Installing CASA

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Installing CASA

CASA is available via the NRAO portal http://my.nrao.edu. You may need to register if you have not been using NRAO services in the past. CASA is available for MacOS X and Linux platforms and installation instructions are provided at https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/Software/ObtainingCASA

Before installing CASA, Mac users need to identify MacOS X software version.

Tips on Verifying Mac OS version

To determine if your hardware is 32 or 64 bit, see the instructions at [1]. 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/).
  • 32-bit Linux
  • 64-bit Linux
• 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.