20050908: mcidasx problem (cont.)

>From: "John Hobbie" <address@hidden>
>Organization: NMSU/NSBF
>Keywords: 200509071943.j87Jh5jo012941 McIDAS build test install

Hi John,

>Thanks for all your help.  All appears to be running well.  I have a few 
>more items to pass on, though, that caused some brief stumbles.

OK.

>But first a war story:  Back in the mid-70's, I was in the Marshall Islands
>and was trying to automate weather data reduction there -- raobs and
>rocketsondes--
>on a mainframe (punch card input.)  I wrote detail instructions and tested
>them by randomly passing them out to members of the station, including the
>secretary.  No one had problems.  Then one man came on shift and the
>program wouldn't >work.  He took every wrong turn in the instructions
>that I hadn't thought of -- logical, but still a wrong turn.  He was a 
>erfect beta-tester.  When I got it past him, no one ever had problems
>again.  I am sorry that I am >turning out to be your Jim Sweet.  (By the
>way he is a hell of a nice guy, but one with an unerring sense of
>following the wrong trail.)

I _need_ someone that finds the errors in the installation instructions.
The problem I have is that I tend to read what should be there instead of
exactly what is there :-)

>Now just a list of a couple of stumbles that I encountered and have not been
>able to figure out why.
> 
>In the step, Configuring a New User Account, url:
>http://my.unidata.ucar.edu/content/software/mcidas/2005/users_guide/Configurin
> gaNewUserAccount.html
>
>under "Setting the Environment", I included the script given in the table
>for non-Conforming shells   into the .cshrc:
>
>setenv MCHOME /home/mcidas
>if ( -e $MCHOME/admin/user_env.csh )
>  source $MCHOME/admin/user_env.csh
>endif
>
>and when I sourced it,   I got the error message,  if: Empty if.

Oops, this is a typo of omission.  The 'if' block is missing the 'then'.
It should read:

setenv MCHOME /home/mcidas
if ( -e $MCHOME/admin/user_env.csh ) then
  source $MCHOME/admin/user_env.csh
endif

I just updated the online docs to reflect this correction.

>To check it, I logged out and back in again with the same error message.
>
>I then manually typed 
>if ( -e $MCHOME/admin/user_env.csh ) source $MCHOME/admin/user_env.csh
>
>and had no problem; eg  echo $MCGUI gave the right respons as well as echo
>$path included /home/mcidas/bin. 
>
>So I modified the .cshrc file to say only
>  source $MCHOME/admin/user_env.csh
>
>because I know that user_env.csh existed.   All worked well after that.

Please go back and read the 'if' block using the listing from the newly
updated online documents.

>The other problem had to do with running   statdisp &
>
>I got the error message
>
> statdisp; Window manager didn't set icon sizes - using default.unable to
>open file /home/mcidas/workdata/DECOSTAT.DAT
>
>and indeed the file DECOSTAT.DAT wasn't there -- any ideas?

'statdisp' is designed to be run in the account for the user that
installed McIDAS-X AND McIDAS-XCD.  DECOSTAT.DAT will be created and
maintained by the data decoding processes of the XCD component of the
distribution.  The ability of the user that installed McIDAS to find
DECOSTAT.DAT is governed by the definition of the Unix environment
variable 'XCD_disp_file'.  This environment variable is defined in the
script 'mcidas_env.csh', so it should exist in your login session _if_
you went back and redid your additions to your ~mcidas/.cshrc file AND
if you are ingesting and decoding data.

To test to see if your 'mcidas' login has this environment variable
defined, please do the following:

- login as 'mcidas'
- type:

env | grep XCD_disp_file

If this is not defined, then the sourcing of ~mcidas/admin/mcidas_env.csh
is not being done correctly in the ~mcidas/.cshrc file.

>We don't normally
>check the decoder status, so it is not a problem, but is there any step that
>should have created it that I may have missed?

I think this failure is related to the previous email.

>The last question has to do with the ldm-mcidas.log file.  Is there any way
>to rotate the logs?

Yes, absolutely.

>It seems to grow like topsy with nearly every image file 
>(gini file) it processes, it leaves several lines of text in the log.

Please add the following entry to the crontab file for the user running
your LDM:

#
# Rotate LDM-McIDAS log files
#
0 18 * * * bin/newlog logs/ldm-mcidas.log

>Thanks again for all your help and continued support.

No worries.

>I will try my best in the future to not be your Jim Sweet.

Please do keep reporting the flubs that I made in the McIDAS
documentation.  It will help others down the road!

Cheers,

Tom
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