20030227: AREA files aren't being displayed

>From: Richard Massa <address@hidden>
>Organization: UC Davis
>Keywords: 200302272337.h1RNbit07349 McIDAS AREA

Hi Richard,

>I have a professor who uses an archived McIDAS data set that was made 5 or so
>years ago, and saved as AREA7xxx and AREA8xxx files (VIS and IR respectively)
>
>I've copied these files into the /home/mcidas/data directory, and when I type
>LA 1 9999 I can see the 7xxx files showing up, but not the 8xxx files.  The
>permissions are the same, and all are owned by mcidas.ldm.  Do you have any
>suggestions?

What is most likely going on is that there is a McIDAS file REDIRECTion
for files named AREA8*.  To verify this, logon to the system as 'mcidas'
and do the following:

cd workdata
redirect.k LIST

Look through the listing and see if there isn't an entry that says to
look for files AREA8* somewhere other than /home/mcidas/data.

How are you planning on looking at the images?  What I mean is will
you be using the McIDAS ADDE command IMGDISP to look at the images, or
are you planning on using the DF command?

If you are planning on using DF, be aware that DF will be dropped from
the next distribution of Unidata McIDAS.  It has, in fact, not been
included in the SSEC distribution for quite some time.  If you/he
still wants to use DF, then you will need to either change the REDIRECTion
that is in place and preventing McIDAS from seeing the files, or
rename the files to something like AREA6xxx.  Changing the REDIRECTion
would be as simple as:

redirect.k DEL AREA8\*

Better than using DF is using IMGDISP.  In order use IMGDISP, you can
create ADDE datasets to access the images.  Here is one idea for
doing this (there are many, many ways to do this).  Suppose that the
images in question relate to some sort of phenomena, and you would
like to access the images using some name that reminds you of the
phenomena, like CASE1 (the name is your choice subject to the limitation
that the name must be in all capitol letters and it can only be 8
characters in length).

Next, since you have VIS and IR images, you should group these into
separate datasets.  If the images are from GOES-West, I would name
the descriptors something like: GW-IR and GW-VIS.

With these decisions made, you could then create the datasets that
IMGDISP will access:

<still in the ~mcidas/workdata directory as the user 'mcidas'>

dsserve.k ADD CASE1/GW-VIS AREA DIRFILE=/home/mcidas/data/AREA7\* \"CASE 1 GOES 
WEST VIS IMAGES
dsserve.k ADD CASE1/GW-IR AREA DIRFILE=/home/mcidas/data/AREA8\* \"CASE 1 GOES 
WEST IR IMAGES

You should then be able to list and display the images using the
datasets you just created:

imglist.k CASE1/GE-VIS.ALL
imglist.k CASE1/GE-IR.ALL

<start a McIDAS session to display>

IMGDISP CASE1/GE-VIS EU=IMAGE MAG=-2 REFRESH='EG;MAP H'
IMGDISP CASE1/GE-IR EU=IMAGE MAG=-2 REFRESH='EG;MAP H'

and so on.

>If logging into the system would help, the hostname is atm20.ucdavis.edu and
>the passwords for ldm and mcidas are the same as they were before.

I don't think that this is necessary, but I might login as 'ldm' and
install the latest LDM version, LDM-6 if you don't mind.

Tom