20040402: Vietnam and GEMPAK GRIB decoding (cont.)

>From: Mai Nguyen <address@hidden>
>Organization: National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting of Vietnam
>Keywords: 200312020023.hB20N4p2027742 IDD LDM Linux

Mai,

>I've put a set of our model data in your directory 
>/home/ldm/VNdata/hrm_grib/2004040112
>
>hiff* is the initial data
>hfff* are forecasts
>suffix 'p' stands for data at pressure levels,
>otherwise are on model levels

OK.  We will grab these, decode them with the Unidata GEMPAK
dcgrib2 decoder, and see what happens.

re: our success decoding and displaying your original GRIB data
>I am very excited with this news. Can't wait to
>download your new version of GEMPAK and just done
>that, and put a binary version for linux of GEMPACK
>5.7.l in your ldm home directory.

I was waiting for our GEMPAK person, Steve Chiswell, to finish
preparing new binary distributions of GEMPAK before doing the download
myself.  I just logged onto met_research3 and see that you did grab the
new releease, good.  I must warn you that the binary release for Linux
was built on a machine running Fedora Core 1 (the README file says
RedHat 7.0, but I doubt that this is true since we don't have a 7.0
machine available in house).  It remains to be seen if this will be
backwardly compatible with RedHat 9.  We _think_ that it will since
Fedora Core 1 is very much like what a RedHat 10 would be, but there is
no guarantee that it will work/work 100% correctly.

>If you have time,
>could you please help me to install it? (Or should I
>read the README file myself?)

I think you should read the README file no matter what;  It should give
you a good feeling for the installation procedure.  Before you start
installing the binary (this should be very easy), I would create a
'gempak' account (e.g., with HOME directoryof /home/gempak) and do the
installation there.  You can install under the 'ldm' account, but it is
cleaner to do the work in a separate account.  I recommend 'gempak'
since that is what the majority of our users use, and it will make the
README file easier to follow.  Also, by not installing under your
existing 'nawips' account, you will not accidentally overwrite anything
you have created there.  Disk space is not an issue since you have
plenty available:

[ldm@met_research3 ~]$ df -k
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdb1            156538792  18395564 130191460  13% /
none                    256652         0    256652   0% /dev/shm


re: why we were so insistent on not redefining GRIB variables
>I acknowledge that.

OK.  I just want to make sure that you understand that we are not
making recommendations to make our life easier, but, rather, to
make you life easier.

>Thanks and best regards, Mai

I would recommend that you give the installation a try after you
create a 'gempak' account.  Please let us know if you run into
problems, or have questions on steps that are unclear to you.

Cheers,

Tom
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