A. To use local servers in McIDAS-V, there is a background server listening process called mcservl. This process run for the duration of the session, and after McIDAS-V is exited, the process take extra time to terminate. If McIDAS-V is closed and started again before the mcservl process terminates, local servers will not be able to start and the 'Local servers cannot write to userpath:' error occurs. Once this error comes up, click OK. If you attempt connecting to a local dataset, a message will pop up directing you to the ADDE Data Manager, where navigating to the Local Servers -> Start Local Servers menu item will start up the local servers correctly so that local servers can be used in the session. To avoid this error, it is recommended that a user waits about 10 seconds after exiting McIDAS-V before starting again.

Additionally, if running 64bit Debian or Ubuntu operating systems, this message can appear at startup if the ia32-libs package is not installed on the workstation. The ia32-libs are the 32bit libraries that 32bit applications need to execute on a 64bit system.

A. Verify that the machine has the most updated video card driver.

A. GLX is an extension that must be supported by the graphics card.  This error is most likely occurring because the graphics drivers for RHEL are not properly configured.

Assuming that the latest graphics drivers are installed, they must be configured in the window system configuration file. Since RHEL uses Xorg, look in the file

/etc/X11/xorg.conf

and see if there are any references to "GLX" or "glx" (and possibly "dri").  If there are, try uncommenting them and rebooting.

A. If you have a firewall and are trying to get data from the remote servers (image, radar, point, and upper air data), error messages such as "Error opening connection ... Operation timed out" or "No Data Available" are normal.  For these servers to send data, your firewall software must allow connections on ports 112 (ADDE) and 8080 (THREDDS Data Server).

A. Some graphics card/driver combinations don't allow McIDAS-V window functions to work correctly in Monitor2 of two-monitor systems. For example, if your system has this problem and you move the McIDAS-V windows to Monitor2, the Image Chooser's Advanced tab in the Field Selector may not be visible, or adding a new tab in the Main Display may result in most of the window going blank ("graying out").  You may also receive the error (or see it in the mcidasv.log file), '...adding a container to a container on a different GraphicsDevice'.

For now, the only working solution for this problem is to move the McIDAS-V windows to Monitor1. After doing this, the windows should display correctly and you should be able to successfully add new tabs and run bundles.

If you are running Red Hat with a NVIDIA graphics card using TwinView and are having problems, go to the preferences, click on the primary display, and make sure the "Make this the primary display..." checkbox is checked.

A. Try changing your memory to use 1 GB or lower and restart McIDAS-V. You can change the amount of memory used by McIDAS-V by editing the Maximum Heap Size in the Advanced tab of the Preferences by selected Edit->Preferences... from the Main Display window.

A. If you run into this problem, you should first try changing your Enable access to geometry by reference VisAD setting in the Advanced tab of the User Preferences window. You can get to the User Preferences window through the Edit->Preferences menu item in the Main Display window. This option is turned on by default, but turning this option off can help to remove random/extraneous map lines that sometimes appear in the display. This is a problem that may occur more frequently on systems with ATI graphics cards. After changing this preference, click OK and restart McIDAS-V (any changes to the Advanced Preference require a restart to take affect).

If this did not solve the map line problem, look in the Layer Controls tab of the Data Explorer for the Default Background Maps. Determine which map is causing the spurious lines by toggling the visibility of the maps on and off. Once you determine which map is causing the lines, change the Fast Rendering option for this map.

A. The first thing to do is to make sure that your graphics drivers are up to date. If this does not solve the problem, another option is to change the amount of memory allocated to McIDAS-V. From the Main Display window's menu bar, select Edit->Preferences. This opens a User Preferences window, where you want to select the Advanced tab. At the top of the window there are two options for selecting memory. Click the radio button that allows you to specify the numerical value of memory allocated to McIDAS-V. Enter in a value of 512 megabytes and click OK to save the change. Then exit and restart McIDAS-V (changes in the Advanced User Preferences require a restart of McIDAS-V to take effect). If this resolves the issue of white images, you can start increasing the memory until the problem appears again. Stay below the memory value that produces the problem.

We have also received reports of this problem (blank images in the Main Display window) occurring on computers with the Mobile Intel 4 Series Express Family of graphics cards. If you have a computer with that configuration and are seeing the problem, try setting the card's "Vertex Processing" configuration setting to "Enable Software Processing". That setting is recommended because it will likely work with a typical amount of memory allocated to McIDAS-V (e.g., 80% of available). If the "Vertex Processing" option is set to a different value (e.g., "Application Settings" and "Default settings"), you may have to select a memory value of 800 MB or less in order to avoid the problem.

A. If the error message also includes a line that is looking for a Library with "dri" in it's name (e.g.: Library=/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/dri/i915_dri.so), it means that you are trying to load the DRI library in your X server which is not compatible with Java 3D. You need to comment out the line:

in your X server configuration file (xorg.conf or XF86Config).