20010921: Upgrade to 7.80, .mcidasrc not being written (cont.)

>From: Kenji Matsuura <address@hidden>
>Organization: University of Delaware
>Keywords: 200109202134.f8KLYR116858 McIDAS ADDE MCGUI

Kenji,

>Thank you so much for your prompt reply. Your response is always very
>informative and I could learn quite a bit. Problem around here is that I
>do sys-admin type job but I do not use mcidas for my work, but mcidas
>users also do not know well enough to instruct me what they would like
>to do.  My memory becomes vague when upgrading time comes.  

I understand and sympathize with your situation.

>Anyway, I installed 7.8 instead of 7.7.

Excellent.

>I nfs-mounted the data
>directory from climate on the new machine and specified local-data for
>all DATALOC lines in LOCDATA.BAT file. This seems to work.

OK.

>I tried to
>specify climate in DATALOC lines but nfs-mounted case seems to be a
>little bit faster.

This is an interesting observation.  Most users have found that ADDE
access to data is faster than through NFS.  The reason is that the
"pipe" for reading data through ADDE is larger than that through NFS.
If NFS is faster in your setup, then I would stick with it.

The only drawback in staying with use of LOCAL-DATA defined datasets is
that all datasets have to be defined for each user.  If the end user
simply specified that they wanted data from an ADDE server, then only
the 'mcidas' account on that server would need to be configured.

>One small thing is v. 7.8 does not create .mcidasrc
>file at initial start. I could use an old one but I am wondering if this
>is a default case.

Do the following for the first McIDAS invocation from any account:

mcidas config

This brings up a GUI configuration tool.  In this GUI, one can specify
that they want to start the MCGUI automatically and select YES for
'Save configuration values to defaults file'.  If the defaults file,
.mcidasrc,  doesn't already exist it is created.  Also, anytime a user
wants to change her/his McIDAS session values (number of frames, size of
frames, etc.), s/he can simply run 'mcidas config' and make sure that save
values is specified.

Another comment for the advenerous.  The 7.80 version of MCGUI allows the
user to easily change which ADDE server to get data from.  Have one of
your users try this out by doing the following (that user may be you?):

1) start a McIDAS-X session in which MCGUI is running:

   mcidas config              <- the first time s/he starts 7.80

   or

   mcidas                     <- assuming that the user specified that
                                 s/he wants MCGUI to automatically start

2) open up the ADDE Dataset Locations widget.  There are two ways of doing
   this:

   click on 'Configure' at the top of MCGUI
     click on 'ADDE Dataset Locations' 

   or

   click on the button that has the icon representing two computers one
   on top of the other (just to the right of the button with the Z on it)

   Either of these brings up the 'Client Routing Table Configuration'
   widget.

3) click on the 'Image' tab at the top of the
   'Client Routing Table Configuration' widget

4) select the server for the various types of data.  I recommend specifying
   the following:

   AMRC     -> UWAMRC.SSEC.WISC.EDU
   CIMSS    -> LOCAL-DATA  (CIMSS images in the Unidata-Wisconsin datastream)
   GINICOMP -> SNOW.PLYMOUTH.EDU
   GINIEAST -> CACIMBO.GGY.UGA.EDU
   GINIWEST -> PAPAGAYO.UNL.EDU
   ME7      -> IO.SCA.UQAM.CA
   RTIMAGES -> LOCAL-DATA
   RTNEXRAD -> LOCAL-DATA     (IF you are ingesting these from the IDD)
               ADDE.UCAR.EDU  (IF you are not ingesting these from the IDD)
   RTNOWRAD -> LOCAL-DATA     (these are images that you must contract for
                               from WSI corporation)
   TOPO     -> LOCAL-DATA     (these get distributed with Unidata McIDAS)

   Under the GRID tab, you would either leave the server as LOCAL-DATA
   if you are decoding gridded data with XCD or PAPAGAYO or ADDE.UCAR
   if you are not.

   Unidata the POINT tab, you would leave this as LOCAL-DATA.  A comment:
   you probably already realize that if for some reason you stopped 
   receiving/decoding POINT data (surface, upper air, profiler, etc.),
   you could simply point at a different server and keep working.
    
   Under the TEXT data, you would leave the server as LOCAL-DATA or
   choose a different server if your weather text decoding is not working
   for some reason.

   Make sure to click the button labeled 'Update and Exit', NOT the 
   one labeled 'Exit'!

5) exercise the selections made.  This is most visibly done by doing
   displays of data that you are not ingesting locally.  For instance,
   since you are most likely not ingesting NOAAPORT GINI imagery
   (you would need a satellite dish for these data as they are not
   on IDD), you should:

   click on 'Display' at the top of the MCGUI.
     click on 'Imagery'
       click on 'GINIEAST'

   Load a 1 km VIS image with the default load to start with.

   Load the same 1 km VIS image at full resolution over a station
   near you:

     click on 'Custom' for load
     change Center value to the ID of a station near you, like KILG
       for Wilmington
     click on and drag the top slider until the load factor is set at '1'
       notice how the second slider value follows the first.  If you
       wanted the load factor for the 'element' (horizontal) dimension
       to be different from the 'line' (vertical) dimension, you would
       then click on and drag the bottom slider.
     click on 'Display'

    McIDAS will go out to the ADDE server you specified above and
    display the latest GOES-East 1 km VIS image in frame 11

    Try playing around with the load center, blow-up/blow-down, etc.

6) notice that after selecting an image dataset, the button on the GUI
   with the satellite image (left most button on second row of buttons)
   is now a short cut to that dataset.

The above should give you/your users and idea of what is coming down
the pipe in regards to remote access to datasets that are not available
locally.  Any feedback you can give me on the MCGUI look, feel, operation
would be most appreciated.
   
One last thing.  Given that you upgraded from 7.705, did you remember
to upgrade your XCD setup?  There is one small step that is needed to
upgrade your XCD stuff in 7.80.  This is described in:

McIDAS-X 7.80 HomePage
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/mcidas/780
  Hot Topics
  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/mcidas/780/hottopics.html
    McIDAS-X/XCD Release Notes 
    http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/mcidas/780/mcx/release_notes.html

>Again, thank you for your help.

You are welcome.

Tom