20011210: McIDAS vis-a-via Solaris 7/8 (cont.)

>From: "James R. Frysinger" <address@hidden>
>Organization: College of Charleston
>Keywords: 200111061842.fA6Igt112242 LDM binary install

Jim,

re: run McIDAS locally at home and access data remotely

>       Would that be like setting up my DATALOC table here at home to refer 
>to weather.cofc.edu for all the products

Yes, for all of the products you have setup weather.cofc.edu to serve.

>that come through the 
>decoders, just like the DATALOC table on 'weather'?

Yes.  Each McIDAS session needs to have DATALOCs for the datasets
that it will display.

>       Do I then have to add my home computer (metric.metricmethods.com) to 
>the "allow" list?

There is no 'allow' list for ADDE servers in the Unidata community.  They
are basically all "open for business".  The client session (e.g., you
at home), simply tells McIDAS (through DATALOC ADDs) where to go for
what datasets:

DATALOC ADD RTGRIDS weather.cofc.edu
DATALOC ADD RTIMAGES weather.cofc.edu
DATALOC ADD RTPTSRC weather.cofc.edu
DATALOC ADD RTWXTEXT weather.cofc.edu
etc.


re: SSEC GUI vs Unidata MCGUI

>       Oh!  I didn't realize that there were two separate GUIs.

Yup, each with its own approach.

>I just 
>launched MCGUI instead of GUI by typing in MCGUI instead of GUI. The 
>McIDAS pdf'd "Users Guide" directions don't cover that. I see I have 
>another opportunity for exploration here. Thanks!

Do this to start up the McIDAS MCGUI:

mcidas config

When the startup GUI comes up, make sure to select that you want the MCGUI
to come up automatically AND to save your selections to the defaults
file (~/.mcidasrc).  After doing that once, you only need run:

mcidas

to startup a session with the same settings.

>       I'm about to head downtown for a couple of hours to work locally. That 
>will let me use admintool to remove ldmcidas as a user. I'll add that 
>line to my crontab on decoders/mcscour.sh while I'm down there.

OK.

I logged onto weather and made some changes:

1) add

exec    "decoders/xcd_run MONITOR"

   to ~ldm/etc/ldmd.conf

2) Change the request line for NLDN data.  You must request NLDN data
   directly from SUNY Albany.  The NLDN lightning data is only delivered
   point-to-point, and its use is restricted: it can _never_ appear
   in publically accessible web pages or any other kind of publically
   visible display other than on the local campus.  It can be used
   for research, and displays of and results from the data can be
   published in scholarlly journals.

   If you are not already allowed to get the data from SUNYA,
   you will have to request a feed from them.  You can check to
   see if you are allowed using the trusty notifyme command run
   from the 'ldm' account:

   notifyme -vxl- -o 3600 -f NLDN -h striker.atmos.albany.edu

   If you do not get an error, you are all set.  If you get a denied
   message, you need to send an email to:

   Dave Knight <address@hidden> (CC to address@hidden)
   and explain who you are; give him your machine name (weather.cofc.edu);
   and ask for a feed.

3) add the XCD and ldm-mcidas decode actions to ~ldm/etc/pqact.conf

   You had made the necessary changes to
   ~ldm/ldm-mcidas-7.6.4/etc/ldm-mcidas-pqact.conf, but you did not put
   those entries in the LDM pqact.conf file, ~ldm/etc/pqact.conf.

   I made a slight change to all of the decode actions.  I added
   'decoders/' to the beginning of each decoder name.  The reason for
   this has to do with PATH information available when the LDM is
   restarted to point at a different upstream host by a cron-initiated
   ldmfail.

4) commented out the WMO FILE action at the end of ~ldm/etc/pqact.conf
   this entry is really not needed

5) removed all of the directories and files created by the action commented
   out in step 4)

Since I do not have the login as ldm (or, at least, I don't have it at
hand), I was not able to stop and restart the LDM.  This is what is
needed for the above changes to take effect so that incoming data can
be decoded into McIDAS-usable files.

Tom