[McIDAS #GPS-629579]: McIDAS installation at CIMH in Barbados

Hi Lloyd,

re:
> I have opened up port 112

I noticed this at the end of last week.  I have been using remote access to
the data being decoded/served on cimh_ucar.cimh.edu.bb since seeing that
port 112 was opened.  Everything is working very nicely!

One quick comment: I setup the cimh_ucar account to be able to use McIDAS.
Doing this for any user account (i.e., non-'mcidas' account) is as simple
as:

1) creating the ~user/mcidas/data directories

2) editing the user's shell-specific definition file (e.g., .cshrc for C Shell,
   .bash_profile for BASH, etc.) and putting in a few lines that read a
   configuration file distributed with Unidata McIDAS.

You can use the 'cimh_ucar' account as an example for how to setup other user
accounts.

In all cases, the first time McIDAS is run from any account, the user should
run:

mcidas -config

Session defaults will be setup through this GUI so that the user does not need
to run the startup GUI again.

> I will check out the network configuration to see if it is causing the
> martian messages

Thanks.  /var/log/messages is being filled with those messages.

> For the "Things left to be done" section
> - I suggest that you do all the things that can be done remotely

OK.  I will review the installation on cimh_ucar.edu.bb and finishany/all of
the remaining tasks.

> For the "Things I did not do that could be done" section

> - It would be best to have the learning guide installed

I just installed the datasets needed for the Learning Guide/Training
workshop.  The files were put in /data/ldm/mcidas/tutorial, and the
appropriate configuration in the 'mcidas' account has been made so
that folks at CIMH can access the data through ADDE.

The Learning Guide and Training Workshop are hosted in the 'mcidas' section
of our website:

http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/mcidas

> - You should decide if it is best to use MySQL.

OK.  Since you are ingesting a very small fraction of the model data
that is available (most covers the U.S.), this is currently not needed.

If we pursue ingesting and serving of high resolution model data (IDD
CONDUIT and/or NGRID) datastreams, then this will need to be setup
as the McIDAS GRID decoder (the decoder that is currently running
and creating GRIDnnnn files in /data/ldm/mcidas) does not know how
to deal with GRIB2 messages (all of the model data in CONDUIT and NGRID
are in GRIB2 format) while the processing using MySQL does understand
GRIB2.

Just so you know, the CONDUIT and NGRID datastreams are very high in
volume. The following listing will give you an idea of the volume of
data in the various datastreams available in the IDD (snapshot taken a
few minutes ago for the data available on the Unidata-operated, toplevel
IDD relay idd.unidata.ucar.edu:

Data Volume Summary for idd.unidata.ucar.edu

Maximum hourly volume   8352.652 M bytes/hour
Average hourly volume   4495.838 M bytes/hour

Average products per hour     185537 prods/hour

Feed                           Average             Maximum     Products
                     (M byte/hour)            (M byte/hour)   number/hour
CONDUIT                1709.101    [ 38.015%]     4641.234    49041.366
NEXRAD2                1422.988    [ 31.651%]     1954.765    47225.902
NGRID                   672.426    [ 14.957%]     1281.625    16433.439
HDS                     219.200    [  4.876%]      423.234    19332.927
NEXRAD3                 174.843    [  3.889%]      285.086    23011.171
NIMAGE                  140.674    [  3.129%]      241.174      165.610
FNEXRAD                  61.393    [  1.366%]       81.866       82.512
IDS|DDPLUS               32.741    [  0.728%]       45.236    29508.195
EXP                      31.846    [  0.708%]       52.764      437.293
UNIWISC                  19.472    [  0.433%]       28.367       17.951
DIFAX                     7.761    [  0.173%]       79.100      248.049
FSL2                      3.283    [  0.073%]       34.370       23.439
LIGHTNING                 0.110    [  0.002%]        1.939        9.512

You are currently getting a portion of HRS, three radars from NEXRAD3, and
all of IDS|DDPLUS and UNIWISC.

The network connection to cimh_ucar.cimh.edu.bb is a LOT better than it was
in the past, but I don't think it is good enough to ingest the fraction of model
data in CONDUIT or NGRID that would cover/be relevant to Barbados.

One final comment for now:  the 'mcidas' login that you will see if running 
'who':

mcidas@cimh_ucar:~/workdata> who
mcidas   pts/0        2008-10-10 01:35 (bcn-204-144-179-235.mric.net)

is me from my home McIDAS development machine.

Cheers,

Tom
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Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: GPS-629579
Department: Support McIDAS
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed