Contents
Installation Procedure
(!) Installation on Mac OS X (!)
BoA has also been successfully installed and running on Apple Macintosh computers. Successful installations were done on a G4 laptop (Powerbook G4 550 MHz) and a G5 desktop (Powermac G5 2x1.8 GHz), under Mac OS X 10.3.5 to 10.3.9. BoA is also running on the new Intel Mac (installed and tested on a MacBook Pro 2.0 GHz, with Mac OS X 10.4.6). Specifics of the installation on Intel Mac are detailed here. For any question related to Mac, please contact FredericSchuller.
Download from BoA's Subversion repository
To download BoA's external packages and the install script from the Subversion server, make shure that the Subversion client software svn is installed on your computer. The command
svn checkout http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/svn/boa/install/trunk boa-install
will download everything you need to install BoA to the directory boa-install under your current working directory. The dirctory boa-install will be created if not allready present.
You are now ready to start the installation.
You can have a look to Documentation/HowToSubversion for help on Subversion commands.
Running the install script
Go to the boa-install directory and start the install script
cd boa-install ./install.sh
In the course of installing BoA, the script will prompt you for some paths (reasonable defaults are offered) and ask you for each software package to be installed, whether you want to install it.
For a fresh installation, you should install every package included (even if, say Python, is allready present on your system). If you plan to install all packages, you can run the installation by
./install.sh -all
The install script will prompt you considerably less often then.
Skipping installation of packages is useful if you resume an aborted installation (see below). You can also try if BoA works with your preinstalled versions of software; however, you are at your own then!
The installation consists of three stages, all of which are performed by the installation script:
Installation of the external packages necessary for BoA
Installation of BoA itself, including documentation and example FITS files
Installation of BoA's initialization files .boarc.sh and .boarc.csh
After the installtion, You will find a installation log in boa-install/build.stat. If the installation fails, the install script will tell you that something went wrong and give you a place where you can find information related with the failure. In addition, you can consult boa-install/build.stat for informations about the earlier steps of the installation.
Installation of external packages
The installation script prompts you for the location of the external packages. The default should allways be correct.
You are then prompted for the directory where BoA is to be installed. If this directory allready exists, you must confirm that choice. This case is necessary to resume an aborted installation or to update the BoA software itself. In all other cases, install to a new directory!
The script then installs all external packages into this directory.
For some packages, (e.g. scipy_distutils) you are prompted whether you want the package to be updated via CVS. This may not be necessary, so you can safely answer n. If you do update, be aware that the CVS server may be slow or even down. If this is the case, you are prompted after a timeout of ~2 min whether you want to proceed without the CVS update. If you are nervous, cancel the installation with Ctrl-C and resume the installation (see below).
Installation of BoA
When the installation of the external packages is complete, the BoA software itself is installed. Since it is not included in the boa-install download, it is downloaded from the BoA Subversion server now.
The script prompts you for a directory, where BoA is to be installed. You can choose any accessible directory.
After the installation of the BoA software, the documentation and example FITS files are downloaded and installed. Again you are prompted whether and where you want these features to be installed.
Installation of BoA's initialization files
As last step, the script installs the initialization files .boarc.sh and .boarc.csh to your home dirctory. These scripts define a runtime environment for Boa (setting shell variables, paths, and aliases) for bash (.boarc.sh) and csh (.boarc.csh). Before running Boa, type source ~/.boarc.sh or source ~/.boarc.csh.
- You may want to add this to your shell's startup script.
Resuming an incomplete installation
To resume an incomplete installation, run boa-install/install.sh again. When prompted for the dirctory to which BoA is to be installed, specify the same directory as in the aborted installation. (Do this even if you will not install a single external package; the information is needed for the initialization files!)
You can then safely skip all installation steps, that where performed successfully in the last installation run.
Please be aware that you are prompted for the variable $PGPLOT_DIR after skipping the installation of pgplot. A reasonable default is offered.
Updating BoA
To update the Boa software itself, go to your $BOA_HOME directory (the directory with BoA´s Python files). Check whether an update is neccessary by typing
svn status -u
and consult the output of this command (see Documentation/HowToSubversion for an explanation of the output).
If you want to update, type
svn update
Again, consult Documentation/HowToSubversion for an explanation of the output and ways to resolve possible conflicts.
From time to time it may also be neccessary to update the external packages. To do so, go to the installation directory (the directory containig the install script install.sh), check the status with svn status -u, and update with svn update. After that, run the install script. When prompted for the dirctory to which BoA is to be installed, specify the directory to which BoA was installed before. Skip all installation steps that are not affected by svn update.
Reference VMs
In order to facilitate development and tests of BoA, Reference Virtual Machines (VMs) for VMWare workstation 5.5.1 have been created with Suse 10.0 and Scientific Linus 4.2 as guest OS. Both guest OSs have been installed, and verified, with a collection of software packages, that allows the installation of BoA. They are available on request, ask AlexandreBeelen of ReinholdSchaaf.
In order to use the VMs, you must either have VMWare Workstation 5.5 or later, or you can use them with the current version of the free VMWare player.
- When starting a VM for the first time, you will be asked whether you want to keep the present UUID or to create a new one. Keep the present one!
Once the VM is running, you can login as boauser with password boa4u. You will find a readme on your desktop that will give some more information about the VM (e.g. the root password). The user boauser is known to BoA's repository.
Please note that the state of the VM is defined as a snapshot. That means that you can revert to that state at any time! Also, you can create new snapshots at any time. (AFAIK, Snapshots do not work for VMWare Player.)
Installation Report
Here is a list of operating system, which detailled instructions, where BoA were succesfully installed :
If you want to report a successfull installation please create a new wiki page under Boa/Installtion/NewOS using the InstallationTemplate or use the following :
Installation FAQ
Fortran compilation errors
- When you have several f2py version installed, be sure to set the $PYTHONPATH variable to the right library.
BoA fails to start
ImportError: No module named fUtilities
the fortran modules have not been compiled. Go to the fortran directory and type make
ImportError: libifport.so.x
you dont have the fortran librarie in you $LD_LIBRARY_PATH, please source the boarc.xx file or check your installation.
I can't open a Graphical Device
- check the pgplot and p_pgplot installation
if trying to output png files, make sure that libpng is present when compiling pgplot and p_pgplot
Reading a MBFits file fails
- check the cfitisio and pcfitsio installation
check that the version of MBFits.xml/$MBFITSXML you are using match the file you are trying to read
Boa runs but it gives me errors
if you have recently updated your version on BoA try recompiling fortran by typing make all in the fortran directory.