19990927: McIDAS-XCD 7.60 configuration at MOPITT

>From: address@hidden (Steve Carson)
>Organization: UCAR/MOPITT
>Keywords: 199909271626.KAA10204 McIDAS-XCD

Steve,

>First, let me bestow upon Tom Yoksas the "Software Medal Of Honor"
>for his help in getting my LDM/McIDAS installation up and running
>correctly. Thank you Tom.

You are welcome.

>Since then, I have been reviewing all of the installation and
>configuration documentation on the Web and verifying the steps
>against my own installation. While doing this I came upon
>something I don't understand. On the web page
>
>http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/mcidas/mcx/xcd_config.html
>
>it says
>
>2.Copy the McIDAS schema repository file, SCHEMA, to the directory in
>which you want your XCD decoders to create output data files making
>sure that it has group read and write permissions:
>
>         Type: cp ~mcidas/data/SCHEMA datadirectory
>         Type: chmod 664 datadirectory/SCHEMA 
>
>I thought 'datadirectory' was meant to be the place where the
>XCD decoders are to write their output,

It is.

>which on our system
>I thought was supposed to be '/MOPITT/ldm/mcidas'. However,
>I find no SCHEMA file there. The only places I find a SCHEMA
>file, under either the 'mcidas' or 'ldm' accounts is
>
>mop1 85% pwd
>/mop1/mcidas
>mop1 86% find . -name SCHEMA
>./data/SCHEMA
>./mcidas7.6/data/SCHEMA

And ~mcidas/mcidas7.6/data/SCHEMA and ~mcidas/data/SCHEMA are the same
file.  ~mcidas/data/SCHEMA is a hard link to ~mcidas/mcidas7.6/data/SCHEMA.

Here is what is going on.  XCD decoders really don't care if SCHEMA is
located in the output data directory _as long as_ SCHEMA can be found
via the McIDAS file finding facilities (e.g. REDIRECT and MCPATH).  The
ldm-mcidas decoders that need SCHEMA (e.g. nldn2md and proftomd) do not
use McIDAS file finding facilities.  They look for SCHEMA in the
directory specified by the '-d' flag that is given them on their
invocation command line.  Since explaining this in the online
documentation has proven to be confusing for the average user, I chose
to err on the side of simplicity:  copy SCHEMA to the output data
directory.  The fact that I did not do this (an oversight) tells me
that you do not have your LDM setup to get/decode either the NLDN
lightning or FSL wind profiler data.  I think I remember telling you
that you might want to get both of these data sets later on.

>Furthermore, a little ways down the same web page, it says to
>
>7.List the active data circuits.
>
>         Type: CIRCUIT LIST
>
>When I do this, McIDAS says 'CIRCUIT not found'. The web page
>also says to type 'DECINFO' to list the active data monitors
>but again I get 'DECINFO not found.'

Are you doing this from within a running McIDAS session as the
user 'mcidas'?  The XCD executables by-and-large are executable by
owner and group, but not world.  The reason?  One does not want the
general user to be running code that could intefere with data ingestion
and decoding.

>Note that when I get these 'not found' messages, I have started
>a new mcidas session and I have *NOT*  first done the
>
>TE XCDDATA "datadirectory
>BATCH "XCD.BAT
>BATCH "XCDDEC.BAT
>
>commands.

But, I _did_ do this on your system in a session running as the user
'mcidas'.

>I thought these commands only needed to be run once,
>and I *assume* Tom and I did this, although I don't actually
>remember.

Yes, they only need to be run once UNLESS there is a catastrophic
disk failure that wipes out the contents of the output data directory.
If this happens, then files created by routines run from XCDDEC.BAT
will not be found and XCD decoding will fail.

>Should I be concerned about any of the above the above?

No, at least not until you want to get the NLDN lightning and FSL wind
profiler data.  At that point, you will want to copy (or link) SCHEMA
to the output data directory of these decoders.

Tom

>From address@hidden  Mon Sep 27 12:42:35 1999

re: running as a user other than 'mcidas'
>Bingo! I was running McIDAS as 'sgc' and not 'mcidas'. When I do this
>as 'mcidas', results are as expected.

re: future use of NLDN/FSL wind profiler data
>Understood. I may want to get the NLDN lightning and FSL wind
>profiler data in the future, but it's not high-priority at the
>moment. I'll keep this in mind when the time comes.

>Thanks again for your invaluable help!

Steve

----------------------------------------------------------------
Steven G. Carson       NCAR/ACD            voice: (303) 497-2916
Software Engineer II   PO Box 3000           fax: (303) 497-2920
MOPITT Program         Boulder, CO 80307   email: address@hidden
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