Starting CIAO

Running CIAO 4.0

To use the CIAO software, you must first run a setup script. If you do not have an alias set up for this, we suggest the following (replace the string /soft/ciao by the location of the CIAO software on your system; see this FAQ if you do not know which shell you are using).

If you have more than one version of CIAO installed, you may wish to version the alias (e.g. "ciao40") to distinguish between them.

• csh/tcsh users should add the following to their $HOME/.cshrc file.

  alias ciao "source /soft/ciao/bin/ciao.csh"
  

• bash users should add the following to their $HOME/.bash_profile, $HOME/.bash_login, or $HOME/.profile file.

  alias ciao=". /soft/ciao/bin/ciao.bash"
  

• ksh users should add the following to their $HOME/.login file.

  alias ciao=". /soft/ciao/bin/ciao.ksh"
  

Then, when you wish to use CIAO, you can just type "ciao", which produces:

unix% ciao
CIAO configuration is complete...
 CIAO version     :  CIAO 4.0 Thursday, December 6, 2007
 Proposal Toolkit version :  Cycle 10 Thursday, December 6, 2007
 bin dir          :  /soft/ciao/bin

It is only necessary to do this once per terminal/window.

Restarting CIAO 4.0

The startup script will not allow you to restart CIAO in a session, instead reporting the following:

unix% ciao
ERROR: The current environment is configured for:
 CIAO version     :  CIAO 4.0 Thursday, December 6, 2007
 Proposal Toolkit version :  Cycle 10 Thursday, December 6, 2007
 bin dir          :  /soft/ciao/bin
Please use the '-o' option to override the previous setup.

If you wish to restart CIAO - perhaps because you have changed the configuration - then you should either start CIAO in a different window or use the override option. If you do not use the bourne shell then you can use the "-o" option:

unix% ciao -o
CIAO configuration is complete... 
The CIAO setup for this window has changed from
 CIAO version     :  CIAO 3.4 Sunday, November 19, 2006
 Proposal Toolkit version :  Cycle 9 Sunday, November 19, 2006
 bin dir          :  /soft/ciao/bin
To:
 CIAO version     :  CIAO 4.0 Thursday, December 6, 2007
 Proposal Toolkit version :  Cycle 10 Thursday, December 6, 2007
 bin dir          :  /soft/ciao/bin

In the bourne shell you have to set the ASCDS_OVERRIDE variable to 1 before "dotting" the script:

unix% ASCDS_OVERRIDE=1 
unix% . /soft/ciao/bin/ciao.ksh
CIAO configuration is complete... 
The CIAO setup for this window has changed from
 CIAO version     :  CIAO 3.4 Sunday, November 19, 2006
 Proposal Toolkit version :  Cycle 9 Sunday, November 19, 2006
 bin dir          :  /soft/ciao/bin
To:
 CIAO version     :  CIAO 4.0 Thursday, December 6, 2007
 Proposal Toolkit version :  Cycle 10 Thursday, December 6, 2007
 bin dir          :  /soft/ciao/bin

Switching between CIAO 3.4 and CIAO 4.0

With prior versions of the software, users had to be careful about switching between different version of CIAO because of differences in parameter files. As of CIAO 4.0, however, the local parameter file directory name will change with each software version, rather than always being set to /home/username/cxcds_param by default. For this release, the directory is named cxcds_param4.

This change makes it trivial to run both CIAO 3.4 and CIAO 4.0 in separate terminal windows on the same machine. For example, assuming CIAO 3.4 is installed in /soft/ciao3.4 and CIAO 4.0 in /soft/ciao:

unix% alias oldciao 'source /soft/ciao3.4/bin/ciao.csh'
unix% oldciao
CIAO configuration is complete... 
 CIAO version     :  CIAO 3.4 Sunday, November 19, 2006
 Proposal Toolkit version :  Cycle 9 Sunday, November 19, 2006
 bin dir          :  /soft/ciao/bin

unix% echo $PFILES
/home/username/cxcds_param;/soft/ciao/contrib/param:/soft/ciao/param

unix% paccess dmgti
/home/username/cxcds_param/param/dmgti.par

and in a different window, using the suggested alias to start CIAO 4.0:

unix% ciao
CIAO configuration is complete...
 CIAO version     :  CIAO 4.0 Thursday, December 6, 2007
 Proposal Toolkit version :  Cycle 10 Thursday, December 6, 2007
 bin dir          :  /soft/ciao/bin

unix% echo $PFILES
/home/username/cxcds_param4;/soft/ciao/contrib/param:/soft/ciao/param

unix% paccess dmgti
/home/egalle/cxcds_param4/dmgti.par

You can see that the information is being read from two separate parameter file locations.

Configuring CIAO

The CIAO configuration process no longer requires that you have any CIAO configuration files in your home directory, nor will the setup script write anything to your home directory during execution. If, however, you would like a custom configuration (e.g., to change your PFILES environment variable if you want to store your parameter files in a different location) then you may copy the relevant setup script (e.g., ciao.csh, ciao.ksh, ciao.bash or ciao.sh as given above) to your home directory, make the changes you require, and use that copy instead.

Similarly, you no longer need the CIAO X resources file (.CXCdefaults) in your home directory, since the CIAO GUIs will use the copy in the installation directory if there is no local copy. If you wish to customize the settings - as this file is used to configure the appearance of the GUI applications - simply

unix% cp $ASCDS_INSTALL/config/system/CXCdefaults ~/.CXCdefaults

and edit your copy ($ASCDS_INSTALL is set up by the configuration script and contains the installation directory of CIAO).

CIAO and FTOOLS

Both CIAO and FTOOLS use parameter files to store parameter values for tools, and provide tools for manipulating these files (e.g. plist, pset, punlearn; they have the same name in both systems). The location of the parameter files is taken from the $PFILES environment variables for CIAO and FTOOLS.

We recommend that you start FTOOLS before CIAO. Here is an example of starting version 6.x of FTOOLS and CIAO 4.0:

unix% setenv HEADAS /soft/lheasoft/headas/sparc-sun-solaris2.8; \
      source $HEADAS/headas-init.csh

unix% ciao
CIAO configuration is complete...
 CIAO version     :  CIAO 4.0 Thursday, December 6, 2007
 Proposal Toolkit version :  Cycle 10 Thursday, December 6, 2007
 bin dir          :  /soft/ciao/bin

Change the HEADAS path to match your local installation. Note this syntax applies only to C Shell variants (csh, tcsh); for further details on starting FTOOLS, including other shells, refer to the Installing HEAsoft instructions.

The $PFILES variable has been set up to use both the CIAO and FTOOLS directories:

unix% echo $PFILES
/home/username/cxcds_param4:/home/username/pfiles;/soft/ciao/contrib/param:
/soft/ciao/param:/soft/lheasoft/headas/sparc-sun-solaris2.8/syspfiles

Caveat: Conflicts with Other Software Packages

There are some known conflicts between CIAO and other software or system libraries and tools. Be sure to read the "Other Software Packages" bug page for a list of these issues.