20040823: LDM pqact.conf setup on cyclone (cont.)

>From:  mynul khan <address@hidden>
>Organization: St. Clouds State
>Keywords: 200408221611.i7MGBLXn021387 LDM ldmd.log

Mynul,

>I would like to how are you fixing these problems. 

I logged onto cyclone this evening and did two things:

<as 'mcidas'>
downloaded McIDAS-X v2004 and started building it

<as 'ldm'>
took a look at your ~ldm/etc/ldmd.conf and ~ldm/etc/pqact.conf files

As I write this the McIDAS build is proceeding.  I will finish the
build and installation sometime tomorrow.

As for the pqact.conf file, I found that each entry for GEMPAK decoding
was specifying the log directory as '/data/gempak/logs'.  This does not
work since the '/data' directory does not exist AND can be created by
the user 'ldm' ('/' is owned by 'root').  The entries should use the
relative directory reference 'data/gempak/logs' as the log directory
instead.  Since ~ldm/data is a symbolic link to /var/data/ldm,
'data/gempak/logs' is actualy the /var/data/ldm/gempak/logs directory
(the LDM runs from the ~ldm directory).  ~ldm/data/gempak _is_ writable
by 'ldm', so GEMPAK log files can be written.

I changed all references of '/data/gempak' to 'data/gempak' in
pqact.conf and then stopped and restarted the LDM.  Now, data is being
decoded into GEMPAK formats and gempak log files are being written.

I also found that you had entries in the McIDAS section of pqact.conf
that did the same decoding as entries in the GEMPAK section of pqact.conf.
This would cause cyclone to do twice the amount of work that it needs
to _if_ the entries in the GEMPAK section had been correct.  They
were not correct, however, since they specified use of the '/data/ldm/gempak'
directory, and that directory does exist and can not be created for
the reasons I outlined above.  I commented out the duplicate actions
in the McIDAS section of pqact.conf.

I also noted that the pqact.conf action for the GEMPAK dcidft decoder
did not specify where the logging should take place.  Consequently, the
log file was being written in the ~ldm/logs directory.  I changed
the two dcidft entries to start logging in the 'data/gempak/logs'
directory like all of the other GEMPAK decoders.

So, it seems that the problems on cyclone were:

- numerous incorrect directory references in pqact.conf
- duplicated decoding entries in pqact.conf
- not logging dcidft to the same log directory as other GEMPAK
  decoders
- you hadn't upgraded cyclone to the McIDAS 2004 distribution yet

Please take a look at cyclone and let me know if you still see GEMPAK
log messages being written to the console window.

While at it I added a crontab entry for 'ldm' that will rotate the
ldm-mcidas log files.

>I really really appreciate your help.

No worries.

Cheers,

Tom
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