Programs

GetFiles

This program is a shell script that downloads new files from the ARI website. The program is run every hour about 10min before the hour.

The program downloads all the files from the ARI FTP site to the local raw folder. This is done for each (24", 30" and 32") telescope and for yesterday's today's and tomorrow's dates. The wget program is used by calling the following command:

wget -r -N -nd -a ftplog.txt --ftp-user=u48933853-ps1 --ftp-password=you_know ftp://sfhartung.com/\!2014\ 24\ inch\ images/2014\ 03\ 30

• The options are: -r (recursive), -N (use time stamping i.e. files are only copied if server version is younger than local version), -nd (just copy files, no directories), -a logfile (append to logfile), --ftp-user=user --ftp-password=password (username and password)

GetFiles was written by Marc Berthoud

Move2Web / U_GroupZip

The u_groupzip program reads the RA and Dec information from all the downloaded files. Then the files are grouped by RA and Dec. Files from each of these groups are stored in three folders which are then archived using the zip command. The information about each ziped image group is passed to move2web. That program extracts information (like the object's name RA, Dec, etc.) from this group and then stores the values in a log file that it automatically generates for the date of that day. This information is used to automatically build a webpage containing a table that lists all the image sets and their corresponding data on the Yerkes IASC Page. Finally, included in the table is a link that fills out a form for the MPC Ephemeris Service that generates the ephemerides for the asteroid that is in each set of images.

The program is started with the following command:

python u_groupzip.py [yyyy_mm_dd]

where the date [yyyy_mm_dd] is optional, default is the current date.

Move2Web was written by Grant Luberda, U_GroupZip was written by Joe Ulowetz.

U_GroupZip Outline

The program runs 4 times a day and goes through the following steps:

1. See if there is another copy of the program running (using the file running_flag.txt). If such a file exists and is older than 24 hours the developers are notified by E-mail.
2. Determine if there are any files in the FTP folder that are younger than 30 minutes. In that case, the program assumes that the download is ongoing and shuts down.
3. Transfer all the files from the FTP folder to a local folder.
4. Decompress (unzip) all the files
5. Sort the files into groups of identical (or similar tbd) RA and DEC corresponding to different asteroid observations
6. For each group the images are compressed into one ZIP file and transferred to the Yerkes Observatory website (by calling move2web).

Move2Web Functions

More extensive documentation of the functions can be found in the comments of move2web.

Clear: This function deletes any old list files (logs).

Addfile: This function creates and adds a list file for that day.

Upload: This function uploads all the list files to the web.

Makeweblist: This function creates the webpage and table that people can access the asteroid image sets from.

Maintenance

The maintenance program is run every day at 16:41 to confirm that the days data were reduced and uploaded successfully.

Maintenance was written by Grant Luberda.

Crontab Entries

The following crontab entries are required for the program to run:

50 * * * * /home/berthoud/asteroids/code/getfiles

10 9 * * * python /home/berthoud/asteroids/code/u_groupzip.py

10 12 * * * python /home/berthoud/asteroids/code/u_groupzip.py

10 18 * * * python /home/berthoud/asteroids/code/u_groupzip.py

30 16 * * * python /home/berthoud/asteroids/code/maintenance.py