problems with ferret 5.0 on Debian GNU/linux 2.1

["Satheesh C. Shenoi" <shenoi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Recently, we have installed the ferret 5.0 beta 1.1 version on Debian GNU/linux
2.1. Earlier we used ferret 4.91 on Sun Solaris 2.5.1. Now we find that, 
something that was working on Sun is not working on the new installation.
For example, 

1. ploting the shape of a smoothing window (@SWL,@SBN, etc)

We tried to recerate figure 8 in chapter 3 of the ferret user's mannual
by using the commands given in the mannual. ie

yes? GO unit_square
yes? SET REGION/X=-1:1
yes? LET delta = IF X EQ 0 THEN 1 ELSE 0
! convolve delta with Welch window
yes? PLOT delta[I=@SWL:15]

Figure 8 in chapter 3 gives a curve peaked at x=0; but we got a stright line
at y=0. No errors are displayed.

When we tried the same on Sun solaris 2.5 (ferret 4.91) we could get the same 
plot as figure 8.

2. a problem with MC data sets under linux. 

The descriptor file is not recognized. The following error is displayed:

yes? set data reynolds_global
 **TMAP ERR: Error in namelist record
             Error in: FORMAT_RECORD; or file not descriptor file
             Data set: /himalaya/user1/datasets/descr/reynolds_global.des
yes?

The descriptor file reynolds_global.des looks like this:

********************************************************************************
 $FORMAT_RECORD
   D_TYPE               = '  MC',
   D_FORMAT             = '  1A',
 $END
 $BACKGROUND_RECORD
   D_TITLE              = 'Reynolds global weekly SST',
   D_T0TIME             = '1-JAN-1982',
   D_TIME_UNIT          = 86400,
   D_TIME_MODULO        = .true.,
   D_ADD_PARM           = ' ',
   D_GRID_FILENAME      = ' ',
 $END
 $MESSAGE_RECORD
   D_MESSAGE            = ' ',
   D_ALERT_ON_OPEN      = F,
   D_ALERT_ON_OUTPUT    = F,
 $END
**************************************************
 $EXTRA_RECORD
 $END
*************************************************************************
 $STEPFILE_RECORD
   S_FILENAME           = 'reynolds_global_1982.nc',
   S_AUX_SET_NUM        = 0,
   S_START              = 2.0,
   S_END                = 359.0,
   S_DELTA              = 7.0,
   S_NUM_OF_FILES       = 1,
   S_REGVARFLAG         = ' ',
 $END
 $STEPFILE_RECORD
   S_FILENAME           = 'reynolds_global_1983.nc',
   S_AUX_SET_NUM        = 0,
   S_START              = 366.0,
   S_END                = 723.0,
   S_DELTA              = 7.0,
   S_NUM_OF_FILES       = 1,
   S_REGVARFLAG         = ' ',
 $END
**************************************************
 $STEPFILE_RECORD
   S_FILENAME           = '**END OF STEPFILES**'
 $END
**************************************************


This also workes on Sun (ferret 4.91). Any clues why we are unable to get going on linux?

Thanks in advance.


Satheesh C. Shenoi                     Ph.:   (91)(832) 226253-56 ext 224/400
Physical Oceanography Division,        Fax:   (91)(832) 223340/221360
National Institute of Oceanography,    email: shenoi@darya.nio.org
					      shenoi@csnio.ren.nic.in
Dona Paula, Goa 403 004, India.	       Ph.:   (91)(832) 233453 (home)