IRAF v2.16 fails at startup in mac os x 2.8 (mountain lion)

[jlowenthal]

On a new imac with 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7 running os x 10.8.1, I've tried installing IRAF several ways, especially: (1) using the scisoft distribution, and (2) using the binaries in iraf-macosx.tar.gz downloaded from iraf.net. The install script returned "OK" to everything and said "Installation Completed With No Errors".

I ran mkiraf to initialize the uparm and login.cl.

But when I start up terminal or XQuartz (was x11), call up an xgterm, and try to start IRAF, I get this error message:

bash-3.2$ ecl
** Syntax error
**: if (!defvar("helpdb")) {
^
**: }
^
ERROR: syntax error
called as: `cl ()'
called as: `cl ()'
Error while reading login.cl file - may need to rebuild with mkiraf
Fatal startup error. CL dies.
bash-3.2$

I've tried rebuilding login.cl and also copying one over from another computer; same error.

Thanks for any help!

James Lowenthal
Smith College

[fitz]

The "if (!defvar("helpdb"))' line isn't part of any of the core IRAF startup scripts, neither is it in anything in SciSoft from what I can tell, so I'm guessing this is either a local loginuser.cl file or some modification to the login.cl file that you've made.

The syntax error is probably coming from a known CL quirk where an if-statement sometimes needs to be terminated by a semicolon to avoid an ambiguity in determining whether an 'else' is expected. That is, the code might need to be something like

[tfish13]

I too am having problems at startup, with near identical set up as James (instead using a 2.6 GHz MacBook Pro) where starting IRAF results with:

bash-3.2$ cl
/iraf/irafbin.macintel/vocl.e not found
/iraf/irafbin.macintel/vocl.e: Command not found.

Many of these forums show that 'Command not found' means that the path is incorrect, which I would guess makes sense as I assume there should be another '/' between the second iraf and bin.macintel?

Trying to use the new path results in:

bash-3.2$ /iraf/iraf/bin.macintel/cl.e
task 'cl' has no param file
Fatal startup error. CL dies.

SAD! Is there somewhere where I am incorrectly setting a path that could easily fix this?

[fitz]

In this case it sounds more like a value of $iraf is being set without the trailing '/', e.g. in your .cshrc you have something like

setenv iraf /iraf/iraf

instead of

setenv iraf /iraf/iraf/

Even though you explicitly give a path to a CL binary, the $iraf value is used in constructing other paths in the system, and when those are incorrect you see the 'has no param file' message. Note that if you don't define $iraf in your .login or .cshrc, it might be defined in e.g. a scisoft 'Setup.csh' that's loaded in there. If it isn't defined at all, look at the /usr/include/iraf.h to see how it is set there, if its missing the '/' then you should rerun the install script to specify the path *with* a trailing '/'.

[tfish13]

This turned out to be true. The reason I was getting hung up is that I had set export iraf=/iraf/iraf/ in the root directory while setting it without the final '/' in the home directory. Embarassing. Thanks for the help!

[jlowenthal]

Still stuck on...

** Syntax error
**: if (!defvar("helpdb")) {

...problem. Thanks, fitz, for your suggestions, but: no, there is no loginuser.cl, and the login.cl file has no such line. I rebuilt login.cl with mkiraf too, but no change.

Another user emailed me another suggestion that didn't work: he said he'd found and commented out some lines of code including the offending
**: if (!defvar("helpdb")) {
in the file hlib$extern.pkg, and that IRAF then started up fine. But my extern.pkg does not have that line either.

In fact I did a global whole-computer search on the string "defvar" using the imac spotlight, and didn't come up with anything obviously relevant.

[fitz]

Try adding the line "d_trace" to the top of your login.cl file to see whether that reveals where the line if coming from. If not, then do the same to hlib$clpackage.cl which is called earlier and does things like the extern.pkg file. Like I said, this isn't in the core system scripts so is likely either from an external package or some local modification in scisoft.

[fitz]

I found out recently this 'defvar' is coming from a script called 'install_helper' in some STScI distribution of STSDAS/TABLES/STCECF. The syntax is actually invalid and should be replaced with

[fitz]

[Moderator Note: posted on behalf of mrawls@nmsu.edu]

I had the very same problem with the 'defvar' syntax error when I tried to install IRAF v2.16 on OSX Mountain Lion on my Retina Macbook Pro. I had to dig quite a bit to find the proper extern.pkg file to edit. For me, the offending file was located in the directory

/usr/local/scisoft/packages/iraf/iraf/unix/hlib

Once I cd-ed there and edited extern.pkg as directed, I redid mkiraf in my xgterm, typed cl, and was on my way! What an obnoxious little bug. It was particularly frustrating because I have two other instances of extern.pkg on my machine (one called extern.pkg and the other called extern.pkg.proto, both in similarly buried scisoft-related directories) which I found first and edited to no avail.

[raybutler]

I just had the exact same problem (Scisoft on a new MacMini, OSX Mountain Lion). I followed the instructions in the last two posts [the code change by fitz, in the file pointed out by mrawls via fitz], and that fixed it.

Many thanks guys!!