Sometimes malacq.tcl hangs, appears to hang, or otherwise malfunctions. This can be a serious problem because it has changed some important instrument settings, and, even worse, some of these settings are more or less hidden from the observer! Below is a guide to recovering from this situation.

1. First and foremost, make sure that malacq.tcl is not simply waiting for some task to complete. The tasks that take a long time are (a) setting the instrument in preparation for MAlign, (b) waiting for the ACS to settle after putting focus mode in or taking focus mode out (40 s), (c) taking an image (usually about 60 s per exposure; if you are doing two exposures per focus mode setting, expect to wait for two minutes), and (d) restoring the observer's instrument settings.

2. Next, try to kill malacq.tcl. You can click the QUIT button, try to quit from the title bar pull-down menu, or type "kill_em malacq" on a kanaha window, in that order of preference.

3. Confirm with the observers that their "Move" and/or "Update CCD" buttons are still yellow. This indicates that their original settings have not been restored.

4. If either or both of those buttons are yellow, ask the observers to click the button(s). This should restore most, if not all, of the settings.

5. On kanaha, type "initCCD" to restore the hidden CCD parameters.
   
   

6. The steps above should fix any problems, but as a last resort, initialize the instrument. The observers can do this by clicking on the button labeled either "Start Here!" or "User Config." Then they should click the "Initialize Instrument" button, and finally the black button that says they really do want to initialize the instrument. This procedure will move motors, and leave the instrument in a default state. It takes about 3 and a half minutes.

7. If you have to initialize the instrument, have the observers check their data directory, CCD binning, observing mode, etc.