20020405: 20020404: McIDAS7.8: problem displaying RTIMAGES

>From: Carl Gibbons <address@hidden>
>Organization: DU
>Keywords: 200204042358.g34Nw8a03150 McIDAS MCGUI DATALOC

Carl,

re: configure such that MCGUI comes up automatically

>Okay, done.  But then I only get the MCGUI and the command-line window
>doesn't come up.

This is by design.  The MCGUI has its own Command window.  To access
it, you left click on the button with the keyboard icone in it (the
one just to the left of the button with the Z).  In fact, this button
brings up three different kind of command windows:

o left click - the MCGUI command window in which all commands run from the
               MCGUI are echoed and are available for recall/edit/rerun

o middle click - brings up the regular McIDAS Text and Command window.  In
                 fact, you can bring up as many of these as you want/need
                 simply by repeatedly clicking the middle mouse button
                 over the keyboard icon

o right click  - brings up a separate GUI command window from which commands
                 can be run, but in which the MCGUI-executed commands are
                 not available

>So I set it back the way it was; having to type MCGUI in
>the command-line window is better than having no command-line window.

I strongly recommend going back to the MCGUI at startup.  It saves
screen space.

re: what is the ADDE server for RTIMAGES

>It's LOCAL-DATA.

OK.  This means that your session has to be setup to serve these data.
This is done by:

1) defining the McIDAS string XCDDATA:

   TE XCDDATA "<the directory where the XCD and ldm-mcidas decoded data
                files are written>

2) making and editing a copy of ~mcidas/data/DSSERVE.BAT:

   <as 'mcidas'>
   cd ~/data
   cp DSSERVE.BAT LSSERVE.BAT
   <edit LSSERVE.BAT and comment out any dataset that your machine will not
   serve>

3) making the definitions in LSSERVE.BAT active in your session:

   BATCH LSSERVE.BAT

re: I can see the data on cyclone.natnet.du.edu, can you

>Yes, I can.

Very good.

re: if the DATALOC for RTIMAGES is LOCAL-DATA, then you need to define
datasets

>Then I suspect that I do not know how to properly define the ADDE
>datasets.  Users ('mcidas' or not) on cyclone don't have the problem.
>Users (including 'mcidas') on nimbus do.

See above.

>The documentation on setting up ADDE datasets asked me to use a
>'TE XCDDATA "whatever' command and then run a batch script.  I used
>'TE XCDDATA "/data/ldm'.  Maybe that was incorrect?

When on 'nimbus', what is the directory in which XCD and ldm-mcidas decoders
are writing their McIDAS format data files?  This will probably be something
like /data/ldm/mcidas, or /data/ldm/xcd, or /data/ldm/mcidasd, etc.  This
is what you want to set XCDDATA to.  After defining XCDDATA you then have
to run:

BATCH LSSERVE.BAT

The other thing that you must do is make sure that your McIDAS session
can find the data files that comprise the datasets.  By this I mean
that you must be able to successfully do things like:

DMAP AREA0

and get back a listing for all AREA files being decoded by ldm-mcidas
decoders.  The set of McIDAS file REDIRECTions that allows your session
to find those data files should have been setup in the installation
process on 'nimbus':

<login as 'mcidas'>
cd ~/data
cp EXAMPLE.NAM LOCAL.NAM
<edit LOCAL.NAM and set the directories to match where the various files
live>

After doing this, you make the settings active in your McIDAS session
by running:

REDIRECT REST LOCAL.NAM

Once your session can find the data files and the datasets have been
defined, you should be able to access the data with a dataloc of
LOCAL-DATA.

NOTE: it is always easier to have one machine at a site act as the
ADDE server.  This way, all a user has to do is "point" at that
server for the datasets that s/he wants to look at.  Since CYCLONE
is already setup, I strongly recommend that you simply have users
on 'nimbus' bring up the ADDE Client Routing Configuration widget
and set the DATALOC for the various datasets to CYCLONE.NATNET.DU.EDU.
They then do not have to go through the steps of defining the datasets
or of setting up file REDIRECTions to find the data.  In fact, it
then means that 'nimbus' does not even need to NFS mount the data
disk from CYCLONE.  All-in-all, this makes the setting up of a new
machine _much_ simplier.

Tom