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FAQ

Welcome to the Mac IRAF FAQ. If your question is not here, contact me, and I’ll see if I can help you out or add the question here. I’m always open to suggestions for things for the web site. Use your browser’s find feature, command-F, to search the questions for a word or string.

This FAQ is painfully out of date and hopefully will be moved to the new Wiki and updated soon.

1. I am trying to install/re-install IRAF using your package installer but it says “permission to install iraf package in a default place is denied.” Help!

In all likelihood / is not writeable by the admin. Do this:

  % cd /

  % ls -al

  drwxrwxr-t  45 root     admin        1530 Jan 13 11:48 .

Your / permisisions shown by the . above should look like that. The group must have write permission. If it does not change it with a

% sudo chmod g+w /

In fresh installs of Panther, you may also need to make sure that / is in the admin group.

% sudo chgrp admin /

There was a lot of staff/group permission weirdness which you can read about read about here

2. I run xgterm but I’m getting some weird error about an xt widget having zero width and/or height?

Try deleting the XGterm file in located at /private/etc/X11/app-defaults/XGterm. This shouldn’t be a problem with the latest XGterm binary and Jaguar.

3. ximtool and xgterm windows seem numb to my keystrokes? What’s going on?

Update to the newest version of X11IRAF or use the flat-namespace workarounds mentioned in the README file to my .pkg X11IRAF installer

4. I made some data file or a command file in a text editor in OS X but the cl in IRAF doesn’t understand it at all.

You need to make sure the text file is using UNIX line breaks. DOS, Mac, and UNIX all use different characters to represent carriage returns. TextWrangler supports UNIX line breaks and you can set its default behavior to save to UNIX text files.

5. I downloaded some unix program and I double click it but nothing’s happening. Why won’t it run?

Okay, unix programs don’t launch in the Finder. See the unix page for tips for unix newcomers. If you want to install many unix-type programs, Fink is an excellent distribution.

6. I’m trying to use imexam but instead of my plots I’m getting a lot of gibberish drawn on my xterm. What’s this about?

Your terminal type is probably set to xgterm and yet you’re running xterm which can’t comprehend the graphics being sent to your terminal. Just run iraf in xgterm and it should work properly. or if you don’t have xgterm try a stty xterm

You may want to give the IRAF button a try, which you can find in the downloads page.

7. I use control-c to halt an IRAF task in Jaguar and the cl and/or task starts gobbling up all my CPU resources. This used to work nicely, what happened?

This has been fixed in IRAF 2.12.2 released Februray 7, 2004. It should be available as of the afternoon of February 10 in .pkg format on the download page.

8. Why don’t you mention Fink anywhere? Don’t you use it?

For those of you who don’t know, Fink is a very popular method for distributing and installing various open-source packages. Some items have to be compiled from source but most can be installed in binary form using the dselect tool. I just got Fink working recently, and I definitely think it’s worthwhile thing to get, if you have any inkling to try and install more Unix-based software on your Mac.

Fink can install Xfree86 for instance, various windows managers (the enlightenment!), and their web page has news about using it with Apple’s X11, etc. I encourage those of you who want access to more unix/x11 programs it to give it a try. There’s also a GUI FinkCommander that makes things even simpler.

9. Do you have a .pkg installer for GUIAPPS, TABLES, or STSDAS?

Yes, I do. They are on the downloads page. The official installation instructions for STSDAS and TABLES are such a mess with cat and uncompress and rtar from the cl. Blech. Very confusing. With the .pkg installers you still must edit the extern.pkg configuration file, but that’s as hard as it gets. Links to the installers are on the main page. MSCRED is now available too, thanks to the work of Daniel Harbeck.

10. I try to display an image but get a message like “ERROR: Cannot open device (node!imtool,,1240,400)” What’s going on?

You need to make sure a display device such as ds9 or ximtool is running before you do the display command in the cl in IRAF. If you’d like to have one command launch everything you need to use IRAF try the new xiraf script.

11. Hey, I just found your site but only after a tedious manual install of IRAF. Why didn’t I hear about this page sooner?

It turns out I’m now linked to at the IRAF home page, so that should help. However, I encourage you to put links to my site wherever you can and to encourage those that control any Astronomy IT sites to link it it as well. While I do well on a “Macintosh IRAF” google search, I’m still not linked to at very many sites at the moment.

12. Is it possible to run ximtool with Apple’s X11?

Yes, the newest beta release of Apple’s X11 supports 8-bit pseudocolor, so I’m told. You can get it use 8-bit color by editing ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.x11.plist and changing the bit depth to 8 instead of 24. You can edit this file with a text editor or if you have the Dev. Tools installed with Apple’s Property List Editor.

The above FAQ answer was submitted by Ricardo Lugo

13. My images and graphics don’t print properly, even though the print commands issued within the IRAF environment appear to execute successfully.

Your printer is probably not be a PostScript printer, the type of printer which IRAF requires. Many inexpensive inkjet printers are not PostScript printers. Fortunately, there is an easy solution for OS X 10.2 Jaguar users.

First go to the OS X GIMP-print site, and click the Supported Printers link at the top. If yours is supported, download the ESP Ghostscript and Gimp-Print installers. Then use the OS X Print Center to delete your current printer from the Printer List. Finally install the Ghostscript, then the Gimp-Print. Further instructions can be found at the gimp-print web site including a very nice Gimp-Print FAQ.

GIMP-Print is a set of common drivers for printers on operating systems that use CUPS, the Common Unix Printing System. CUPS is part of Jaguar. You can access the CUPS web based interface at port 631 on your own computer. You should also be able to use Print Center as you normally would.

The above FAQ item was orginally asked and later answered by Peter Shull

14. I get an error like this

dyld: xgterm Undefined symbols:
xgterm undefined reference to _tgetent expected to be defined in
when I try to run xgterm.

You’re running the wrong version of xgterm for 10.2 or 10.1. Jaguar and 10.1 have different xgterms that they need to run, as certain symbols are in different libraries in the two versions of MacOS X. Be sure to download the correct one from the download page.

15. Is there a way to have the Apple X11 quartz_wm (Quartz window manager) use focus follow the mouse, rather than mouse clicks?

Yes, you can do this by editing the X11 apple preferences from the command line:

% defaults write com.apple.x11 wm_ffm true

The above FAQ item was submitted by Daniel Harbeck

Note: With Xfree86/Xdarwin or a any non quartz-wm window manager, this option resides in whichever the preferences of the window manager you choose.

16. I use one of your installers and it tells me at the end “errors occured during installation, please try again.”

This is a mystery, but it’s not a problem. Just check /iraf to see if the files are there, they almost always are and this error message can be ignored.

17. Your website and installers are just awesome. Where can I mail you a check?

Well, thank you. Spread the word and send an email or leave a comment. Let me know what you like, don’t like, where you’re from, what kind of Mac you have, etc. I think MacOS X is the best platform for astronomers, bar none.

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