Getting Started in CASA
Installing CASA
See the CASA Primer for installation instructions for common OSs.
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
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/).
- 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
Starting CASA
Once installed, you can start CASA using the command "casapy"
## From a UNIX shell prompt
casapy
Note that, by convention, UNIX-level commands will be commented out so to facilitate parsing these pages into CASA scripts.
Listing Available Commands and Tools
# From within CASA
tasklist()
A more exhaustive summary can be obtained as follows.
taskhelp
Some commands are hidden away as methods under various objects. For example, to take a look at options under the imager object
help im
Notice that the method mem appears here, under help, but not under tasklist.
Getting Help on a Command
Let's get some exhaustive help on clean.
# From within CASA
help clean
This method is OK, and perhaps the following method is better.
# From within CASA
pdoc clean
Quitting CASA
You can exit CASA by typing quit,
# From within CASA
exit
or CTRL-D at the casapy prompt. If you don't want to see the question "Do you really want to exit [y]/n?", then just type
# From within CASA
Exit
and CASA will stop right then and there.
Additional Tips
New Startup Screen
- When you started CASA, it gave you a lot of useful information. But now you've been mucking around for a while, and that info is lost. How do you get it back? Just rerun the startup screen.
startup
Setting up the available memory
CASA's default is to use 90% of the memory available. This should be a good setting for most users.
However, if this does not suit your needs, you can set the amount of memory that CASA will use, either in absolute or relative units.
To do so, create a ~/.casarc file in your home directory (if you still have an ~/.aipsrc in your home directory, it would be wise to remove it).
Within ~/.casarc add the following variable:
system.resources.memory: <absolute_number>
or
system.resources.memfrac: <relative_number>
where <absolute_number> stands for the allocated memory in units of MB. e.g. for 16GB of memory the number would be 16000. <relative_number> stands for the percentage of memory that CASA can access, e.g. a value of 80 corresponds to 80% of the memory installed.
Now restart CASA.
Starting CASA without the logger or log messages to terminal
You also have the option of starting CASA without the logger, for example if you are running remotely in a terminal window without an X11 connection, or if you just do not want to see the logger GUI. In this case use the --nologger option:
casapy --nologger
The logger messages will still go into the casapy.log file. If you want to see these at your terminal, use the --log2term option also:
casapy --nologger --log2term
What If Something Goes Wrong?
First, always check that your inputs are correct; use inp <taskname> Next, check the inline documentation using the "pdoc" facility: pdoc <taskname> or pdoc par.<parameter_name> to review the allowed parameters. For example, pdoc par.selectdata will give guidance on the use of this parameter (and in this case its sub-parameters).
If something has gone wrong and you want to stop what is executing, then typing CNTL-C will usually cleanly abort the application. Alert: Note that you will likely lose contact with the logger GUI if you have one, so you will then want to restart CASA.
If CASA crashes, then usually restarting casapy is sufficient to get you going again. Note that there may be spawned subprocesses still running, such as the casaviewer or the logger. These can be dismissed manually in the usual manner. After a crash, there may also be hidden processes. You can find these by listing processes, e.g. in linux: ps -elf | grep casa or on MacOSX (or other BSD Unix): ps -aux | grep casa You can then kill these, for example using the Unix kill or killall commands. This may be necessary if you are running remotely using ssh, as you cannot logout until all your background processes are terminated. For example, killall ipcontroller or killall Python will terminate the most common post-crash zombies.
NRAO access to stable version (not release)
At NRAO you will have access to the current stable version of CASA> this will exceed the capabilities of the release but it will see changes on faster timescales. This version can be started via
## From a UNIX shell prompt
casapy-test
--Jack Gallimore 14:42, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
