KARMA: Download and Installation

KARMA is available as a source package and as precompiled binary distributions for various platforms (Linux and Mac OS X) Both options are described below. 

Please note that the released package also includes the correct version of the SkyCat executable. The provided SkyCat executable will not interfere with previous installations of the tool on your system.

Building and installing KARMA from the source distribution

Prerequisites

  • A PC with Linux installed. The type of distribution should not matter, but kernel 2.4 or higher is required. To build KARMA from the sources on Mac OS X is in principle possible but not thoroughly tested.
  • The GNU g++ compiler, version 4.0 or higher, and the GNU make utility. Whether other compilers and make versions will be suitable, can not be guaranteed. Just try it out.

With these prerequisites at hand you can now set to work on the KARMA installation itself:

  • Download the following installation kit: karma_src-1.11.tar.gz [204 Mbytes compressed]
  • At this point you should have a gzipped tar file in your current directory. Unpack it by executing: tar fvxz karma_src-<version>.tar.gzThis will create a directory called karma_src-<version>.
  • You may now remove the gzipped tar file: rm karma_src-<version>.tar.gz
  • Change to the KARMA directory and start the install script: cd karma_src-<version>
    ./karmaBuild <karma_dest_dir>

    The directory <karma_dest_dir> here denotes the directory where KARMA is to be installed into. You must have read/write permissions there. The installation procedure might take a few minutes since there are quite a few sources to compile. Standard outputs as well as possible error messages and warnings will always be logged in appropriate les in the log subdirectory.

  • Once you have successfully installed KARMA, you can restore the initial clean state of the source tree by typing: ./karmaClean
  • The bin subdirectory of <karma_dest_dir> contains the single executable karma. If you don't want to call karma via its absolute path, you should include the bin subdirectory into your PATH environment variable.

    • Installing a KARMA binary distribution

    For a number of target platforms precompiled KARMA binary releases are available. Download the appropriate KARMA package from the following list:

    You can determine the type of your hardware platform by typing: uname -m

  • At this point you should have a gzipped tar file in your current directory. Unpack it by executing: tar fvxz karma_bin_<machine>_<os>_<version>.tar.gzThis will create a directory called karma_bin_<machine>_<os>_<version> with subdirectories bin, data, config and doc.

  • You may now remove the gzipped tar file: rm karma_bin_<machine>_<os>_<version>.tar.gz
  • The bin subdirectory of karma_bin_<machine>_<os>_<version> contains the single executable karma. If you don't want to call karma via its absolute path, you should include the bin subdirectory into your PATH environment variable.

    • Running KARMA

    Assuming that you have successfully installed KARMA, you can now start the tool with 'karma' if it is in your path, or using the absolute path: <karma-dest-dir>/bin/karma

    For more information about how to install and use the tool to prepare your observations, check out the KARMA User Manual.

    Instrument selector

    This page is specific to KMOS.