ISIS 2 Documentation
ISIS Frequently Asked Questions
A1: The fully-supported platforms include:
Q2: How can a hard-copy ISIS manual be produced?
A2: Most of the ISIS documentation is contained in a set of files
that can be viewed and printed with a web browser. These files
are contained in the $ISISHTML directory of a local ISIS installation.
For example, to view the ISIS documentation with netscape, type:
netscape $ISISHTML/documentation.htmlYou can also access the ISIS documentation over the Internet at the
The web page "Notes on ISIS Documentation" describes how to use the "isisdoc" program to create a text file that can be printed to produce a hard-copy reference manual of program descriptions.
Q3: After ISIS has been installed, I get the error message "Error sending
initiation message to process; host code=32" when I try to run a TAE-based
program. What is wrong?
A3: There are several things that can cause this problem:
/usgs/isisr/exe/dsk2dsk: ELF 32-bit MSB executable SPARC ...If the executable is for a different operating system, you will see something like:
/usgs/isisr/exe/dsk2dsk: data
Q4: Is an IDL (Interactive Data Language) license required for running ISIS?
A4: No. The ISIS data processing programs do not require IDL. Most of the
programs use the TAE (Transportable Applications Executive) user interface,
which is included with the ISIS distribution. This includes the TAE-based
"qview" display program. However, ISIS includes several additional display
programs that require IDL. Some of these include "tvtie" (control point and
match point picking), "cv" (spectrum plotting, spatial-spectral slice display,
Instrument Spectral Library display, etc.), and "isis2std" (conversion of
ISIS cube data to TIFF and JPEG format). See the Display Program Summary
for details.
Q5: How can ISIS cube data be accessed by an IDL program?
A5: The READISIS and WRITEISIS routines can be called by an IDL program to
read data from an ISIS cube into an IDL array and to write data from an IDL
array into an ISIS cube file. These routines are contained in the source
files "readisis.pro" and "writeisis.pro" in the $ISISIDL directory. Comments
at the beginning of these source files explain how to use the routines.
The normal ISIS installation setup will put $ISISIDL into the IDL_PATH
environment variable so that IDL can find these routines when they are
called by your IDL program. There is also a READBACKPLANE routine, which
can be called to read a backplane. Note that the "cpylab" program can be
used to copy label information to the cube file created by the WRITEISIS
routine. This is sometimes useful because much of the label information
is lost in the READISIS/WRITEISIS sequence.
Q6: How do you apply a nice contrast stretch to a cube?
A6: We have a series of programs that automatically apply a
contrast stretch to a cube. First, execute the program "hstret" which
will generate a table file containing the stretch parameters needed
for a good contrast stretch of each band of the cube. Then, apply the
stretch parameters to the cube by running the program "stretch". The
"stretch" program can be used alone to apply the same stretch to all bands
of a cube. Note that "stretch" changes the values of the pixels.
Interactive stretching (such as that of the display programs "cv", and
"qview") does not change pixel values in the file.
Q7: How can I edit/change the pixel values in a cube?
A7: There are two programs that allow you to "doctor" pixels interactively.
They are "qview" and "cubelook". For more information on these programs tutor
them under TAE.
Q8: How can I change the pixel data type of a cube?
A8: The pixel data type (sometimes called "bit type") can be changed without
additional data processing using the "dsk2dsk" program. Also, many processing
programs allow selecting the output pixel data type with the OTYPE parameter.
Q9: How much swap space do you recommend to properly run ISIS?
A9: A general rule of thumb is that 2 to 3 times the amount of RAM is
allocated to swap space. It can vary depending upon your situation,
however. Note that this will reduce exactly disk space, so if, say,
you are installing Linux on a laptop, you will want to keep swap to a
minimum (at least twice the amount of RAM).
We have a couple of ISIS applications that need around 500MB swap to simply load. We hope to make these dynamically allocate memory rather than statically...someday. The applications that require large amounts of memory are not widely used (spice2rand, findmatch). These also have alternative versions that support a specific number of input images (spice2rand11000, findmatch2500). Note that it is unpleasant to try to add additional swap space after the fact unless you add new disks.
We have sucessfully run ISIS on systems with 64MB of RAM of which there is 256MB of swap allocated. We have several machines here with 256MB of RAM and 500MB of swap.
Q10: When I run tae (taetm) I get the following error:
[TAE-UNRECTTY] Unknown terminal type.
I then cannot "tutor" applications.
A10: This problem is caused by TAE being unable to determine the terminal
type. This behavior is typically found on RedHat Linux systems. It
may appear on others as well. Specifically, an appropriate terminal
profile cannot be resolved. This can be corrected by setting the
TERMINFO environment variable to the directory path where terminfo
entries exist. For RedHat, this is /usr/share/terminfo. So prior
to executing TAE, you can set the environment variable:
setenv TERMINFO /usr/share/terminfo # T/C Shell users
- or -
TERMINFO=/usr/share/terminfo # Bash/Bourne/Korn Shell Users
export TERMINFO
Q11: In processing Viking data I get the following errors on the SPICELAB
step of vlev1.pdf.
[PULABTOSTR-INSMEM] (-4) Not enough memory supplied to return STRING [PULABTOVAL-INVSTR] (-2) Error converting label value to STRING [PULABTOKEY-CNVERR] (-2) Conversion error on value 1 in keyword INSTRUMENT_ID [PGETSTRKEY-INVVAL] (-5) Error converting INSTRUMENT_ID keyword value(s) [SPICELAB-CAMERA] (-15) No camera [TAE-ABTERM] Abnormal termination forced by application programWhat is this telling me? Is it really a memory problem, or is it something to do with the paths to the SPICE tables?
A11: This problem results from trying to use "pds2isis" instead of "cd2isis"
for converting Viking data to an ISIS format. For complete instructions
on the Viking data image processing sequence refer to
Viking Image Processing with ISIS.
Q12: I do not have PERL installed on my system and I do not intent to do any
MGS/MOC processing. How do I install ISIS from the ISIS release CD-ROM
or DVD without PERL nstalled on my system?
A12: If you are running the May 15th, 2001 ISIS release or newer this should
not be a problem. We have updated our installation scripts to give you
the option to continue without Perl. If you are running the August 15th,
2000 ISIS release, do the following:
Create a dummy file with executable privileges in /usr/bin. Then test it by giving the command 'which perl'. If the command returns '/usr/bin/perl' you should be able to run the isis_install script successfully. If you still experience problems, contact isis-support@flagmail.wr.usgs.gov.