ATNF Calc Server
Calc9 is most conveniently run using the calcserver which provides an xml-rpc interface. Unfortunately permissions and firewalls prevent us usefully running the calcserver on either Pawsey systems or a machine at ATNF.
The solution is to have a VM on the Nectar Cloud (details from Cormac).
We have a single instance of an Ubuntu 17.04 VM, with firewall permissions set to allow access from Magnus head nodes. This VM has rather low specs, but is not used for any other purpose than running the calcserver. The project needs to be renewed approximately annually (again details of the application available from Cormac).
Once the VM instance has been created and set running, with appropriate firewall (“Security Group”) access, the setup of the calcserver is fairly straightforward.
ssh ubuntu@$CALC_SERVER sudo apt-get install automake libtool autoconf # etc. svn co https://svn.atnf.csiro.au/difx/applications/calcserver/trunk/ calcserver aclocal; libtoolize --copy --force; autoconf; automake -a; ./configure --prefix=/home/ubuntu/DiFX/ make install sudo cp init.d/calcserver /etc/init.d/ sudo update-rc.d calcserver defaults sudo apt-get install rpcbind sudo /etc/init.d/calcserver start
Note that the calcserver will run on an arbitrary port, so the VM Security Group will have to be modified to match the relevant port (rpcinfo -p will let you see what port it is running on).
Note that from DiFX-2.5 and later, calc11 is available, which can be called directly and does not need a calcserver. We continue to use the calc server for older astrometric projects which prefer not to have a model change midway through.
