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19990325: mcidas on freebsd 2.2.6?

>From: Steve Dixon <address@hidden>
>Organization: ABoM
>Keywords: 199903242326.QAA05043 McIDAS FreeBSD

Steve,

This isn't Don, it is Tom Yoksas.  I do the McIDAS-X support here at
Unidata.

>I work for the Bureau of Meteorology in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. Jeff
>Wilson (from Melbourne) suggested that I email you with my problem.
>
>We have mcidas7.501 working well in AIX platforms but owuld like to install
>it on one or more FreeBSD machines. The idea is to have the FreeBSD machine
>routinely perform background data processing tasks and take some load off
>the IBMs.

Sounds like a good plan.  We ported McIDAS-X to RedHat Linux and
Solaris for Intel back in 1996 so that our sites can have a cheap
platform alternative.

>I have been working on mccomp.sh and mcar.sh versions that have been used
>for linux and adaptiing them, but the are some problems with linking.

What are you using as the "Fortran" routine.  In our 7.4 and 7.1 releases
I was using a Perl scritp called 'fort77'.  With our 7.5 release (which
we just announced this past Monday), I have switched to a Bourne shell
script that I bundled with McIDAS.  This script, mcfc.sh, gets made
into 'mcfc' and installed in the ~mcidas/bin directory so that it can be
used throughout the rest of the build.  It is responsible for running
gcc to compile C routines and f2c followed by gcc to compile Fortran
routines.  I also added interpretation of '-s' so that the output
executables would be stripped (saves a considerable amount of space).

>I have looked on the unidata web site amnd the email archive but although I
>can see that mcidasX has been compiled on FreeBSD, I cannot find out how.

One of our sites did the port to FreeBSD.  He noted that the changes
needed were minimal.  I just tried to find his notes on what he did, but
I was unsuccessful.

>Any comments?

If you can tell me the kinds of errors you are seeing, I could potentially
help you iron them out.  I have been meaning to try a build on our BSD/I
system here at Unidata for some time, but I have never been able to get
to it.  If I can help you/you help me, I could fold in FreeBSD support
into my distribution files (makefile, mccomp.sh, mcar.sh, etc.) so my
site doesn't have to reinvent the wheel with each new release.

>------------------------------------------------------------------
>Dr Steve Dixon,  Regional Computing Manager,
>Bureau of Meteorology (Tasmania/Antarctica), Hobart, Tas, Australia
>Ph (03)62212101        Mobile 0418-563914      Fax (03)62212080
>EMAIL  address@hidden

Tom Yoksas