Ansvr failure

Sequence Generator Plate Solving
1

Hi,

Last night and for no apparent reason local astrometry failed to solve because apparently no indexes were specified. I have had it working for a while so was surprised.

My indexes are stored in C:\cygwin\usr\share\astrometry\data and are all the 4205 series which fits my fov.

the ansvr log said someting along the lines of you must specify at least one index file in backend.cfg (cygwin\etc\astrometry\backend.cfg So I opened the cfg file which I have never done before and here is what it contains - I don’t think it’s right and why has it changed? It doesn’t seem to specify my 4205 set and I have had it working between march and may this year.

Will i just add in the names of my indexes into this file and save it?

not sure what’s happened.

also the format of what I have pasted in here excludes all the hash symbols at the beginning of commented lines.

thanks for any help,
Paul

This is a config file for the ‘backend’ program - it contains information about

where indices are stored, and “site policy” items.

Check the indices in parallel?

-if the indices you are using take less than 2 GB of space, and you have at least

as much physical memory as indices, then you want this enabled.

-if you are using a 64-bit machine and you have enough physical memory to contain

the indices you are using, then you want this enabled.

-otherwise, leave it commented-out.

#inparallel

If no scale estimate is given, use these limits on field width.

minwidth 0.1

maxwidth 180

If no depths are given, use these:

#depths 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Maximum CPU time to spend on a field, in seconds:

default is 600 (ten minutes), which is probably way overkill.

cpulimit 300

In which directories should we search for indices?

add_path /usr/share/astrometry/data

Load any indices found in the directories listed above.

autoindex

Or… explicitly list the indices to load.

#index index-219
#index index-218
#index index-217
#index index-216
#index index-215
#index index-214
#index index-213
#index index-212
#index index-211
#index index-210
#index index-209
#index index-208
#index index-207
#index index-206
#index index-205
#index index-204-00
#index index-204-01
#index index-204-02
#index index-204-03
#index index-204-04
#index index-204-05
#index index-204-06
#index index-204-07
#index index-204-08
#index index-204-09
#index index-204-10
#index index-204-11
#index index-203-00
#index index-203-01
#index index-203-02
#index index-203-03
#index index-203-04
#index index-203-05
#index index-203-06
#index index-203-07
#index index-203-08
#index index-203-09
#index index-203-10
#index index-203-11
#index index-202-00
#index index-202-01
#index index-202-02
#index index-202-03
#index index-202-04
#index index-202-05
#index index-202-06
#index index-202-07
#index index-202-08
#index index-202-09
#index index-202-10
#index index-202-11
#index index-201-00
#index index-201-01
#index index-201-02
#index index-201-03
#index index-201-04
#index index-201-05
#index index-201-06
#index index-201-07
#index index-201-08
#index index-201-09
#index index-201-10
#index index-201-11
#index index-200-00
#index index-200-01
#index index-200-02
#index index-200-03
#index index-200-04
#index index-200-05
#index index-200-06
#index index-200-07
#index index-200-08
#index index-200-09
#index index-200-10
#index index-200-11

2

Hi Paul,

I would not recommend editing that config file without understanding what changed or what went wrong.

Your index file path C:\cygwin\usr\share\astrometry\data suggests you installed ansvr before the advent of the ansvr installer . Is this the case? Or do you have a customized installation using the ansvr installer with the index files in a non-standard location?

Andy

3

HI Andy, thanks for your help. I originally installed Astrotortilla, but did not download the index files, as I had them (and AT and ANSVR) installed on a different machine.

So what I did was this:
install AT (without indexes)
Install ANSVR (without indexes)

copy all the relevant indexes from my other computer (C:\cygwin\usr\share\astrometry\data)

to the current computer (C:\cygwin\usr\share\astrometry\data)

On reflection, perhaps I need to set a path so that ANSVR knows where the files are?

On the current computer I think i would have used the ANSVR installer but sorry I can’t remember - I know i didn’t download the index files but copied across as explained.

Is there anything else I can check to give you more info?

thanks
Paul

4

Paul,

On the current computer, assuming you used the ansvr installer, ansvr will be looking for the index files in the folder

C:\Users\<YOUR_USERNAME>\AppData\Local\cygwin_ansvr\usr\share\astrometry\data

If you move the index files there it should work.

If you are trying to install both ansvr and AT on the current computer and have them share the index files, that’s a bit different and we’ll have to edit one of the config files to get one of the programs to see the other one’s index files.

Andy

5

thanks very much Andy, I put the index files in the path you indicated - it
works fine now.
best wishes
Paul