20020412: ldm-mcidas NLDN decoding questions

>From: William C Klein <address@hidden>
>Organization: Valparaiso
>Keywords: 200204101351.g3ADpma28875 McIDAS-XCD ldm-mcidas

Bill,

>I've followed the instructions for the NLDN up to the chmod 666 SCHEMA.
>I'm not following the lines after that.

The lines in question are:

o you setup appropriate file REDIRECTions so that your 'mcidas' account
  can find the files into which the NLDN lightning data is to be decoded

o you setup the RTPTSRC dataset in the 'mcidas' account to access the
  decoded NLDN data

The first line deals with setting up your 'mcidas' account to read/write
MD files in the directory you are planning on decoding to.  Since your
other decoding is working, and the files are being found by McIDAS,
this step is probably OK.

The second line refers to the setting up of the ADDE dataset to access
the data in those MD files.  Since the other parts of the ADDE dataset
are setup correctly on aeolus (I can point to your machine from mine
and check this from here), it means that the dataset is setup correctly.

The most likely thing at this point is that you are not decoding
the NLDN lightning data.

>Here's what I get from the stack trace when I try to access lightning
>data:
>
>can't read "ptPltDays(LIGHTNING)": no such element in array
>    while executing
>"lsearch $ptPltDays($ptPltType) *$ptPltDay($ptPltType)*"
>    invoked from within
>"$postprocess invoke"
>    (command bound to event)

This says that there is no data in the RTPTSRC/LIGHTNING dataset on your
machine (I am assuming that the DATALOC for RTPTSRC (POINT) dataset
on your machine is aeolus.valpo.edu).  In turn, this says that NLDN
decoding is not working.

So, did you setup your LDM to request the NLDN data from SUNY Albany?

This would be a line in ~ldm/ldmd.conf that looks like:

request NLDN ".*" 169.226.43.58

or

request NLDN ".*" striker.atmos.albany.edu

Remember, that after making a modification in the LDM ldmd.conf file,
you must stop and restart your LDM for the change to take effect:

ldmadmin stop
<wait until all LDM processes have exited; use 'ps -u ldm' to check this>
ldmadmin start

Now, before you can successfully ingest NLDN data, you would have had
to secure permission for the data from Dr. David Knight of SUNY Albany
(his email is:  address@hidden).  Did you get SUNY Albany to
allow you to request the NLDN data from them?

If the answer to the last question was no, or if you did not add a
request line for NLDN in your ~ldm/ldmd.conf file, then you will
not be receiving NLDN data.  A quick way to check if you are being
allowed to request the data is by running the LDM application 'notifyme'
from your machine to the SUNYA machine as the user 'ldm':

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

If you get an OK status back from the notifyme invocation, you are
allowed to request the data.  If you get a denied/error, you are
not and will have to contact David for permission.

Tom