Preparing a User Account

The McIDAS-X software is installed in the mcidas account. However, you can not run McIDAS-X as user mcidas. Ask your system administrator to create individual accounts for running McIDAS-X. Then, the user or system administrator must complete these two tasks for each account:

Setting the Environment

1. Log on to the account and modify the environment variable PATH in your $HOME/.profile (ksh) or $HOME/.cshrc (csh) file. Insert $HOME/mcidas/bin, the directory with your site's locally developed code (the suggested directory is ~mclocal/mcidas/bin), and ~mcidas/bin, in that order, at the beginning of your PATH.

2. You may also need to modify your PATH if it does not contain all of the required directories or have them in the correct order. If you will be writing and compiling your own McIDAS software, update your PATH with the modifications listed in step 3 of Preparing the mcidas Account.

If you will not be writing and compiling McIDAS software, update your PATH with the modifications listed below.

Operating System	Modification
Enterprise Linux 6.0+	none necessary
macOS	none necessary

3. Log out and log on again for the changes to take effect.

Enabling McIDAS-X Keys

The actions required to enable certain keys used by McIDAS-X (for example, Alt A, Ctrl F11) vary depending on your workstation and its configuration. This section describes these actions for workstations running the following SSEC-recommended configurations:

These directions assume you are in the account's $HOME directory and logged on to the workstation console.

Enabling McIDAS-X Keys for Linux and GNOME --Follow the steps below if you use an Linux workstation console and the GNOME desktop environment.

1. Bring up the Keyboard Shortcuts window by clicking the following in order: Main Menu (in lower-left corner), Preferences, Keyboard Shortcuts.

2. Highlight each shortcut associated with a key combination you want to use in McIDAS-X (e.g., <ALT>F2) and press the Backspace key to change it to Disabled. This allows McIDAS-X to use the key combination for strings and other applications.

Enabling McIDAS-X Keys for macOS and X11 --Follow the steps below if you use a macOS workstation console and Apple's X11 desktop environment.

1. Start X11 by double-clicking the X11 icon in the Applications>Utilities folder. If X11 is already running, click the X11 icon in the dock to make the application active.

2. Click the X11 menu at the top of the display, then click Preferences to bring up the X11 Preferences window.

3. Click the Input tab, then uncheck the checkbox labeled Enable key equivalents under X11.

Steps 1-3 allow the open-apple keys (on each side of the spacebar) to function as the Alt keys in McIDAS-X.

4. Start a Terminal by double-clicking the Terminal icon in the Applications>Utilities folder. If a Terminal is already running, click the Terminal icon in the dock to make the application active. Then use the xmodmap utility to configure a key to function as the Insert key during McIDAS-X command entry. Choose the appropriate command below, depending on whether you have a fullsize (desktop) keyboard or a laptop.

On a fullsize keyboard, run the command below to configure the help key to function as Insert. The spaces before and after the equal sign (=) are required.

Type: xmodmap -e 'keysym Help = Insert'

On a laptop, run the command below to configure the option (alt) key to function as Insert. The spaces before and after the equal sign (=) are required.

Type: xmodmap -e 'keysym Mode_switch = Insert'

This concludes the instructions for installing McIDAS-X and configuring user accounts. Continue with Configuring McIDAS-X Sessions with .mcidasrc, which provides information about tailoring McIDAS-X sessions to your preferences.