20041007: McIDAS question

>From: Mark Tucker <address@hidden>
>Organization: Lyndon State University
>Keywords: 200410071359.i97DxcUE000065 McIDAS MCGUI

Hi Mark,

>We have a problem starting MCGUI for some users.  Once started, it
>never exits and opens a new MCGUI window about every 10 seconds until
>the system runs out of memory.
>
>In our mcidas environment each user has a ~/.mcidasrc file which calls
>a batch file:
>
># begin ~.mcidasrc
>-f 17@600x800
>-c '!@exec mccheck'
>-tgeometry 85x36+0+400
>-igeometry +430+0
>-graphicsColors 16
>-imageColors 64
>-c 'BATCH "/mnt/data/mcidas/labstuff/STARTUP.BAT'
>-c 'MCMENU UNIDATA.MNU'
># end ~/.mcidasrc
>
>The batch file /mnt/data/mcidas/labstuff/STARTUP.BAT sets up a number
>of redirections, dataloc statement and string values and then, as it's
>last statement, calls MCGUI.

I think that it would be much better to start the MCGUI through a
.mcidasrc entry than to start it from a McIDAS BATCH file.

>The problem is that the STARTUP.BAT batch file never exits, but hangs
>on MCGUI as it repeatedly spawns MCGUI windows.  I noticed that MCGUI
>creates a batch file in ~/mcidas/data/MCGUISTART.BAT which contains the
>following two lines:
>
>REM Unidata McIDAS MCGUI startup commands
>BATCH "/mnt/data/mcidas/labstuff/STARTUP.BAT

Yes.

>I then had the user exit mcidas and delete the file
~/mcidas/data/MCGUISTART.BAT.  When mcidas was restarted, it hung in
>the same manner and the MCGUISTART.BAT file was created by MCGUI with
>the same contents.  It appears that when MCGUI runs it calls
>MCGUISTART.BAT, which starts MCGUI which runs MCGUISTART.BAT which
>starts MCGUI...

>If I disable the MCGUI call in STARTUP.BAT mcidas behaves normally and
>starting MCGUI from the McIdas command window works normally.

Right.  It would be much better to start the MCGUI from .mcidasrc than
to start it from your BATCH file.

>What is causing mcidas to create this MCGUISTART.BAT and why to does it
>add the command to run STARTUP.BAT??

I had to add the creation of MCGUISTART.BAT in order to support
processing of user-specified BATCH execution in .mcidasrc lines like:

-c 'BATCH "/mnt/data/mcidas/labstuff/STARTUP.BAT'

>How do I fix this so that we can
>have MCGUI start automatically from this startup script without the
>problems we've been seeing?

Remove the startup from your BATCH file

change:

-c 'MCMENU UNIDATA.MNU'

to:

# -c 'MCMENU UNIDATA.MNU'

Add the startup in .mcidasrc:

change:

# -c MCGUI

to:

-c MCGUI

Cheers,

Tom
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