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>From: "Fingerhut, William A" <address@hidden> >Organization: Lyndon State >Keywords: 200207191535.g6JFZa920941 McIDAS-X XCD REDIRECT Bill, >Steven knows and approves of your logging in. OK, I logged on right after reading this message. I immediately reviewed environment variable settings (e.g., MCPATH, etc.), REDIRECTions, etc. All looked OK. I did all of this -- as always should be done -- from the ~mcidas/workdata. The key point is when configuring McIDAS, always run commands while residing in the $MCDATA directory. This goes for 'mcidas' as well as ordinary users. While checking out things, I did the following: <as 'ldm'> ldmadmin stop <as 'mcidas'> cd /var/data/ldm/mcidas/xcd rm *.R* *.IDT cd /home/mcidas/workdata tl.k <- to verify XCDDATA setting which was correct rm ../data/SKEDFILE <- these should be in ~mcidas/workdata rm ../data/STRTABLE " rm -f core.* <- core files from ingetext.k and ingebin.k (!?) Then, I started looking around. I found the following: 1) you have your system setup to save XCD-decoded files in /var/data/ldm/mcidas/xcd and ldm-mcidas-decoded files in /var/data/ldm/mcidas/xdata. As far as the software goes, there is no reason to keep these sets of files separated from each other. In fact, I now recommend to write all data files to a single directory as it eliminates a configuration step that I will get to next. Both the ldm-mcidas and XCD decoders are setup to read/write items from the files ROUTE.SYS and SYSKEY.TAB. For point source file decoding, they both use information from the file SCHEMA. I found that you had one copy of SCHEMA in /var/data/ldm/mcidas/xcd and a different one (the most current one) in /var/data/ldm/mcidas/xdata. Since the copy of SCHEMA that both decoders should be using is the most current one, I did the following: cd /var/data/ldm/mcidas/xdata rm ../xcd/SCHEMA ln SCHEMA ../xcd Since both decoders want to read/write ROUTE.SYS and SYSKEY.TAB, I did the following: <still in /var/data/ldm/mcidas/xdata> ln ROUTE.SYS ../xcd rm ../xcd/SYSKEY.TAB <- this was different from the on in . ln SYSKEY.TAB ../xcd Now, both directories are using the same set of SCHEMA, ROUTE.SYS, and SYSKEY.TAB 2) I noticed that the majority of the XCD-produced MD files (surface, upper air, synoptic, etc.) were bad. Their file sizes were: ls -alt MDXX* -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 4989748 Jul 24 16:16 MDXX0035 -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 4149660 Jul 24 16:16 MDXX0065 -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 5078740 Jul 24 15:43 MDXX0034 -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 6656 Jul 24 02:38 MDXX0045 -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 5979224 Jul 24 01:08 MDXX0064 -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 4987048 Jul 23 23:59 MDXX0033 -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 6656 Jul 23 23:47 MDXX0005 -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 6656 Jul 23 23:17 MDXX0015 -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 6656 Jul 23 23:17 MDXX0025 -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 6656 Jul 23 23:14 MDXX0055 -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 6656 Jul 23 14:46 MDXX0044 -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 6656 Jul 23 12:23 MDXX0014 -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 6656 Jul 23 12:23 MDXX0024 -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 6656 Jul 23 12:20 MDXX0004 -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 6656 Jul 23 12:20 MDXX0054 -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 4671164 Jul 22 18:14 MDXX0063 You can see from this partial, edited listing that a number of the files have a size of 6656. This indicates that they were created incorrectly. I deleted all of the XCD-created MD files (while the LDM was turned off), so they could get recreated correctly. Continuing on: <still as 'mcidas'> batch.k XCD.BAT <- this and the next step came after 1) and 2) batch.k XCDDEC.BAT below After making the above changes, I restarted the LDM: <as 'ldm'> ldmadmin start Now, as new MD files are coming in and being decoded, they look properly sized: ls -alt MDXX* -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 32688636 Jul 24 16:34 MDXX0005 -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 4552888 Jul 24 16:34 MDXX0035 -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 6460512 Jul 24 16:34 MDXX0055 -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 4155336 Jul 24 16:34 MDXX0065 -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 3526680 Jul 24 16:29 MDXX0015 -rw-rw-r-- 1 ldm udata 16640 Jul 24 16:22 MDXX0025 The munged MD files was _probably_ the sticking point for the creation of the *.RAT files. If the decoder can't correctly write to the output MD file, the rapid access files don't get updated. In fact, as I write this I note that *.RAT files are now being produced/updated. Yahoo! Another problem I just saw is that the McIDAS-XCD output directory is apparently being scoured by LDM's scour utility. This is not advised since scour can delete files that are open for writing by XCD routines. I strongly recommend that the LDM scour of this directory be stopped. In fact, I stopped it by editing ~ldm/etc/scour.conf and commenting out ALL lines that scoured things in subdirectories of /var/data/ldm/mcidas. Since there is already a cron entry for running the McIDAS scour routine, mcscour.sh, your system should be in no danger of filling the disk. While I was on foxfire, I took the liberty of doing a couple of other things: 1) upgraded McIDAS-X to addendum 7.806; this was not necessary to get the decoding working, but, what the hey! 2) updated ~ldm/decoders/xcd_run with a needed patch (after making changes to xcd_run, I stopped and restarted the LDM) 3) deleted all FSUS* files from /var/data/ldm/mcidas/xdata (these were not getting scoured) 4) commented out the ~ldm/etc/pqact.conf entries for filing front analysis and forecast files (ASUS* and FSUS*). McIDAS no longer uses these files; it reads the frontal information from the XCD-produced text spool files (/var/data/ldm/mcidas/xcd/*.XCD) As I close, I think that everything is running correctly. Please let me know if you see anything amiss. Tom >From address@hidden Wed Jul 24 11:53:24 2002 Tom, I sure feel much better now. Thanks so much. This was getting quite frustrating, since I invested a lot of time and didn't see anything wrong. Live and learn, I guess. Thanks again, Bill < Bill Fingerhut, Professor PHONE: 802-626-6257 > < Meteorology Dept FAX: 802-626-9770 > < Lyndon State College > < Lyndonville, Vt 05851 > < > < EMAIL: address@hidden > < address@hidden > < WWW: http://apollo.lsc.vsc.edu/ > < > < disclaimer: I know nothing - I only work here. >