Installing IRAF - A solution for newbies

rohit · Active IRAF User Joined: 01 Jun 2006 Posts: 86

Every student has difficulty installing IRAF for the first time, especially if they are new to Linux. I found a link to a self-contained IRAF script that installs IRAF in less than 10 min. There are very few commands one needs.

Note this is for Ubuntu Users

The script is written by an astronomer, Fernando Andr�s �vila Castro. To install do the following:

(1) Download the ISO file from his website:
http://www.astro.uson.mx/%7Efavilac/downloads/ubuntu-iraf/iso/IRAF_Ubuntu.iso

(2) To mount the ISO file do the following in the terminal:

sudo mkdir /media/iso

sudo mount filename.iso /media/iso -t iso9660 -o loop

(3) cd /media/iso

Once you are inside. execute the command:

sh install-ubuntu.sh

That's all. Wait until it runs. The script installs the following programs and versions:

IRAF 2.14.1
STSDAS 3.11
TABLES 3.11
PyRAF 1.7
PyWCS 1.4
DS9 6.0
X11IRAF 2.0BETA
WCSTOOLS 3.7.0
TELARCHIVE 1.4
PHIST 2.0
STECF 1.5
FV 5.2.1
XVISTA 7.08

Thanks Fernando Andr�s �vila Castro for this time-saving script and not me! Smile

Hope you enjoy working with IRAF, it is amazing! Smile

JulienM · Joined: 10 Mar 2010 Posts: 6

That's great !
I tried to install IRAF on my laptop following this procedure, but still I have an issue, it says :

favilac · Joined: 16 Dec 2005 Posts: 8 Location: Hermosillo

Hi, I'm the author of the script.

Usually this kind of errors came from a corrupted download.

Try downloading it again from here:

http://www.astro.uson.mx/~favilac/downloads/ubuntu-iraf/files/iraf.tar.gz

In the next version I will include a md5sum of this file, as it has happened a couple of times now.

JulienM · Joined: 10 Mar 2010 Posts: 6

Thank you,

I downloaded the file, but as it's not an iso, what should I do ? should I just extract it and replace older files ? then how should I install ?

I found a few weeks ago a link on this forum to a site which describes step-by-step installation of IRAF under Ubuntu by hand, but I encountered the same problem when it came to the instruction :
"sudo ./install"

the instructions were kind of weird because they stated :

rohit · Active IRAF User Joined: 01 Jun 2006 Posts: 86

Julien,

The whole installation may seem daunting but it is not. I am not sure why the install did not work. It is likely the download was corrupted. I would try downloading it again with the link I provided and seeing if it works. If it does not, you will need to do through a manual install. I am giving you a link to work it out. However, I would suggest you read the whole page, including the comments people have left before you give it a try.

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-912583.html

Good luck!

Rohit

JulienM · Joined: 10 Mar 2010 Posts: 6

Hi !

first of all sorry for the late reply I've been busy for the past few days...
Then thank you for the link, I read the whole thread then I followed the instructions step by step but I still encountered the same problem, when it says to test the install typing "sudo ./install -n" I get the same error :

JulienM · Joined: 10 Mar 2010 Posts: 6

OK I finally found what was wrong !

I noticed that there were no csh shell installed on my ubuntu system, only tcsh (although I read somewhere that tcsh was more developped so it kind of included csh).
I installed csh shell and now it works !
I feel ashamed for such a stupid thing... Embarassed

anyway thanks a lot for your help ! Wink

Julien