Common error-messages - what have I done wrong?

The computer does not find the command task

You probably have forgotten to initialize SURF or KAPPA.

The computer does not recognize the command SURF

Let's assume that you have followed the manual, and you type surf to initialize the SURF software package, but nothing happens. You get a reply saying command not found, instead of the listing you saw in the manual. In this case you probably lack the Starlink initialization in your .cshrc and .login files. Type

% source /star/etc/login
% source /star/etc/cshrc

and you should be able to initialize SURF and KAPPA. The Starlink initialization scripts should be placed in your .cshrc and .login files if you intend to use SURF and KAPPA regularly:

i.e. in your .login file put the line:

if (-e /star/etc/login) source /star/etc/login

and in your .cshrc file put the line:

if (-e /star/etc/cshrc) source /star/etc/cshrc

See, for example, SUN/212 [3] for more information on using and installing Starlink software.

Kappa tasks like centroid pick up the wrong image

This seems to occasionally happen when we switch between program packages. The cure is to delete the AGI [1] resource file, called agi_computer.sdf, where computer is the name of your computer, and the file resides in your home directory. In my case the file is called /home/sandell/kala_agi.sdf.

Kappa display plots a new image inside an old image

This means that your AGI database has become corrupt (e.g. by using control-C to exit early from a task that displays graphics (scuover for example) - this prevents the task from performing normal cleanup duties). This problem can be fixed by issuing the KAPPA command gdclear or by removing the AGI database file from your home directory (see earlier fault).

I get a grayscale hardcopy, even though I specified a color device

Any color printer will need the color table supplied with the plot. In addition to setting the device to a color printer (e.g. epsfcol_p), you will also have to specify the color table with the parameter lut. In the example below we plot the final NGC7129 image using the bgyrw color table, which resides in $KAPPA_DIR as bgyrw_lut

% display axes clear n7129_lon lut=$KAPPA_DIR/bgyrw device=epsfcol_p \
    mode=scale

This produces a color postscript file gks74.ps.n. A list of valid devices can be obtained with the KAPPA command gdnames.

Cannot create data array ...

Error messages of this type typically indicate that you are out of disk space - a quite common occurrence for anybody reducing SCUBA maps - or that you do not have write permission in your current directory.