Obtaining CASA

CASA is distributed as a series of RPMs (http://www.rpm.org) for Linux Red Hat Enterprise 4. A script, load-casapy, can be downloaded from:

ftp://ftp.cv.nrao.edu/casa/development/framework/distro/load-casapy

Once this has been downloaded, the script must be executed by a user with root privilege. Note: root privilege is required due to a known problem with the RHE4 operating system; it is currently being worked on by Red Hat.

Execute the file as:

> ./load-casapy --root
starting download of casa-data-20050103-2ds.noarch.rpm...   complete
starting download of casa-data-base-20050103-2ds.noarch.rpm...   complete
starting download of casapy-19.1259-11ds.i386.rpm...   complete
starting download of casapy-shared-19.1259-11ds.i386.rpm...   complete
starting download of ccmtools-python-0.5.5-40ds.i386.rpm...   complete
starting download of ccmtools-shared-0.5.5-40ds.i386.rpm...   complete
starting download of cfitsio-2.510-21ds.i386.rpm...   complete
starting download of pgplot-5.2.2-6ds.i386.rpm...   complete
starting download of tix-8.1.4-98.i386.rpm...   complete
starting download of casapy-python24-2.4.2-3.i386.rpm...   complete
installed casapy-shared-19.1259-11ds.i386.rpm
installed ccmtools-shared-0.5.5-40ds.i386.rpm
installed cfitsio-2.510-21ds.i386.rpm
installed casapy-python24-2.4.2-3.i386.rpm
installed ccmtools-python-0.5.5-40ds.i386.rpm
installed casapy-19.1259-11ds.i386.rpm

CASA is installed in the /usr/lib/casapy and /usr/lib/casa directories (approximately 160 MB required). It contains versions of Python (2.4.2), IPython (0.7.1), matplotlib, numeric, pytz and dateutil that are known compatible with CASA, and will not interact/interfere with the users' versions of these.

Download and install times seem to run around 3 minutes.

Startup

This section assumes that \casa\ has been installed on your LINUX or OSX system.

If you have installed the RPMs, then just type:

> casapy

You should also have a copy of the following; these can be put into the appropriate directory in your home area or in the current working directory: