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>From: Richard Massa <address@hidden> >Organization: UC Davis >Keywords: 200211080021.gA80LWX27028 McIDAS Fkey uwgrid.sh Richard, >Another question... > >So I was introduced to the Fkey system by my professor who said that had to >have this working after all is said and done, so I'm having some problems... OK, but first I want to encourage use of the MCGUI. The Fkey menu gets little attention now adays, so actions in it can be expected to break eventually. In fact, I have been receiving comments on several problems in the Fkey menu from another user over the past few weeks. I am fixing those problems, but I will not be adding any new functionality to the Fkey menu in the future. I also want to note that the Fkey menu can be run in conjunction with the MCGUI. To do this, try running 'mcidas config' and specifying that you want the MCGUI to automatically start. When your McIDAS session starts, you can fire up the Fkey menu from the 'Misc' list available at the top of the MCGUI. Again, these can both be active at the same time, so that things available in the Fkey menu that are not available in the MCGUI can still be used. For everything except GRID display, the MCGUI is recommended over the Fkey menu. >I ran mcidas config, and selected the FKEY option, and then went to > >Model Output - North America Horizontal (F4) >and then to 500mb Geopotential (F5) > >and I get a sequence of commands, with errors like this: > >SF 16 >GU REST GRAPHIC 16 DEV=NNN >MAP DEF 7 LALO -2 INT=20 20 DASHSET=1 X 5 LAT=20.83 49.88 LON=78 137.97 SLON=1 > 05 PRO> >MAP: Completed frame 16 >BATCH: BATCH done /home/mcidas/data/BKGMAP.BAT >GRDDISP: No grid found matching search conditions > >Various other functions don't work as well and also claim to have problems >obtaining GRID data... What do I need to do to make this work? The Fkey menu GRID actions are based on there being specific GRID datasets available: RTGRIDS/NGM-UW and RTGRIDS/MRF-UW. These datasets need to be created from XCD-created GRID files by running an appropriately modified copy of the Bourne shell script 'uwgrid.sh' from cron. By appropriately modified, I mean that you should do the following: <login as 'mcidas' (or 'ldm')> <make a local copy of uwgrid.sh so that it won't be overwritten upon new McIDAS installations> cd workdata cp uwgrid.sh ucduwgrid.sh <edit your local copy of uwgrid.sh and set McIDAS environment variables in the exact same way that you set them in the scripts 'xcd_run', 'mcscour.sh', and potentially 'batch.k'> <run your local copy of uwgrid.sh from cron to create the datasets that the Fkey menu is looking for. Here are cron invocations fashioned after ones I use on a machine I administer: # Create the NGM-UW and MRF-UW GRID files 30 10,22 * * * /home/mcidas/workdata/ucduwgrid.sh NF 1>/dev/null 2>&1 00 9,21 * * * /home/mcidas/workdata/ucduwgrid.sh NG 1>/dev/null 2>&1 Now, the hours that cron jobs run are in local time (too bad, UTC would be much easier to deal with). To me, this means that you might want to alter the entries for your machine since you are one hour furter west than us: # Create the NGM-UW and MRF-UW GRID files 30 9,21 * * * /home/mcidas/workdata/ucduwgrid.sh NF 1>/dev/null 2>&1 00 8,20 * * * /home/mcidas/workdata/ucduwgrid.sh NG 1>/dev/null 2>&1 The tricky part, however, is that the hours the scripts run must be tailored for your site not only by geographic location (due to the running of the jobs by local time), but also by the averate time that you receive the gridded data in the IDD HDS stream. This is something each site has to tune themselves. The hours I provide above are a good starting point, however. Now, once the local copy of the uwgrid.sh script is run, you will end up with GRID files that will makeup the ADDE datasets used by the Fkey menu GRID display actions. If the file REDIRECTions you put in place followed the recommendations on the Unidata McIDAS web pages, those GRID files will be stored in the same directory as your XCD created ones. The will also be scoured by the same scouring action in mcscour.sh that is being used for the XCD created GRID and MD files. Please let me know if the above wasn't clear. Also, be on the lookout for a McIDAS addendum that contains fixes for other actions in the Fkey menu. Tom