Ubuntu network problem

I ran into a problem with avahi that appears to be relatively common. My version is that the wireless networking fails and Network Tools shows a network device called eth1:avahi which shows a few transmitted and received bytes (with errors) but no interface information. This device appears to have preempted the correct eth1 device. I killed this rogue device using
sudo avahi-autopid --kill eth1
then after a while wireless works again as the eth1 device shows a connection.

At the suggestion of omingo I have done a
sudo apt-get --purge install avahi-autoipd --reinstall
to make sure the latest version of avahi-autopid is in use.

Update: this doesn't seem to have helped. Another possible workaround seems to be to go to Wireless Connections Properties using the Network Settings tool and switch from DHCP to Zeroconf, click on OK, wait for the tool to finish resetting the connection, then go back into Properties and switch back to DHCP.

Update: this may actually be a problem with network-manager. I've made the fix to NetworkManager.conf for bug 40125. Did a suspend then restart and the wireless connection came up correctly which it has not done before.

HEAsoft built under Ubuntu

Successfully built the HEAsoft distribution on my new Dell with Ubuntu Feisty Fawn. I had to get a number of packages...

sudo apt-get install gfortran g++
sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev
sudo apt-get install x-dev libx11-dev libxt-dev

Just to be on the safe side (and under bash) I did a

F77=gfortran
export F77
CC=gcc
export CC
CXX=g++
export CXX

Then the configure and build is

./configure > config.out 2>&1 &
make > build.log 2>&1 &
make install > install.log 2>&1 &

Cisco VPN client and Ubuntu Feisty Fawn

Working on setting up my new Dell laptop which came preinstalled with Ubuntu Feisty Fawn. A little work needed with the Cisco VPN client - the version downloaded from Goddard CNE needs patching for recent versions of Linux. Fortunately, there are really helpful instructions on using the VPN client available. Tricks I had to do were
sudo chmod 4111 /opt/cisco-vpnclient/bin/cvpnd
/etc/init.d/vpnclient_init restart
to get round the error messages
privsep: unable to drop privileges: group set failed.
The application was unable to communicate with the VPN sub-system.
then I got
Initializing the VPN connection.
Initiating TCP to 198.119.56.78, port 10005
Secure VPN Connection terminated locally by the Client
Reason: Failed to establish a VPN connection.
There are no new notification messages at this time.
This occurs if both the wireless and ethernet connections are enabled at the same time. I turned off the ethernet connection by going to Network Settings selecting Wired Connection then clicking on Properties followed by checking the Enable Roaming Mode box.

update of fluxerror.tcl for multiple datasets

Shao Li noted that fluxerror.tcl doesn't work if multiple datasets have been read in. An immediate workaround is just to change "tcloutr flux" to "tcloutr flux 1" in the script. I have checked in a new version of the script which returns an error range for each dataset - note that the flux ranges will only actually be different if the datasets are members of different datagroups.

xspec v12 gain fit parameters

Craig has fixed the gain fit parameters so they can be individually frozen during a fit (other than just having both parameters fixed or free). This makes the behavior similar to that available in v11. v12.3.1ae.

swind1 model update

Chris Done supplied modified model.dat information for her swind1 model which is currently available through the new models website. The only change is to the allowed range in the column parameter.

Unable to save file in xspec v11

Glenn Morris reported that when xspec v11 is built using gcc4 then the save command will not allow an existing filename to be overwritten. This turned out to be because in this case the Fortran OPEN command returns an IOSTAT=1, not IOSTAT=128 as per gcc3. This breaks the code in OPENWR in sys.lnx and sys.darwin. Fixed in v11.3.2ah by using an INQUIRE in these two files to check for a pre-existing file.

Note that the sys.* options are labelled by operating system however all those running gcc should be the same (eg sys.lnx and sys.darwin).

invalid filter expressions in extractor

Extractor was silently ignoring invalid filters attached to filenames eg infile.fits[pi>100]. Now it at least generates an error message. Note that the only allowed filters are of form name=#:#. v4.79

xspec v11 bug in HEAsoft 6.3

One of my minor mods to xspec v11 to support the use of the gfortran compiler introduced a bug in the addcomp command - inserting a component into the model caused the name of the final component to be changed to CPCMOD. Thanks to a report from Lisa Winter we caught this within a week of the HEAsoft 6.3 release and have updated the tar files.

xspec v11 on 64-bit Linux

Glenn Morris reported the very strange error "Fit parameter*** belongs to no model" when running xspec v11 on a 64-bit machine with RHEL4. We have established that this is a function of compiling using gcc/g77 3.4.6 and upgrading to gcc/gfortran 4 (ie RHEL5) solves the problem.

Preprints

Roelofs et al. derive parallaxes for a set of AM CVn binaries and predict LISA GW signals.

Dietrich et al. describe BLOX, a program to select galaxy clusters based on optical, X-ray and weak lensing shear.

Percival et al. measure the baryon oscillation signal at z=0.2 and z=0.35 using SDSS and 2dFGRS to constrain w=-1.004 +/- 0.089 for a flat model including the supernova and CMB constraints.

Wallin et al. place limits on deviations from Newtonian gravity in the outer Solar System through observations of the orbits of TNOs.

Markevitch points out that X-ray emission from clusters of galaxies depends on the He abundance in their cores which is unknown (and may be enhanced due to sedimentation). Combining SZ measurements with distances determined using other techniques can be used to estimate the He abundance.

Ruiter et al. calculate the LISA foreground due to mass-transferring binaries and find that it becomes significant at frequencies above ~7 mHz.

Bickel et al. develop methods for searching for periodicity in photon event times with application in the gamma-ray regime.

Prix & Whelan apply F-statistic methods developed for LIGO to the MLDC binary challenges.

srcut and sresc seg fault in xspec v12

Heather Matheson at U.Manitoba reported that srcut seg faults in v12. This turned out to be due to an error in the C++ to Fortran conversion for the power-law routine that is called by srcut and sresc.

another seg fault in compps

I had a slight error in the dynamic memory allocation for the compps model which caused a potential seg fault if the response had < 88 energy bins. This is patched in both v11 and v12.

Preprints

Jee et al. use weak-lensing analysis of Cl0024+17 and find a ring of dark matter which they interpret as the result of a high-velocity line-of-sight collision.

Tsalmantza et al. present the first results from a program to generate a library of synthetic galaxy spectra to be used to classify the several million unresolved galaxies whose spectra will be acquired by Gaia.

Wu & Wang calculate Fe K line shapes from relativistic accreting disks including the effects of self-shadowing.

Tornatore et al. use hydro simulations to investigate chemical evolution in clusters of galaxies.

Trimble et al. summarize astrophysics in 2006.

Padmanabhan reviews dark energy cosmology, argues that only a cosmological constant makes sense and that the problem cannot be satisfactorily solved at our current level of (mis)understanding.

Fiore et al. combine optical, IR, and X-ray observations of the Chandra Deep Field South to identify the Compton-thick AGN that have so far been missing from deep Chandra observations.

Kelly describes a Bayesian approach using Gaussian mixtures for linear regression in the presence of measurement errors, non-detections, and selection effects.

Eckert et al. analyze a 1.1Ms Integral ISGRI observation of the Coma cluster to find an extended hard X-ray excess in the direction of the infalling cluster A1376.

Sanders & Fabian continue their analysis of the very deep Chandra observation of the Perseus cluster finding a) the ripples interpreted as sound waves carry a significant fraction of the energy lost to radiative cooling b) the distribution of metals peaks at 40 kpc and is clumpy on scales of 5 kpc c) there is no evidence for thermal emission from the radio bubbles.

Repin et al. give analytic approximations for the relativistic Fe K line shape from accretion disks. A table is available.

gsmooth

Jeremy Sanders provides a faster version of the gsmooth model which precalculates an array of erf values then interpolates on them.

Preprints

Stanek proposes a an alternative history version of astro-ph for failed telescope and other proposals. Probably should have come out on Apr 1.

Feroz & Hobson describe an efficient sampling method for multimodel and/or degenerate distributions when calculating Bayesian evidence.

Hallman et al. use numerical simulations to show that using beta-model fits to X-ray data in the analysis of SZE observations leads to systematic biases and suggest a simple correction.

Miller reviews relativistic X-ray lines from the inner regions of accretion disks.

Magliocchetti & Bruggen combine X-ray data from the REFLEX and NORAS samples and radio data from the NVSS to investigate the effects of radio sources on the cluster L_X-T relation.

Kitaura & Ensslin survey Bayesian reconstruction schemes for large-scale structure.

Kerkyacharian et al. present a new estimation method for the inverse problem building on SVD decomposition.

building with gfortran

Successfully built headas on my Mac using the gfortran from the installer supplied at gcc.gnu.org. This places the gfortran library files in /usr/local/gfortran/lib so configure has to be altered so that F77LIBS4C in hmakerc includes this directory. If the gfortran plug-in for Xcode is used then the gfortran library files end up in /usr/local/lib which is in the link path anyway so need not be specified in F77LIBS4C. Also had to update cctools to avoid an undefined dso_handle. Had to add DHAVE_ETIME=1 to DEFS in hmakerc to ensure that etime is not defined again in xanlib/sysdep/sysc.c.

Not directly connected to gfortran but we discovered cod.dhf was not being built - this requires running hlpdhf on cod.hlp which means ensuring ia/doc is built ahead of qdp.

udmget : Too many blocks error

Both Roderick Johnstone and Ewan O'Sullivan have reported getting "Too many blocks" errors when using xspec v11 with complicated models. MAXBLK is set to 100 in udmget.c and there is no good reason why this should be so small. I've changed this to 1000 for the next release which should solve these problems.

Note that Bryan has updated xspec/src/tcl/Makefile so that it will rebuild libxantcl* when changes are made in the libxanlib* library. I really should be building libxantcl under the xanlib tree rather than the somewhat bizarre way it is done at present under the xspec tree.

hk file extension numbers in xselect

Change requested by Suzaku XIS team to allow multiple extensions in HK files. The read hk command now allows an extension to be given eg filename+3. This entire name plus extension is passed to maketime when doing a select hk. The code change does in principle allow the same syntax to be used when reading an event file however this is disabled because in some places xselect appends a +1 extension descriptor to the event file name.

xspec v11 and gfortran block data problem

Put in workarounds for the block data initialization problem with gfortran. None of these should have any discernible effect but we shall see. The changes were in the default values for genfit, the default names for model components, the default gain parameters in response, and the atdata.f routine used by the NEI models.

This latter has been changed in xspec v12 as well.