Why is it stuck when I run the catalog with phosim and where can I find the right SEDs?

[Former user]

Hi, I am trying to simulate some images followed by the phosim tutorials,however,I met two problems that stopped me generate the right simulate images as flollows:

(1)Firstly,when I installed phosim successfully and run the first command "phosim examples/star -c examples/nobackground" as PhoSim Tutorial 3 shows.but,it returns that:

note:My laptop OS is Ubuntu 16.04 .

zlw@zlw-virtual-machine:~/StarTrails/phosim_v5.3.1$ ./phosim examples/star -c examples/nobackground ...... Number of Sources: 4 Photons: 1.16e+04 Photons/cm^2/s: 9.86e-02

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Photon Raytrace commit none

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Type Sources Photons/Electrons ( Sat , Rem , Rej , Acc )% Time (s) Events/s

then it will stucked.

I wonder if I run the wrong process or missed some necessary files or parameters?

(2)Secondly,when I download the catalog example file "phoSim_example.txt" and runs "./phosim /home/zlw/StarTrails/SimCatlog/phoSim_example.txt -c examples/nobackground",but it shows that:

(part of output) ...... Photon Raytrace ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Installing Universe. Can't find SED file: /home/zlw/StarTrails/phosim_paper/data/SEDs/starSED/mlt/m0.6Full.dat.gz ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Photon Raytrace ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Installing Universe. Can't find SED file: /home/zlw/StarTrails/phosim_paper/data/SEDs/starSED/mlt/m0.6Full.dat.gz

I'd also down load SEDs as the tutorial shows, which are curated at the Spanish Virtual Observatory and the Space Telescope Institute. Put the SEDs into the directory data/SEDs after untarring.. It almost 6.7G. but I could not find the file like 'starSED/mlt/m0.6Full.dat.gz'.

Looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks a lot!

Best regards!

[John Peterson]

Hi-

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Ok, so the hanging after the raytrace printout should definitely not be happening. It should complete in a fraction of a second for this particular example.

Did you have any compiler warnings? Have you tried a slightly older version (v5.2)? You could also try some of the more complicated examples (e.g. examples/small_catalog), but not sure if that is useful.

I’ve forwarded your problem to someone who has a similar linux distribution, so we should have something for you soon.

As for the SEDs, you should definitely continue to use the curated SVO & STSci set. The other test catalog (I think you’ve found from the Rubin page) is several years old, and you should avoid that example.

Anyways, I should update this in a day or two.

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John

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[John Peterson]

We ran v5.3.1 on Ubuntu 18.04, and it seemed to work fine. Is there any chance that this is coming from running on a virtual machine? Have you tried running it locally?

[lunwei zhang]

Thank you for your patiently reply,your suggestions help me a lot . And I will try v5.3.1 on Ubuntu 18.04.

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[John Peterson]

also, do you have any compiler warnings when you compile it? that could be a clue.

[lunwei zhang]

Thank you John,sorry for replying you so late, I tried v5.3.1 on Ubuntu 18.04 again, still on virtual machine,I make a little modification and it worked fine now. The main reason is my OS’s environment is not that friendly. what I modified as follows:

and the same modification on phosim_gui.

[John Peterson]

ok, i see. so what it is using is the python reference from a file that phosim creates in phosim/bin/setup. there you can see where it thinks your python is. this line gets created by the configure script where it simply does the “which python” command, so it assumes you already have python pointing to your preferred place.

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So you can either:

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1. just do what have done and edit those two files (that should be fine).
2. or you could have just edited the bin/setup file to point to the different python
3. or you can configure the environment variable correctly before you run configure
4. or we could modify the configure script in the future so it makes sure your python is configured. I’m certainly willing to do that, but I’m not sure how many users would have the command “python” not pointing to python.

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Thanks for your interest, and even if we don’t do 4, maybe we can change the documentation to make this more clear.

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john

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[John Peterson]

Lunwei-

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What happens when you type “which python”? I know you said that your configuration requires you to use python3, but I’m just wondering what the command would say because then we could make the configure script more robust by at least checking for a problem.

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John

[lunwei zhang]

Hi,John, it shows :

~$ which python
/usr/bin/python
~$ which python3
/usr/bin/python3
~$ python
Python 2.7.17 (default, Jul 20 2020, 15:37:01)
[GCC 7.5.0] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

It looks like worked fine. And,I tried phosim_v5.3.2 on the same Ubuntu18.04 yesterday,this version can be worded successfully without any modification.

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Lunwei

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[John Peterson]

ok, so since you have that “which python” returns a valid directory, we can’t test for that. but what happens when you type “python --version” and “python3 --version”. I’m not really sure why your regular python isn’t working. is your python3, python version 3?

[lunwei zhang]

Hi,It shows like :

I am considering try v5.3.1 on Ubuntu18.04 agin this weekend to see more details and make sure whether the problem shows again. if there are any other clues,I will show you.

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[John Peterson]

I think this is probably resolved. Will close this soon.