AIPS Linux Install Notes

The install testing for 15OCT96 was carried out on a Linux 2.x (ELF) system that had a very generic Red Hat (version 3) Linux installation thereon. No install test was performed on an a.out system this time around.

• You may want to add -O2 -m486 to the relevant options line in the XAS Makefile prior to building it (or having INSETP1 build it for you). Apparently this improves its performance somewhat. However, it will not work on Intel 80386 based systems.
• If you are running a version of Linux prior to 1.3 (i.e., using a.out object file format and not ELF format), and have a version of gcc or ld of 2.6.3 and 2.5.2.6 (with BFD 2.5) respectively or later, then several tasks will not build correctly. These include $APLPGM/OTFUV, $APLPGM/UVMTH, $APGNOT/HOLGR, and $APGNOT/XTRAN. The problem can be traced to a failure to accept static global structures with single arrays larger than 16 Megabytes. All these programs have common blocks larger than this, and the f2c Fortran-to-C translator converts such common blocks to static globals. This problem was not apparent in older versions. A patched version of ld (from Linux 1.2.8, patched by hand, not available in the normal distribution areas!) is included in the $SYSLINUX area for this version. INSTEP1 will automatically uudecode this binary if you indicate you do not support ELF format object files, and you should either move it to /usr/bin yourself or have your sysadmin do so.
• If you have a standalone PC that is not connected to any network, either via ethernet or phone (or you want to run without tieing up a phone link), you will probably have to set up a dummy network interface so that the internet services SSSIN and others will work.
• Ignore the warnings that may be issued during the Make of XAS about LITTLE_ENDIAN being redefined, if any.