Fedora Astronomy SIG Meeting log 18-01-2008
by Marek Mahut
Fedora Astronomy SIG Meeting 18-01-2008
=======================================
Agenda
======
- Introduction.
- Review of tasks from last meeting.
- What can Fedora do for pari.edu institute? Discussion for Lamar.
- Find time for meeting that fits for everyone.
- Free discussion, mind storming
Next meeting
============
Friday, February 2nd, 2008 at 16:00 UTC
Meeting log
===========
14:34 marek ping :)
14:35 * marek looks around
14:35 Telimektar hi marek
14:35 marek changed the topic of #fedora-meeting to: Fedora Astronomy
SIG Meeting | http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Astronomy/
14:35 marek hi Telimektar
14:36 marek you're not at school?
14:36 sergiopr > [n=sergiopr(a)halmax.fis.ucm.es] joins #fedora-meeting
14:36 Telimektar exceptionnaly not
14:36 marek oh, ok
14:36 Telimektar practical session hasn't begin yet, but last week i
won't be here
14:36 sergiopr hello Telimektar, marek
14:37 Telimektar hi sergiopr
14:37 marek hi sergiopr
14:37 marek update agenda, if you want something
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Astronomy/Meetings/Agenda
14:37 sergiopr no, it's ok
14:38 Telimektar ok for me, is lamar here ?
14:38 marek not yet I think
14:39 Telimektar ok
14:39 marek let's wait 3-4 min
14:40 abadger1999 > [n=abadger1(a)65.78.187.68] joins #fedora-meeting
14:40 * rishi is here
14:43 marek ok, let's start
14:43 marek changed the topic of #fedora-meeting to: Fedora Astronomy
SIG Meeting | http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Astronomy/ | Introduction.
14:43 marek who's here?
14:43 * marek Marek Mahut
14:43 sergiopr Sergio Pascual
14:44 *Telimektar Micha"el Ughetto
14:45 * rishi Debarshi Ray
14:45 marek changed the topic of #fedora-meeting to: Fedora Astronomy
SIG Meeting | http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Astronomy/ | Review of
tasks from last meeting.
14:45 marek so, do you have any updates on tasks?
14:45 marek regarding art team, I had no time at all to contact
them, because I was on vacation without frequent internet access :(
14:46 sergiopr I'm working on the midas rpm
14:46 rishi I am stuck with BOINC packaging. Did not get much
time to test it out.
14:47 Telimektar i've made my first package, soon will build another
one, then i'll ask for a sponsor
14:47 marek good Telimektar, did you fill in a review request?
14:48 nihed2 > [n=ikanawa(a)41.224.248.247] joins #fedora-meeting
14:48 Telimektar not at all i'd like to prepare at less two package
before beginning review and commiting process
14:48 marek Telimektar: ok, good
14:49 Telimektar but the package has been reviewed by the french team
of fedora, so i think it will be pretty quicka with the fp review
14:49 marek I would like to have all package that we want to
include in the spin finished before end of February
14:49 marek Telimektar: ok, if you fill in a request, please
update this wiki page:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Astronomy/Packages/UnderReview
14:49 Telimektar marek, ok I will give as much time as i can to packaging
14:49 rishi marek: I am a bit burdened now, but I hope to finish
BOINC sometime next week.
14:49 Telimektar marek, ok
14:50 sergiopr midas is tricky
14:50 nihed1 < [n=ikanawa(a)41.224.222.66] quits [Read error: 110
(Connection timed out)]
14:50 sergiopr lots of files and no way to knows which are needed
for proper run
14:50 marek sergiopr: I agree, but I know you *love* tricky
packages ;)
14:50 sergiopr :)
14:51 marek ok, that is for an update from last meeting
14:51 marek changed the topic of #fedora-meeting to: Fedora Astronomy
SIG Meeting | http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Astronomy/ | What can
Fedora do for pari.edu institute? Discussion for Lamar.
14:51 marek Lamar around?
14:52 marek no :(
14:52 marek changed the topic of #fedora-meeting to: Fedora Astronomy
SIG Meeting | http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Astronomy/ | Find time
for meeting that fits for everyone.
14:52 marek ok, we need to reorganize our meeting time
14:52 marek
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/FedoraMeetingChannel here is
the channel schedule
14:53 marek sergiopr, rishi, Telimektar what time fits best for
each of you?
14:53 sergiopr I prefer later, but this time it's ok
14:53 sergiopr 14 utc I mean
14:54 marek Telimektar have problem with friday
14:54 Telimektar as I said on the ML, for now on all my fridays from
1400 to 1530 will be taken
14:54 * rishi is reading the URL
14:54 marek Telimektar: what's best time for you?
14:55 marek for me, it's working week, around 14h UTC the best
14:55 snavin > [n=snavin(a)124.43.55.191] joins #fedora-meeting
14:55 marek but I'm flexible with this
14:55 Telimektar mhm, i'd rather like week-end, as my schedule will
surely move during the semester
14:55 rishi marek: Is 16:00UTC on Fridays possible?
14:55 rishi Or maybe during the week-end?
14:56 marek Saturday 16:00UTC?
14:56 marek sergiopr: and what about you?
14:56 Telimektar the rishi proposition is good also
14:56 sergiopr Agree
14:57 rishi For it would be 21:30 IST -- before dinner-time.
14:57 Telimektar 1600 utc on friday will be ok for me
14:58 marek
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?year=2008&month=01&d...
14:58 marek just looking for other GEOs
14:59 rishi Telimektar: You are in which part of the globe? I am
in India (+5:30 UTC).
14:59 marek I'm in Czech Republic (+1 UTC)
14:59 sergiopr Spain +1 UTC
14:59 Telimektar France , UTC +1
15:00 rishi Wow! All in the same timezone.
15:00 marek ha! :)
15:00 marek Friday 16h is not possible for me
15:00 marek so for the weekend, Sat 16h UTC is ok?
15:01 marek rishi: quite late for you, is it ok?
15:01 jnettlet > [n=jnettlet(a)c-76-118-159-90.hsd1.ma.comcast.net]
joins #fedora-meeting
15:03 rishi marek: Quite good.
15:04 marek ok, let's vote: meeting will be move to Saturday 16h
UTC every two weeks
15:04 marek +1 from me
15:04 sergiopr +1
15:04 Telimektar +1
15:05 bpepple >
[n=bpepple(a)adsl-76-247-62-254.dsl.wotnoh.sbcglobal.net] joins
#fedora-meeting
15:05 rishi +1 from me
15:06 marek good :)
15:06 marek changed the topic of #fedora-meeting to: Fedora Astronomy
SIG Meeting | http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Astronomy/ | Free
discussion, mind storming
15:06 marek ok
15:06 marek any other business?
15:06 sergiopr Next July is the metting of the Spanish Astronomical
Society and I'm planning to
15:06 sergiopr apply for an oral contribution about free software
in astronomy and Fedora Astronomy in particular
15:07 marek sergiopr: cool! do you need any help from us?
15:07 sergiopr I don't know yet
15:07 sergiopr I scientific comitee has to aprove it
15:08 sergiopr it it's rejected I will contribute with a poster
15:08 sergiopr if it's rejected, I mean
15:08 sergiopr I will keep yo informed
15:08 rishi sergiopr: Nice.
15:08 marek ok good
15:09 marek I've made little script called redmode, please test
it when you will have a free minute
15:09 marek https://fedorahosted.org/astronomy/wiki/RedMode
15:10 Telimektar ok
15:10 marek do you have any ideas for such projects?
15:11 Telimektar mhm, i do not
15:12 loupgaroubl >
[n=yankee(a)pool-71-182-215-182.pitbpa.east.verizon.net] joins #fedora-meeting
15:12 marek ok
15:12 marek anything else you would like to discuss?
15:13 Telimektar no
15:15 sergiopr I'm done
15:16 marek ok me too
15:16 marek thank you for the meeting
15:16 marek changed the topic of #fedora-meeting to: Topic for
#fedora-meeting is Channel is used by various Fedora groups and
committees for their regular meetings | Note that meetings often get
logged | For questions about using Fedora please ask in #fedora | See
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/FedoraMeetingChannel for
meeting schedule
--
Marek Mahut https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Astronomy/
Fedora Project http://www.jamendo.com/
16 years, 3 months
Meeting today.
by Lamar Owen
Umm, what happened to the meeting that was scheduled for today on IRC?
--
Lamar Owen
Chief Information Officer
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC 28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu
16 years, 3 months
Introductions
by Lamar Owen
Good morning, and an early Happy New Year to everyone.
I first learned of this SIG Saturday; very cool. I have downloaded and have
read the archives of the mailing list (nothing like getting a little history,
even if that isn't but a month long) and I plan on attending the meeting on
the 11th, unless something work related comes up.
By way of introductions, I am CIO at the Pisgah Astronomical Research
Institute (PARI), which is one of the few observatories with both optical and
radio capabilities.
We currently have several optical instruments, from a pair of solar telescopes
with Ethernet video webcams to a 16 inch DFM with an Apogee Ethernet CCD, and
we have four dish-type radio instruments: two 26 meter X-Y mounted prime
focus parabolics good up to 12-14GHz; a 12.2 meter prime focus parabolic
good to 26-30GHz; and a 4.6 meter prime focus parabolic good up to the low
millimeter range. We also have a few HF arrays for use with the Radio Jove
program, observing the sun and Jupiter in the 20-28 MHz band. We also host
another radio instrument from Virginia Tech; see
http://www.ece.vt.edu/swe/eta/ for lots and lots of details on this exciting
instrument.
The 12.2 meter is in need of major work, and is mothballed pending funding.
The two 26 meter telescopes are in the midst of drive and feed upgrades; DFM
Engineering is performing the drive upgrades (this is the second drive
upgrade on these telescopes that they've done for us; this gets us 27 bit
absolute encoders and Ethernet connectivity for control and telemetry); the
feeds are being upgraded to thermally stabilized dual, coaxial 2.4GHz and
8.5GHz for extreme scattering event research as an interferometer, funded
through an NSF MRI grant. Also, PARI is collaborating with Furman University
Astronomer Dr. David Moffett on pulsar monitoring research in the 318MHz
band; the instrument is currently off-line, but the pulsar radiometer backend
is on Linux (currently an older Fedora).
The 4.6 meter Andrew parabolic is in active use for our School of Galactic
Radio Astronomy educational program, and has a 1.42GHz hydrogen RF chain and
spectrometer. This telescope is currently internet controllable through a
Java applet in-browser (the applet doesn't work with the F8 java stack,
unfortunately), and with a custom java servlet backend. The SGRA program
teaches middle school teachers how run the telescope remotely, how to perform
doppler spectroscopy to determine the galactic rotational characteristics,
and how to teach their classes how to do this. The telescope has a smiley
face painted on it (long story), so it is nicknamed 'Smiley' for obvious
reasons.
Smiley also gets used for solar astronomy at 1.4GHz (we have a program, called
Space Science Lab, that teaches high school sophomores and juniors, in a one
week on-site seminar setting, all about solar astronomy, from optical all the
way down to 20MHz radio, and Smiley is a part of that. In the SSL program,
the students spend one week on site, learning astronomy, radio astronomy,
basic electronics, soldering, troubleshooting, etc: they build a Radio Jove
kit radiometer, and if they don't have their own PC, we give them one with
the require software preloaded; out of 57 kits attempted at this point, 56
have been successfully constructed within the one week seminar; the 57th kit
had a bad PC board).
We have a number of other programs; you can see the breadth of them on our
website at www.pari.edu
Personally, I have run Red Hat and Fedora Linux since Red Hat Linux 4.1 in
1997. I was the PostgreSQL Global Development Group's RPM maintainer from
1999 through 2004 (my base spec file is still in RHEL4), when I passed the
maintainership to Devrim Gunduz, as personal reasons prevented me from doing
the builds in a timely fashion at that time. Since then, of course,
automated buildsystems have come of age, and packaging is a much simpler
process than it was then.
On the subject of packages, I see in the rejected packages list IRAF. Getting
permission from UCAR to distribute NCAR as a part of Fedora would be killer,
as IRAF is de rigeur for optical astronomy. For radio astronomy, getting the
former AIPS and AIPS++ packages, as well as the currently maintained CASA
packages, in Fedora would be killer, as that is pretty much required for
single dish and interferometer imagery in radio astronomy.
Also, GNUradio has an astronomy section; with a Universal Software Radio
Peripheral (USRP) with a DBRX daughterboard, and a medium-sized dish (2-4
meters) useful 1.4GHz radio astronomy can be done. GNUradio requires wx, and
the radio astronomy examples require PyEphem; getting PyEphem in Fedora would
be great in general for astronomy, as PyEphem does all the interesting
calculations, including the absolutely required (for radio astronomy) local
standard of rest. Having GNUradio packages (it's in Debian already) would be
great (I might be able to do these if no one else does them).
In any case, it's great to see this SIG form, and I look forward to being able
to help in some fashion. I see several names I recognize here; Jef, spot, in
particular. We use Aurora Linux on a couple of our backends, running on an
E6500 and E5500 Sun Enterprise pair.
--
Lamar Owen
Chief Information Officer
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC 28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu
16 years, 3 months
kdeedu vs. kstars RPM
by Wrolf
Hello everyone.
Trying to put together a live USB thumbdrive with a set of astronomy
packages for casual user (naked eye or binoculars, look at Mars directly
overhead/phase of moon for camping trip/etc.).
I eventually realized that with xephem out due to licensing, I needed
KStars, which in Fedora is part of the kdeedu RPM.
So to have an Astronomy spin, we have to drag in KLatin, Konqueror, etc.
Does not seem right.
Can we have just a kstars RPM, like in other distros? Perhaps the kdeedu
rpm could have a dependency on a kstars RPM?
Otherwise the Astronomy spin is doomed to always have khangman. Does
every astronomer require Hangman on their desk?
See http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/kde-split-ebuilds.xml for the same
issue in Gentoo and their solution.
Wrolf
16 years, 3 months