saltemail

Name

saltemail – email adapted standard letter to PIs

Usage

saltemail pinames scamobslog rssobslog emailfile readme logfile (verbose) (status)

Parameters

pinames
String. List of Principle Investigator surnames. Surnames can be provided as a comma-separated list, or a string with a wildcard, or a foreign file containing an ascii list of surnames. For the ascii list option, the filename containing the list must be provided preceded by a ‘@’ character, e.g. 'images=@listofnames.lis‘. All surnames in the list must match surnames stored in the PROPOSERS FITS keyword of SALT image data, although string-matching within the task is case-insensitive. Alternatively if pinames=’all’ the task will collate data individually for all PI names that are tabulated within the observation log.
scamobslog
String. The name of a FITS table file containing SALTICAM output from the saltlog task. If the file resides in a separate directory then the absolute or relative path must be supplied with the file name. If no SALTICAM data exists from the night of interest, use scamobslog=’None’.
rssobslog
String. The name of a FITS table file containing RSS output from the saltlog task. If the file resides in a separate directory then the absolute or relative path must be supplied with the file name. If no RSS data exists from the night of interest, use rssobslog=’None’.
emailfile

String. The name of an ascii file containing PI names and their email addresses. If the file is contained in a different directory then the relative or absolute path must also be included. The format of the file is a two-column table. Th first column is an exact match for PI names contained in data keywords (although case is not important). The second column is hte email address and the two columns are separated by a comma. Below is an example:

bloke,abloke@saao.ac.za
geezer,ugeezer@rutger.edu
doofus,doof@soton.ac.uk
readme
String. An ascii file containing relavant information for the data PI. This information is converted to a PI-tailored email message. A canned version of the file is provided in /iraf/extern/salt/pysalt/html/readme.template which can be copied and edited by users. If the readme file does not exist, the task will continue after providing a warning.
server
String. The address of the email server.
username
String. A valid username on the email server.
password
String. The valid password assocciated with username on the email server.
logfile
String. Name of an ascii file for storing log and error messages written by the task. The file may be new, or messages can also be appended to a pre-existing file.
(verbose)
Hidden Boolean. If verbose=’no’, log messages will be suppressed from both the terminal and the log file. Error messages are excluded from this rule.
(status)
Hidden Integer. Provided status=0 is passed to saltemail, a successful run of the task will yield status=0 at completion of the task. Any other value for the status flag at completion indicates failed execution.

Description

saltemail is the final task called within the SALT automated pipeline. After data has been reduced, archived and transferred to the public FTP server, saltemail notifies PIs of the availability of their data by email.

Before execution, a pre-requisite is that the email addresses of the PIs are recorded in the table referred to by the emailfile argument. It is the repsonsibility of the SALT Astronomers to ensure that the table remains up-to-date. Since the file is based upon PI name there is potential for name duplication and email address ambiguity.

The PI names referenced in the piname input argument are cross-correlated with the PI names recoded in the RSS and SALTICAM observation logs. If there are mis-matches then the task will stop with an error message. The task will also stop if there are mutliple matches of the same name in the email table.

The email message itself is copied from a text template, pointed to with the readme argument. The template is copied exactly into the body of the message with three exceptions. Any instance of the string ‘SALT user’ will be replaced by the PI’s name, any instance of the string ‘yourname’ will be replaced by the PI’s name and any instance of the string ‘yyyymmdd’ will be replaced by the date of the observation.

It is exected that saltemail will be run manually for a period of time. Once confidence has been gained in the performance of the pipeline, saltemail will be run antomatically.

Examples

1. To send email to three PIs based upon standard text kept in the template file /iraf/extern/salt/pysalt/html/readme.template:

--> saltemail pinames='Bloke,Geezer,Doofus'
scamobslog='/Volumes/data1/Sobslog.fits'
rssobslog='/Volumes/data1/Pobslog.fits'
emailfile='/Volumes/data2/pi_emails.dat'
readme='/iraf/extern/salt/pysalt/html/readme.template'
logfile='salt.log' verbose='yes'

Time and disk requirements

saltemail requires no significant disk space. Execution time is typically 1 sec.

Bugs and limitations

Ideally email addresses should be extracted from the SALT database. Until the SALT database is released, data files will not contain an observation ID within keywords. Before then, saltemail will operate upon PI names.

Send feedback and bug reports to salthelp@saao.ac.za

See also

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