Tutorials: ATNF Pulsar Software

ATNF Pulsar Group Software

Many external users may need to use the ATNF pulsar software, so this is a guide as to the software installed and the way that it is laid out.

For a guide on how to load the ATNF pulsar group shared software into your environment, see ATNFPulsarLogin.

Layout of /psr

The disk normally called “/psr” is mounted at /pulsar/psr, though on some machines there is a symlink from /psr to /pulsar/psr. It is best to always assume that the disk will be at /pusar/psr however, as this will work on any computer, rather than just those specifically with the /psr symlink.

If you have loaded the pulsar login script, then you will also find this disk located at $PSRHOME. All paths in this guide should be considered to be relative to $PSRHOME unless otherwise stated.

The pulsar login script also defines a new value for $LOGIN_ARCH which is a combination of the debian “codename” of the OS and the machine architecture (as returned by `uname -m`). Currently (as of May 2011) there are three supported architectures: etch_i686, lenny_i686 and lenny_x64_86. Thus, paths such as $PSRHOME/linux/bin are replaced by paths such as $PSRHOME/dist/etch_i686/bin. The full details of this are discussed below.

$PSRHOME has the following subdirectories:

dev
dist
login
people
projects
tex

These will be discussed below

dev/

The dev/ path contains developmental software. This includes: source code currently under development, “untested” or “unsupported” software, “customised” versions of standard software or simply software that is not commonly used enough to be in the main distribution.

dev/ contains the following primary subdirectories

dev/cvshome
dev/cvsroot
dev/$LOGIN_ARCH

the dev/cvshome and dev/cvsroot are the pulsar group local CVS repositories. This mainly contains archival software, however there are a number of important files stored in here, such as the catalogue files for psrcat.

dev/$LOGIN_ARCH contains “dev” binaries, libraries, headers, etc. This is the $PREFIX for “dev” software, and so there should exist, at a minimum, a dev/$LOGIN_ARCH/bin path.

dist/

The dist/ path contains the “distribution” install of software. This code can only be updated by the “psrmgr” unix account to prevent accidental overwriting of files with “make install”. All users of the “psrmgr” account are expected to take care to avoid installing “broken” code in this location. Trials of these packages can be installed in dev/ to first check that they are working.

The dist/ path has the following subdirectories:

dist/src
dist/share
dist/$LOGIN_ARCH

As with dev/, the software is installed with the $PREFIX set to dist/$LOGIN_ARCH, and so there will exist dist/$LOGIN_ARCH/bin, dist/$LOGIN_ARCH/lib, dist/$LOGIN_ARCH/include, etc.

The dist/src path contains the source code that is installed in dist/$LOGIN_ARCH. This code is all checked out via anonymous CVS (or similar) so that they can be updated by any psrmgr user. Code that is built here is expected to be build for all supported architectures. This means that currently any update here requires building on each of the three “buildhosts”.

Software, or files, which are not architecture specific (e.g. locations pointed to by $TEMPO2, $PSRCAT_RUNDIR or python/java/etc codes) are stored in dist/share.

login/

The login/ directory contains the login scripts, and the various environment variables that are used for pulsar work at ATNF. The login scripts are owned by the psrmgr user account and should not be modified without extreme care.

There are also “user defined” login scripts located in login/extra/. These have the form [name].cshrc where [name] is the name that is used to add this script to the PSR_EXTRA variable used by the pulsar login script. This can be used to create optional login variables for non-standard software or pipelines.

people/

This is a location that users may use to store their own files. Create a subdirectory of people/ with your username, so that your files can be easily identified. Please do not fill this area with large files!

projects/

This area is similar to people/ however it is for projects (e.g. ppta, fermi timing etc) to store shared files. Folders can only be created here by psrmgr.

tex/

This is the “standard” tex/ directory, containing papers, drafts, bibtex files (including psrrefs), etc.

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