20000906: McIDAS: PNG2AREA Problem

>From: Michael Keables <address@hidden>
>Organization: Geography Dept, University of Denver
>Keywords: 200009062321.e86NL0N01678 ldm-mcidas LDM pqact

Mike,

I just saw that you FTPed the latest ldm-mcidas distribution.

>I'm trying to modify my pqact.conf file to allow for the decoding of the PNG
>image files.  I made the changes to the file as explained on the web page but 
>when I run pqactcheck, I get an unrecognizable feedtype error. Here is the
>section of pqact.conf that I changed:
>
>#
>####           Unidata-Wisconsin channel image (AREA) files
>#
>
>#MCIDAS ^(LWTOA3 .*)
>#       PIPE    -close
>#       lwtoa3 -d data/mcidas -v
>
>MCIDAS  ^pnga2area Q. (..) (.*) (.*) (.*) (.*) (........) (....)
>        PIPE    -close
>        pnga2area -d /var/data/mcidas -r \1,\2
>
>(tab begins second and third line)
>
>What's wrong and how do I fix it?

Are you sure that the line before the 'MCIDAS   ^pnga2area' does not
have a blank in it?  Are you sure that there is not blank at the
beginning of the 'MCIDAS   ^pnga2area' line?  It is as though the
pqactcheck is seeing something at the beginning of a line and trying to
interpret that as a feed type.

One other thing.  The action you have setup will decode the CIMSS
images that were put into the datastream at the end of June.  I have
had one site that had a problem in doing this _without_ first adding
the CIMSS products to their routing table.  To add the CIMSS products
to your routing table (if you have not already done so), do the
following:

<login as 'mcidas'>
cd workdata
ftp ftp.unidata.ucar.edu
  cd pub/mcidas
  get CIMSS.BAT
  quit
batch.k CIMSS.BAT

Do this before turning the LDM on.

>Thanks in advance.

No problem.  Let me know if you continue to have problems getting the
pqact.conf entries setup.

Tom