcome the problem...
Thanks for any help you may provide,
Catarina

An "abnormal termination" message usually means a problem with the binary, e.g. an unfound shared library, wrong architecture, etc. You usually get a more informative error by running the task outside of IRAF, i.e. form the unix prompt do something like

% /iraf/iraf/noao/bin.linux64/x_photcal.e

You will either get a "\$this->_split2($m[0])" prompt which means it started normally, or a host error that indicates the problem. Be sure the architecture is correct for your system (I assume you're using 64-bit, but run the 'file' command on the binary to see what it is, and the 'ldd' command to list the needed shared libraries (you shouldn't see any "not found" errors). Post the output of these commands if the output doesn't make any sense to you).

Thanks for the swift answer!

The 'file' command returned:

/iraf/noao/bin.linux64/x_photcal.e: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.9, not stripped

and the 'ldd' command did not work - it returned:

not a dynamic executable


So, I installed glibc.i686 and now it runs OK!