20001011: GEMPAK

>From: Stephen Saleeby <address@hidden>
>Organization: UCAR/Unidata
>Keywords: 200010112032.e9BKWr402295

>  I'm a research associate in the Atmospheric Science Dept. at Colorado
>State University and am interested in using GEMPAK for model output
>visualization. To obtain a license do I need to go thru a department
>manager or can I directly get a license for getting a copy to run on my
>Linux machine? What's the typical process to get access to download the
>software?
>
>Thanks,
>  Stephen Saleeby 
>
>-- 
>*************************************************************
>"The eternal God is our refuge, and underneath are the 
>everlasting arms."    -Deuteronomy 31:27-
>
>Stephen Millican Saleeby  (address@hidden)
>3501 S. Stover  Apt 3-54  (H):970-267-9302) (W):970-491-8588
>Fort Collins, CO 80525    (cell):970-231-0390
>
>Home Page: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~smsaleeb
>Gravity Wave Page: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~smsaleeb/gwave.html
>*************************************************************
>

Stephen,

Sorry for the delay in answering your message, but I had to get the
GEMPAK 5.6 release out last week. Now you won't have to download the
distribution a second time to get the most recent version.

Your Atmospheric Science department is licensed for GEMPAK software. 
The department contact we have listed on the contract is John Kliest.
If this is no longer accurate, please let us know. The contract was
signed back in April, 1990 so things change. In general, the site
contact should be responsible for downloading and installing the software,
but I'll provide you with the download instructions. You should of course
find out if your department is in fact maintaining a current version.


The current distribution as of Friday is GEMPAK 5.6.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
The information you need to download gempak is:
host: ftp.unidata.ucar.edu
login: gbuddy
passwd: XXXXXX

Please record the above information for your records.

Here are the general source download and building instructions. If
you are running Solaris x86 or Linux, you can download binary distributions
for these platforms. In particular, GEMPAK requires Motif which is not
part of Linux (must be purchased separately), so you would likely
need to download the binary distribution.

The source distribution for building is found under
~gbuddy/nawips-5.6/gempak_upc5.6.tar.gz

To build Gempak from source, download and unpack the distribution into
a clean directory. Edit the csh file Gemenviron in the top directory
and define the NAWIPS environmental variable to be the directory you
unpacked into. Source the Gemenviron variables into your csh
environment to define $NAWIPS and all the tree locations relative to
NAWIPS. Then, if your system is standard configuration for Solaris,
Solaris for Intel (X86) IRIX, OSF/1, AIX, Linux, HPUX- you should be able 
to just type "make all", followed by "make install" when the compilation 
finishes. 
If you have libraries in non-standard places, then the 
$NAWIPS/config/Makeinc.xxxxx
file for your OS would have to be modified. You should not modify the 
optimization levels since some compilers don't work well with aggressive
optimization (Especially Digital UNIX).

Documentation for GEMAPK can be found as PDF files under
the $NAWIPS/doc/User_Guide directory, as well as online at:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/gempak/tutorial/
I have provided release notes for GEMPAK 5.6 at:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/gempak/GEMPAK5.6/

All users that use Gempak should source Gemenviron into their csh
environment to define the Gempak variables and add the executable
directory into their path. Once the distribution is installed,
you can edit the data directory locations defined in Gemenviron-
but thats not a priority for building.

Plese refer all questions about the distribution and any problems
you may have to address@hidden. You may also wish to
subscribe yourself to the gembud email list at:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/mailinglist/mailing-list-form.html

Announcements about the GEMPAK distribution, including new distributions,
patches, and feature enhancements are made through that list. Also,
if you have information or need to find other users who may have
experience with a specific data set, then you are encouraged to
use the email list which is composed of fellow GEMPAK users in our community.

Once you have GEMPAK installed, you can use the "dc" realtime data decoders
with the LDM package to decode the data into GEMPAK format as it arrives
at your site. Refer to the LDM web pages for the installation of LDM and
getting connected to the IDD. Examples of LDM pqact.cont pattern/action entries 
for 
the various types of data for the GEMPAK decoders are found in the tutorial
as well as in the Examples section of the GEMPAK www pages.


Steve Chiswell
Unidata User Support