20020819: refining how many days of McIDAS data are kept online

>From: William C Klein <address@hidden>
>Organization: Valparaiso
>Keywords: 200208191558.g7JFw6K19855 McIDAS-X mcscour.sh

Bill,

>Currently, it seems as though we are only saving 2 days worth of data.
>Is there a way to change this or is it based upon the feed and demand?

The amount of McIDAS data that a site keeps is, if they follow installation
and setup recommendations, controlled by settings in the script used to
scour data holdings, mcscour.sh.  mcscour.sh is designed to be:

o copied to a directory in the PATH of the user running the LDM
o edited by the party responsible for the LDM operation
o run from cron once per day

It is the second item above that governs how much data will be kept online
at any time.  The default settings in the version of mcscour.sh that
is distributed with Unidata McIDAS look like:

MCPATH=$MCPATH PATH=$PATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH mcenv << EOF

qrtmdg.k GRID 5001 6300 1
doqtl.k  1  70 2
doqtl.k 71  80 2
doqtl.k 81  90 2
doqtl.k 91 100 2
delwxt.k 1 10
igu.k DEL 132
lwu.k DEL VIRT9001
lwu.k DEL VIRT9002
lwu.k DEL ROUTEPP.LOG
exit

EOF


The entries that begin with doqtl.k are the ones responsible for scouring
McIDAS MD files back to 'n' number of days.  Here 'n' is 2.  The
meaning of these entries is:

scour    MDb MDe  Nday
doqtl.k    1  70    2       <- MD files 0001 - 0070

Storage of realtime point source data in McIDAS MD files follows:

MDmin   MDmax   POINT data
-------+-------+------------
  1       10    surface observations (SAOs and METARS)
 11       20    mandatory level upper air data
 21       30    significant level upper air data
 31       40    ship/buoy data
 41       50    FOUS14 (NGM MOS) model output for selected cities
 51       60    synoptic data
 61       70    pirep/airep data
 71       80    NLDN lightning data
 81       90    hourly summary FSL wind profiler data
 91      100    6-minute FSL wind profiler data

The scouring was broken down into sections (1 -70, 71-80, 81-90, 91-100)
as an example of what can be done by the local site's administrator.

If you wanted to keep 4 days each of surface, upper air, ship/buoy, fous14,
synoptic, and pirep/airep data, all you would need need to do is

change:

doqtl.k 1 70 2

to:

doqtl.k 1 70 4

If you wanted to keep 3 days of surface and upper air observations, but
only 2 days of ship/buoy, fous14, synoptic, and pirep/airep data, you
would need to create two entries out of the on existing one:

change:

doqtl.k 1 70 2

to:

doqtl.k  1 30 3
doqtl.k 31 70 2

and so on.

Tom