19990311: installing McIDAS 7.10 on Solaris 2.6 (cont.)

>From: Craig Motell <address@hidden>
>Organization: University of Hawaii
>Keywords: 199903100258.TAA26142 McIDAS-X

Craig,

>I have two comments and one question about installing 7.4.
>
>1) The notes under "Unidata McIDAS-X: mcidas,mcadde Accounts"
>suggest you set up environment variables such as follows:
>
>setenv McINST_ROOT /home/mcidas
>
>then
>
>if (!${?MCPATH})then
>setenv MCDATA /home/mcidas/workdata
>etc
>
>2) Now under testing "Unidata McIDAS-X Testing:" we have the following
>setup:
>
>setenv MCDATA /home/mcidas/mcidas7.4/data
>etc
>
>Questions:
>
>1) Why set the environment variables to different locations?

The idea behind the "Unidata McIDAS-X Testing:" section is that you test
the build _before_ you install it.  The installation process links the
executables built in the ~mcidas/mcidas7.4/src directory to the destination
"bin" directory (typically ~mcidas/bin).  Part of the install process is
removing any files in the destination directory with the same name as
the newly built ones.  So, if you are upgrading from one version to the
next, you want to test the new executables _before_ removing the old
ones.  To do this, you need to exercise the new routines in place.  This,
means that you need to set your McIDAS environment variables to locate
the files in the build locations instead of the install locations.

>2) AT first I set my environment variables to point to locations such as
>
>setenv MCDATA /home/mcidas/bin

This is incorrect.  Since it appears that the home directory for your
'mcidas' account is /home/mcidas (good, this is the recommendation),
your MCDATA directory would be /home/mcidas/workdata.  For testing
purposes, this would be set to /home/mcidas/mcidas7.4/data.

>etc
>
>When I look in directories such as /home/mcidas/bin I see that it is
>empty.

This directory will be empty if this is your first McIDAS installation
AND you have not yet installed the distribution (as opposed to building
it).

>Of coarse that is part of the reason why perhaps I needed to
>set my environment to /home/mcidas/mcidas7.4/bin but why do I have
>empty directories under "/home/mcidas/bin or /home/mcidas/data etc?

No, not really.

>Perhaps I set my MC_INSTROOT variable wrong in the beginning?

Hopefully, you set MCINST_ROOT to be '/home/mcidas'.  The common mistake
is to set this to be '/home/mcidas/mcidas7.4'.  This mistake is very
costly in terms of time that it will take to recover from it.

Here is a quick checklist to be done as the user 'mcidas':

o download the distribution including mcinstall
o change the file permissions on mcinstall to have execute permission
o define McINST_ROOT.  In your case, this would be:

  setenv McINST_ROOT /home/mcidas
o run mcinstall:

  cd /home/mcidas
  ./mcinstall

  'mcinstall' may be misnamed since it only unpacks the distribution after
  making necessary directories.

o cd to /home/mcidas/mcidas7.4/src
o build the distribution:

  make all

o test the distribution.  To do this in place, define MCDATA, MCPATH,
  MCGUI, and PATH to match your system:

  setenv MCDATA /home/mcidas/mcidas7.4/data
  setenv MCPATH ${MCDATA}:/home/mcidas/mcidas7.4/src
  setenv MCGUI /home/mcidas/mcidas7.4/src
  setenv PATH  $MCGUI:$PATH
  rehash

  run the tests that I show in the online docs

o if the testing goes with no problems, then install the software

  make install.all

o after installing the distribution, you will want to begin using the
  code from its installation directories.  To do this, you define
  the environment variables listed above to match your installation
  directories:

  setenv MCDATA /home/mcidas/workdata
  setenv MCPATH ${MCDATA}:/home/mcidas/data:/home/mcidas/help
  setenv MCGUI /home/mcidas/bin
  setenv PATH $MCGUI:$PATH

  This is best done in your shell definition file, .cshrc, since you will
  be using these definitions from now on.

>Thankyou,
>
>sincerely, craig motell
>Craig Motell University of Hawaii

Tom