Hi team,

I've finally found a reliable way to run idl jobs in the background so that you can log out and not
+hog up a
computer screen.  (If you're not interested in running idl in the background then you can ignore this
+message.)

Here are the four easy steps:

1) Add this alias to your .cshrc

alias idlback '(/usr/bin/nohup /usr/bin/nice -15 $IDL_DIR/bin/idl < \!*.batch)   >& \!*.log'

        (note: don't forget to source your .cshrc before trying to use it.)
        
2) Create a text file with only the commands you wish to pass to idl.  This file must end in ".batch".

3) Log into a mac using

ssh estrella -X

        (note: estrella can be replaced by 47uma and gandalf.)
        
4) Change to the directory where your ".batch" file is located and type

idlback filename &

where "filename" ends in ".batch" but is omitted in this command.

Done!  Now check to see that it is running with "top" and "more filename.log", which should contain
+all printed
output from idl.  You should be able to log out of the mac without disrupting the idl job.  I
+recommend logging
out and then back into the mac to double check that it is still running.

I still have had no luck running background jobs on the sun's.  This isn't a major issue unless we
+have lots of
cpu demand because the mac's should be able to handle at least 3x's as much as one sun-blade.

Happy computing,

Peter