IRAF on Debian from the ESO Scisoft DVD

Ok… here’s a short summary of what I did to get IRAF working. I’m using the SciSoft DVD tarball from ESO for IRAF. Yes, this might be a bad idea because you’ll be installing a LOT of other stuff too.

1. Extract the tarball

sudo cp scisoft-7.0.0.tar.gz /
cd /
sudo tar -xzf scisoft*
sudo rm scisoft-7.0.0.tar.gz


2. Run the SciSoft Setup.bash file

cd /scisoft/bin
chmod a+x ./Setup.bash
su -
. ./Setup.bash
exit


3. Install ds9

sudo apt-get install saods9


3. Prepare to run IRAF
I do my IRAF work in ~/IRAF and not under a new user account as some manuals specify.

mkdir ~/IRAF
cd ~/IRAF
/scisoft/bin/mkiraf
PATH=$PATH":/scisoft/bin" # Required for SGI EPS export etc
ulimit -s unlimited # Sets unlimited stack size. Required in Debian too.


4. Run IRAF

ds9 &
iraf


This might not work for you, because I might’ve installed some library dependency, or tried some other source of IRAF and might be using that in part. If it doesn’t, please let me know of the corrections through comments.

HTH.