20001222: configuring user accounts for mcidasx7.70

>From: alan anderson <address@hidden>
>Organization: St. Cloud State
>Keywords: 200012222209.eBMM9eo00321 McIDAS-X 7.70 configuring

Alan,

>After our last exchange, I waited until setting up our second 
>terminal with 7.7.  Got your distribution after the email messages
>from earlier this week.
>I will go back and update the first one I did earlier this month.

OK, sounds good.

>On this latest install, everything has gone very well;  
>build took about 45 minutes on a Sparc 5.
>
>I have just a couple of questions/comments.
>
>1.  When following the web page install/configure pages, 
>    the section: Configuring User Accounts,  then Copying
>    Needed Files.
>
>    I am wondering if you don't want the line
>
>    ~mcidas/admin/userdata ~mcidas/mcidas7.7/data ~/mcidas/data
>
>    to read: ~mcidas/admin/userdata ~mcidas/mcidas7.7/data
>/home/'username'/mcidas/data
>
>    From the context of the section, I am guessing this stuff goes into the 
>    /mcidas/data directory of the specific user, and not user 'mcidas'.

The first portion of this set of instructions says that each user should
do the following:

To run userdata, each user should log on to his/her account and do the
following:

If the account is new, make the McIDAS-X working directory: 


     Type: mkdir mcidas
     Type: mkdir mcidas/data


After $HOME/mcidas/data has been created, the user needs to: 


     Type: ~mcidas/admin/userdata ~mcidas/mcidas7.7/data ~/mcidas/data

If the user 'mcidas' is doing this for other users, then your comment is
correct.  If each user is doing it for him/herself, then I believe that
the directions are correct as ~/mcidas/data/ is /home/'username'/mcidas/data.


>    I did it as listed, and it went ok, but message told me it was already
>there.
>    I also put it into the /mcidas/data dir. of the user I was configuring.

Just to be sure that we are talking about the same thing, you actually
mean that you also put it into the mcidas/data directory of the user
you were configuring (i.e., ~user/mcidas/data).  I know that you understand
that, but I want to make sure that whoever reads this message from the
tracking system understands this also.

>2.  I had a little trouble getting my path set properly in the .cshrc account.
>    I cut and pasted directly from the web page, so I expected things to go
>    ok.  I use C shell, so took the section listed.  Found that when I whas 
>    done, I could not execute mcidas and sure enough, $MCGUI had not been 
>    inserted at start of my path.  I added a separate statement at the very end
>    of my .cshrc file:  setenv PATH ${MCGUI}:$PATH   and everything was fine.
>
>    Not sure what I might have done wrong originally, but the path stuff is 
>    a bit fuzzy to me.  I know I don't understand the conditional statements
>    regarding setenv path as listed on web, but that is my weakness.

Hmm...  I will have to create a new account and do the steps exactly to
see if I can replicate the problem you ran into.  My intention in the
conditional clause for PATH was to set PATH to $MCGUI _IF_ PATH was
not otherwise defined.  If PATH _was_ already defined, I wanted to redefine
it so that the $MCGUI directory ended up at the beginning of PATH.
Again, I will create a new account (or setup an existing one that is
not already setup for McIDAS) and see what happens.

<few minutes later...>

I modified our support account's .cshrc file to setup the McIDAS
environment variables as specified in the Configuring User Accounts in
two ways:

o put the configuration steps at the very top of the account
o put the configuration steps after PATH declarations

In both cases, I would login as support; configure .cshrc; logout; and then
log back in.  In both cases, the configuration resulted in the $MCGUI
directory being the first directory in PATH.

I guess the question is what user you were logged in as when setting up
the configuration?

>Anyway, another success, thanks to you guys.  

Thanks for the nice words!

>Hope you have a pleasant holiday;

You too!

>we seem to be stuck in the cold up here, 
>but they say it will pay off for next summer--lots of bugs and nasty stuff
>won't make it.

It was pretty cold down here (could tell by the massively larger heating
bills!), but it turned nice and warm sometime last night.  Today, it
really felt like shirtsleeve weather: highs in the upper 50s F.

>I will be in after Christmas, and will probably be setting up another terminal
>or two.

When you do this, please let me know if you run into the same problem
in setting up the McIDAS environment variable stuff.  I would love to see
exactly what things look like when my web page procedure doesn't work
properly.

Hmm...  is the machine you were doing this on running Solaris 2.8?  I
have run into a number of _funny_ things related to environment variable
settings under 2.8.  If you are running on 2.8, then the problem may
be a syntax that works on non-2.8 systems, but fails on 2.8 systems.

>Greet Don and others.

A greeting to Don will have to wait until New Year's eve as he and his
family are visiting his parents in Florida.  I relay your greeting
to others next week.  I seem to find myself here all alone today :-)

Tom

>From address@hidden Wed Dec 27 15:44:58 2000
>Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 22:45:44 +0000

Tom

Regarding my item # 1, Copying Needed Files, I think I did this
as user 'student', but it is possible I was logged in as user 'mcidas'.
I will go back and see who 'owns' the mcidas/data subdirectory as I 
created this just before executing the script.

In any case, I agree with your response.  Will try and double check this
next time.

Regarding my item # 2., we are using Solaris 2.8 on these terminals.  Again,
I understand your response, but still had the problem as I described.  
It sounds as if the OS may be involved.   I will also watch for this again.

Thanks


Alan