20031124: Unidata McIDAS-X Version 2003 under Fedora at NIU (cont.)

>From: Unidata Support <address@hidden>
>Organization: UCAR/Unidata
>Keywords: 200311241913.hAOJDtEH002777 ldm-mcidas proftomd

Gilbert,

On the off chance that the problem you are seeing is on weather2,
I SSHed from weather3 to take a look.  What I found was that none
of the ldm-mcidas decoding actions were running, and the ~ldm/logs/ldmd.log
file was full of pipe errors like you said.

I then found that the LDM was not running as the user 'ldm', but, rather,
as the user 'mcidas', and this was your entire problem.  So, I logged
on as 'mcidas' and stopped the LDM:

<login as 'mcidas'>
ldmadmin stop

and then logged on as 'ldm' and started the LDM:

<login as 'ldm'>
ldmadmin start

Now, the pnga2area decode processes are working correctly.

I see, however, that proftomd is failing:

Nov 24 21:02:18 proftomd[17038]: Starting up
Nov 24 21:02:18 proftomd[17038]: could not open /data/mcidas/.tmp_netcdf.QoJRvX
Nov 24 21:02:18 proftomd[17038]: Exiting

What is happening here is that the FSL wind profiler decoder is
trying to create a temporary file in /data/mcidas.  Since this directory
does not exist, the process was failing.  I changed the proftomd
entries in ~ldm/etc/pqact.conf:

were:

# Hourly Summary
FSL2    ^FSL\.NetCDF\.NOAAnet\.windprofiler\.01hr
        PIPE    -close
        proftomd -vl /home/ldm/logs/ldm-mcidas.log -d /data/mcidas U2 WPRO 81
#####   PIPE    -close proftomd -d /home/data/mcidas U2 WPRO 81
#
# 6-minute
FSL2    ^FSL\.NetCDF\.NOAAnet\.windprofiler\.06min
        PIPE    -close
        proftomd -vl /home/ldm/logs/ldm-mcidas.log -d /data/mcidas U6 WPR6 91
#####   PIPE    -close proftomd -d /home/data/mcidas U6 WPR6 91

changed to:

# Hourly Summary
FSL2    ^FSL\.NetCDF\.NOAAnet\.windprofiler\.01hr
        PIPE    -close
        proftomd -vl /home/ldm/logs/ldm-mcidas.log -d /home/data/mcidas U2 WPRO 
81
#####   PIPE    -close proftomd -d /home/data/mcidas U2 WPRO 81
#
# 6-minute
FSL2    ^FSL\.NetCDF\.NOAAnet\.windprofiler\.06min
        PIPE    -close
        proftomd -vl /home/ldm/logs/ldm-mcidas.log -d /home/data/mcidas U6 WPR6 
91
#####   PIPE    -close proftomd -d /home/data/mcidas U6 WPR6 91


I then checked the integrity of the ~ldm/etc/pqact.conf file and sent
pqact a HUP signal telling it to reread the file:

ldmadmin pqactcheck
ldmadmin pqactHUP

Waiting around until profiler data came in shows that it is now being
decoded correctly:

Nov 24 21:08:44 proftomd[17952]: Starting up
Nov 24 21:08:44 proftomd[17952]: Decoding 2003328.2054 data into 
/home/data/mcidas/MDXX0098
Nov 24 21:08:44 proftomd[17952]: WARNING: MD #cols 35 < dataset #stn 35
Nov 24 21:08:44 proftomd[17952]: Exiting

So, the file is being written now.  The warning being issued by proftomd
is a separate issue that I will need to look into further.

I then noticed that a lot of the data files in /home/data/mcidas had
not been scoured in quite awhile.  I traced this down to the following:

1) the McIDAS scouring was being done (through a cron job running mcscour.sh)
   by 'mcidas'  --  this is not bad, but
2) the output log file for the scouring, /home/mcidas/workdata/scour.log,
   was owned by 'ldm' and was not writable by 'mcidas'

I commented the cron initiation of mcscour.sh in the 'mcidas' account
and added the same entry to the 'ldm' account.  In doing this, I
also:

1) made a copy of /home/mcidas/workdata/mcscour.sh in /home/ldm/decoders
2) added a cron entry to run that copy of mcscour.sh
3) added a cron entry to rotate ldm-mcidas log files

I think things are running correctly now.  Please let me know if you see
strange things.

Tom

>From address@hidden Mon Nov 24 15:30:17 2003

re: LDM was running as 'mcidas'

>Oh, boy. Sometime, I must have, in a bunch of confusion setting everything 
>up, restarted LDM as user McIDAS. Cute. Sorry about that.

re: the profiler data file is now being written

>Great! Whew. OK, next problem...
 
re: setup scouring in 'ldm' account and added rotation of ldm-mcidas log files

>Thanks again for all your help! Actually, they are being strange.

>Whenever 
>I bring up the plot/contour menu, it crashes before I can do anything. It 
>just hangs the moment I bring the menu up.

>From address@hidden Mon Nov 24 15:31:10 2003

>SAO/Metar Plots/Contours menu, sorry. I just did it now and it is hung 
>hard on weather2.

*******************************************************************************
Gilbert Sebenste                                                     ********
(My opinions only!)                                                  ******
Staff Meteorologist, Northern Illinois University                      ****
E-mail: address@hidden                                               ***
web: http://weather.admin.niu.edu                                      **
Work phone: 815-753-5492                                                *
*******************************************************************************