20011106: McIDAS 7.8 at COFC (cont.)

>From: "James R. Frysinger" <address@hidden>
>Organization: College of Charleston
>Keywords: 200111061842.fA6Igt112242 McIDAS platfomrs

Jim,

>I am considering installing McIDAS 7.8 on a linux system as a backup to
>our SPARC computer, 'weather', and also to see if linux systems might be
>the better route for us to follow than Solaris.

The only difficulty I have experienced with McIDAS on Linux is the
inability to serve sounding data through the remote ADDE server.  This
problem appeared when Linux moved from the 2.0.36 to the 2.1.x kernel.
I have not been successful in developing a workaround for this (yet).
For reference, I see no problems on any other of the platforms I support
McIDAS on, including Solaris x86 and FreeBSD.

>One of the first steps is to have the sysadmin (that's me) "force the
>kernal to activate the shared memory system at boot time and set the
>maximum size to 512 MB or greater the first time McICAS-X is installed
>on a Solaris or Linux workstation."

Right.

>I have searched all the documentation I can find (stored and paper) and
>many web sites and I cannot figure out how to go about this.

This is described in the Unidata Installation and Configuration
instructions for all of the platforms that I support:

Unidata McIDAS 7.80 HomePage
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/mcidas/780/index.html
  Installation and Configuration
  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/mcidas/780/mcx/mcidas-x.html
    Initial Preparations 
    http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/mcidas/780/mcx/prepare_mcx.html
      Preparing the Workstation
      http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/mcidas/780/mcx/workstation.html 

>The key
>words "shared memory" do not cause any hits to be genererated. I'm
>guessing that this is going to require me to do something like mkswap to
>create a swap space, but I'm not sure that's related to shared memory
>or, if it is, how to designate it as shared memory. What man and info
>pages should I be reading? How do I go about carrying out this step?

Look through the last link above.

>The system I'm thinking about putting this on is a SuSE 7.2 distribution
>(kernel 2.4.4, 620 MB RAM, 500 MHz, oodles of hard drive space) running
>on a Pentium III. This is a dual boot machine and it also boots in Win98
>(if the LILO floppy is not inserted in the 90 mm drive).

I use Linux as my McIDAS development platform at home, and I love it.
I have not, however, used SuSE, but I have built under RedHat (our
officially supported Linux platform), Debian, Mandrake, and Slackware.
All recent (post 2.0.36) distributions are unable to serve sounding data
through the remote ADDE server.  Now, if I just knew a Linux expert...
Are you one?  If so, you might be able to help solve this problem.

>regards and thanks,
>Jim Frysinger
>also at:
>   address@hidden
>
>--
>James R. Frysinger                  University/College of Charleston
>10 Captiva Row                      Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
>Charleston, SC 29407                66 George Street
>843.225.0805                        Charleston, SC 29424
>http://www.cofc.edu/~frysingj       address@hidden
>Cert. Adv. Metrication Specialist   843.953.7644

Tom

>From address@hidden Tue Nov  6 21:32:31 2001
>Subject: Re: 20011106: McIDAS 7.8 at COFC (cont.)

re: are you a Linux expert

>       I sure wish I were, Tom! I installed linux at home so I could teach 
>myself that OS in order to figure out Sun Unix. (Somehow that 1 
>semester C, C++, and Unix course I took a few years ago didn't cover 
>everything -- imagine!). And I wanted to learn Unix so that I could 
>install and run McIDAS. It's just like that old song, "There's a hole 
>in my bucket, ...." from grade school.
>
>       Now, I'm lucky if I remember to boot up Windows once a month on my 
>dual boot machine. Yep, I sure have a love-hate relationship with *nix. 
>Sure gets your fingers into the gears, doesn't it! That's better than 
>wondering what's behind the big blue curtain that Windows puts up, 
>though. And don't even start me talking about Muck-'n-Slosh computers.

>       Gotta take a break for a day or two to squeeze in some lectures and 
>labs before my students squeal on me. Thanks for all the advice; you've 
>given me enough to work on for several days, at least.
>
>regards,
>Jim