iraf.net

Hi allwhenever I try to use the help command, for example "help imcombine",
I get the following message:
cannot access help database file <odd characters>lib$helpdb.mip'
cannot access help database file stsdas$lib/helpdb.mip<odd characters>
No help available for 'imcombine'Please note that when I say <odd characters>, it's about three or four odd symbols that certainly are not on my keyboard! The exact same collection of these symbols occurred in both places where I put <odd characters>. Also I think I recognise the above lines from the following directory on my computer:
/iraf/iraf/unix/hlib/extern.pkg
So I think it might be something I have to do in there..
I have only just installed IRAF and am not confident I have set it up correctly so maybe I made in error in the installation phase..Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.Andrew

HiFrom first look it looks like your extern packages (like TABLES, STSDAS, ...) might be missing (link problem?) or the declarations in the extern.pkg setting the paths for the specific helpdb.mip might be incorrect.How did you do the installation? Specifically - where did you install the extern packages?Hope it give you some clue where to look.Regards
Pat

The 'helpdb' string is a comma-delimited list of help databases, i.e. a 'helpdb.mip' file for the core system, NOAO package, external packages, etc. It is typically specified using a '\' to escape the newline so you can specify one package per line, if you're seeing strange characters then this escape may be missing or there is some other typo. Please post the file if you're not sure what to do.

Thanks to both replies,just to let ya know the problem seemed to be that everything after the reset helpdb = in the extern.pkg should be enclosed in inverted commas..for some reason on mine the inverted commas seemed to be replaced with the odd characters that I spoke about..I am guessing the reason this happened is because I copied and pasted from another guy's (Rubab Kahn) instructions directly into the extern.pkg file and deleted what was already in there..so perhaps in doing that the inverted commas were changed to garbage characters... Rubab's page that I used by the way is at:
http://geco.phys.columbia.edu/~rubab/iraf/iraf_step_by_step_installation.Thanks again