19991018: mcgui at stc

>From: alan anderson <address@hidden>
>Organization: St. Cloud State
>Keywords: 199910082015.OAA10268 McIDAS-X 7.60 ADDE SFCPLOT RAOBPLOT

Alan,

>We implemented the fix you provided for Theta and Theta-E last week, 
>but only on one machine.  Things seemed to work ok.

OK.

>Today, that same machine gives an error message, as below, when trying
>to start MCGUI;
>
>  Error in startup script system key work 1 read failed (-3)
>
>plus a couple of other statements.  the last line indicates that the
>problem is in :
>   home/mcidas/bin/mcgui.k   line 1335
>
>I did a redirect to confirm that syskey.tab was redirected to 
>/var/data/mcidas  (as it should be).  

The next thing to try would be to see SYSKEY.TAB had valid information in
it.  This is easily done outside of a running McIDAS session as follows:

<login as 'mcidas'>
cd workdata
dmap.k SYSKEY.TAB
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/ldm/surface/front: No such file or 
directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/ldm/surface/front: No such file or 
directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
WARNING: cannot examine directory /var/data/xcd: No such file or directory
PERM      SIZE LAST CHANGED FILENAME   DIRECTORY
---- --------- ------------ ---------- ---------
-rw-         0 Oct 18 21:38 SYSKEY.TAB /var/data/mcidas
0 bytes in 1 files

The WARNINGs are telling us that you have a REDIRECTion that references
the directory /var/data/xcd and that directory doesn't exist.

The other thing that this listing is telling us is that SYSKEY.TAB has
zero length (SIZE of 0 bytes).  The GUI then fails because it is trying
to read a file that has nothing in it.

>Not sure if this is related to the fix we did last week;  we only did
>the fix to repair the Theta/Theta-E problem.

It looks like SYSKEY.TAB got stomped on somehow.  What you need to do
is to update the file on the ingesting machine (presumably, you are
mounting the disk from waldo on /var/data/mcidas where SYSKEY.TAB should
be).  I am assuming that IF /var/data/mcidas is a disk mounted from the
ingestor, then the copy of SYSKEY.TAB is 0 length on the ingestor.  To
update SYSKEY.TAB, you should do one of two things:

o copy the version of SYSKEY.TAB that is shipped to the directory where
  ldm-mcidas and XCD decoders produce their output

o crank up a McIDAS-X session on the ingesting machine and create a
  new SYSKEY.TAB:

  SYSKEY                       <- creates a new SYSKEY.TAB from a template
  BATCH "LROUTE.BAT            <- assumes that you have made a copy of
                                  DROUTE.BAT in ~mcidas/data and done
                                  any modifications needed to match what
                                  you want for your setup.  If your setup
                                  is "standard" (i.e. how I send it out),
                                  then replace LROUTE.BAT with DROUTE.BAT
  ROUTE REL C                  <- enables creation of GOES-East/West composites
  ROUTE REL N                  <- enables creation of topographic composites

>Our server, waldo, runs a MCGUI session ok, as does another machine 
>that was not updated yet.

I have to believe that MCGUI sessions on waldo will now fail at startup.
I say this because the copy of SYSKEY.TAB on waldo should be the one that
you share on your other machines.  I find that this is _NOT_ true, however,
since I logged onto waldo and find that its copy of SYSKEY.TAB is fine:

/home/mcidas/workdata% rlogin waldo
Password: 
Last login: Mon Oct 18 20:02:30 from :0
Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.7       Generic October 1998
/home/mcidas% cd workdata
/home/mcidas/workdata% dmap.k SYSKEY.TAB
PERM      SIZE LAST CHANGED FILENAME   DIRECTORY
---- --------- ------------ ---------- ---------
-rw-     24000 Oct 18 16:23 SYSKEY.TAB /var/data/mcidas
24000 bytes in 1 files

So, the question back to you is what is happening on met56a?  OH, now I
see.  /var/data/mcidas from met56a is basically empty except for a
blank copy of SYSKEY.TAB.

/home/mcidas/workdata% hostname
met56a
/home/mcidas/workdata% ls /var/data/mcidas
SYSKEY.TAB

If this is supposed to be waldo's data disk, then there must be a mount
problem.

Tom