20041103: McIDAS ADDE setup Help

>From: "Adam Taylor" <address@hidden>
>Organization: ULM
>Keywords: 200411031957.iA3JuxvV029184 McIDAS 

Adam,

>I have been trying to install mcidas for 2 weeks now.

Install, or use?

>The GUI will come up
>and can read in the point data.  Satellite images don't work however.

Are you using the SSEC GUI or the Unidata MCGUI (some folks indicate they
are using one when they are actually using the other)?

If you are using the GUI and things are not working or working
inconsistently, then it is likely that you need to delete the GUI
configuration files and let it reconfigure itself.  How you do this
is independent of which user is running McIDAS, but the directory
in which the files will be deleted is user specific:

mcidas:  ~mcidas/workdata
others:  ~/mcidas/data

The files to delete are:

SERVERTABLE.TDAT
GUICMDHIST.TXT
CONTEXT.DAT
MCCMDHIST.TXT

Note that one or more of these files may not exist.

>On
>top of that ADDE doesn't work correctly.don't know why.

It probably is not setup/setup correctly, or there is a firewall blocking
access to one or more of the ports that McIDAS can use for ADDE transactions
(112, 500, and 503).

>IDV can't connect to it and it gives me  a bunch of errors.  

OK.  I would guess that either one or more of the following is true:

- the ADDE remote server was not setup

- the ADDE remote server was setup and a user is trying to access it
  using 'compress' compressed data transfers, but the files 'compress'
  and 'uncompress' can not be found to support these transfers (I
  have seen this happen on Linux systems where the Linux installation
  did not include everything).

- there is a problem in the ~mcidas/.mcenv file (e.g., typo) (note that
  this assumes that the HOME directory for the user 'mcadde' is
  the same as that for the user 'mcidas' and they are both in the same
  group!)

- there is a firewall setup blocking access to the ADDE server port(s)

One way to check access to the ports that McIDAS ADDE uses is using 
telnet from a remote machine.  This is problematic, however, since one
can turn off access by telnet independently of allowing access through
the ports McIDAS uses.

I just tried:

telnet cyclone.geos.ulm.edu 500

and what it got was:

Trying...

meaning that I can not access port 500 (uncompressed data transfes), at
least from my machine here in Unidata.  I got the exact same result for
ports 503 ('compress' compressed data transfers) and 112 ('gzip'
compressed data transfers)

>Could someone please get onto the system and either tell me or fix whatever
>is wrong with adde or mcidas or both.  I just plain give up.

>Thanks
>Adam Taylor

>Ps.  The password should still be the same for cyclone.geos.ulm.edu
>If you need it though just email me.

I logged in to cyclone and took a quick look around.

- the ADDE remote server is setup

- 'compress' and 'uncompress' executables can not be found so 'compress'
  compressed transfers (port 503) will not work

- ~mcidas/.mcenv looks OK, and the users 'mcidas' and 'mcadde' are
  in the same group

- it appears that the firewall rules in /etc/sysconfig/iptables  are not
  allowing access on any of the ports that McIDAS ADDE users.  Do you want
  me to add these?

Tom
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