19990623: mcidasx user accounts at stc

>From: alan anderson <address@hidden>
>Organization: St. Cloud State
>Keywords: 199906232126.PAA03187 McIDAS Web

Alan,

>Well it is again time for to me to try and list my problems for 
>the day.  My intent is to create a generic user account on waldo
>so that I can begin to introduce students and faculty to mcidasx.

OK.  I am assuming that the intent is to have this one account that
one person at a time can run from.  If your intent is to allow several
people to login to the same account _on different machines_ at
the same time, then you will run into problems.

>I have created user  ...,  with a pass of ...  ... uses the 
>c shell and is a member of the the group  data  along with users mcidas
>and ldm.

I would recommend that the general user NOT be in the same group as
'mcidas', 'mcadde', and 'ldm'.  This is in the online documentation for
installing and configuring McIDAS.

>Reading in the html titled 'Configuring User Accounts', I see that I
>need to do several things, but I think I am stalled with the first, 
>'Setting the environment'  I did not do anything regarding 'Enabling 
>the McIDAS -X Keys yet, but assume that is not my problem.
>
>I edited the .cshrc file for guest, I believe as directed in the html
>but upon logging in as guest and typing  mcidas, I get the following
>4 llines:
>
>waldo% mcidas
>waldo% WARNING: No MCPATH environment variable.
>Using
>MCPATH=/home/guest/mcidas/data:/home/guest/mcidas/help:/home/mcidas/data:/ho
>me/mcidas/help
>Current directory is /home/guest/mcidas/data
>
>Something must not be right concerning MCPATH;
>below are the contents of the .cshrc file for user guest
>
>
># @(#)cshrc 1.11 89/11/29 SMI
>umask 022
>set path=(/bin /usr/bin /home/mcidas/bin /usr/ucb /etc .)
>if ( $?prompt ) then
>       set history=32
>endif
>if (!${?MCPATH}) then
>setenv MCDATA ${HOME}/mcidas/data
>setenv MCPATH ${MCDATA}:/home/mcidas/data:/home/mcidas/help
>setenv MCGUI /home/mcidas/bin
>setenv MCTABLE_READ "${MCDATA}/MCTABLE.TXT;/home/mcidas/data/ADDESITE.TXT
>setenv MCTABLE_WRITE "${MCDATA}/MCTABLE.TXT"
>endif

There are two problems with the above.  The first is the 'if' line.
When I wrote the online documents, I assumed that people would cut the
various sections from the web page and paste them into the target
files.  Apparently, a number of people read the page and type in what
they see.  This can lead to problems like the one you have
encountered.  The problem is that there needs to be a space between the
'!' and the '$' in the 'if' line:

if ( ! ${?MCPATH} ) then

I looked at the web page and see that the font used for this listing
makes it look like there are no spaces.  I changed this so that the
text is more clear.

>My editing included adding /home/mcidas/bin to the set path statement, to
>point to the mcidas executables on waldo plus the lines from the html page 
>regarding MCPATH, MCDATA, MCGUI... .  I am pretty ignorant about these things
>so the mistake or omission may be obvious, but I am stuck.  

The second problem is the lack of a terminating quote on the
'setenv MCTABLE_READ ...' line.

The entry in the user's .cshrc file should be:

if ( ! ${?MCPATH} ) then
setenv MCDATA ${HOME}/mcidas/data
setenv MCPATH ${MCDATA}:/home/mcidas/data:/home/mcidas/help
setenv MCGUI  /home/mcidas/bin
setenv MCTABLE_READ "${MCDATA}/MCTABLE.TXT;/home/mcidas/data/ADDESITE.TXT"
setenv MCTABLE_WRITE "${MCDATA}/MCTABLE.TXT"
endif

>Even with the above message, mcidas does start for user guest.  

It will start correctly with no errors once the .cshrc entry is corrected.

>I get the text/command window and the image window.  In order to get commands
>to execute, I think I have to specifiy the contents of a dataloc table,
>similar to that for user mcidas, but that is another step.

There are two things you should do for the user in his/her McIDAS-X session:

BATCH "LOCDATA.BAT
REDIRECT REST LOCAL.NAM

The BATCH line will setup the DATALOCs for the various datasets that 
waldo is producing.

The REDIRECT line is needed IF you want that user to be able to access the
data using non-ADDE commands.  Since the Fkey menu and Unidata GUI both
are still not fully ADDEized, you will need to let the users have non-ADDE
access, so you need to have REDIRECTions for them that can locate the data
files.

>I think all my data groups will point to waldo.stcloudstate.edu   Correct?

Yes.  In setting up the 'mcidas' account on waldo, I did the various steps
listed in the online documentation.  LOCDATA.BAT was created by:

o CD to /home/mcidas/data
o cp DATALOC.BAT LOCDATA.BAT
o edit LOCDATA.BAT and change fully_qualified_host_identifier to
  waldo.stcloudstate.edu

After 'BATCH LOCDATA.BAT' has been run, ADDE commands will look to waldo
for data in the user's McIDAS session.

After 'REDIRECT REST LOCAL.NAM' has been run, the user will be able to
run non-ADDE commands like:

LA 130 139
DF 130 1 EU=IMAGE
etc.

>Well, I will turn it over to you.

A quick edit of the user's .cshrc will fix the problem;  I just did
this for you.  I verified that two editing changes worked by starting
a session with display back here to Unidata.

While I had the session up and running, I decided to go ahead and
run the BATCH and REDIRECT commands I listed above.  I then tested various
ADDE and non-adde functions to make sure that the session can display
data; it does:

non-ADDE

LA 130 139
DF 133 1 EC KSTC 2 EU=IMAGE
MAP H
SFCPLT T OLAY FRAME

ADDE

SF 2
IMGDISP RTIMAGES/GW-IR STA=KSTC MAG=2 EU=IMAGE REFRESH='EG;MAP H'
SFCPLOT T OLAY FRAME

While not exhaustive, these tests showed that access to image and point
source data was working OK.  I am sure that a user playing with the
GUI or Fkey menu will be able to see better if there are any problems.

Remember to have the user start his/her McIDAS session like:

mcidas config

This will popup up a Tcl/Tk GUI that allows the user to set some parameters
on the fly and, if the appropriate radiobutton is depressed, bring up
the GUI.

Also remember that the GUI button with the keyboard icon on it toggles the
GUI command mode on and off.  In its default state, it is off or hidden.
When on, the user can type McIDAS commands AND recall all of the commands
that were run out of the GUI.  This turns out to be a nice training tool.

>Thank you

Talk to you later...

Tom