Installing CASA on Linux

To install CASA for Linux, we have packaged up a binary distribution of CASA which is available as a downloadable tar file. We believe this binary distribution works with most Linux distributions.

We do not currently have a distribution designed for end users who wish to do C++ development using CASA.

Simply download and untar the distribution
tar xzvf casa-release-##version##.tar.gz
all executables, including casapy are in the casa-release-##version##/bin directory.

Caveats

You do not have to have root or sudo permission, you can easily install CASA, delete it, move it, and it works for many versions of Linux.

You may also want to include the executables to your path, i.e.
export PATH=$PATH://casa-release-##version##/bin
for bash or
set path = ($path //casa-release-##version##/bin)
for csh shell environments.

The one caveat is that CASA on Linux currently will not run if the Security-Enhanced Linux option of the linux operating system is set to enforcing. For the non-root install to work. SElinux must be set to disabled or permissive (in /etc/selinux/config) or you must run (as root):

setsebool -P allow_execheap=1

Otherwise, you will encounter errors like:

casapy: error while loading shared libraries: /opt/casa/casapy-20.0.5653-001/lib/liblapack.so.3.1.1: cannot restore segment prot after reloc: Permission denied

The non-root installation is thought to work on a wide variety of linux platforms, see the Obtaining CASA for the officially supported OSs. Other platforms may work, too, but we do not regularly test those.

Unsupported platforms

The non-root install may work on other platforms not listed, please let us know if you find that this binary distribution of CASA works on other linux platforms.

Also note, that the plotting tasks like plotxy and plotcal are the ones that typically give problems for new platforms, so a check of these after attempting an unsupported platform installation is advisable.

Obtaining CASA

See Obtaining CASA for download options.

Support

If you encounter difficulties, please see our list of known problems or consult our CASA helpdesk or the ALMA helpdesk.

If you want to be kept up to date about CASA, please subscribe to our CASA mailing lists.

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