RtFC Correlator Setup

The realtime fringe checking runs on "pam0" at Parkes (called "pkpam" if accessing from within Parkes). It calls Adam Deller's software correlator to process the data.

Environment settings

The following environment variables need to be set (or added to existing paths)


Example
PERL5LIB
/home/vlbi/difx/share/perl/5.10.0:/home/vlbi/difx/lib/perl/5.10.0:/home/vlbi/evlbi/RtFC
PATH
/home/vlbi/difx/bin:/home/vlbi/evlbi/RtFC
PGPLOT_DIR  /usr/local/gnu/x86_64/pgplot-5.2.2-1
RTFC_CONTROL
Optional, defaults to localhost
RTFC_EOP
Optional, defaults to $HOME/.eops
RTFC_CORRHOST Optional, defaults to localhost
RTFC_NTHREAD Optional, defaults to 1


All these will be set if you add

> source ~vlbi/RtFC/setup.csh

into your .cshrc file. This is done by default for the vlbi account on Parkes.

Manual Startup

Log onto pam0 (at least) 3 times. Run the following in separate terminals (and in the following order). Give each process time to start before starting the next.

> control.pl
> ui.pl

To run the corr process, you need to first change to a writable directory with lots of space. The corr.pl program  needs the vex schedule files so it can the work out the correlation parameters (source position, frequency etc). A typical startup would be:

> cd /home/vlbi/fringe/Oct10/v131az
> corr.pl v131az.skd

Easy Startup

If you log onto pam0 with X11 forwarding enabled (test by trying to start xeyes), then each of these process will be started in its own xterm if you run

> rtfc_corrwin.csh

This only starts an xterm for corr.pl. You must "cd" to the the correct directory by hand and run corr.pl telling it which vexfiles to read. Alternatively, you may run the following script  on your local machine and which just logs you into pam0 (this may be better on slow links).

> rtfc_corrwin_local.csh