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199955: 19990505: GEMPAK scripts core dump when run as cron jobs

>From: weather <address@hidden>
>Organization: .
>Keywords: 199905052111.PAA06936

>Steve,
>
>I did xhost +wxmcidas and that worked, but the problem I have now
>is that with the 8-bit color, I run out of colors while
>the cron job is running if I am using Netscape or GARP, etc as another
>user.  Could you give me some more info on the virtual X server.
>I don't see anything about that in documentation.
>
>Thanks,
>Robert Mullenax
>NSBF Meteorology
>


Robert,

If you are logged in, launch "ntl" which will obtain a common color map
for use in any gempak program. If you launch ntl befor netscape, then
you should be able to get the needed colors. Netscape is smarter than gempak,
and can use a private colormap (netscape -install) if needed. If you have
launched ntl, then when a program runs from a script, it will use the shared
color map space. You should always launch Garp from ntl to ensure
you can obtain the color table. Ntl also lets you specify the number of
colors used by graphics and images in case you need to cut down on
colors- for instance, the default for gempak is to use 128 colors for
satellite images...however, if you want to cut that down to 64, you
can launch ntl as "ntl -s 64".

The Xvfb virtual frame buffer is distributed with X11R6, and creates a
memory area which programs can draw to as if it were a display.
We launch this on our sparc solaris machine like:
/usr/local/X11R6.3/bin/Xvfb :1 -screen 0 1280x1024x8 &

This creates a screen unix:1.0 (typically DISPLAY = machinename:1)
that is 1280x1024 and 8 bits. I use the virtual frame buffer for all scripts
to draw to to avoid colormap conflicts.

Steve Chiswell