20020615: GEMPAK Installation Help - Newbie Alert

Corene,

When you source Gemenviron, it will add the $NAWIPS/bin/linuxc and
$NAWIPS/bin/scripts directories to your path (at the end) automatically,
so you don't have to duplicate that step.

Your problem is:
InitGempakColorMap:  Can't allocate Graphic colors.


This probably means that your X display is running in 24 bit mode.
To use GEMPAK, your default X display will have to be 8 bits.
In RH Linux 7.3, the default Xfree86 server has a bug that
eats all available colors, so you will have to CVS checkout and
build the server for 7.3. That shouldn't be a problem with 7.2...
though 7.2 had lots of other bugs.

You can use the search page from the gempak homee page. The Xfree86 
for RH 7.3 is discussed at:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/glimpse/gempak/5085

When you have configured your display as 8 bits, the one gotcha is
that you can't use GNOME which reserves all colors. Instead, use
KDE, FVWM, TWM etc,

For KDE, you can get the most available colors by setting the toolbar and 
window manager icons to gray:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/gempak/tutorial/gifs/linux_kde1.gif


Steve Chiswell
Unidata User Support





>From: "CORENE J MATYAS" <address@hidden>
>Organization: UCAR/Unidata
>Keywords: 200206151948.g5FJmXJ05062

>Can anyone give me an "Idiot's Guide To Installing GEMPAK on Linux"?
>I'm running Red Hat 7.2 [kernel 2.4.10smp] (I've also got another
>machine with 7.3 [kernel 2.4.18]) and I know NOTHING about GEMPAK, LDM,
>MCIDAS, etc.  I'm familiar with some of the NWS systems (NOAAPort,
>etc.) but have little experience manipulating data from the NWS beyond
>simple HTTP/FTP GETs.  However, I do have pretty a good amount of
>experience with Linux/UNIX.
>
>I downloaded GEMPAK 5.6.e.1 in binary form, and installed it in
>"/opt/gempak5.6".  I added a gempak user and changed its shell to
>/bin/csh.  The only thing I modified in Gemenviron was the NAWIPS var,
>which I set to "/opt/gempak5.6".  It looks like theres lots more to
>configure, but I'm lost..  :(  I switched to the gempak user, then I
>added bin/linux and bin/scripts dirs to the path in .cshrc and sourced
>Gemenviron.  That's the extent of the configuration that I've done.
>
>The problem is that even the simplest GEMPAK example either freezes, or
>stops without generating any output at all.  When I try to run GARP, it
>tries to pop up a few windows then spews errors and dies (see below).
>As for the ultimate goal, I've got a TON of archived NIDS and NOWRAD
>images in their respective formats.  I need to convert all of the
>images to GIFs (or any common file format, really).  I would also like
>to extract the meta data from the files, if possible (although I can
>write a PERL script to do that if need be).
>
>Any help is appreciated!
>
>
>Here are the GARP errors:
>
>G A R P - v2.1 starting...
>  Warning: keylist   is null
>           Cannnot set option menu default button
>  Warning: keylist   is null
>           Cannnot set option menu default button
>  Warning: keylist   is null
>           Cannnot set option menu default button
>  Warning: keylist   is null
>           Cannnot set option menu default button
>InitGempakColorMap:  Can't allocate Graphic colors.
>GarpInitialize:  GempakInit failed
>Main: Initialization failed.  Exiting
>
>