How to install and run gaia astronomical software from starlink-hikianalia

Question

I am trying to install gaia, image software for astronomy. I am running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and have xcode tools 3.2.6 with developer tools installed. I also believe I have the correct gfortran compiler necessary.

How do I install gaia now? What are the commands I need to run. When I download it, it unzips and there are just a bunch of folders.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Max

Answer 1

Steps for installing Starlink Gaia

1. Download the latest Starlink distribution (Hikianalia, as of this writing):

   http://starlink.jach.hawaii.edu/starlink/HikianaliaDownload

2. Uncompress the .tar.gz. A new star directory will be created. You can move it some other place (for instance, /Users/Shared/star, or /star)

   1. As the installer is 0.7GB, you might want to delete it after installation has been successful.

3. Depending on your default shell:

   1. For C (csh, tcsh) shells:

      1. Create a STARLINK_DIR environment variable pointing to where the star directory is to be left (i.e., /Users/Shared/star):

         setenv STARLINK_DIR /Users/Shared/star
         

      2. Source the chsrc files

         source $STARLINK_DIR/etc/login
         source $STARLINK_DIR/etc/cshrc
         

      3. You can combine the steps above creating an alias called start_starlink to add to your .cshrc file, so that you only start the Starlink libraries when needed:

         alias start_starlink 'setenv STARLINK_DIR /Users/Shared/star; source $STARLINK_DIR/etc/login; source $STARLINK_DIR/etc/cshrc'
         

   2. For Bourne (sh, bash, zsh) shells:

      1. Create a STARLINK_DIR environment variable pointing to where the star directory is to be left (i.e., /Users/Shared/star):

         export STARLINK_DIR=/Users/Shared/star
         

      2. Source the chsrc files

         . $STARLINK_DIR/etc/profile
         

      3. You can combine the steps above creating an alias called start_starlink to add to your .cshrc file, so that you only start the Starlink libraries when needed:

         alias start_starlink='export STARLINK_DIR=/Users/Shared/star; . $STARLINK_DIR/etc/profile'
         

So, after typing start_starlink, you can just type gaia to launch Starlink Gaia.

Fixing a missing gfortran

In x86_64 systems, if launching gaia fails with the message:

dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/local/lib/libgfortran.3.dylib
Referenced from: /Users/jdsant/Downloads/star/bin/gaia/gaia_wish
Reason: image not found

you need to make sure that you have gfortran libraries installed, and that they are were gaia expects them.

You can try to use locate libgfortran.3.dylib, and copy it to /usr/local/lib , or make a symlink to it. See, for instance, http://starlink.jach.hawaii.edu/starlink/HikianaliaDownload#SnowLeopard64-bitdistribution

Answer 2

I had this

dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/local/lib/libgfortran.3.dylib
Referenced from: /Users/jdsant/Downloads/star/bin/gaia/gaia_wish
Reason: image not found

problem and was becoming very frustrated until I figured out that per the instructions on the GFortran website, that you must unzip the gcc file in the terminal, not using your browser. So, after downloading gcc-5.0-bin.tar.gz, I executed:

$ gunzip gcc-5.0-bin.tar.gz 
$ sudo tar -xvf gcc-5.0-bin.tar -C /

this unpacked the file, but then received a very long error stating "Application initialization failed: no display name and no $DISPLAY environment variable" and "gaia was not properly installed". I then executed:

$ startx

which started X11, and then opened xterm. I then restated in xterm:

$ export STARLINK_DIR=/Users/kristen/Downloads/star-2014A
$ source $STARLINK_DIR/etc/profile
$ gaia &

and another GUI for GAIA Starlink popped up and it all worked