Installing CASA

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Installing CASA

CASA is available via the CASA homepage NRAO casa.nrao.edu. Follow the "Obtaining CASA" link for the latest installation packages. The following information is likely outdated but could still be helpful if you want to install CASA on non-Redhat platforms.

Tips on Verifying Mac OS version

Before installing CASA, Mac users need to identify MacOS X software version. To determine if your hardware is 32 or 64 bit, see the instructions at http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3696. Next, to determine if you are running Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6, go to "AppleMenu -> AboutThisMac -> MoreInfo -> Software" and see System Version (not Kernel Version!). Finally, if "64-bit Kernel and Extensions = Yes", then you are running a 64-bit kernel (x86_64), otherwise it is a 32-bit kernel (i386).

Installing CASA on Ubuntu

The following method worked for Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty).

• Download the tarball appropriate for your Linux distribution (from https://svn.cv.nrao.edu/casa/linux_distro/), e.g. casapy-30.0.9860-001-64b.tar.gz.
• Install to /usr/local/bin/CASA (or substitute your own directory).

sudo mkdir /usr/local/bin/CASA
sudo mv casapy-30.0.9860-001-64b.tar.gz /usr/local/bin/CASA # this is for 64-bit installation; substitute the appropriate tarball here
cd /usr/local/bin/CASA
sudo tar zxvf casapy-30.0.9860-001-64b.tar.gz

• Add the following environment variable to your .bashrc (or the equivalent command for your preferred shell startup script).

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin/CASA/casapy-30.0.9860-001-64b

• Test it out!

source ~/.bashrc # or open a new terminal
casapy

Installing CASA on Debian

The Ubuntu installation instructions work well for Debian as well. However, if "xvfb" is not installed on your machine, CASA may start with errors like this:

OK, no bytes read while starting xvfb, timeout?...15396...

15390-casaviewer-svr: cannot connect to X server localhost:16.0

If so, try this:

sudo apt-get install xvfb

Then restart CASA and the problem should be solved.

Hints for Slackware

If you want to install CASA ona slackware system, you may try the following:

• replacing _hashlib.so in the casapy package with the same library provided with python in slackware 13 (otherwise, a missing dynamic library is needed).
• editing the file .../casapy.../lib/python2.6/hashlib.py

line 63
(old) import _md5 ----> (new) from _hashlib import openssl_md5
line 64
(old) return _md5.new ----> (new) return openssl _md5.new

• editing the file .../casapy.../lib/python2.6/site-packages/IPython/genutils.py

line 50
(old) from IPython import DPyGetOpt, platutils ----> (new) import DPyGetOpt, platutils