Bugs: Other Software Packages

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Matching CIAO and CALDB Versions

CIAO 3.4 requires CALDB 3.3.0 or higher to operate properly.

CALDB 3.4.0 and higher should not be used unless you are running CIAO 3.4 or CIAO 4.0.

Are your versions mismatched? Time to update CIAO and CALDB!

News Previous Items

11 Nov 2008

These are the webpages relative to the CIAO 3.4 release (18 December 2006). They are no longer actively updated, however the CXC will continue limited support of CIAO 3.4 for the near future.

CIAO 3.4 users should check the CALDB 3 website for compatible calibration updates.

15 Dec 2008

The newest version of the Chandra Interactive Analysis of Observations software, is CIAO 4.1, released on 15 December 2008. Read the release notes for detailed information. This release requires that CALDB 4.1.0 be installed for the software to work correctly.

Bugs

Parameter file conflicts with HEAsoft

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 (or $UPARM if $PFILES does not exist).

Common errors are:

pget: could not get parameter "foo"

and

The following parameter:
    "foo,b,l,no,,,"Keyword""
has the following error(s):
  o Mode field "l" is invalid.

and

The following parameter:
"foo,i,h,INDEF,INDEF,INDEF,"description""
has the following error(s):
o Problem converting minimum field "INDEF" to parameter type "i".
o Problem converting maximum field "INDEF" to parameter type "i".

We recommend that you start FTOOLS before CIAO to minimize problems.

More information on this problem is available in the CIAO and FTOOLS section of the Starting CIAO thread. Also refer to the related FAQ "The tool is failing because ")sval" has somehow shown up in the parameter value..

CIAO and IDL: DYLD_BIND_AT_LAUNCH environment variable
(Mac OS X)

If IDL is started in a window in which CIAO is already running, an error of the following format will occur:

unix% idl                                                                      

  dyld: Symbol not found: __XEditResPutWidgetInfo
    Referenced from: /Applications/rsi/idl_6.1/bin/bin.darwin.ppc/libXm.2.dylib
    Expected in: flat namespace

  Trace/BPT trap

This is due to the fact that both CIAO and IDL use the DYLD_BIND_AT_LAUNCH environment variable. By unsetting this variable, it is possible to get IDL to run:

unix% unsetenv DYLD_BIND_AT_LAUNCH  

unix% idl
  IDL Version 6.1.1, Mac OS X (darwin ppc m32). (c) 2004, Research Systems, Inc.
  Installation number: 94064-13.
  Licensed for use by: Department License

However, DYLD_BIND_AT_LAUNCH is required for the CIAO GUIs (e.g. Prism), ChIPS, Sherpa, and ahelp (the help system) to run. Without it, they will try to start up but hang. The CIAO command-line tools are unaffected by the environment variable.

Workaround:

The only workaround to this problem at the present time is to run CIAO and IDL in separate windows.