20030415: McIDAS 2002b on RedHat8

>From: "Alliss, Randall J." <address@hidden>
>Organization: Northrop Grumman
>Keywords: 200304152019.h3FKJ67U020616 McIDAS-X v2002b MCGUI

Hi Randy,

>Martha recently built Uni-mcidas2002b on our redhat box. the OS is Linux8. I
>get strange results when i fire up mcidasx...When the .mcidasrc file is
>configured NOT to start either SSEC or UD GUI's then all i get is the text
>box...no mcimage even though when i do a ps mcimage is running.

Are you running Gnome or KDE?  Many users have experienced strange
things like the mcimage window not materializing under KDE.
Interestingly, the process is running, but the window never gets
displayed by the window manager.  Folks at SSEC have looked at this
some, but their comment (I saw this in the Inquiry Tracking system
recently) was that it was not a high priority item since McIDAS seems
to work fine under Gnome.

I must add that I have never fired up McIDAS at the console on a RedHat
8.0 Linux machine, so I can't comment directly on what you are seeing.
I can, however, fire it up when logged onto the system from another
machine (the typically setup here at Unidata) while having the display
sent back to my console.

>Also in the
>text box i get the following messages:
>mcimage:  unknown options: -addCompress FALSE -addeTimeout 120

Not to worry.  I added these options to my GUI startup since I thought
that they were important.  The concept is that the user can specify if
s/he wants compressed or uncompressed data transfers and can also
specify the ADDE timeout from my GUI startup window.  The GUI startup
then sets environment variables that are read by McIDAS on startup.
mcenv complains that it doesn't know what the -addeCompress and
-addeTimeout options are, but all it does is complain and then ignore
them.

>mcimage:  number of graphics colors plus image colors cannot be more than...
>mcimage:  attempting to guess a good value
>mcimage:  using slow processing for Z-16 images.

This can usually be safely ignored unless you are not getting enough
colors in your McIDAS session.  I would recommend, by the way, that
you run your Linux desktop with 32-bit color instead of 16.  That way
you won't get the first two lines of message above, and the third
will read:

mcimage:  using slow processing for Z-32 images.

Don't worry about the 'slow' in this message. That was put in the code
a LONG time ago when machines being used were really slow.  It is
true that the system has to do more work when the user wants to run
in anything other than 8-bit mode, but ythis is true for any
application, not just McIDAS.

>when i turn on the UD GUI option i get a mcimage window but also get the
>hour glass and can perform no functions.

The 'UD' GUI option?  I am unsure of what you are referring to.

>In the text window i can issue a
>IMGDISP command but i do not see the image load in the mcimage window. I can
>even do an ALT-D and it gives me the values  but again no picture.

>same thing for runnning SSEC GUI...mcimage but no image appears when using
>IMDISP command.
>
>your thoughts?

Sounds like you may be running under KDE?  After you tell me more about
the UD GUI option, I will investigate further.

Tom

>From address@hidden Tue Apr 22 07:10:04 2003

Tom,

problem solved...GNOME fixed the problem...I was also able to logon from
another machine and had display sent back to other machine. 

thanks,
Randy