Doug Tody and Jeannette Barnes
The IRAF V2.11.2 patch release, mentioned in the previous issue of this Newsletter, was released in August for selected platforms. This patch supports all Sun Sparc systems (SunOS, and Solaris 2.5.1, 2.6, 2.7, Solaris 7), Digital Unix 4.0 (now Compaq Tru64), OpenVMS running on the Alpha chip, and VAX/VMS. This odd collection of platforms is a reflection of the internal operational priorities (primarily for pipelines) of the institutions that develop IRAF. As a reminder, an IRAF V2.11 patch (version V2.11.2 or greater) is required for anyone running IRAF to make IRAF Y2K (Year 2000) compliant. Fixes are required to fix several Y2K-related bugs, as well as to implement support for the new format, Y2K-compliant FITS date format. Further information on the Y2K compliance of IRAF is available on our Web page at http://iraf.noao.edu/projects/y2k.
As this article is being written, an upgraded version of PC-IRAF is in testing, with a release planned for mid-November. The new version of PC-IRAF will run IRAF V2.11.3; a V2.11.3 patch will be released to upgrade the platforms for which V2.11.2 was released in August. Shortly after the PC-IRAF upgrade is out, we will upgrade the remaining IRAF platforms (e.g., HP, SGI, AIX) so that the V2.11.3 patch is available for all supported platforms. The new release of PC-IRAF will support FreeBSD 3.3, RedHat Linux 6.1, Slackware Linux 4.0, Solaris 7 for Intel, and SUSE Linux 6.2. The Solaris x86 and SUSE platforms are new ports. Linux on Macintosh (another new port) is not included in this upgrade, as it was just too much to do all at once, but we will try to get it out as soon after the upgrade as possible. Currently we are favoring LinuxPPC and Yellow Dog Linux over MkLinux, due to the limited support for the latter platform.
Our new IRAF data acquisition and quick look environment, the Mosaic Data Handling System, was extended in June to add support for the CTIO Mosaics and Mosaic II. Efforts are underway to add support for 16 amp readout to reduce the readout times for the Mosaic (the DHS already supports this, but further system tuning and testing are required).
As part of the Mosaic DHS support, we have been looking at the problem of doing heavy image i/o systems like Solaris, which use a virtual memory file system for all ordinary file i/o. Heavy image processing on such a system runs a large amount of data through the virtual memory file system, causing heavy paging in some circumstances. A caching scheme is being investigated to avoid this problem. This scheme will continue to use ordinary file i/o to access images, and image data will be cached in system memory in the usual way, but we will control the caching of data in system memory to minimize the paging that occurs when memory fills and the system pageout daemon is run. The caching scheme will be implemented initially for the Mosaic DHS, but may migrate to the IRAF system itself in a later release. If it proves successful, the cache control scheme could be very beneficial for any virtual memory file system computer used for heavy file i/o. This code is part of the distributed shared image facility being supported in part by the NASA ADP Open IRAF and AISR PIE grants.
Work continues on the automated pipeline system that is being developed initially to pipeline process Mosaic data. We are just wrapping up work on the database system. A database has been defined that will be used to catalog all raw and processed data, as well as keep track of all data as it flows through the system. Work on the pipeline modules, which are mostly IRAF MSCRED tasks, is coming along well. This now includes facilities for automated astrometric and photometric calibration of data frames. Work on the data extraction subsystem, pipeline GUIs, and the pipeline manager is next up.
Several NOAO staff scientists and members of the IRAF group met with Gemini staff at the Gemini Observatory headquarters in Hilo in late August to begin planning jointly-developed IRAF facilities for reducing data from the Gemini instruments. This meeting was very productive and has resulted in a preliminary development plan extending through the year 2000. The new software is expected to provide not only support for the Gemini instruments, but much improved general IRAF support for multi-extension image and spectral data formats, variance arrays and variance handling, IR reductions, multispectral instruments including IFU support, and eventually, support for adaptive optics.
During this quarter, work has resumed on the IRAF astrometry package. A general catalog access applications programming interface has been developed that can be used within IRAF applications to make network connections to catalog servers, format and send catalog queries, and to decode query results. The new catalog access facilities are currently being used to build a new astrometry tool that will support multiple catalogs.
The IRAF programmers attended the 1999 ADASS Conference in Hawaii in early October. Several IRAF-related papers were presented by the programmers at the Conference, and these papers will appear in the conference proceedings to be published next year as part of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series.
For further information about the IRAF project, please see the IRAF Web pages at http://iraf.noao.edu/ or send e-mail to iraf@noao.edu. The adass.iraf newsgroups (available on USENET or via a moderated mailing list which you can subscribe to by filling out a form on the IRAF Web page) provide timely information on IRAF developments and are available for the discussion of IRAF related issues.