Software support

A number of SuperDARN users have reported difficulties with installing the latest version of the Radar Software Toolkit, RST 3.5. Here we present two paths to getting a working version of the code:

1) Make edit corrections to the original s/w as outlined here, download hdw.dat files, and recompile

or

2) Acquire the working VT version of the RST 3.5 code from a github and install (one-stop shopping)


1) Fixing RST 3.5

If you are having trouble with the install of RST 3.5, this is a possible problem is. In rst_dir/rpkg/superdarn/rst.3.5/build.txt, on line 19,

this: superdarn co<x>debase/superdarn/src.bin/bin

should be this: superdarn codebase/superdarn/src.bin bin

Then, go to the rst directory, and edit .profile.bash to contain your OS and your editor.

Next, add the following lines to your ~/.bashrc file

export RSTPATH="directory where you unzip the file"
. $RSTPATH/.profile.bash

after this change, the software should be able to be compiled using 'make.build' and 'make.code superdarn rst'.

I would also recommend getting the hardware.dat tables from here
https://github.com/vtsuperdarn/hdw.dat


2) Getting the VT version of RST 3.5

If these don't solve the problem, or if you want to download our version of the code, you can get it at

https://github.com/vtsuperdarn/VTRST3.5

This is the latest version of the RST, with a few bugfixes, correct hardware tables and some routines I wrote. The routines I wrote are not really ready for primetime, though.

First, you need these packages:

IDL 8.X
netcdf (dev)
CDF 3.X
netpbm
libpng (dev)
zlib
ncurses (dev)

From there you should be able to download the package as a zip file, or install git and use the command git clone https://github.com/vtsuperdarn/VTRST3.5.git in the directory where you want it installed (RECOMMENDED). The benefit of doing it this way is that you can get updates easily with git if we change anything. The zip file is obviously more straightforward for the first install.

Either way, after downloading (and extracting, if you download a zip), the lines I wrote above need to be added to the ~/.bashrc file and the code is compiled with 'make.build' followed by 'make.code superdarn rst' from your RST directory. Note that between adding the lines to .bashrc and running the compile commands, the terminal needs to be restarted (or a new one opened).

Note: Periodically, we will be pushing updates to VTRST3.5 on github. You can install these updates by going to the directory where you installed the rst and running "git pull origin master" followed by a "make.build" and "make.code superdarn rst"



Notes


I recommend installing the rst to some directory which includes its version, eg 'VTRST3.5', and creating a symbolic link wherever you want to be able to access it, eg '/rst'. That way if more than one version is installed, one can switch between version by just changing the directory the link points to.

For more details or questions, contact AJ.