McIDAS-XCD Administrator's Guide
Version 2017.2

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Installing McIDAS-XCD 2017.2 for the First Time

If you are installing McIDAS-XCD on a workstation that already has a previous version of McIDAS-XCD installed, go to the previous section, Upgrading to McIDAS-XCD 2017.2.

Installing McIDAS-XCD for the first time on a workstation consists of the three tasks in this section (Adding the mcdata Group, Assigning Directory Permissions, Loading the McIDAS-XCD Software), followed by additional configuration steps in the section Configuring McIDAS-XCD.

Before proceeding with the instructions below, verify that McIDAS-X 2017.2 has been installed on the workstation. If it hasn't you must do so before you install McIDAS-XCD 2017.2.

Adding the mcdata Group

The workstation running the McIDAS-XCD software must have the group name mcdata which contains the users oper and mcidas. Use this procedure to add the mcdata group, if needed.

1. Log on to the root account.


2. Add the following line to the /etc/group file. Replace groupid with a unique group ID number.



mcdata::groupid:oper,mcidas

For example: mcdata::23000:oper,mcidas

3. Log out of the root account.

Assigning Directory Permissions

Use the steps below to assign write privileges to the directory ~mcidas/data.

1. Log on to the workstation as user mcidas and change the group for the ~mcidas/data directory to the group mcdata.

Type: chgrp mcdata ~mcidas/data

2. Change the permissions for the directory ~mcidas/data so only the user mcidas and members of the group mcdata have write permission.

Type: chmod 775 ~mcidas/data

3. Log out of the mcidas account.

Loading the McIDAS-XCD Software

Complete the steps below to load the McIDAS-XCD software.

1. Logon to the workstation as user oper and change to the ~oper/mcidas directory.

Type: cd ~oper/mcidas

2. Verify that the PATH environment variable contains the ~mcidas/bin and ~oper/mcidas/bin directories, and the operating system-specific modifications listed for the mcidas account in the McIDAS User's Guide.

Type: echo $PATH

3. Verify that the ~oper/mcidas/data directory exists (use command mkdir ~oper/mcidas/data to make it if it doesn't) and that the MCPATH environment variable is set and includes the ~oper/mcidas/data, ~oper/mcidas/help, ~mcidas/data, and ~mcidas/help directories.

   Type: echo $MCPATH

4. Build and install McIDAS-XCD 2017.2 using the same settings for optional flags -noopt and -mysql as were used to build McIDAS-X 2017.2. You must use the same compilers and optional flag settings for both the McIDAS-X and McIDAS-XCD builds.

Type: sh ./xcd2017.2.sh  flags  install all

where flags is zero, one or both of the two optional flags described below.

• The -noopt flag is used to build McIDAS-XCD with no optimization. If you don't specify this -noopt flag, McIDAS-XCD is built using the default optimization: -O2 for builds with vendor compilers and -O1 for builds with gcc/g77.
  
• The -mysql flag is used to build McIDAS-XCD using the MySQL database libraries. Use this flag if this workstation will be serving real-time GRIB files from the NOAAPORT data stream and you have installed and want to use a MySQL database to make the GRIB data access faster for your McIDAS-X clients/users. If the database is in a non-standard install location, specify the flag as -mysql=directory, where directory is the root MySQL install directory. Remember, the -mysql flag must be specified when building both McIDAS-X and McIDAS-XCD.

This script performs the following steps:

• creates the subdirectories xcd2017.2, xcd2017.2/src, and xcd2017.2/data in the ~oper/mcidas directory
• uncompresses the file xcd2017.2.tar.Z
• compiles the source code and copies the binaries to the directory ~oper/mcidas/bin; approximately 130 modules are compiled, so this step takes a few minutes to complete; your compiler may generate some warnings while the macro commands are compiling
• copies data files to the ~oper/mcidas/data and the~mcidas/data directories
• copies the help files to the ~oper/mcidas/help directory

When the script is finished, you will see the message below.

McIDAS-XCD package installation is now complete



5. Switch to user mcidas so you can install the McIDAS-XCD ADDE servers.

Type: su mcidas

6. Run the script below to install the new ADDE server executable code in the mcidas account.

Type: sh ./xcd2017.2.sh install addeservers

7. Exit from user mcidas.

Type: exit

You should now be logged on as user oper.

8. Start a McIDAS-X session.

Type: mcidas

9. Determine the full Unix path of the directory in which you want -XCD to write data. The location where you store data is up to you; be sure to take disk space needs into account when making your decision. The data directory needs to exist, and also needs to contain grib and bufr subdirectories. Once you've determined the path of your data directory, create a McIDAS string named MCDATA that contains the full Unix path to the directory. From the McIDAS-X session,

Type: TE MCDATA "/data_directory_path

For example: TE MCDATA "/home/oper/xcd_data     
In order for -XCD to correctly file data in this example, the /home/oper/xcd_data, /home/oper/xcd_data/grib, and /home/oper/xcd_data/bufr directories need to exist. Create the #MCDATA, #MCDATA/grib, and #MCDATA/bufr directories, if necessary.

10. Run the batch file XCD.BAT to redirect to data files in #MCDATA and to initialize the files GROUPS.DAT and COUNTRY.DAT.

Type: BATCH XCD.BAT

11. Run the batch file XCDDEC.BAT to register MD file schemas, create rapid access pointer files, and initialize several data files.

Type: BATCH XCDDEC.BAT

Proceed to the next section, Configuring McIDAS-XCD, and complete the configuration instructions for each section.

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