HEAsoft v6.14 - Known Issues
If you are using HEASOFT v6.13 and don't want to upgrade to v6.14 just yet,
see the HEASOFT 6.13 Issues List.
Please visit the
HEASOFT Supported Platforms page
for current information about supported operating systems and compilers.
Several packages track issues separately from this page:
The following is a list of known issues in v6.14 of HEAsoft not covered
by the above pages.
Last modified Friday, 04-Apr-2014 18:06:50 EDT
- xstar (PC Linux 64-bit) [Source code distribution only]:
The xstar modeling package v2.2.1bn15 may abort prematurely without an obvious
error on some 64-bit Linux operating systems due to an incorrect buffer size in
the routine which reads the atomic data file. The source code downloads have been
patched with a fix for this issue (providing xstar v2.2.1bn16)
as of 17:00 EDT Monday, 26 August 2013.
A patch file for existing source code installations is available
here. The PC Linux 64-bit pre-compiled binaries are not affected. To
update your source code distribution:
1) Initialize your environment to use HEASoft.
2) The patch file contains
heasoft-6.14/ftools/xstar/src/xstar/xstar.f
heasoft-6.14/ftools/xstar/xstarlib/src/fheader.f
heasoft-6.14/ftools/xstar/xstarlib/src/readtbl.f
heasoft-6.14/ftools/xstar/xstarlib/src/xstarsetup.f
so unpack it above your existing heasoft-6.14 directory
(i.e. unpack in the directory containing heasoft-6.14).
3) cd heasoft-6.14/ftools/xstar/
4) hmake all install
- ximage:
HEASoft 6.14 incorporates Tcl/Tk version 8.5.13, which has resulted in
a known but apparently harmless issue on some platforms. After using
the /XTK plot device, the following message may be displayed upon exit:
[XIMAGE> quit
X Error of failed request: RenderBadPicture (invalid Picture parameter)
Major opcode of failed request: ### (RENDER)
Minor opcode of failed request: # (RenderFreePicture)
Picture id in failed request: #########
Serial number of failed request: ####
Current serial number in output stream: ####
- Perl version mismatch::
Pre-compiled Perl libraries used extensively by mission software (Swift, Suzaku,
NuSTAR) and other packages are not especially portable,
so we generally recommend building HEASoft from the source code distribution.
- uvotgrplot:
This Swift/UVOT task may fail with a Fortran runtime error while generating a
postscript plot when compiled using certain versions of gfortran (e.g. v4.6.2
installed via fink) on Mac OS X. At present we suspect a compiler bug and
recommend using an alternate compiler from the options on our
support page.
- xspec / PLT - wenv, whead, wdata:
Some GNU Fortran compilers (gfortran 4.4.x, 4.0.x, 4.1.x)
appear to have internal issues which prevent the PLT commands wenv,
whead and wdata from working unless an output file is specified;
i.e. attempts at producing terminal output may fail with
"Fortran runtime error: Invalid argument".
To get around this, provide an output file name when using these commands, for
example:
wenv myFile1.qdp
whead myFile2.qdp
wdata myFile3.qdp
- HEASoft and other software packages (CIAO, XMM-SAS):
Please note:
Users may wish to download and run our hwrap script
to create an alternate runtime environment for HEASOFT to help avoid
conflicts with other software packages, but if not, please take note of
the potential pitfalls below:
If you have any questions about the information above, please write to
us at the FTOOLS help desk.
FTOOLS HELP DESK
If FTOOLS has been useful in your research, please reference this
site (http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/ftools) and use the
ASCL reference for HEASoft
[ascl:1408.004] or the
ASCL reference for the original FTOOLs paper
[ascl:9912.002]:
Blackburn, J. K. 1995, in ASP Conf. Ser., Vol. 77, Astronomical
Data Analysis Software and Systems IV, ed. R. A. Shaw, H. E. Payne,
and J. J. E. Hayes (San Francisco: ASP), 367.
Web page maintained by:
Bryan K. Irby
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