Pulsar Astronomy .net | Tutorials / ATNF Pulsar Login

ATNF Pulsar Login Scripts

This page describes how to set up your ATNF user account to take advantage of the pulsar group software.

The login scripts themselves are stored in /pulsar/psr/login/psr.cshrc (or /pulsar/psr/login/psr.bashrc if you are using bash).

tcsh/csh users

Most users will use tcsh as their login shell, so should follow this guide.

You will want to load the pulsar group login script in your ~/.login and ~/.cshrc file. Because of the way the ATNF login system works, you will need to modify both the .login and .cshrc file.

If you have not customised your .cshrc or .login files, you may find it useful to simply copy over the example files.

cp -i ~/.cshrc ~/.cshrc.bak
cp -i ~/.login ~/.login.bak
cp -i /u/psrmgr/psr.cshrc ~/.cshrc
cp -i /u/psrmgr/psr.login ~/.login

Otherwise, you can continue through these steps to modify your login file by hand.

Step 0: Backup your existing `.login`/`.cshrc` files.

Make a backup! If you break your login, you will want to be able to go back to an old verison.

Step 1: Remove any reference to the old login script

The old login script ($PSRHOME/csh_script/PSR.cshrc) is deprecated, and will be disabled after 24th May 2011. Edit your ~/.login and ~/.cshrc files and remove any references to this old login script.

Step 2: Add the login script to your `.login` file.

You will want to source the pulsar login script towards the end of your ~/.login file. This must be done after the ATNF scripts are loaded. Typically this would be in the section labelled:

#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Personalized login processing. 
#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Then add the following to the login script:

# load the pulsar login scripts!
if ( -e /pulsar/psr/login/psr.cshrc ) then
   source /pulsar/psr/login/psr.cshrc
endif

Step 3: Add the login script to your `.cshrc` file.

The ~/.login file is only called when you log in to a machine, however when you e.g. start a new terminal, this is not loaded. We must therefore also load this in the .cshrc file. We cannot load it only in the .cshrc file, since the .login file is loaded after the .cshrc file (if it is going to be called) and the ATNF login scripts overwrite many of the variables set by the pulsar login script. We can check if the .login file will be called, and load the pulsar login script in .cshrc if we know that the .login file will not be called. In the section labeled

#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Personalized cshrc processing.
#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Add the following to your .cshrc file:

setenv PSR_EXTRA ″
# Load the pulsar login scripts
if ( ! $?loginsh ) then
# Only load it here if we are not going to call .login later
# If we call .login then we load it from there
       if ( -e /pulsar/psr/login/psr.cshrc ) then
               source /pulsar/psr/login/psr.cshrc
       endif
endif

You may wish to change the value of PSR_EXTRA to load any additional login scripts. Note that these “extra” scripts are not as carefully checked as the main login script, and so may have errors that cause issues when you login, or load software that is not supported on all architectures.

PSR_EXTRA options are delimited by spaces. For example,

PSR_EXTRA=“ppta java-1.6”

would load the login script to define the ppta pipeline variables, and also the login script that uses enables java 1.6, and some of the pulsar java software that requires this.

Step 4: Test your new environment

Log out, and log in

bash users

If you are one of the very few users who use bash as their default shell, you can load (in your .bashrc) the bash login script:

e.g.

export PSR_EXTRA=“ppta java-1.6”
. /pulsar/psr/login/psr.bashrc

Note that bash is not yet supported by the ATNF computer group, so you are somewhat on your own here for now!

Tutorials: ATNF Pulsar Login