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19990501: gcc, solaris7, and mcidas-x and follow-up to previous question

>From: weather <address@hidden>
>Organization: NMSU/NSBF
>Keywords: 199905012048.OAA16960 McIDAS-X mcfc tclcomp

Robert,

>I know Tom appreciates an occasional success story as a change of pace.

Indeed I do :-).

>I got rid of Linux on wxfts.nsbf.nasa.gov, a dual-boot NT machine
>that is a kind of back-up/development machine when not being used
>as an NT pc.  I installed Solaris 7 on it (166Mhz 80MB RAM, slow IDE
>drive) and obtained gcc.

How would you contrast the performance of Linux versus Solaris x86 on
this platform?  I have found that RedHat Linux 5.2 on my 200 Mhz Pentium
PC is much more responsive than Solaris x86 on the same box.  It also
uses a lot less system resources.

>I obtained latest McIDAS distribution and the
>solx86 f2c files(and installed them) and followed instructions.

Your comment "and followed instructions" is _so_ refreshing ;-)

>McIDAS and XCD completed the compile, but when I went to start McGUI,
>I found that mcwish had not been produced.  I went back in the makelog
>and found an error (bad option -R) that I had seen while perusing the 
>support archives.  I made the change that Tom suggested in tclcomp
>in the support message and did remade mcwish.  The build finished
>and I installed and configured it.  I installed the ADDE server
>and am getting data from wxmcidas (on the other side of the room)
>via the ADDE server.  Everything works great!

I am going to put out an Addendum either today or tomorrow that includes
this mod.  The problem came up when I released SSEC's mcfc.sh in a
previous Addendum and didn't fully test it on Solaris x86 (the build
with the Sun compilers worked just fine).

>Also a follow-up to a problem I had where the XCD decoders are not
>producing boundary layer (30 MBAG) winds from the AVN/MRF, whereas
>GEMPAK is.

I believe that Don contacted SSEC about this problem.

>I am not rushing for an answer, but if you think a resolution
>might be far away,

I can tell you that it is not imminent.

>I will go ahead and produce the charts via cron jobs
>using GEMPAK rather than CGI scripts and McIDAS(I have had problems with
>gplt and gpend and CGI scripts), as I need to finish the web page up this
>week.

Sorry I didn't get to this earlier.  I was trying to cleanup a bunch of
stuff and then we had a tragedy in Unidata.

>Thanks,

Thanks for sending in a success story.  It really is appreciated!

Tom

From: weather <address@hidden>
Date: Wed, 5 May 1999 18:03:05 +0000 (GMT)

Thanks Tom,

I would agree that Linux running the standard window manager (FVWM2,
or whatever the one is that looks similar to Windows 95) is faster
than Solaris.  However, when I was running KDE, the free semi-clone
of CDE, I found that the two were a lot closer in terms of just using
the machine.  I just find Solaris more user friendly (for a new
Unix user), I like CDE better than KDE or any other "free" window
manager, the Solaris Answerbook has been tremendously helpful.
There is a lot of info and help for Linux, but it is very hard
to pull it together from all of the various sources.  For us, of
course, since we are a heavy GARP user, Linux is not an option
because of having to purchase Motif separately. However, it would be 
interesting if I had another machine like wxmcidas (400Mhz PII
256MB of RAM) to load Linux on it and load it up like
wxmcidas is loaded.  

I was sorry to hear about Glenn Davis.  I did meet him once at the
workshop last year, and he was very helpful and cordial as I
waited around after arriving early.


Robert Mullenax
NSBF Meteorology