AWIPS II Installation & Configuration
Unidata Program Center, Boulder, CO
Last Updated April 2013
Disclaimer

Because AWIPS II is still in development and not ready for release, this document is intended only as an informational guide and is subject to change at any time.

Document Contents
  1. Before You Begin
  2. Yum Repository Setup
  3. EDEX Installation
  4. Configuring the EDEX Server
  5. Starting EDEX
  6. Installing the LDM
  7. CAVE Installation
  8. Starting CAVE
  9. Uninstalling AWIPS II
  10. Log Files
  11. Additional Notes
  12. Where to Turn for Help
Before You Begin

The AWIPS II EDEX server requires a user account awips and group fxalpha be available for the RPM packages to install, and the bash shell must be assigned to the user awips (using csh/tcsh may result in RPM package installation errors).

All AWIPS II packages are installed in the base directory /awips2, while the LDM will be installed to /usr/local/ldm/ldm-6.11.2/, with the LDM data store located at /data_store, which is soft-linked to /awips2/data_store

IPv6 must be enabled for the EDEX server to run properly.

AWIPS II must be installed by root.

Yum Repository Setup

A yum repository file will be provided with AWIPS II. This /etc/yum.repos.d/awips.repo file will point to a collection of AWIPS II packages. If you have the AWIPS II distribution saved locally, simply point the awips.repo file to the directory containing the i386 and repodata subdirectories:

>cat awips2.repo 
[awips2repo]
name=AWIPS II Repository
baseurl=file:///awips2/repo/13.1.2/
enabled=1
protect=0
gpgcheck=0
proxy=_none_

For the example above, baseurl points to the directory /awips2/repo/13.1.2/. If this directory is mounted via Network File System (NFS), each machine which will run an AWIPS II component must have access to this directory.

EDEX Installation

For a single-server standalone installation, constituting all EDEX server packages installed and running on a single server, (as root) issue the yum groupinstall command:

yum groupinstall awips2-standalone 

A total of 67 packages are installed (64 contain awips2 in their name; 3 have netcdf in their name). You can check the number of packages installed at any time by issuing the command rpm -qa | grep awips2 | wc -l. Database packages will take the longest to install, and through yum you can monitor the progress of the packages being installed, for example:

...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                                         6.3 GB/s | 206 MB     00:00     
Running rpm_check_debug
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
\| Installing the AWIPS II Python Distribution...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Installation Root = /awips2/python
 Installing: awips2-python [####################                  ]  1/24

Configuring the EDEX Server

Download the shell script edex and copy to /awips2/tools/bin/ so it is available in your path. Also set permission to 755 (executable for owner).

As root, run edex setup. This program checks your server configuration and adds the appropriate IP address and hostname definitions to /awips2/data/pg_hba.conf and /awips2/edex/bin/setup.env, respectively:

edex setup

[edex] EDEX IP and Hostname Setup
 Checking /awips2/data/pg_hba.conf
      ** Missing 128.117.140
 Checking /awips2/edex/bin/setup.env
      ** Missing /data_store
 Checking /awips2/httpd_pypies/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
      ** Missing Group fxalpha

 Do you want to allow these edits? [y/n]y

[edit] 128.117.140.0 added to /awips2/data/pg_hba.conf
       File backed up to /awips2/data/
       DATA_ARCHIVE_ROOT set to /data_store in /awips2/edex/bin/setup.env
       File backed up to /awips2/edex/bin/
[edit] Group fxalpha added to /awips2/httpd_pypies/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
       File backed up to /awips2/httpd_pypies/etc/httpd/conf/
[done]

If you attempt to run edex start before edex setup has been run, you will be prompted to complete the setup process before EDEX services are started.

To check your EDEX server configuration at any time, issue the edex setup command again:

>edex setup

[edex] EDEX IP and Hostname Setup
 Checking /awips2/data/pg_hba.conf [OK]
 Checking /awips2/edex/bin/setup.env [OK]
 Checking /awips2/httpd_pypies/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf [OK]

 EDEX correctly configured

Starting EDEX

Check the status of EDEX services with edex status:

>edex status	
				
[edex status]
 Postgres    :: not running	
 PyPIES      :: not running	
 QPID        :: not running	
 EDEXingest  :: not running	
 EDEXgrib    :: not running	
 EDEXrequest :: not running	
 EDEXdat     :: not running  
	 

Start all EDEX services with the command edex start:

>edex start
Starting EDEX PostgreSQL: 											
Starting logging service:                                  [  OK  ]	
Starting httpd:                                            [  OK  ]	
Starting Qpid AMQP daemon:                                 [  OK  ]
Creating durable queues												
Creating queue external.dropbox										
Creating queue Ingest.Grib							
...													
Creating queue Ingest.Satellite						
Creating queue Ingest.dhr
Creating queue dhrProcess 
Starting EDEX Camel (ingest): OK					
Starting EDEX Camel (ingestGrib): OK			
Starting EDEX Camel (request): OK					
**************************************************	
* Waiting for EDEX ESB to become operational     *	
*  - This may take a few minutes                 *	
*  - Do not start CAVE until this is complete    *	
**************************************************	
..................................................	
..................................................	
.........											
**************************************************	
* EDEX ESB is now operational                    *	
* You may now start alertviz and CAVE            *
**************************************************					

If a problem is reported by edex start, you may need to start each service individually. Issue the service command (as root) for the four necessary services which start EDEX, in order:

service edex_postgres start
service httpd-pypies start
service qpid start
service edex_camel start          

To stop all EDEX services:

edex stop

Stopping EDEX Camel (ingest): OK
Stopping EDEX Camel (ingestGrib): OK
Stopping EDEX Camel (ingestDat): OK
Stopping EDEX Camel (request): OK
Stopping Qpid AMQP daemon:                                 [  OK  ]
Stopping httpd:                                            [  OK  ]
Stopping logging service:                                  [  OK  ]
Stopping EDEX PostgreSQL: server stopped
Installing the LDM

The LDM is installed by the command rpm -ivh /awips2/repo/awips2-ldm-6.11.2-2.i386.rpm as user root. The LDM is installed in /usr/local/ldm/ldm-6.11.2/.

When the package in installed, it should be ready to run "out of the box". Start the LDM with the command ldmadmin start. Note that you MUST have the EDEX ingest server running BEFORE you start the LDM, or the Qpid message queue will quickly bottleneck.

CAVE Installation

CAVE and Alertviz are installed by a separate group installation package awips2-visualize:

yum groupinstall awips2-visualize -y

Unlike the EDEX server, CAVE can be run as a user other than awips, but must still be installed by root. Standalone installations (CAVE and EDEX on the same machine) should keep ownership of /awips2 to the user awips and group fxalpha:

chown -R awips:fxalpha /awips2

Client-only installation (CAVE installed locally and connection to a separate EDEX server) allows for custom owner and group permissions for /awips2:

chown -R [user]:[group] /awips2
Starting CAVE

If this is the first time CAVE is run on your system, you will be prompted to connect to an EDEX server. CAVE will not run if you are unable to verify and connect to a server. Upon first startup, the directory ~/caveData is created.

Alertiviz must be started:

/awips2/alertviz/alertviz.sh

Before CAVE can be launched from another terminal:

/awips2/cave/cave.sh

Alertviz will add itself to System Startup Preferences for every user on the CAVE system. Alertviz will then start automatically on login. To disable this on the GNOME or KDE desktop, open System Preferences > Startup Services and remove the Alertviz entry.

Uninstalling AWIPS II

To uninstall the CAVE client group:

yum groupremove awips2-visualize -y

To uninstall all EDEX server components:

yum groupremove awips2-standalone -y 

Note that the above command will also remove the CAVE/visualization group if it's installed on the same system as the EDEX server components.

Check if any AWIPS II packages are still installed:

rpm -qa | grep awips2

and optionally remove them manually:

yum remove `rpm -qa | grep awips2 | awk '{ print $1 }'`
Log Files

If you encounter a problem with any of the EDEX services be sure to check the appropriate logs, which are written with the date or process ID in the filename:

EDEX Ingest logs: /awips2/edex/logs/edex-*.log

PostgreSQL logs: /awips2/data/pg_log/postgresql-*.log

Alertviz logs: ~/caveData/logs/consoleLogs/$MACHINENAME/alertviz_*.log

CAVE logs: ~/caveData/logs/consoleLogs/$MACHINENAME/cave_*.log

Additional Notes

To list all available AWIPS II installation groups:

yum grouplist | grep AWIPS
   AWIPS II Backup Database Server
   AWIPS II Database Server
   AWIPS II LDM Server
   AWIPS II Message Broker Server
   AWIPS II Processing Server
   AWIPS II Rehost Server
   AWIPS II Standalone
   AWIPS II Visualize
Where to Turn For Help

Unidata now maintains an AWIPS II support desk which can be reached at support-awips@unidata.ucar.edu