>From: Rita Edwards <address@hidden>
>Organization: NASA/MSFC
>Keywords: 200101081628.f08GSvo02818 McIDAS
Rita,
>I have received a request to install McIDAS-X 7.7
>on a SGI running IRIX 6.5.6f. The issue is that
>the users do NOT want the 7.5 version removed until
>the 7.7 version has been tested. Thus the question,
>can I place multiple active installation of McIDAS?
Yes. I do this here for development purposes.
>My original thought was to set up an symbolic link
>for the home directory of McIDAS. However, that
>would not allow the users of the 7.5 version to
>continue work, while the testing of 7.7 is being
>conducted.
I took a different approach. Please see below.
>My second thought was to use the ideas from
>your documentation "Testing the Build,"
>and have a script to set the environment variables
>for a test session.
>
>However, I am not sure if this will provide the
>full functionality the user will require. In
>addition, I am unclear on about the impact of
>system resources.
The test setup is something I would not use for a lot of McIDAS
activity. It works OK for testing, but I think that it has too
many negatives for use of two versions in parallel.
>Any ideas on tricks to pull this off?
Here is what I do (this is a little long, but I think it is pretty
clear, so hang in there):
1) the HOME directory for my 'mcidas' user is the "standard"
/home/mcidas.
2) I _never_ put any "real" data files in /home/mcidas/data. Instead,
I put all data files off in either a separate directory or, better
yet, on a different file system in a directory like /data/mcidas
3) I _never_ install a McIDAS distribution into /home/mcidas (i.e.,
my McINST_ROOT is never defined to be /home/mcidas. Instead, I
install in a subdiretory of /home/mcidas. In my situation, I not
only want to keep different versions of McIDAS around and usable,
but I also want to build the same distribution of McIDAS for
different operating systems in the same account.
To accomplish the needed separation, I create a set of SHELL
definition files (i.e., .cshrc for the C shell which I use) that are
setup to access an individual release of McIDAS or are for a
particular operating system. The OSes that I support are Solaris
SPARC, Solaris x86, Linux, AIX, OSF/1, IRIX, IRIX64, and HP-UX. My
installation directories and corresponding C shell configuration
files for these OSes are:
home directory C shell configuration file
----------------------------+--------------------------
/home/mcidas/solaris cshrc.solaris
/home/mcidas/solarisx86 cshrc.solarisx86
/home/mcidas/linux cshrc.linux
/home/mcidas/aix cshrc.aix
/home/mcidas/osf1 cshrc.osf1
/home/mcidas/irix cshrc.irix
/home/mcidas/irix64 cshrc.irix64
/home/mcidas/hpux cshrc.hpux
My main .cshrc file does a case switch on `uname -s` to figure out
which cshrc.xxx file to source. This way when I login, my
environment is setup correctly for whatever OS I am running in:
# Set operating system name and release
setenv OS `uname -s`
setenv RELEASE `uname -r`
switch ($OS)
case SunOS:
switch ($RELEASE)
case 4*:
echo McIDAS-X is not supported under SunOS 4.x
breaksw
case 5*:
switch (`uname -m`)
case sun*:
source $HOME/cshrc.solaris
breaksw
case i86pc:
source $HOME/cshrc.solarisx86
breaksw
default:
echo Unknown Solaris platform
exit
endsw
breaksw
default:
echo Unknown SunOS version
exit
endsw
breaksw
case IRIX:
source $HOME/cshrc.irix
breaksw
case IRIX64:
source $HOME/cshrc.irix64
breaksw
case AIX:
source $HOME/cshrc.aix
breaksw
case HP-UX:
source $HOME/cshrc.hpux
breaksw
case OSF1:
source $HOME/cshrc.osf1
breaksw
case Linux:
source $HOME/cshrc.linux
breaksw
endsw
Of course, the MCPATH, MCTABLE_READ, MCTABLE_WRITE, etc. settings
in the cshrc files for the different OSes have to be setup correctly
for things to work.
4) Step 3 is enough for running McIDAS on different operating systems,
but it is not enough to be able to quickly swap in a new version of
McIDAS on a particular operating system. For this I do some
additional setup that is fashioned after what users are advised to
do for our LDM. For different versions of McIDAS I have different
install (McINST_ROOT) targets:
/home/mcidas/mcidas77 -> McIDAS-X 7.70
/home/mcidas/mcidas76 -> McIDAS-X 7.60
etc.
Since I may want to use McIDAS from one setup that looks "standard"
(i.e., McINST_ROOT=/home/mcidas), I make links to the distribution
to be used in the HOME directory of 'mcidas'.
<login as 'mcidas'>
cd /home/mcidas
ln -s mcidas77 runtime
ln -s runtime/bin bin
ln -s runtime/data data
ln -s runtime/inc inc
ln -s runtime/tcl tcl
ln -s runtime/help help
ln -s runtime/man man
etc.
After doing this, the job of switching use between one version of McIDAS
and another is very simple: just change the link for runtime:
rm runtime
ln -s mcidas76 runtime
After doing this, I would be using the 7.6 version of McIDAS instead
of the 7.7 version.
I should mention that I only use this runtime setup for builds on
one OS. Since Solaris SPARC is the most popular OS in the Unidata
community, the builds in the /home/mcidas/mcidas76 and
/home/mcidas/mcidas77 directories are for Solaris SPARC.
I can tell you that this setup works nicely for me. Also, at least one
Unidata site has adopted the same setup and seems pretty pleased with
it.
>Thanks for any help,
The above sketch of how I have setup my system may not be detailed enough
to "get" right off. Please let me know if something seems lacking.
Tom Yoksas
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