Installation

Note

This section provides an overview of different ways to install specific components of CARTA. Please refer to our step-by-step instructions for a complete set of installation and configuration instructions for supported platforms, and ensure that you have followed all the required steps before running the controller.

Installing the backend

Packages

We provide binary Ubuntu and RPM packages of the latest beta and stable releases of the CARTA backend for all officially supported distributions.

You can install the latest stable version with all dependencies on Ubuntu by adding our main PPA to your system and running apt-get install carta-backend.

On AlmaLinux you can add our main Copr repository and run sudo dnf install carta-backend.

Note

The packages in the main repositories are updated with every stable CARTA release. If you would like to install the latest beta version of CARTA, or to receive beta release updates as well as stable release updates in the future, please use the alternate preview PPA or preview Copr repository instead.

Packaged debug symbols

You can install debugging symbols for our Ubuntu packages with apt if you enable this option for our PPA (substitute the preview PPA URL as required).

sudo add-apt-repository -c main/debug ppa:cartavis-team/carta
sudo apt-get install carta-backend-dbgsym

Rebuilding packages

Our Ubuntu package source is available in a collection of public repositories. Please refer to the debian subdirectories in these repositories if you would like to build your own Debian packages, or to check what build options we use.

You can also obtain the Ubuntu package source with apt-src after enabling source packages for our PPA (substitute the preview PPA URL as required).

sudo add-apt-repository -s ppa:cartavis-team/carta
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install apt-src
apt-src install carta-backend

You can obtain the RPM package source with dnf.

dnf download --source carta-backend

Custom Casacore version

The backend depends on a custom version of the Casacore C++ library which also includes the image analysis component of CASA. We provide Ubuntu and RPM packages of this dependency in the same repositories as the backend packages. To avoid clashes with the default system Casacore packages, our packages use a different name, and a custom install location, /opt/carta-casacore.

External data for Casacore

Casacore depends on a collection of external astronomical data. Some distributions provide packages for this. Because these packages may be far behind the current version of the data, you may wish to manage the required files without using a package.

The casacore-data package is recommended by the Ubuntu backend package, but installing it is optional. The packages in our Ubuntu PPAs (release or preview) should be compatible both with the casacore-data package in the core Ubuntu repositories and with the package provided by the Kern PPAs. To avoid installing the casacore-data package, use the --no-install-recommends flag when installing the backend package.

An example script for fetching the data manually (you can configure cron to run this weekly):

#!/bin/bash

rm -f /tmp/WSRT_Measures.ztar
wget ftp://ftp.astron.nl/outgoing/Measures/WSRT_Measures.ztar -P /tmp -q

mkdir -p /var/lib/casacore/data
tar zxf /tmp/WSRT_Measures.ztar -C /var/lib/casacore/data
chmod -R 755 /var/lib/casacore/data

Installing from source

To install the backend on a different host system, or to install a custom version, you can build it from source from the backend repository on GitHub. The dockerfiles in the backend repository are a good starting point for installing and configuring all the build dependencies on different Linux distributions.

Once all dependencies have been installed, check out the backend repository and all its submodules, and build using cmake.

# Clone the backend repository
git clone https://github.com/CARTAvis/carta-backend.git
cd carta-backend
git submodule update --init

# Configure the build
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..

# Build
make -j8

The backend executable will be located in the build directory.

Note

If you are building the latest development or beta version of the backend on a recent Ubuntu or RPM-based system, you should be able to install the packaged build dependencies from the preview PPA or Copr repository. However, if you are building the latest stable release version, you should install them from the main PPA or Copr repository instead.

Note

If you install a custom backend, ensure that a custom processCommand is set in the controller configuration and that the backend path is updated in the sudoers file.

Installing the frontend

If you install the controller package from NPM, the corresponding packaged version of the frontend will be installed automatically as a dependency. However, you may wish to install a custom version of the frontend if you are installing the controller from source, or if you would like to test an updated frontend version.

Note

If you install a custom frontend, ensure that a custom frontendPath is set in the controller configuration.

NPM package

You can manually install a specific published version of the frontend from NPM, either globally or into a custom location.

# Install latest pre-release version into the current directory
npm install carta-frontend@dev

Installing from source

Development versions of the frontend can be installed from the frontend repository on GitHub. Node.js and NPM are required for the build. We recommend performing the WebAssembly compilation in a container. The example below requires Docker to be installed. Please refer to the repository documentation for more compilation options.

# Clone the frontend repository
git clone https://github.com/CARTAvis/carta-frontend.git
cd carta-frontend
git submodule update --init

# Build the frontend (using Docker for WebAssembly compilation)
npm install
npm run prepack

The built frontend will be available in the build subdirectory.

Copying existing build

The generated code in the build directory is standalone and portable between systems. If you already have a build of the frontend in another location, you can safely copy only this directory and use it without having to rebuild it. This may be simpler than setting up a build environment on your server.

The build can be found in carta-frontend/build in the node_packages directory created by an NPM install. You can also download tarballs of builds directly from the NPM repository without using npm.

Installing the controller

NPM package

You can install the latest stable version of the CARTA controller from NPM by running npm install -g carta-controller.

Note

If you would like to install the latest beta release of CARTA, please install carta-controller@beta instead.

If you would like to install the package in a local directory, omit the -g flag.

Installing from source

Development versions of the controller can be installed from the controller repository.

# Clone the controller repository
git clone https://github.com/CARTAvis/carta-controller.git
cd carta-controller
git submodule update --init

# Install the controller
npm install

Running the controller

Executable location

The carta-controller executable can be found

  • on the system path, if you installed the NPM package globally

  • in node_modules/.bin and node_modules/carta-controller/dist, if you installed the NPM package locally

  • in carta-controller/dist, if you installed from the source directory.

If you installed the controller from source, you can also launch it by running npm start in the source directory.

Kill script location

The kill script executable path is

  • /usr/bin/carta-kill-script or /usr/local/bin/carta-kill-script, if you installed the NPM package globally (depending on the Node.js distribution)

  • node_modules/.bin/carta-kill-script, if you installed the NPM package locally

  • carta-controller/scripts/carta_kill_script.sh, if you installed from the source directory.

Ensure that the correct killCommand is set in the controller configuration, and that the kill script path is correct in the sudoers file.

Persistence

You can use a utility such as forever or pm2 to keep the controller running. It is also possible to create a pm2 startup script which will automatically start the controller when the system is rebooted.