19990107: mcidas at stc

>From: address@hidden
>Organization: St. Cloud State
>Keywords: 199901072139.OAA01802 OS/2 to Unix transition

Alan-

>Some comments and questions about our next moves with our system here 
>at stc.  As I noted earlier, we have taken delivery of 3 new pc's,
>all from gateway.  Initially, we need to use two of them as replacements
>in our met lab, taking out two older machines for use in faculty offices
>(wouldn't want to let the new machines go to the faculty would we?)

Okay.

>So these two are initially scheduled to be set up with warp and mcidas7.4,
>no changes from our present system.

Ugh, okay. ;-)  You probably need them for class this spring so
going with what you know is probably the safest bet.

>On the third machine I plan to install (or have installed) sun's solaris
>for intel.

Which version are you installing - 2.6 or 7.0?

>Once that is up, we will install latest ldm and mcidasx.  This machine
>would be
>our new ingester.  As you know, our present pc's all mount a disk on an
>ibmr6000,
>on which we are running an older version of ldm (ldm5.0 I think).

Yes.  Right now, you are getting DDPLUS|IDS|MCIDAS on hobbes.  You 
are using the LDM-McIDAS decoders to decode the MD, GRID and AREA
files from the MCIDAS datastream.

>My initial idea was to continue this arrangement, but with a new server and  
>latest version of ldm, and also set up mcidasX on it.  Then, gradually
>change all of our pc's over to mcidasX over the next few months.
>
>I know we need to get away from os2 and assume that the
>change to mcidasX is next step.  

Yes, that should be the next step and as soon as possible.  However, get
your feet wet with the ingester first.

>The new pc's are 400Mhz, 128Mb ram, 10Gb disks.

What kind of video cards do these have?  That is usually the sticking
point for OS/2 and Solaris.  You also might want to consider getting
more memory (256 or more total) for the ingester.  128Mb should be
fine for now, but if you have a little extra money,  memory is cheap
now and that helps on an ingesting/server machine.

>The older machines in the lab are all 200Mhz, 64Mb ram and 3Gb disks.

These should be okay for McIDAS-X.  More memory wouldn't hurt, but
what you have should work fine for now.

>What is your take on this?  Would another plan seem more useful or easier to 
>implement than the above?   I would appreciate your comments.

Here's what I suggest you do:

1) Install Solaris on the new system that you plan to use for the ingester.

2) You will need Perl for the LDM and you can get that at:

   http://www.sunfreeware.com/

download and install that.  You might also consider getting/installing
Netscape Navigator.  You can get that from www.netscape.com.

3) Install the LDM binary on this system. (Instructions are found at:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/ldm) Initially, you can test it
out by feeding from hobbes. You will have to add an ALLOW line in
ldmd.conf on hobbes for the new system. Once you get that up and running
successfully, contact your upstream sites and ask them to feed the new
machine as well as hobbes for a short time. Change your LDM on the new
machine to feed from the upstream site. Once you are successful at this,
then have hobbes feed from the new system instead of the outside source.

At this point, you should have the LDM up and running on the new machine,
feeding from your upstream site and feeding hobbes.  After this, hobbes
will continue doing what it has been all along.

4) Next, you can move on to installing LDM-McIDAS on the new system.
This will give you access to the decoders for the AREA (lwtoa3) and 
GRID files (gunrv2) from the Unidata-Wisconsin datastream.  You will
use McIDAS-XCD to decode the MD files from the raw DDPLUS data.
You should also consider getting the lightning and profiler data
from the appropriate sources and using the appropriate LDM-McIDAS decoders
for those datasets.

5) Then you need to install McIDAS-X and McIDAS-XCD on the new system.
The key question is whether you have the Sun Compilers for this system
or not.  If so, then you can just proceed with the installation,
following the instructions found at:

http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/mcidas/mcx

If you didn't get the compilers, then we either have to cut you
a binary release, or go through the steps of figuring out how to 
compile using gcc and f2c.  It might be easier now to do the
binary release, but Tom will have to do that so it won't happen
next week.

6) Once you get McIDAS-X and -XCD up and running on the new system,
you can try switching over one of your OS/2 PC's to mounting to
the new system.  This should just be a matter of setting up the NFS
server on the new system to export the appropriate directory and then
changing the mount command on the OS/2 system to point to the new
Solaris system and the appropriate directory.

If you need help with this at any point, let us know.

>It is a bit cool here, as you noted.  Sure takes care of the insects and
>other forms
>of low life.  Besides the cold, we now have a real governor.  A few more
>days like 
>this and ice fishing along with driving on/through the ice will also take
>off.  
>Time for me to pack up and head for home.

Let us know if you have more questions or need help with the setup/installation.

Don