flocs-lta

A package that focuses on interaction with the LOFAR Long Term Archive within the FLOCS ecosystem.

Installation

Flocs-lta has a few non-standard dependencies to interact with the LTA. To use flocs-lta, do not follow the LTA client instructions as given in the readme of lofar_lta. They are outdated and not applicable for at least Python 3.12 and up. Instead, follow the instructions here. The following dependencies are needed:

• lofar_stager_api: https://git.astron.nl/astron-sdc/lofar_stager_api
• lofar_lta: https://lta.lofar.eu/software/
• Oracle instant client

Installing lofar_stager_api

Clone the lofar_stager_api from https://git.astron.nl/astron-sdc/lofar_stager_api and add it to your PYTHONPATH.

Installing lofar_lta

Download LTA 2.8.0 (or newer) from https://lta.lofar.eu/software/. Unzip and run

uv pip install oracledb
uv pip install lofar_lta-2.8.0

Installing Oracle Instant Client

Go to https://www.oracle.com/database/technologies/instant-client/linux-x86-64-downloads.html and download the basic package. Unzip, and add the resulting folder (e.g. instantclient_23_26) to LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

Setting up the enviornment for interacting with the LTA

To use flocs-lta, we need set up interaction with the StageIt service and with the LTA database. First make a file under $HOME/.stagingrc with your username and StageIt token. This will be used for downloading data. Next, configure your AWE environment by editing $HOME/.awe/Environment.cfg. Set database_user and database_password to your LTA credenditals, and add an entry for database_api set to oracledb-thin (or modify it if it h as been defined already).

Installing flocs-lta

The FLOCS LTA package can be installed as usual with pip:

uv pip install git+https://github.com/FLOCSoft/flocs-lta.git

If everything went well, you should be able to see the help via flocs-lta --help.