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20031119: McIDAS v. 2003 at STC .mcidasrc file

>From: "Anderson, Alan C. " <address@hidden>
>Organization: St. Cloud State
>Keywords: 200311191953.hAJJrFOb009539 McIDAS

Hi Alan,

>I just finished up with at least the initial configuration of McIDAS
>2003 on a server terminal which runs on Solaris sparc,  ver. 5.9.

OK.

>I had no problems except that when configuring an account for a general
>user, I did not see that my first run of a mcidas session resulted in
>the creation of the   .mcidasrc  file as described in the
>documentation.   This file was created when in the mcidas account when
>I first started mcidas there.

Right.

>What I did was to just copy the file from the mcidas user account over
>to the general user and edited it as I wanted,  but I had expected the
>file to be created automatically.

The file should be created automatically in each user's account.  I
would advise you to login as that user, and delete the copy of
.mcidasrc that you copied over from ~mcidas.  After verifying that the
environmenbt settings for the user are set correctly, I would start a
McIDAS session using the GUI start method and make sure that the
writing of the defaults file is specified.  After starting the session,
go ahead and exit it and make sure that the ~user/.mcidasrc file was
created.

>Can you tell me if my experience suggests I have a problem somewhere,
>and if so what might be the solution.

I would think that there is a little problem (not big) that should be
looked at before pushing on.

Also, there is an easy(ier) way to specify McIDAS environment variables
in users' accounts.  I imagine that you added the various lines to your
the user's .cshrc (or .profile, or .bash_profile, etc.) files as per
the web page.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, but there
is a way that is a little cleaner/quicker.  Here is an example of what
I have in mind for the non-'mcidas' user that is using the C shell:

<in .cshrc>

 ...      (all of the stuff that does not involve McIDAS)

if ( -f /home/mcidas/admin/user_env.csh ) then
  source /home/mcidas/admin/user_env.csh
endif

That's it!  I think that this is a lot easier than putting all of the
definitions into .cshrc directly.

Also, just to make things better, I would recommend that the 'if'
clause be put in the the .login file for C shell users, not in .cshrc.
This comment assumes that the PATH (path) doesn't keep getting reset in
.cshrc.  If it does, you will need to edit .cshrc to make sure that the
~mcidas/bin directory is included in the PATh.


Tom