>From: address@hidden >Organization: St. Cloud State >Keywords: 199904162027.OAA18678 ldm-mcidas Alan, >Friday is a decent day for me as I have no lectures. Now I understand why your emails come on Friday afternoons :-) >Following your last message of Tues., my assistant went through the >testing items as listed in the html. All went ok, with the only >message being one that there were not enough colors available. This is probably due to the lack of colors available to the X server. Perhaps you/he were/was already running Netscape (tm) when you tried to run McIDAS? We have found that on Solaris x86 it is best to exit Netscape; start McIDAS; and then restart Netscape (if you want it running while you are running McIDAS). >It did >not seem to be a serious problem as everything appeared to work ok. I >am not sure how the video card settings are changed, but I have not >looked; I would think there is some icon on the desktop. The problem is that the X visuals on Solaris x86 are 8-bit, so you only have 256 colors total in your session. The more applications that run that use colors, the fewer the number of colors available for McIDAS. To keep things "nice", try starting McIDAS first and then the other applications later. >I would sense that we now need to configure the ldm properly to create >the necessary files. Data files? Yes. >I have looked at the sample pqact from your web >page on mcidas ldm and have copied that to waldo for editing. Hopefully, you use the one in the ldm-mcidas distribution as a template. Cutting and pasting from a web page will lose tabs that are so important in pqact.conf. >At >present we do not get lightning and do not subscribe to nexrad data. >Will add the lightning data, but want to start with what we have. I think that getting the lightning data is a good move. It is very interesting to see the evolution of lightning flashes during explosive convective development. >My plan is to use the example pqact.conf, with only the necessary >editing. Watch out for places where tabs are needed instead of spaces! >I plan to have ldm configured and delivering the data files >before continuing further with mcidasx. OK, I understand. It is easier to test out a system when you have a variety of data than not. >Comments > >I do have some questions. > >1. Somewhere I have the impression that mcidasx files (upper air stuff > for example) were created by ldm from fos (dd+) data and that the > unidata-mcidas datastream was used only to capture the images. This is where we are moving, yes. The non-imagery products in the Unidata-Wisconsin datastream are being removed on July 1. > The sample pqact shows that unidata-mcidas stream provides the data > to create md files. Can you comment? We have shown how you can extract the MD files that are currently in the Unidata-Wisconsin datastream using ldm-mcidas decoders, but setting this up will be a waste of effort on your part given that those products are going away. The next release of ldm-mcidas will have the setup information for non-imagery data removed. >2. I have not started on the sections of configuring the mcidas account > or the mcidas user accounts. I see that needs to be done. We have the > web page materials for these items and will follow. > Any 'watch out for this' items? Here are some things that I would caution you about: o make sure that the user's 'mcidas', 'ldm', and 'mcadde' are all in the same group and that that group does not contain "average" users o pay particular attention to the sections dealing with how to setup McIDAS-XCD (the decoding component of McIDAS-X). Please do not hesitate to ask for help in doing this as a clean installation will save both of us a lot of time in the long run. o setting up ROUTE PostProcess BATCH invocations from ldm-mcidas decoders is tricky. Almost every site has problems doing this 'cause it is hard to get your mind right to understand what has to be done (I have wracked my brain on an easier way to do the ROUTE PP BATCH stuff, but I havn't been able to do it. For reference, the ROUTE PP BATCH routines are those McIDAS BATCH files specified in the McIDAS routings table that are kicked off after the successful ingestion/decoding of products from the Unidata-Wisconsin datastream (I am sure that you know that, but these messages are reviewed by others who use our tracking system). Again, please don't hesitate to ask for assistance o Don suggested that I recommend that you install the ldm-mcidas stuff using runtime links like the LDM recommends. This is not (yet) in the online documentation for ldm-mcidas, so you may have to wing it (or ask for advice) if you decide to do things this way. Again, I can help out. o Given that the non-image products in the UW datastream are going away and you are, hopefully, going to use XCD, I would recommend that you put all McIDAS data files into a single data directory (/var/data/mcidas for instance). When users were getting the MD files in the UW datastream AND creating them with XCD, they had to make sure that the data files were put into different directories. You should not have that problem. By the way, this will simplify the REDIRECTions you will need for access to data in your McIDAS sessions. That should be a pretty good start on things to keep an eye out for. Again, don't hesitate to ask when you run into something that doesn't make sense or you are unsure of. >How many dull persons are needed to change a light bulb? only one. Duh... Tom
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