Starting Sunsort

Setting your path

Before you can run Sunsort, you'll have to tell the computer where to find it. This is done by setting an environment variable called PATH. You will need to know where Sunsort has been installed on your system. Find out who was responsible for installing Sunsort at your site and ask them, or failing that, ask another Sunsort user. For the sake of the following examples, we'll assume that the answer you got was /opt/sunsort/sunsort.

To determine the correct command to use you need to know what type of shell you're running. To do this, enter the command echo $SHELL. If the answer ends in csh or tcsh then you are running a C-Shell variant. If it ends in sh, ksh or bash then you are running a Bourne Shell variant.

For C-Shell variants, type:

      set path = ( /opt/sunsort/sunsort $path )

For Bourne shell variants, type:

      export PATH
      PATH=/opt/sunsort/sunsort:${PATH}

You may wish to add these commands to the list of commands that are executed automatically each time you log in. If so add them to the end of the file called .cshrc if you are using a C-Shell variant, or add them to the end of the file called .profile if you are using a Bourne Shell variant.

Running Sunsort

Once your path is set up, all you'll usually need to do to run Sunsort is to type sunsort at the command line. Everything else should happen automatically.

Very occasionally you may need to type some options at the command line. They are as follows:

-nograf: stop Sunsort from automatically starting its 1d and 2d display processes.
-nogui: stop Sunsort from automatically starting its front end graphical user interface.
-batch filename: specify the name of an input file containing a sequence of Sunsort commands to be initially processed. This option also sets -nograf and -nogui.
-sproc: specify the name of a sort program which will be loaded at startup. By default Sunsort will try to load its sort program from ./sunsort_proc and its spectra and variable definitions from ./sunsort_proc.spec.
-dbx level: the numeric level entered after this option defines how much diagnostic verbiage Sunsort will generate. Setting a debug level of 1 can sometimes provide messages which may help the user better understand any problems he or she may be encountering. Higher values give more information. The default is level 0.

Steven M. Singer

Last modified: Wed Sep 29 22:09:45 BST 1999