20021129: McIDAS XCD/ADDE setup at UQAM

>From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Christian_Pag=E9?= <address@hidden>
>Organization: UQAM
>Keywords: 200211291324.gATDOY421746 McIDAS ADDE LSSERVE.BAT

Christian,

>I have been setting up xcd decoder for IDS|PPS|DDS ldm. Everything 
>seems to work, as my data directory is full of files being updated by 
>xcd.

Don't forget to setup data scouring using the 'mcscour.sh' script
included in the McIDAS distribution.  McIDAS MD files must be scoured
before they get to be 10 days old.  If they are not, new data will be
written to the end of files that hold data that is 10 days old.  Since
the MD files' sizes are limited, decoding will eventually stop, and you
will not be able to access new data.

>But I am not able to access any of this data either through 
>LOCAL-DATA or ADDE server. DSSERVE LIST MYDATA/PTSRCS doesn't show any 
>data either. I am a little bit lost on what should I look for and what 
>info is important to fix the problem.
>
>Could you enlighten me on what to check and which commands to look for 
>to serve these files?

You are close to being up and working.  What you need to do now is define
the contents of ADDE datasets.  Defining the content of a dataset is
a process of telling McIDAS which data files belong in which datasets
according to names that follow a 'group/descriptor' form.  For
instance, RTIMAGES/GE-IR is a dataset that should be composed of
GOES-East Infrared (10.7 um) imagery.  You have to teach McIDAS about
this relationship.

In the distribution, I included a McIDAS BATCH file called DSSERVE.BAT;
this file gets installed in the ~mcidas/data directory.  You need to:

o login as 'mcidas'
o cd ~mcidas/data
o cp DSSERVE.BAT LSSERVE.BAT
o edit LSSERVE.BAT to comment out any datasets that you will not have
  on your system, and, if necessary, modify the definitions for the
  other datasets that you will have
o after you have finished editing ~mcidas/data/LSSERVE.BAT, you need
  to make the settings in it active for McIDAS.  This is done with
  the BATCH command _after_ you have defined a McIDAS string called
  XCDDATA to point at the directory where XCD is decoding data files.
  Since you say that XCD is working, XCDDATA must already be defined.

The following are some tips on modifying LSSERVE.BAT.  I am assuming
that you are using McIDAS-X v2002.  If you are not, if you are using
v7.8x some of these comments will not be appropriate.

1) virtually all users leave the definitions for the CIMSS, RTIMAGES,
   and RTPTSRC datasets alone.  Only the user well versed in McIDAS
   ventures to alter these definitions

2) If you are ingesting NEXRAD composite imagery from the IDD FNEXRAD
   data feed, you will have at least some of the datasets defined
   in the NEXRCOMP section of LSSERVE.BAT.  You need to determine
   which of the FNEXRAD images you are ingesting and decoding with
   ldm-mcidas decoders and incorporate that knowledge into the
   LSSERVE.BAT entries for NEXRCOMR.  In particular, you will need
   to comment out any entries for products that you do not/will not
   have (a comment line in a McIDAS BATCH file begins with 'REM ').
   You will also need to replace the value of the keyword 'DIRFILE='
   with the fully qualified pathname for the data that you are
   ingesting/decoding.

3) you should comment out all entries for all datasets that you will
   not have on your system.  This will probably include WNEXRAD and
   WNOWRAD and possibly RTNEXRAD.  WNEXRAD and WNOWRAD are already
   commented out, so you won't have to do anything there.  You
   will want to keep the RTNEXRAD dataset definitions if you
   are ingesting NEXRAD Level III radar products from the IDD NNEXRAD
   or FNEXRAD feeds.

Again, the important part in modifying LSSERVE.BAT is setting the fully
qualified pathname masks for NEXRCOMP images and commenting out the
dataset definitions for datasets that you will not have.

Once you have finished editing LSSERVE.BAT, you make those definitions
active in your account using BATCH:

<still as 'mcidas'>
cd ~mcidas/workdata
batch.k LSSERVE.BAT

Again, the McIDAS string XCDDATA must have been defined before you
run BATCH.

The above process defines the datsets in LSSERVE.BAT.  If your McIDAS
session did not already have a pointer to a machine that has these
data sets (a DATALOC for a dataset), then all of the definitions will
become active, and the datasets will be accessible through LOCAL-DATA.

Now, a question for you.  I thought that ADDE was already setup on
your machine.  I know that io.sca.uqam.ca at least has the ME7
dataset defined.  Is it the case that no other ADDE datasets were
defined previously?  Or, are you setting up a new machine?

Tom Yoksas

>From address@hidden Wed Dec  4 19:36:37 2002
>Subject: Re: 20021129: McIDAS XCD/ADDE setup at UQAM

Hi Tom,

Thanks for all the info, I will try that as soon as I can but not 
now unfortunately, since I am now in a rush now for other things. 
Then I will try to make make xcd work properly on our machine.

>
> Now, a question for you.  I thought that ADDE was already setup on
> your machine.  I know that io.sca.uqam.ca at least has the ME7
> dataset defined.  Is it the case that no other ADDE datasets were
> defined previously?  Or, are you setting up a new machine?

I had only setup ME7 dataset, but I never ingested anything through 
ldm and xdc, But ADDE was setup to server ME7.

Thanks again, and I will keep you updated as soon as I can test my 
setup given your instructions.

Christian Pagé
address@hidden
http://meteocentre.com/        http://meteoalerte.com/
Etudiant au Doctorat +1 514 987 3000 ext. 2376
Sciences de l'Environnement UQAM