20000921: IMGPROBE and OD failing in McIDAS-X sessions

>From: Edward Hindman <address@hidden>
>Organization: CCNY
>Keywords: 200009220055.e8M0teb08133 McIDAS-X IMGPROBE OD

Ward,

>I am using McIDAS in my oceanography class to measure real-time 
>sea-surface temperatures using the ALT-D command and the OD L T.

It turns out that there were a few things messed up on halo.  Please
read on.

First, I want to remind you that the OD command only works with images
loaded with the non-ADDE command DF (and programs that run DF like
ALOOP).  If you load an image with IMGDISP, OD can not be used; you
have to use IMGPROBE or ALT-D.

Images loaded from the Unidata McIDAS-X 7.6x Fkey menu are loaded with
IMGDISPs; images loaded from the Unidata McIDAS-X 7.6 MCGUI are loaded
with ALOOP which runs DF.  So, you should expect the images loaded from
the Fkey menu and from the command line with IMGDISPs to be
interrogatable by IMGPROBE (ALT-D just runs IMGPROBE).  Images loaded
from the MCGUI or from DF commands can be interrogated by OD.

>The ALT-D command sometimes works and sometimes does not work.

I believe that I found the reason for this.  It looks like there have
been a number of aborted McIDAS-X sessions run as the user 'wxnut'.
This did the following:

o leave a lot of shared memory segments allocated, but not used.  This
  was taking up system resources so that other processes couldn't use
  them.

o one or more of the 'wxnut' McIDAS-X sessions that had failed had
  dumped files in the /home/mcidas/help directory.  The files that
  had been dumped were ones that should be located in subdirectories
  of ~wxnut/.mctmp.  These files are meant to be transitory: they
  should go away when a session is EXITed.  The fact that the
  /home/mcidas/help directory is in every McIDAS-X user's MCPATH
  means that those copies of the dumped files (named FrameN.M, where
  N and M are numbers) will be used in everyone's sessions.  The
  BIG problem with this are that simulatenous sessions will conflict
  with each other, and some users will not be able to write to
  the files, so McIDAS programs will start failing in mysterious
  ways.  This is, in fact, what is causing the error you report next:

>When it doesn't work we get the following error message:
>
>OD: AREA NOT PRESENT=
>OD: Program called abort
>IMGPROBE: Data service module problem, RC= -1
>IMGPROBE: Local interface module cannot be found
>IMGPROBE: ival for mcadir= -98
>IMGPROBE: Failed to set up directory server

This was being caused by orphaned copies of FrameN.M existing in
/home/mcidas/data.  After I forced the McIDAS-X session being run by
'wxnut' to EXIT, I was able to clean up these files, removed the
orphaned shared memory setments, and get things working as they
should.  Things even seemed like they were running faster, but that
could have been a result of the time (after 10 pm your time).

>The OD L T command never works and we get the following diagnostic:
>
>OD: AREA NOT PRESENT=
>OD: Program called abort

This means that the images are never loaded with DF, ALOOP, so you
have to use IMGPROBE.

>I would appreciate it if you could logon to "Halo" and see if you can make 
>these two "bread and butter" commands work.

I can't make OD work on ADDE loaded images.  Also, it is being sunset,
so it is best to use only IMGPROBE/ALT-D.

I did login and found the orphaned file problem I mentioned above and
the large number of shared memory segments owned by 'wxnut'.  I removed
those segments using the 'ipcrm' facility of Uhix.

After cleaning up, I ran McIDAS-X sessions both as 'wxnut' and as
'mcidas' and was able to display images and interrogate them.  Since I
used the Fkey menu to load the images, I used IMGPROBE to probe them.
All of the IMGPROBEs and ALT-Ds that I tried worked as expected.

Give the cleaned up setup a go tomorrow and let me know if things don't
work as you hope.  Remember, however, that you will not be able to use
OD on images loaded from the Fkey menu.  You will need to use IMGPROBE
exclusively (and ALT-D which runs IMGPROBE).

>Ward Hindman
>CCNY

Tom