iraf.net

Jim,
I notice several things from your mail. Yes, there is a limit of 63
characters in file names, so the longer filename for your pixel file would
definitely cause problems. Do you know about setting imdir = "HDR$pix/"? That puts just the string
"HDR$pix/imagename.pix" into the image header, and locates the pixel file in
a subdirectory "/pix" off the directory containing the header; this might
get around your very long pathname problem. In your environment you also
need to consider IRAF networking. If the node name in the pathname to a pixel file in an image header is
not the local node, IRAF will try to use networking to access the pixels.
In your environment, this is tcp/ip over ethernet, and in order for it
to work, you need a ".irafhosts" file in your UNIX login directory (not
your IRAF startup directory, if they are different). The form of this
file is "node : username password", where "*" may be used in place of
the node name, and "?" in place of the password, causing the system to
prompt whenever it needs to fire up another remote kernel server. If you
use "?" for your password, you will not be able to run jobs in the background
that must fire up remote kernel servers. On the other hand, putting your
password in .irafhosts, even if it is read-protected, might be considered
a security risk. An example .irafhosts file follows: lacerta : iraf ?
* : rooke ?In addition to the users' .irafhosts files, the dev$hosts files on all
IRAF hosts must contain entries for all nodes in the IRAF network, including
the local node. Furthermore, you must have an up to date dev$uhosts file,
which just contains copies of the relevant /etc/hosts entries. A subtlety
of the network interface is that if the system cannot gain access to the
network, it will try to access the same file on the local node. This is
likely the reason why you could read the file from some nodes but not others. So, if you don't mind putting all pixel files in subdirectories of the
header directory, that should solve your problem (HDR$pix/). If you can't
do this, but you don't mind having users' passwords in their own .irafhosts
files, read-protected from other users, that again would solve your problem
in all cases including background jobs. Finally, if you don't want the
passwords in the files, you can use "?" and get prompted for the password
at the terminal for interactive sessions.Steve Rooke
rooke@noao.edu