Welcome back to AWIPS Tips!
If you have a lab of students who’ve made procedures, colormaps, displays, etc. (user configurations) but want to upgrade your EDEX without losing those configurations, it is possible!
When you install a new build of EDEX using the awips_install.sh script, (Assuming you have Unidata’s version of EDEX installed), you will be given the option to back-up some of your data:
Please make a selection for what you would like backed up. If you choose not to back up files you will lose all your configurations:
1. logs
2. configs
3. both logs and configs
4. none
If you select option 2 or 3, you’ll be asked for a path to save your backup files to. Everything in /awips2/edex/data/utility will be backed up to the path you specify. This is where all of the User configurations reside. Once the back-up finishes copying your files, EDEX will be removed, all AWIPS2 files removed, and then the new EDEX will be installed. After EDEX is installed, you will have to manually copy over your previous user configurations.
NOTE: It’s important to note that user configurations may not be compatible with the upgraded version of EDEX. This rarely happens, but could be a possibility with major version changes (like our upcoming 20.3.2 release).
It’s also important to note that the base configuration may have changed, but if there’s a user configuration that will override the new base configuration.
For example, if a user edits the gridImageryStyleRules.xml to change the units for wind speed from kts to mph. A copy of the xml file gets saved in /awips2/edex/data/utillity/common_static/user/XXXX/styleRules/gridImageryStyleRules.xml with the updated units. If our new EDEX build includes updates to the styleRules (in base), but you copy over the user’s file, you won’t see the new updates.
If you’re not worried about getting the latest and greatest updates and would rather make sure your user’s configurations are available, then you will want to copy over your backup. You’ll need to do this for cavestatic and commonstatic.
cp [BACKUP_DIR]/awips2_backup_[YYYYMMDD-hh:mm:ss]/utility/common_static/user/ /awips2/edex/data/utility/common_static/user/
cp [BACKUP_DIR]/awips2_backup_[YYYYMMDD-hh:mm:ss]/utility/cave_static/user/ /awips2/edex/data/utility/cave_static/user/
Additionally, you can do this on a case by case basis for your users if you would just like to preserve certain users’ configurations.
Once the files have been copied and EDEX has been started/restarted, you should be able to connect CAVE and see the available user overrides!
Check back in two weeks for the next blog post, our year end summary.
To view archived blogs, visit the AWIPS Tips blog tag, and get notified of the latest updates from the AWIPS team by signing up for the AWIPS mailing list. Questions or suggestions for the team on future topics? Let us know at support-awips@unidata.ucar.edu
This blog was posted in reference to v18.2.1-6 of NSF Unidata AWIPS
