20031027: Unidata McIDAS-X Version 2003 at NIU

>From: Gilbert Sebenste <address@hidden>
>Organization: NIU
>Keywords: 200310280030.h9S0U4Ob008841

Hi Gilbert,

>Weather3.admin.niu.edu is up! I do need to do a lot of stuff on it, 
>though.  I have installed LDM 6.0.14, but haven't turned it on; 
>Any chance you could install McIDAS, ADDE and decoders and see if it 
>breaks any land speed records?

I jumped onto weather3 last evening and did the following:

- changed the group for mcidas and ldm to unidata (502)

- created the user mcadde and put it in group unidata

- downloaded, built, and installed McIDAS-X v2003; suprisingly, this
  was not even close to a speed record (6:30).  The speed record
  is held by a single processor AMD 2000+ box at the Universidade
  Federal do Rio de Janeiro (5:37).  I think that the limiting
  factor is the disk subsystem.  The machine in Rio has ATA 133
  hard disks; what does weather3 have?

- created data directories for LDM and McIDAS use:

  /data
  /data/ldm
  /data/ldm/logs
  /data/ldm/mcidas

- changed the /home/ldm/logs directory to point at /data/ldm/logs
  pointed /home/ldm/data to /data/ldm

- changed the group ownership for everything under ~mcidas and ~ldm
  to be in group unidata

- downloaded the ldm-mcidas v2003 binaries for RedHat 8 Linux.
  unpacked it in /home/ldm/ldm-mcidas and then copied SATANNOT and
  SATBAND to /home/ldm/etc.  Copied the ldm-mcidas decoders you
  may/will use to /home/ldm/decoders.

- copied ~mcidas/mcidas2003/src/xcd_run to /home/ldm/decoders
  copied ~mcidas/workdata/mcscour.sh to /home/ldm/decoders
  copied /home/ldm/ldm-mcidas/ldm-mcidas-2003/bin/batch.k to /home/ldm/decoders

  Edited all 3 files to set needed McIDAS environment variables.

OK, that was more or less what I did.  I turned on the LDM to see it
work and left it on overnight.  There are a number of things that are
not working as indicated in /home/ldm/logs/ldmd.log.  The one thing
that is most puzzling to me is there was no data decoded by
McIDAS-XCD.  At the moment, I am totally at a loss as to why the
decoders were not creating output data files.  The decoders (actually
data monitors) were running, but they were not doing anything.  This
will take some reflective thought as to why.  The problem is that I am
swamped this week, so I will only be able to get on from time to time.

>Speaking of records, here's what I intend to do:
>
>Weather3 will be my primary ADDE server, and LDM ingestor/relay. As soon 
>as things have stabilized, I will announce that everyone feeding from 
>weather2 should now feed from weather3.

OK.  This means that I will need to make a change in the setup I
send out with McIDAS.  Please coordinate this switchover with me
so the change will be smooth.

>Weather2 becomes my backup ADDE/Backup LDM/Primary THREDDS server. I won't 
>get that up and running until after I am back from Germany, on November 
>10.

OK.

>But, weather3 is up, with a quarter gig of disk space,

You mean a quarter of a TB of disk space :-)

>1.5 GB RAM, 3.06 
>GHZ P4 processor, and 800 MHZ bus. Not bad.

Not bad at all.  That is why I was suprised that McIDAS did not build
more quickly.  Mind you, building in 6 and a half minutes is not bad;
it is just not a record.

Tom