KARMA: Download and Installation

Please note that all versions of the KARMA software includes a dedicated version of the RTD executable. It will not interfere with any other installation(s) of the tool on your system.

Installing KARMA

KARMA is available via Apptainer containers (for Intel Linux), package managers (MacPorts, RPM/yum/dnf & apt) from the ESO Mac & Linux Software repositories for some OS+Hardware combinations or via binary distribution tar.gz file for several different hardware platforms.

KARMA is available via the following installation methods:

  • macOS, version 2.7:
    • Intel Silicon: MacPorts (binary packages for macOS-12 (Monterrey) only)
    • Apple Silicon: not available (but coming soon... soonish...)
  • Linux, version 2.8 (the latest):
    • Apptainer
    • RPM: CentOS-7 and for some, but not all, Fedora <= 32

macOS

For the moment we are still stcuk at version 2.7 for macOS, and this is ONLY available for Intel Silicon hardware. We are working on the final steps to bring KARMA-2.8 to macOS MacPorts for both Intel and Apple Silicon.

Linux

We are unable to compile and run KARMA via RPMs in Fedora beyond Fedora-32. Using the Fedora-32 RPM we have managed to make Ubuntu packages for Ubuntu releases up to 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish). We have therefore decided to provide KARMA Apptainer containers based on the Fedora-32 KARMA-2.8 RPMS which should allow KARMA to be run on any Linux installation where Apptainer can be installed. Apptainer is thus now the recommended install method for KARMA for all 'modern' Linux versions and distributions (compatible with Apptainer). Apptainer even seems to be available for CentOS-7, so it can (probably) even be used there (though we have not as yet tested that).

The exisiting RPM and Ubuntu package repositories will remain available for the forseeable future so you can still use those if packages your distribution & version happen to still be available, but they will no longer be updated.

Apptainer

Instructions for installing KARMA via Apptainer are available in the Apptainer containers for Observation Preparation Software knowledgebase article.

ESO Mac & Linux software repositories

To install the relevant repository, please follow the relevant instructions at ESO Mac & Linux software repositories, in the final instruction for each OS/distribution replace the generic <package_name> with eso-karma. i.e. one of the following, as appropriate for your OS/distribution:

sudo port install eso-karma
sudo dnf install eso-karma
sudo yum install eso-karma
sudo apt-get install eso-karma

Once installed, see the instructions for use here.

Installation from tarball

This install method is OBSOLETE and NO support can be provided. Caveat emptor, use at your own risk.

For a number of target platforms precompiled KARMA binary releases are available. Download the appropriate KARMA package from the following list:

You can determine the type of your hardware platform by typing: uname -m

  • After download you should have a gzipped tar file in your current directory. Unpack it by executing: tar fvxz karma_bin_<machine>_<os>_<version>.tar.gz This will create a directory called karma_bin_<machine>_<os>_<version> with subdirectories bin, data, config and doc.
  • You may now remove the gzipped tar file: rm karma_bin_<machine>_<os>_<version>.tar.gz
  • The bin subdirectory of karma_bin_<machine>_<os>_<version> contains the single executable karma. If you don't want to call karma via its absolute path, you should include the bin subdirectory into your PATH environment variable.

    • Building and installing KARMA from the source distribution

    Installation from source code is currently not supported due to licencing issues. We hope to have a new version of KARMA available, including source code soon.

    Running KARMA

    Assuming that you have successfully installed KARMA, you can now start the tool with 'karma' if it is in your path, or using the absolute path: <karma-dest-dir>/bin/karma or /usr/bin/karma on Linux if you installed from the repositories or /opt/local/bin/karma if you installed on Mac from the repository.

    For more information about how to install and use the tool to prepare your observations, check out the KARMA User Manual.

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