NOTE: The mcidas account was intended by SSEC to not be used for anything other than installing McIDAS-X. In Unidata McIDAS, it is to be though of as the 'root' of the McIDAS-X installation, and it should be used for supervisory activities. Changes made by mcidas to configuration files in the $McINST_ROOT/data directory can affect all McIDAS-X users, so changes should be made judiciously. As you might imagine, this feature can be very useful or dangerous.
The 5 tasks needed to configure the mcidas account and are described in sections below:
To simplify the configuration process, the script mcxconfig has been included in the Unidata McIDAS-X distribution. mcxconfig will lead the installer through the configuration steps giving advice when necessary.
mcxconfig is run as follows:
The following sections given an overview to the steps that mcxconfig leads the user through.
NB:If you run mcxconfig, you do NOT need to perform the steps outlined below!
XCDDATA must be defined before continuing!
If the directory defined in XCDDATA does not exist, create it:
Copying files from the distribution to the XCDDATA directory:
Setting read/write permissions on the files copied:
As will be seen in Configuring Configuring a New User Account, each user must specify a MCPATH for their environment. MCPATH defines a list of directories that McIDAS will look through when looking for data and ancillary data files.
File redirections are specifications of locations of files by name. File locations specified through file redirections take precedence over the MCPATH mechanism. It is our experience that it is much more desirable to locate data files (e.g. images, grid files, files of surface and upper air data, etc.) through file redirections and ancillary data files (e.g. map databases, image enhancements, graphic palettes, etc.) through MCPATH.
The first supervisory task mcidas needs to complete is setting up a set of file redirections that allows users to access the various McIDAS data files (e.g. AREA, GRID, MDXX, TEXT, etc.). File redirections are defined by invocations of the REDIRECT command.
In Unidata McIDAS-X we provide an ASCII redirection template file, EXAMPLE.NAM. EXAMPLE.NAM contains pairs of data file name patterns and associated directory locations. After installation, EXAMPLE.NAM will be located in the $McINST_ROOT/data directory.
mcidas should make a copy of this file:
and then modify the copy to match the local McIDAS-X setup.
The regular expressions for the data file names follow Bourne Shell-style patterns; the directory portion of the pairs must be fully qualified names of existing disk directories. For instance:
tells McIDAS to look for all files beginning with AREA006 in the /data/ldm/mcidas directory.
File name patterns may match multiple files and multiple patterns may match the same file(s). The REDIRECTion that will be used in the latter case is the one that is the most specific. For instance:
both match the file named AREA0061, but since the second pattern is more specific than the first, it will be used to look for, find, or create AREA0061 in /data/mydata.
After modifying REDIRECT settings in LOCAL.NAM, make them active in a McIDAS.
Start a McIDAS-X session:
From the McIDAS-X Command Window, first make the redirections in LOCAL.NAM active.
This restores the redirections defined in LOCAL.NAM to memory and also saves them in the file LWPATH.NAM in the $McINST_ROOT/workdata directory. LWPATH.NAM will be read each time mcidas starts a McIDAS session, so the REDIRECT sequence above only needs to be run once.
Verify that you setup the redirections correctly. Again, from the McIDAS-X Command Window:
At a minimum, you should see files with names like AREA9000, AREA9010, etc.:
DMAP AREA
PERM SIZE LAST CHANGED FILENAME DIRECTORY ---- --------- ------------ -------- --------- -rw- 9341360 Apr 01 16:20 AREA9000 /home/mcidas/data -rw- 1503728 Apr 01 16:21 AREA9010 /home/mcidas/data -rw- 1503728 Apr 01 16:21 AREA9011 /home/mcidas/data -rw- 1543904 Apr 01 16:23 AREA9012 /home/mcidas/data -rw- 1003728 Apr 01 16:23 AREA9013 /home/mcidas/data -rw- 1003728 Apr 01 16:24 AREA9014 /home/mcidas/data -rw- 897680 Apr 01 16:24 AREA9015 /home/mcidas/data -rw- 608288 Apr 01 16:25 AREA9016 /home/mcidas/data -rw- 565512 Apr 01 16:25 AREA9017 /home/mcidas/data -rw- 311008 Apr 01 16:25 AREA9018 /home/mcidas/data -rw- 714288 Apr 01 16:26 AREA9019 /home/mcidas/data -rw- 768 Nov 25 1996 AREA9982 /home/mcidas/data -rw- 768 Nov 25 1996 AREA9983 /home/mcidas/data -rw- 2816 Jun 02 1998 AREA9995 /home/mcidas/data 46229344 bytes in 18 files
If you don't see a file listing similar to this, there is most likely a problem with your REDIRECT definitions in $McINST_ROOT/data/LOCAL.NAM, and you should go back and correct the mistake(s) and rerun the REDIRECT REST sequence above.
Unidata McIDAS-X contains a BATCH file, DSSERVE.BAT, that defines a recommended set of ADDE dataset contents and associated names.
DSSERVE.BAT runs the DSSERVE command that associates data set names with sets of data files.
mcidas should make a copy of DSSERVE.BAT:
Modify dataset definitions to match your McIDAS data configuration in LSSERVE.BAT.
Since the user interfaces provided with Unidata McIDAS rely on particular datasets being available, it is recommend that you do not change the data set names in LSSERVE.BAT unless you are an expert user.
Activate the ADDE dataset name definitions contained in LSSERVE.BAT in the McIDAS session started in step 2 above:
This saves the ADDE data set definitions in the file RESOLV.SRV in the $McINST_ROOT/workdata directory.
Finally, verify that the data set names were defined correctly (note that the following depends on file redirections having been setup correctly):
If you have images in McIDAS AREA format ingested from the Unidata-Wisconsin datastream available on your disk, try using IMGLIST to list information on them and IMGDISP to display them.
McIDAS supports the use of user-specific and site-wide client routing tables concurrently. Access to the user and site client routing tables is controlled by the environment variables MCTABLE_READ and MCTABLE_WRITE; these need to be defined in each user's McIDAS-X session. The site-wide routing table should be created and maintained by the user mcidas; the user routing table will be created and maintained by individual users.
In order to simplify the process for generating the site-wide client routing table, the distribution includes a template file, DATALOC.BAT that contains relevant dataset location information. The user mcidas should make a copy of this file as follows:
mcidas should edit LOCDATA.BAT and change all instances of fully_qualified_host_identifier to the fully qualified hostname or IP address of local or remote ADDE servers. The site client routing table will be created from this template in the next section.
To create the ADDE site client routing table defined in LOCDATA.BAT do the following from within a McIDAS-X session:
If you defined the environment variable MCTABLE_WRITE to point at $McINST_ROOT/data/ADDESITE.TXT, running BATCH LOCDATA.BAT will create the file ADDESITE.TXT in the directory $McINST_ROOT/data.
If you did not define MCTABLE_WRITE, the above step will create the file MCTABLE.TXT in the $McINST_ROOT/workdata directory. MCTABLE.TXT should be moved to mcidas' data directory, $McINST_ROOT/data, and then renamed to ADDESITE.TXT:
From the Unix prompt:
Define environment variables needed for the McIDAS ADDE remote server in the file $McINST_ROOT/.mcenv. This is accomplished by copying the contents of:
to $HOME/.mcenv and make sure that the file has group read and write permissions:
You are done configuring the mcidas account. You should EXIT your McIDAS-X session: