Introduction

The Munich Image Data Analysis System, MIDAS, is developed and maintained by the European Southern Observatory. Its main goal is to provide the astronomical community with software tools for both general image processing and analysis, and for the reduction of data acquired at ESO telescopes. Although originally developed on a VAX/VMS system, MIDAS is now available for UNIX/Linux systems, or Mac OSX systems.

MIDAS can be obtained as compressed tar file from ESO's ftp server, ftp.eso.org, (dir: ftp.eso.org/pub/midaspub/) via anonymous ftp.

This document describes the installation of MIDAS on computer systems running the UNIX/Linux or Mac OSX operating system. It contains all information needed to ensure a smooth installation of the MIDAS software. In Chapter 2 the actual installation of MIDAS is described, as well as how MIDAS should be set up properly. In addition this chapter describes a few items related with file initializations. In Chapter 3, the installation procedures of graphic devices can be found. Chapter 4 gives an overview of how to install, modify and test local tape drives. Chapter 5 discusses the optional installation of the tapeserver. Chapter 6 describes other optional stand-alone utilities. Chapter 7 contains the address of the MIDAS Hot-Line service in case of problems.

Throughout this document a number of typographic conventions are used. These conventions are given below.

• Italic type style is used to emphasize a term or statement in the body of a paragraph:
• Typewriter type style is used:
  • to show, within the body of the text, command lines or options that should be typed verbatim on the screen;
  • to show, within examples, computer-generated input/output or the contents of files.
• Bold type style only used to emphasize a very important note or remark for the installation of MIDAS.

In addition the following symbols are used:

• # for the standard prompt when executing as superuser.
• % for the standard prompt when executing as a normal user.