20040712: question about radar data downloading

>From: address@hidden
>Organization: GMU
>Keywords: 200407121849.i6CIntaW003204 ldm-mcidas pnga2area ROUTE.SYS ldmd.conf

Ying

>I can use ldm to download satellite succefully, but can not get any radar
>data. the ldm-mcidas.log file indicates things like:
>
>Jul 12 17:28:02 pnga2area[10667]: Starting Up
>^@Jul 12 17:28:02 pnga2area[10667]: Error opening routing table: No such file 
> or directory
>^@Jul 12 17:28:02 pnga2area[10667]: output file pathname: data/mcidas/AREA1241
>^@Jul 12 17:28:02 pnga2area[10667]: unPNG::  1029372   2439056  2.3695
>^@Jul 12 17:28:02 pnga2area[10667]: Exiting
>^@Jul 12 17:29:08 pnga2area[10668]: Starting Up
>^@Jul 12 17:29:08 pnga2area[10668]: Error opening routing table: No such file 
> or directory
>^@Jul 12 17:29:08 pnga2area[10668]: output file pathname: data/mcidas/AREA1251
>^@Jul 12 17:29:09 pnga2area[10668]: unPNG::   950410   2439056  2.5663
>^@Jul 12 17:29:09 pnga2area[10668]: Exiting

The log output indicates that data is being decoded and apparently
written into ~ldm/data/mcidas/AREA1241, ~ldm/data/mcidas/AREA1251,
etc.  Those images, however, are not ones from the FNEXRAD feed, but,
rather they are IR images from the Unidata-Wisconsin (IDD feed type
UNIWISC aka MCIDAS) datastream.

>part of the pqact.conf is like:
>
>#### PNG compressed FNEXRAD image (AREA) files
>#
>
># NEXRCOMP 6 km National BREF mosaic
>FNEXRAD ^pnga2area Q5 (RL) (.*) (.*) (.*) (.*) (........) (....)
>        PIPE    -close
>        pnga2area -vl logs/ldm-mcidas.log
>        /usr/local/ldm/data/gempak/nexrad/NEXRCOMP/6KN0R-NAT/\4_\6_\7
>
># NEXRCOMP 10 km National RCM mosaic
>FNEXRAD ^pnga2area Q5 (RN) (.*) (.*) (.*) (.*) (........) (....)
>        PIPE    -close
>        pnga2area -vl logs/ldm-mcidas.log
>        /usr/local/ldm/data/gempak/nexrad/NEXRCOMP/10KRCM-NAT/\4_\6_\7
>
># NEXRCOMP 1 km Regional BREF mosaic
>FNEXRAD ^pnga2area Q5 (RO) (.*) (.*) (.*) (.*) (........) (....)
>        PIPE    -close
>        pnga2area -vl logs/ldm-mcidas.log
>        /usr/local/ldm/data/gempak/nexrad/NEXRCOMP/1KN0R-FLT/\4_\6_\7
>
>#
>#### PNG compressed FNEXRAD image (GINI) files
>#
>
># NEXRAD Level III radar composites in PNG-compressed GINI format
>FNEXRAD ^rad/NEXRCOMP/(...)/(...)_(........)_(....)
>        PIPE    -close
>        pngg2gini -vl logs/ldm-mcidas.log
>        /usr/local/ldm/data/gempak/nport/RADAR/\1/\2/\2_\3_\4

These actions are OK.

>1) What should the routing table be? Is it ROUTE.SYS? 

Yes, the routing table is ROUTE.SYS.  It needs to be copied to the
directory where pnga2area is writing output images if and when the
decoding action is using the '-r \1,\2\' flag to pnga2area.  Since your
actions for FNEXRAD data do not use this flag, you do not need to copy
ROUTE.SYS to ~ldm/data/gempak/nexrad/NEXRCOMP/...  You should, however,
copy it to ~ldm/data/mcidas along with ~mcidas/data/SYSKEY.TAB.  Also,
you should make sure that the file permissions on ROUTE.SYS and
SYSKEY.TAB are such that the user running the LDM (presumably 'ldm')
and the McIDAS account (if you are using McIDAS) have write permission
on the file.  If you are not using McIDAS, then it means that you would
have copies of ROUTE.SYS and SYSKEY.TAB from the ldm-mcidas
distribution.

>2) How come the files like AREA1241 are generated?  

You have a pqact.conf action that is running the ldm-mcidas pnga2area
decoder on Unidata-Wisconsin imagery, and that action(s) is using the
'-r \1,\2' flag.

>3) How can I fix this problem?

I suspect that you are not requesting all of the FNEXRAD data, or the
upstream host that you are requesting it from does not have the images
that you want.   Your ldmd.conf action for getting all FNEXRAD products
should look like:

request FNEXRAD ".*" upstream_feed_host

If your request looks like this, then you can check to see if you
are getting hte images using notifyme:

<as ldm>
notifyme -vxl- -f FNEXRAD -o 10000 -p pnga2area

You should see headers that look like:

Jul 12 23:15:42 notifyme[85885]: da126022ba139c85302ee82ff90ec57f    12906 
20040712224048.291 FNEXRAD 000  pnga2area Q5 RN 500 RADAR BREF 10km 20040712 
2219
Jul 12 23:15:42 notifyme[85885]: 80592c63d1065f79ecb74933768a7a90    65072 
20040712224142.993 FNEXRAD 000  pnga2area Q5 RL 300 RADAR BREF 6km 20040712 2235
Jul 12 23:15:42 notifyme[85885]: 86b208f3f57a931ea49f03ed50e7458f    80436 
20040712224146.399 FNEXRAD 000  pnga2area Q5 RO 400 RADAR BREF 1km 20040712 2236

If you don't see headers like this, you are not receiving the images,
so the problem may be that you are not requesting them or the site you
are requesting from does not have them.

Next, check the upstream host using notifyme again:

notifyme -vxl- -f FNEXRAD -o 10000 -p pnga2area -h upstream_feed_host

>Thank you very much and have a good day, 

Cheers,

Tom Yoksas
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