IRAF/X11 install issues on WSL2/Ubuntu

[cphenr02]

Hello,

I have been attempting to install IRAF and X11IRAF to my Windows 10 device with Ubuntu 20.04 (using WSL2) but keep running into issues. The primary issue is while attempting to compile X11 and occurs when attempting to compile ximtool specifically.

I installed IRAF using sudo apt install iraf which appeared to work fine however I receive an error saying

Command 'xgterm' not found, did you mean:
command 'xterm' from deb xterm (353-1ubuntu.1.20.04.2)
Try: sudo apt install

I believe these is due to needed X11 however this runs into the issue mentioned above.

I've attached a log of the compilation process including errors. I'm very new to Linux but need IRAF for my internship so if anyone could walk me through how to resolve these issues I would greatly appreciate it. If a build.log is needed, can you please direct me on how to pull this as well? (again, new to Linux! Sorry!)

x11_make_error.txt.txt

Thank you in advance.

[olebole]

If you just need xgterm, then it is already compiled now as xgterm/xgterm. Copy it to /usr/local/bin/, and you are ready for IRAF.

The error you see happened when you tried to compile an optional IRAF extension for ximtool. So, ximtool itself should also already usable as ximtool/ximtool (without the extension doesn't display the world coordinates).

This error looks as if you had one of the IRAF environment variables set from an earlier attempt to compile/install IRAF, like iraf, host or so. Please check also that the file /usr/lib/iraf/extern/.zzsetenv.def exists (maybe an empty file), and that you used the correct xc (the one that comes with Ubuntu, in /usr/bin).

However, I strongly recommend to not start with IRAF. IRAF is an old, abandoned piece of software, which is kept here mainly for people who still rely on this.
Instead I recommend to use astropy and its affiliated packages.