20040920: McIDAS in a new acct

>From: mynul khan <address@hidden>
>Organization: St. Cloud State
>Keywords: 200409201503.i8KF3KnJ029837 McIDAS user account

Mynul,

>Mcidas is working well in "meteor". Besides mcidas
>account we have another account "student". There is no
>problem viewing imegary using mcidas. But last weekend
>I created a new account and configured it so that the
>new user could use mcidas from his account. But
>unfortunately   new account unable show any imagery on
>mcidas. 

Is the new account allowed to access files in 'mcidas' account?

>I did the following to configure the account.
>First, copied .cshrc from "student" account. Then did
>the following:

>Type: cd mcidas/data
>Type: cp ~mcidas/mcidas2004/data/UNIMENU.DEF .
>Type: mkdir mcidas
>Type: mkdir mcidas/data

This sequence doesn't make sense -- it appears out of order.  The
~/mcidas/data directory would need to exist before you can CD to it.

>Type: ~mcidas/admin/userdata ~mcidas/mcidas2004/data ~/mcidas/data
> 
>Then I defined data file access:
>Type: mcidas
>Type: REDIRECT REST LOCAL.NAM

OK.  The first thing I would recommend is to make sure that the
'REDIRECT REST' invocation actually worked:

REDIRECT LIST
DMAP AREA
DMAP MDXX
 etc.

>Type: REDIRECT MAKE
>Type: TE XCDDATA "/var/data/mcidas #this is the fully
>qualified direcotry name
>Type: BATCH LSSERVE.BAT

First, XCDDATA does not need to be defined for this user _if_ you setup
the account to access data through the remote ADDE server, which is my
recommendation.  Also, 'BATCH LSSERVE.BAT' does not have to be run if
your are going through the remote ADDE server.  The actions in
LSSERVE.BAT (a potentially locally modified version of the DSSERVE.BAT
file contained in the McIDAS distribution) define ADDE server actions
for the user running BATCH.  If you are going through the remote ADDE
server interface, only the user 'mcidas' has do define ADDE datasets.
This makes life _much_ easier for all users except 'mcidas'.  Since the
'mcidas' account is to be regarded as 'root' for the McIDAS
application, it is not unreasonable to concentrate all of the knowledge
of intricate McIDAS stuff in that account.

Second, if you really typed:

TE XCDDATA "/var/data/mcidas #this is the fully qualified direcotry name

then you have a problem.  The correct TE invocation would be:

TE XCDDATA "/var/data/mcidas

The McIDAS TE command takes everything after the '"' (shifted quote) as
the value of the McIDAS string XCDDATA.

>Type: BATCH MYDATA.BAT
>Type: BATCH TOPOADDE.BAT

These are needed, and the invocatoins are correct.

>Type: EXIT

>So, could you please help me to find out whether I
>have missed anything or, is there something I did
>wrong?

The first thing I strongly recommend is making sure that you have fully
setup the 'mcidas' account.  This includes installation of the ADDE
remote server interface:

<as 'root'>

- setup the ADDE remote access

cd ~mcidas
sh ./mcinet2004.sh uninstall mcadde
sh ./mcinet2004.sh install mcadde

  -- make sure that the machine is accessible through ports 112, 500,
     and 503 (i.e., bore a hole in the firewall if needed)

- create the file ~mcidas/.mcenv as per instructions in the McIDAS
  web pages

- make sure that the ADDE datasets have been defined by 'mcidas'

After the remote ADDE server is setup and working, configuring a new
account to use McIDAS is trivial:

1) add needed McIDAS environment variable definitions into the user's
   shell-specific definition file (e.g., .cshrc for Cshell,
   .bash_profile for BASH shell users, etc.)

2) create the ~/mcidas/data directory

If 1) was done as per web page instructions, the user should then be
able to run McIDAS.  The first thing she will need to do is setup ADDE
"pointing" (DATALOCs) to datasets hosted by the remote server that was
setup in the 'mcidas' account.  This is easily done by:

<as 'mcidas'>

cd ~mcidas/data
cp DATALOC.BAT LOCDATA.BAT

-- edit LOCDATA.BAT and setup DATALOCs to point to your remote server
   for the datasets that it has; point at other servers for datasets
   that your server doesn't have

<as the user>

cd mcidas/data
-- start a McIDAS session
BATCH LOCDATA.BAT

At this point the user should be able to start using McIDAS.

The above procedure was abstraced from the Unidata McIDAS web pages for
configuring user accounts.

>Thanks,

No worries.

Cheers,

Tom
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