Installing CASPER

• Introduction

• Requirements

• Operating Systems

• Languages and Libraries

CASPER uses the NAIF SPICE libraries intensively.  However, you will not need the NAIF SPICE library to run CASPER unless you are forced to recompile the shareable SPICE library.

• How to obtain CASPER

1. casper.tar.Z:  This contains the main CASPER source code, libraries and documentation.
2. kernels.tar.Z: This contains the Kernel files required by CASPER and includes example tour files.
3. user.tar.Z: This contains the User source code and libraries.
4. mapsgap.tar.Z: This contains the MAPSGAP tools.
5. personal.tar.Z: This contains the personal directory setup that each individual CASPER user will need.

• Unarchiving CASPER
• Download the archive files listed above.
• Go to the directory where you wish the CASPER installation to be located. If you will be the only person at your site using CASPER, then this will normally be your home directory. If there will be multiple CASPER users at your site, then the system manager should install it in a directory that is accessible by all users.
• Create a directory called casper_3.7 (mkdir casper_3.7).
• Go to this new directory (cd casper_3.7).
• Move the archive files (except the personal.tar.Z file) to this new directory (if using Netscape or Mosaic, you can specify the download directory in the ftp window). (mv ~/casper.tar.Z .  assuming you are in casper_3.7/ and the files are in your home directory.)
• Unpack the archive files (using uncompress and tar) e.g.

csh> uncompress casper.tar.Z
csh> tar xvf casper.tar

• Downloading the Events tool

Events software can only be obtained directly from JPL, and a licensing agreement must be signed.  International users may have to complete additional paperwork.  To see about getting access to the Events web site and the Events software, contact Jennifer Schikbernd (jks@jpl.nasa.gov) or Kevin Grazier (krg@anlashok.jpl.nasa.gov) at JPL.
 

• Setting Up the CASPER Environment

 
• The General CASPER Environment

The steps for setting up the general CASPER environment are:

• Move to the casper_3.7/casper directory that has just been created.
• Locate the casper_setup file.
• Open the file casper_setup in your text editor.
• Edit the file so CASPER_HOME_DIR points to the top level of your CASPER directory hierarchy (casper_3.7) e.g.
            setenv CASPER_HOME_DIR  /home/user_name/casper_3.7/
• Next, edit the file so that CASPER_EVENTS_DIR points to the directory where you have your new version of Events installed.
•  setenv CASPER_EVENTS_DIR   /home/user_name/events/
• NOTE: In both cases, make sure you have a trailing '/' on the path name.

• source the setup file to create the required environment variables and aliases
• csh> source casper_setup
• You must do this the whenever you log in and want to run CASPER. so it is a good idea to edit your .cshrc file to do this automatically by adding a line similar to:
            source /home/casper_3.5/casper/casper_setup

• The Personal CASPER Environment

This is done by creating a directory structure in the user's own directory and using a personal setup file to make this available to CASPER, via the following steps:

• Download the file personal.tar.Z to your home directory.
• Uncompress and untar this file e.g.

            csh> uncompress personal.tar.Z
            csh> tar xvf personal.tar

This will create a directory casper_save that contains the required directory structure for saving/loading your own personal CASPER files.
 
• Edit the casper_personal_setup file located in your new casper_save directory, so that casper_PERSONAL points to the casper_save directory that was created earlier.
• setenv  CASPER_PERSONAL         /home/yourname/casper_save/
• Source this casper_personal_setup file to create the required environment variables and aliases

            csh> source casper_save/casper_personal_setup

• You must do this whenever you log in and want to run CASPER, so it is a good idea to edit your .cshrc file to do this automatically by adding a line similar to:

source /home/yourname/casper_personal_setup

• Installation of Kernel Files (All Operating Systems)

The kernels.tar file is quite large (more than 26MByte), so if you have kernel files from a previous CASPER installation, you can just copy these into the corresponding directory. However, you may wish to check that you have the most recent versions of these files.

To convert the SP Kernel files from transfer (.tsp) format to binary (.bsp), you should run the SPICE tool SPACIT on them (this is included in the NAIF SPICE distribution in the directory naif/toolkit/exe but is not distributed with CASPER) and convert them from transport format to binary format.

NOTE: All binary files should be given the file extension .bsp as this is used for filtering purposes by CASPER.

Other tour files may be downloaded from the Cassini Tour Design homepage and should be placed in the $SPICE_SPK directory.

An example SPACIT conversion is shown below: 

   Welcome to SPACIT Version 6.0.0

   SPICE File Summary and Conversion Utility
 

         SPACIT Options

   ( Q ) Quit.
   ( L ) Log SPACIT output to a file.
   ( T ) Convert transfer file to binary file.
   ( B ) Convert binary file to transfer file.
   ( S ) Summarize binary file.
   ( R ) Read comment area of binary file.

   Option: t

Enter the name of the transfer file to be converted.

Filename? T18-2.CATO.tsp

Enter the name of the binary file to be created.

Filename? T18-2.CATO.bsp

Converting from transfer file to binary file.

Converting Transfer File: T18-2.CATO.tsp
To Binary File          : T18-2.CATO.bsp

Please wait...

Binary file created.

The operation was successful

         SPACIT Options

   ( Q ) Quit.
   ( L ) Log SPACIT output to a file.
   ( T ) Convert transfer file to binary file.
   ( B ) Convert binary file to transfer file.
   ( S ) Summarize binary file.
   ( R ) Read comment area of binary file.

   Option: q

Quitting the program.

csh>

• Setting Up Printer Selection (All Operating Systems)

Each line of the file contains the information for one printer. First there is the string which will appear in the printer selection widget. You should edit this to contain whatever details you require to appear in the printer selection window such as, name, type and location of the printer. This is followed by a double colon (::) and then the command that needs to be executed in order to print a PostScript file e.g. ::lpr or ::lpr -Ppostscript_printer. Note you should not leave a space between the last colon and the print command. You can enter a number of printer options, with the order in which you specify them being the order in which they will appear in the printer selection widget, with the first being the default selection.

An example file for Unix systems:

Default Printer ::lpr
sys$color Color Printer ::lp -dcolor_laser
sys$print Old Postscript Printer Room 678 ::lpr -Psys$print

• The Final Step

The command CASPER_COMPILE will run the compilation script and create the compiled CASPER for you. It will also start CASPER.

csh> CASPER_COMPILE

After the first time, you can start CASPER with the command

csh> CASPER

which will start the program running more quickly than the CASPER_COMPILE command.  If you ever receive patches or code updates, however, you must use the CASPER_COMPILE command again to recompile and save the new version.
 

• Running CASPER

• Problems?