20010131: NLDN, MCIDAS feed : need permission on new machine running ldm (cont.)

>From: Leigh Orf <address@hidden>
>Organization: UNCA
>Keywords: 200102010314.f113ERX17446 IDD

Leigh,

re: how to get different permissions allowed for IDD feeds
>
>OK, thanks Tom, wasn't sure what the proper protocol was.

I didn't think so.  I know that it is tough walking into a new situation.
The great thing is that Unidata is a great community of folks who
really do try to help each other out as much as possible as fast as
possible.

re: McIDAS setup
>I *think* I have things set up right now. My last issue was having the
>wrong setting for $MCDATA... I now set it to a local directory instead
>of the directory where all the mcidas data files are dumped by the
>ldm (XCDDATA).

OK.  Hopefully, that local directory for the user 'mcidas' is ~mcidas/workdata.

>I understand about setting up the ldm-mcidas user and
>building the conversion programs. But I will certainly be happy to
>accept your help in setting things up. Hopefully it will be an easy
>transition.

The transition really should be easy.

>My main reason for doing this is because I'm having some
>annoying NFS problems between Solaris (vortex) and Linux (storm2 which
>is now holding the data).  Might as well just ingest mcidas data on
>storm2 which I was planning on doing eventually anyway.

Linux's poor NFS performance is nothing new.  We keep hoping that each
major upgrade of Linux (like RH 7.0) will include a good implementation
of NFS3.  We are still waiting and hoping, but things are improving.

>I currently have mcidas-x running on three workstations in our lab
>where they are used daily in class, and in my office. Things seem to be
>working smoothly. I look forward to when the MCGUI interface is ADDE-ized
>so I can ditch NFS.

I agree!!  I wish I could free up the time that it will take to do this
right.  If you are using the Fkey menu on those workstations, I can
tell you that I have worked on that lately (this is more of a knockoff
than a rewrite of MCGUI), and I will be releasing the new mods soon.
One thing that I added was an interface to NOAAPORT GINI images.  For
the majority of sites, these images will be served off of ADDE
installations at cooperating universities.  This will be the first
general *free* access to 1 km VIS imagery in the Unidata community.

>I like your idea about having public ADDE servers (you mentioned this
>earlier), although I'd want to know who was connecting for security
>reasons. I'd be willing to be an ADDE server for a few folks. It's nice
>to have a backup.

Security/monitoring can be done in two major ways:

o TCP wrappers on the ports that ADDE uses
o turning on McIDAS accounting of ADDE use

The first option allows one to limit access and to see who is
connecting, but it does not tell you what is being accessed.  The
second option allows one to limit access AND to see who is connecting
AND also see exactly what they are doing.  This turns out to be very
interesting for me since it helps me understand exactly what people are
trying to accomplish and how they are going about it.  When
appropriate, I can then contact the users and suggest more efficient
ways of doing the same things.

Got to get moving for a meeting..

Tom