20030113: how to display loop of images in a webpage (cont.)

>From: Sridharareddy Duggireddy <address@hidden>
>Organization: USF
>Keywords: 200301061638.h06Gcdt04784 McIDAS web animated GIF

Sridhara,

>    I was trying to display the loop of radar images. I have created 10
>radar gif images and tried to loop them using convert which you have
>given. But it is not working. Can you tell me why it is not working?
>I am sending the cgi script file and shell script file along with this.
>
>regards,
>Sridhara.


I jumped onto metlab and took a look in the
/usr/local/apps/php-apache/htdocs/sridhara/mcidas/gifs
directory.  There is a BIG file there that does not have a printable
name:

[root@metlab gifs]# ls -alt
total 8460
 ...
-rw-r--r--    1 nobody   nobody    3484291 Jan 14 19:01  
 ...
-rw-r--r--    1 nobody   nobody    3484291 Jan  9 11:42 GE-IRloop.gif

Interestingly, the file with no name is the same size as the GE-IRloop.gif
file, but the timestamp is current!  I deleted the file to see if it
would return.  It did at 19:40:

[root@metlab gifs]# ls -alt
total 8584
-rw-r--r--    1 nobody   nobody    3484291 Jan 14 19:40  
drwxr-xr-x    2 nobody   nobody       4096 Jan 14 19:40 .
-rw-r--r--    1 nobody   nobody     107955 Jan 14 19:40 20030114193957.gif
-rw-r--r--    1 nobody   nobody      11133 Jan 14 19:39 20030114193929.gif

This has to be one clue as to what is going on.

Another clue is that GE-IRloop.gif has not been updated for several
days:

[root@metlab gifs]# ls -alt GE-IRloop.gif
-rw-r--r--    1 nobody   nobody    3484291 Jan  9 11:42 GE-IRloop.gif

I would guess, therefore, that you made a change to something on Jan
9 that is causing the failure of frameX.gif and GE-IRloop.gif
to update; a file with a blank name to be created; and the
RADAR_LOOP.gif file to not be created.

In looking at the script, I found that there was no new line fter
gif">" so that the line was actually:

...gif">"echo<center>

I believe that this was your problem, so I corrected it.  I also
eliminated the quote marks inside of the img src reference, and put
quote marks around </center>.  This seemed to make things work:

change:

echo "<img 
src="http://metlab.cas.usf.edu/sridhara/mcidas/gifs/RADAR_LOOP.gif";>"echo 
</center>

to:

echo "<img src=http://metlab.cas.usf.edu/sridhara/mcidas/gifs/RADAR_LOOP.gif";>
echo "</center>"

I did the same thing for your other gen*.csh files, and the file with
no name problem has apparently disappeared.  We will have to wait awhile
to know for sure.

One observation:  the last GIF in your radar loop does not have a map
or data bar drawn on top of it.  In the script where you are generating
the GIF or set of GIFs, you should add a pause for a couple of seconds
so McIDAS actually draws the map and data bar.  A pause in a McIDAS
script is done with the McIDAS WAIT command.  I would add a 'WAIT 3' to
whatever script is creating those radar GIFs.

Tom