Starting CIAO

Running CIAO 4.15.2

To use the CIAO software, you must first run a setup script. There are a few things to note about setting up the alias:

• These examples have CIAO installed in the directory /soft/ciao-4.15/. The location of the CIAO software on your system may be different.

• If you have more than one version of CIAO installed, you may wish to version the alias to distinguish between them.

The alias syntax depends on the shell (tcsh, csh, bash); see this FAQ for help in determining which shell you are using.

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

  alias ciao "source /soft/ciao-4.15/bin/ciao.csh"
  

• bash users should add the following to their $HOME/.bashrc file.

  alias ciao="source /soft/ciao-4.15/bin/ciao.sh"
  

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

  alias ciao="source /soft/ciao-4.15/bin/ciao.sh"
  

Users can create the file if one does not already exist. These are simply text files that can be edited with the users favorite text editor (emacs, vi, gedit, etc.).

Then you can just type "ciao" to start the software

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

conda installation

As of CIAO-4.12, users can install CIAO as a conda package. conda is a package management and environment management system which allows users to install multiple versions of packages and easily switch between them. conda users are encouraged to use bash shell as conda support for tcsh is limited. The CIAO conda package installs various activate scripts akin to the standard ciao setup scripts (ciao.csh and ciao.sh). Conda users then only need to activate the environment to have access to CIAO.

$ conda activate ciao
(ciao) % ciaover -v
# packages in environment at /export/miniconda/envs/ciao-4.15:
#
# Name                    Version                   Build  Channel
caldb4                    0.1.0                    pypi_0    pypi
ciao                      4.15.2          py310h50a7cbf_0    https://cxc.cfa.harvard.edu/conda/ciao
ciao-contrib              4.15.1                     py_1    https://cxc.cfa.harvard.edu/conda/ciao
ds9                       8.4.1                         0    https://cxc.cfa.harvard.edu/conda/ciao
sherpa                    4.15.0                   pypi_0    pypi

System information:
Darwin likes.finches.edu 18.7.0 Darwin Kernel Version 18.7.0: Thu Jun 18 20:50:10 PDT 2020; root:xnu-4903.278.43~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

conda or classic, not both

Users can not setup for both the conda edition of CIAO and also setup for classic CIAO (ie sourcing the ciao.csh or ciao.sh scripts) at the same time in the same terminal window (ie shell). conda users can deactivate their environment before sourcing the CIAO setup script; classic CIAO users need to start a new terminal window.

Restarting CIAO 4.15.2

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 4.15 Monday, November 21, 2022
  bindir      : /soft/ciao-4.15/bin
  CALDB       : 4.10.4
Please use the '-o' option to override the previous setup.

If you wish to restart CIAO, then you should either start CIAO in a different window or use the override option ("-o"):

unix% ciao -o
CIAO configuration is complete... 
The CIAO setup for this window has changed from
CIAO 4.13 Wednesday, December  2, 2020
  bindir      : /soft/ciao-4.13/bin
  CALDB       : 4.10.4
To:
CIAO 4.15 Monday, November 21, 2022
  bindir      : /soft/ciao-4.15/bin
  CALDB       : 4.10.4

Switching between CIAO 4.13 and CIAO 4.15.2

Users have to be careful about switching between different version of CIAO because of differences in parameter files and IPython startup scripts. The default local parameter file directory name is the same in CIAO, which makes it more tricky to run both CIAO 4.13 and CIAO 4.15.2 in separate terminal windows. For example, assuming CIAO 4.13 is installed in /soft/ciao-4.13 and CIAO 4.15.2 in /soft/ciao-4.15:

unix% alias oldciao 'source /soft/ciao-4.13/bin/ciao.csh'
unix% oldciao
CIAO configuration is complete...
CIAO 4.13 Wednesday, December  2, 2020
  bindir      : /soft/ciao-4.13/bin
  CALDB       : 4.10.4

unix% echo $PFILES
/home/username/cxcds_param4;/soft/ciao4.13/contrib/param:/soft/ciao4.13/param

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

and in a different window, using the suggested alias to start CIAO 4.15.2:

unix% ciao
unix% echo $PFILES
/home/username/cxcds_param4;/soft/ciao-4.15/contrib/param:/soft/ciao-4.15/param

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

You can see that the information is being read from the same parameter file locations. If there are changes to the parameter file (parameters added or deleted) then CIAO may have problems updating to the correct version.

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 4.15.2:

unix% setenv HEADAS /soft/lheasoft/headas/x86_64-pc-linux; \
      source $HEADAS/headas-init.csh
unix% ciao

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-4.15/contrib/param:
/soft/ciao-4.15/param:/soft/lheasoft/headas/x86_64-pc-linux/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.