"aclient" timeout trouble

[abhishek_rawat]

Hello All,
I am using SCAMP Version 1.5.8 on fedora core 9.
I have installed all the dependencies CDSCLIENT etc as given in the manual.
But when I try to run scamp, it exits with the following error message:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[rawat@ps6928fc9 ~/sextractor_test_run]$ scamp test.ldac
----- SCAMP 1.5.8 started on 2010-03-08 at 11:19:35 with 2 threads

----- 1 inputs:
> Examining Catalog test.ldac
> WARNING: FLAGS parameter not found in catalog test.ldac

test.ldac: "no ident " no ext. header 1 set 1637 detections

----- 1637 detections loaded

----- 1 instrument found for astrometry:

Instrument A1 :
FILTER =
QRUNID =

----- 1 instrument found for photometry:

Instrument P1 :
FILTER =

----- 1 field group found:

Group 1: 1 field at 05:52:18.96 +32:33:12.5 with radius 9.133'
instruments center coordinates radius scale
test.ldac A1 P1 05:52:18.96 +32:33:12.5 9.133' 1.008"

----- Reference catalogs:

> Querying USNO-B1.0 at 130.79.129.161 for astrometric reference stars...
****aclient: too long to connect (TIME_MAX=60)
> *Error*: No source found in reference catalog(s) for group 1; wrong sky zone?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

While I am sitting behind a firewall and a proxy server, I have declared http_proxy as username:passwd@proxy:port as normally done.
Separately, I also tried to run one of the scripts that comes as part of CDSCLIENT to cross check and found that it works fine. I checked
---------------------------------------------------------------
findusnob1 -f my_cats -r 9.133 -m 33
---------------------------------------------------------------
where my_cats is an ascii file having the RA/DEC centres. This works just fine and yields a list of objects from USNOB1 as expected (this includes the centre RA/DEC of the field that I gave to scamp above).
So this is not a proxy problem. I have tried connecting to different vizier servers including a local server in India but the problem persists.
Does anyone know a way around this?
Maybe if someone can point out which script from CDSCLIENT is used by SCAMP, I can check it separately as well.
If nothing works, I will need to open the SCAMP course code to see what is being done there, but I thought I will first post my problem here.
Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks and with regards.
abhishek.

[terben]

Hi,

You should try:
- There is a command line option 'CDSCLIENT_EXEC' with that you
can specify the path to the 'aclient' executable. Make sure that the
"aclient" program you use with scamp is the same as that you use
for the manual script calls.

- The Vizier server in Strasbourg is sometimes down which leads to
your error message. In that case you can try to set the option
"REF_SERVER" to "vizier.hia.nrc.ca" and scamp tries to get the
catalogue data at CADC.

One of those always solved that problem for me.

[Emmanuel Bertin]

Hi Abhishek
SCAMP is using the same aclient executable as findusnob1, but by default it does not use HTTP, only its own "legacy" protocol on port 1660. I can certainly try to add an option to have aclient use HTTP if you wish.
- Emmanuel.

[abhishek_rawat]

(03-10-2010 10:42)Emmanuel Bertin Wrote:  Hi Abhishek
SCAMP is using the same aclient executable as findusnob1, but by default it does not use HTTP, only its own "legacy" protocol on port 1660. I can certainly try to add an option to have aclient use HTTP if you wish.
- Emmanuel.

Yes! that would indeed be a very useful feature to have since most organisations tend to block all but a handful of ports.
Do you think you would be able to add this functionality soon?
I did try to change the "REF_PORT" param in scamp.conf to standard HTTP ports like 80 or 8080 with no luck.
The SCAMP manual of course lists this param with an asterisk with the disclaimer
"They must be used with caution, and may be rescoped or removed without notice in future versions".
Not sure if this applies to version 1.5.8

Thanks again!
cheers!
abhishek.

[Emmanuel Bertin]

Hi Abhishek

I am back with a new version 1.7.0 of SCAMP (sorry for the delay). Did you install SCAMP from the source archive or from the RPM? If you installed it from the source, you might want to test the new unstable version on the SVN. Otherwise I will be glad to send you an RPM (32 or 64bit?) for you to test before the final release. Thanks!
Cheers
- Emmanuel.

[abhishek_rawat]

Hello Emmanuel,
Thanks for taking the trouble and fixing this issue................it will help me a lot in my work!
I installed SCAMP using the rpm mainly on account of the fact that I could not get ATLAS to compile on my machine.
Can you please prepare a rpm (32bit) and either send it directly or dump it on a server from where I can download it?
here is the o/p of uname -a on my machine
----------------------------------
>> uname -a
Linux ps6928fc9 2.6.25-14.fc9.i686 #1 SMP Thu May 1 06:28:41 EDT 2008 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
------------------------------------

I will test it out and let you know how it goes.
Thanks again,
cheers!
abhishek.

(03-30-2010 23:50)Emmanuel Bertin Wrote:  Hi Abhishek

I am back with a new version 1.7.0 of SCAMP (sorry for the delay). Did you install SCAMP from the source archive or from the RPM? If you installed it from the source, you might want to test the new unstable version on the SVN. Otherwise I will be glad to send you an RPM (32 or 64bit?) for you to test before the final release. Thanks!
Cheers
- Emmanuel.

[Emmanuel Bertin]

Hi Abhishek,
done! Check your PM and please tell me if it works (you'll need a recent version of CDSclient that contains the aclient_cgi executable).
- Emmanuel.

[abhishek_rawat]

works!
sorry about the delay in replying, as I was tied down by some other work.
Thanks Emmanuel for providing the rpm.
I still end up having to define http_proxy as I am sitting behind a passwd protected proxy server.
I will test more extensively later this week and report back in case of any issues.
thanks again,
cheers!
abhishek.

(04-01-2010 09:57)Emmanuel Bertin Wrote:  Hi Abhishek,
done! Check your PM and please tell me if it works (you'll need a recent version of CDSclient that contains the aclient_cgi executable).
- Emmanuel.

[Emmanuel Bertin]

Thank you Abhishek. I will add a few words about the proxy issue in the documentation.
Cheers
- Emmanuel.