20020128: McIDASX 7.804

>From: Eirh-Yu Hsie <address@hidden>
>Organization: CU/CIRES/NOAA
>Keywords: 200201281757.g0SHvmx11844 McIDAS-X 7.804 MCGUI

Hsie,

>I just install McIDASX7.804 in a linux system (RedHat 7.2).  I can not access 
>Nexrad data from the GUI interface.  It always gives me:
>
>"No NIDS images found in dataset RTNEXRAD/NCR." in a popup window.

The error being returned by stratus.al.noaa.gov when trying to access
the NCR (composite reflectivity) imagery is:

IMGLIST RTNEXRAD/NCR ID=LIST
Image file directory listing for:RTNEXRAD/NCR
IMGLIST: error opening configuration file
IMGLIST: done
IMGLIST failed, RC=2

This does indicate a configuration error.

>The satellite data is fine.  I must misconfigure some configuration files.

The configuration for ADDE serving of NEXRAD imagery is controlled by a
configuration file located in the ~mcidas/workdata directory.  The name
of this file should be site-specific as it should be a copy of the file
include in the Unidata McIDAS distribution which is named NNEXRAD.CFG.

The installation/configuration process that sets up ADDE serving of the
various datasets is (all done as the user 'mcidas'):

cd ~mcidas/data
cp DSSERVE.BAT LSSERVE.BAT
<edit LSSERVE.BAT to match your desired setup>
cd ~mcidas/workdata
batch.k LSSERVE.BAT

So, the first thing to do is to look at the existing copy of
~mcidas/data/LSSERVE.BAT to see what the ADDE setup for the RTNEXRAD
group is.  The default line (i.e., the one that came from DSSERVE.BAT)
pertaining to the NCR imagery is:

DSSERVE ADD RTNEXRAD/NCR          NEXR    1 9999 TYPE=IMAGE INFO=NNEXRAD.CFG   
"Composite Reflectivity

In the <edit LSSERVE.BAT to match your desired setup> step above, you
would have changed the INFO=NNEXRAD.CFG keyword setting to something
particular to your setup.  The object of the INFO= will be the name of
the file containing the configuration information for your setup.

** NOTES **

1) If, for some reason your LSSERVE.BAT file does not have an entry for
   RTNEXRAD/NCR, add the line above to it and modify the INFO= entry to
   match the other NEXRAD image types.

2) If, for some reason you do not have a ~mcidas/data/LSSERVE.BAT file,
   you will need to create one:

   cd ~mcidas/data
   cp DSSERVE.BAT LSSERVE.BAT

   and edit the copy to setup ADDE serving to match your setup (and also
   to remove lines from it for datasets that you will not be serving)

   In this case, you will be faced with determining what the name of
   your existing NEXRAD configuration file is.  To do this, I would
   look for the files that match the mask *NEXR.CFG in your ~mcidas/workdata
   directory (I recommend to sites to name their local configuration
   files in this manner).

Since I see that stratus is not setup to serve other NEXRAD imagery
(like N0R), it is likely that your configuration file setup did not
use a file name that would not be overwritten by the installation
process.  If this is the case, then perform the copy instructions
in 2) above.  In this case, I would recommend that you name your
NEXRAD configuration file something like CUNEXR.CFG or LOCNEXR.CFG.
You would set this name as the object of the INFO= keyword in LSSERVE.BAT,
AND create the file as follows:

cd ~mcidas/workdata
cp NNEXRAD.CFG CUNEXR.CFG

You will then need to edit your local copy and setup the DIRMASK=
and FILEMASK= arguments at the bottom of the file.  DIRMASK is an
extended regular expression for the directory where the data files
can be found, and FILEMASK= is an extended regular expression for
the names of the files.  The recommended setup for storing NEXRAD
data is as subdirectories with names of the NEXRAD stations under
some top level directory.  Under each directory of ID names, would
be subdirectories of image type.  To illustrate this point, I include
the setup on one of our machines here at Unidata:

top level directory:  /data/ldm/gempak/nexrad/NIDS
directories with names that match NEXRAD station IDs:  ABC  AMX  BMX  CLX
                                                       etc
subdirectories of image types:  N0R  N0V  N1P  N1S  N2R  N3R  NCR  NTP  NVW
                                N0S  N0Z  N1R  N1V  N2S  N3S  NET  NVL
file names: N0R_20020128_0828  N0R_20020128_1057  N0R_20020128_1326

In this case, DIRMASK= and FILEMASK= would be setup as:

DIRMASK=/data/ldm/gempak/nexrad/NIDS/\ID/\TYPE
FILEMASK=\TYPE_*

Here the "replaceables" \ID and \TYPE symbolically represent the
station ID (e.g., ABC,  AMX,  BMX,  CLX, etc.) and product type (e.g.,
N0R, N1R, ...)

Once your local configuration file is setup (i.e., edited), then running
the configuration BATCH setup:

cd ~mcidas/workdata
batch.k LSSERVE.BAT

should be sufficient to setup ADDE serving of these data.

>Any help will be appreciated.

Please let me know if the above does not make sense, or if you continue
to have problems in setting up serving of the NEXRAD data on stratus.

Tom