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HEASARC: Software
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SUPPORTED ARCHITECTURES AND OPERATING SYSTEMS




  • A note about using HEASoft and CIAO:

    There is a known problem that arises (primarily on Linux) when using both HEASoft and the CIAO software in the same session or window. CIAO currently distributes a copy of the C++ library libstdc++.so.5 which will not always be compatible with other programs (xspec v12 in HEASoft, for example). At this time, the only solution to this problem is to avoid using CIAO and HEASoft in the same session. For more information about this issue, please also see our note for Linux binary users.



    • x86 PC

    • OS: LINUX

      OS Versions: preferred (32- or 64-bit): Redhat 7 or later (except Red Hat 8), Fedora, Scientific Linux

      Compilers: GNU compilers v3.1 or higher. gfortran in GNU distributions 4.2.0 or higher is now supported. Intel compilers are supported.

      UNSUPPORTED: GNU 2.96 compilers (unofficial, unstable GNU release), g95, gfortran 4.0.x or 4.1.x, Red Hat 8

      Known Issues:

      • Users who wish to get the HEAsoft pre-compiled Linux binaries should see our important note about perl libraries.


      • Fedora 7, 8, 9: We have received reports of mysterious memory errors in some software (Suzaku primarily) when using the default 4.x compilers (gcc, g++, gfortran) on the Fedora 7, 8, and 9 Linux operating systems. Currently it looks like switching to alternate compilers - typically installed in /usr/bin/ alongside the 4.x versions as, for example, gcc34 (or gcc-34), g++34 (or g++-34), and g77 - will fix the problem. To use these alternate compilers, 
                setenv CC gcc34
        setenv CXX g++34
        setenv FC g77
        prior to configuring a HEASOFT source code distribution.

      • gfortran: The GNU Fortran compiler gfortran is now supported (as of the HEASoft 6.2 release), but only in GNU compiler distributions 4.1.1 or higher. In recent Linux distributions, you may find that your system has gcc / g++ / gfortran 4.x as well as gcc3 / g++3 / g77. Either set of compilers should be sufficient, but we recommend that you avoid mixing compilers from one set with the other, i.e. use a consistent set of compilers to build HEASoft.

        We have recently found that - when compiled with gfortran earlier than ~4.2.x - the wmodel command in the QDP plotting program fails when no filename is specified (i.e. a default screen dump). This is evidently a bug in early versions (4.0.x, 4.1.x) of gfortran and is corrected in later versions (4.2.x, 4.3.x).


      • X11: Users may find it necessary to specify the location of their X11 libraries and header files to the configure script. In some newer operating systems, X11 is no longer found in the traditional location (/usr/X11R6/), but lives in /usr/lib and /usr/include instead: 
        
    ./configure --x-libraries=/usr/lib --x-includes=/usr/include

      or for 64-bit architectures:

    ./configure --x-libraries=/usr/X11R6/lib64 --x-includes=/usr/X11R6/include
      • UBUNTU Linux: The default installation of this operating system is missing several of the standard prerequisite packages (compilers, libncurses, and the X11 development libraries) needed for building HEASoft. Users may need to install them using apt-get prior to configuring HEASoft (source code distribution): 
        
    sudo apt-get install gfortran g++
    sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev
    sudo apt-get install x-dev libx11-dev libxt-dev
      • gcc 3.4.3: The gcc 3.4.3 compiler may fail to link the xspec v12 binary because of a conflict with the linker ld v2.14. Details of the problem are described online HERE. Presumably this problem will be fixed in the next release of the GNU compilers.


      • RED HAT 8: This version of Linux is not supported. Several users running the Red Hat 8 operating system have reported build and run time problems that we are unable to diagnose. This platform is known to be unstable and problematic, so we suggest upgrading to Red Hat 9 or Fedora.


      • REDHAT 7.3 / gcc 2.96: A number of runtime errors occur in HEASOFT when built from source code using the default compiler which ships with Red Hat 7.3 (gcc v2.96, which was NOT a stable GNU release). The pre-compiled HEAsoft binaries for Linux should not suffer these problems. If you must build from the HEAsoft source code under Red Hat 7.3, we highly recommend that you install an official GNU release of gcc (version 3.3.x, for example) before building HEAsoft.


      • SuSE: The GNU Fortran (g77) compiler version 3.3 20030226 (prerelease) which is shipped with SuSE Linux 8.2 (and possibly other SuSE distributions) appears to be "buggy", and will cause a build failure in HEASOFT. If you are using this compiler, we suggest either upgrading to a newer official GNU compiler release (e.g. version 3.4.4), or using our precompiled binaries instead.


      • MANDRAKE (equivalent to RedHat 6.0 and higher): HEASOFT has been successfully built and run on a Linux Mandrake 7.1 system, though since we do not have this system in the lab, the software has not been regularly built under Mandrake Linux, nor indeed has it been fully tested on this platform.


      • PERL scripts under Linux RedHat 8 and 9: Users running HEASOFT perl scripts under these platforms may encounter "Split loop" errors. This problem is caused by a bug in the Perl version installed by default with RedHat 8 and 9 which causes it to not function properly with the UTF-8 locale which RedHat made the default starting in release 8. Users should be able to get around this problem by either:

        1) Updating your Perl to v5.8.1 or higher.

        or

        2) Getting rid of the UTF-8 encoding in your shell environment. The environment variables LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG may be used. For example, on GSFC RedHat systems, we do not have LC_ALL or LC_CTYPE set but we do have LANG=en_US.UTF-8, so we "setenv LANG en_US" to fix the problem.

    • OS: CYGWIN

      OS Versions: 1.5.5 or higher

      Compilers: GNU compilers (tested at LHEA with version 3.4.4)

      Known Issues: Please see the README.CYGWIN document before attempting to build HEAsoft in the Cygwin environment.

      Please note that some packages are NOT supported in Cygwin: Suzaku, and the FV/GUIS packages are not currently supported in Cygwin. FV users should see the FV page to download the latest FV GUI for the native Windows platform instead.


    MACINTOSH

    • OS: Intel OS X / Darwin

      OS Versions:

      • Darwin 9.x (Mac OS X 10.5.x [Leopard])
      • Darwin 8.x (Mac OS X 10.4.x [Tiger])


      Compilers: We recommend one of the following compiler configurations:

      • Apple XCode compilers gcc/g++ (v4.0.1) plus g95 (fink-installed or from www.g95.org)

        or

      • Fink-installed GNU Compiler Collection Version 4.2 (gcc42) or 4.3 (gcc43), consisting of gcc-4, g++-4, and gfortran.

    • OS: PPC OS X / Darwin

      OS Versions:

      • Darwin 9.x - Mac OS X 10.5.x [Leopard]
      • Darwin 8.x - Mac OS X 10.4.x [Tiger]
      • Darwin 7.x - Mac OS X 10.3.x [Panther]

      Compilers: We recommend one of the following compiler configurations:

      • Apple XCode compilers gcc/g++ (v4.0.1) plus g95 (fink-installed or from www.g95.org)

        or

      • Fink-installed GNU Compiler Collection Version 4.2 (gcc42) or 4.3 (gcc43), consisting of gcc-4, g++-4, and gfortran.


      UNSUPPORTED:

      • Non- XCode or fink-installed compilers (except for www.g95.org binaries): While it may be possible to install your own version of the GNU compilers by hand (rather than using the Apple XCode and fink-installed compilers), we recommend against it and cannot support compilers installed in this way.
      • Note re: g77 3.4.3 compiler: Please note that there is a (minor) problem for Xspec users: when built with g77 3.4.3, the PLT file output commands (WData, WEnviron, and WHead) do not work properly when PLT is run from XSPEC12 (by XSPEC's iplot command). They may result in blank output files (with some of the information instead appearing in a file named "fort.49"). If this causes a problem, we recommend installing g95 in place of g77.

      Known Issues:

      • Users of Mac OS 10.3.x (Panther) trying to build a source code distribution from a download that includes either ASCA, Suzaku, or Swift may need to apply this patch in order for the newmakefilter task to compile correctly.


      • libcc_dynamic:

        Tiger users may need to use the Disk Utility to repair permissions on the Tiger startup volume in order for HEASOFT (specifically xspec12) to build correctly. Double-click on Disk Utility, select the appropriate volume under First Aid, then click the repair permissions button. Or, use the command-line version, diskutil: for example, "diskutil repairPermissions /".

        This procedure restores libcc_dynamic, which is needed in order for xspec12 to link properly. If that library has not been restored, you may see the error "type S_REGULAR does not match previous objects type S_COALESCED".

        Please note that the existing pre-compiled Darwin binaries (built in Darwin 7.9.0) seem to work okay in Darwin 8.x.x.


      • fork:

        Darwin users may encounter "fork: resource temporarily unavailable" errors during the HEASoft build. The "fork" system tool is used for spawning child processes of a given task (here, the HEASoft build), and the maximum number of processes by a single user ("maxproc") may sometimes be exceeded due to the flexible build paradigm used in HEASoft. For Mac OS X users, this limit can be checked by using the "limit" command. The default "maxproc" generally seems to be 100, which should be fine for most users. Users who are running a large number of other programs are advised to exit some of these tasks before building HEASoft to avoid hitting the "fork" error during the build. If you wish to raise the maxproc limit, the method used depends on the version of Darwin you're running:

        • OS X 10.3.x (Panther):

          maxproc may be altered using the "sysctl" command, or by creating /etc/sysctl.conf (if it doesn't already exist) with the contents: 
                  > cat /etc/sysctl.conf
        # Turn up maxproc
        kern.maxproc=2048
        # Turn up the maxproc per user
        kern.maxprocperuid=512
        • OS X 10.4.x (Tiger):

          The launchctl utility can be used to set/alter resource limits. You can check the current settings by running launchctl limit. To change the settings you need to create /etc/launchd.conf (if it doesn't already exist) with the contents: 
                  > cat /etc/launchd.conf
        limit maxproc 512 2048
          The first number is the soft limit and the second number is the hard limit.

      • XSPEC & G77 3.4.3: When built with g77 3.4.3, the PLT file output commands (WData, WEnviron, and WHead) do not work properly when PLT is run from XSPEC12 (by XSPEC's iplot command). They may result in blank output files (with some of the information instead appearing in a file named "fort.49"). If this causes a problem, we recommend installing g95 in place of g77.



    SUN OS / SOLARIS

    • OS Versions: SunOS 5.6 or higher

      Compilers: As of HEASoft 6.4.1, the following compilers are supported:

      • Sun Studio 12 C ("cc"), C++ ("CC"), f95
      • Sun Workshop C ("cc"), C++ ("CC") and Fortran (f95 or f90) - Workshop 7 is preferred
      • GNU compilers 4.x or newer (gcc, g++, gfortran)

      UNSUPPORTED: Workshop 6.2 C++ (CC), g77

      Known Issues:

      • Builds on SunOS using non-GNU compilers now have Fortran optimization turned off by default, due to runtime problems found when using the SunStudio Fortran compiler (f95). Users who wish to increase optimization for e.g. the Workshop Fortran compiler may configure HEASOFT using the '--with-fopt=' option.

      • The Workshop 6.2 compilers are not supported, and are known to fail in compilation of the makefilter task and generate run-time problems in xspec v12. We recommend upgrading to the Workshop 7 compilers.

      • The default Solaris sed (usually /usr/bin/sed) has a line-length limitation (approximately 4000-characters) which may cause a build failure in the fitsTcl library. The best solution is to install the GNU sed, which has no such limitations. If you install the package from www.sunfreeware.com, it will put GNU sed in /usr/local. Make sure that 'make' can find the GNU sed before it finds Sun's sed by putting /usr/local/bin before /usr/bin in your $PATH. Alternately, you may be able to circumvent the build problem by keeping the directory path to the HEASOFT source code tree as short as possible.

      • The Native Solaris tar (typically /usr/bin/tar) is known to have problems unpacking some pre-compiled binary distribution tar files downloaded from the HEASOFT download page, due to a fundamental incompatibility (relating to how long pathnames are encoded) with GNU tar (with which the tar files are created). If you do not already have GNU tar installed (typically /usr/local/bin/tar), we recommend installing and using it instead (distributed freely from GNU here).


    UNSUPPORTED:
    Use of HEASOFT is not supported under the following:

    • Linux/PPC
    • OSF/Alpha
    • AIX
    • IRAF
    • IRIX
    • VMS
    Help lines: FTOOLS or xanprob@athena.gsfc.nasa.gov

    Web page maintained by Bryan K. Irby

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    Last modified: Tuesday, 25-Nov-2008 14:52:26 EST