19991002: McIDAS-X at STC (cont.)

>From: alan anderson <address@hidden>
>Organization: St. Cloud State
>Keywords: 199909201508.JAA14368 McIDAS-X setup on client machine

Alan,

>Tom, one more bit, although I may not catch you.
>
>I noticed when I did the redirect list on our latest machine, that some of the
>file names, as listed on the EXAMPLE.NAM file, end in .xcd  (I think), while
>most of them are /var/data/mcidas.

EXAMPLE.NAM has examples of where files may lie.  When there were MD
files in the Unidata-Wisconsin datastream, it was mandatory to put
XCD-created MD files into a different directory.  This is why there
are references to /var/data/mcidas and a /var/data/xcd.  With the
removal of MD files in the UW stream, it is advisable to put all McIDAS
data files into a single directory.  The real reason it is advisable is
simplicity.

>This seemed unusual to me, I was expecting everthing to be /var/data/mcidas.
>I did not change anything, just copied EXAMPLE.NAM  to LOCAL.NAM and did a 
>REDIRECT REST to activate LOCAL.NAM.  

A number of universities have a history of putting the UW stream and
XCD created data files in different directories, so I felt that it was
appropriate to leave the different directories in EXAMPLE.NAM Again,
LOCAL.NAM is designed to be edited by the user to match his/her setup.

>I know I can go in and edit if needed,

And it is almost always the case that it does need to be edited.

>but wonder about the files with XCD in
>the packaged EXAMPLE.  I assume those files will not be available to me unless
>I edit my LOCAL.NAM.  Can you comment?

The reason for creating LOCAL.NAM is so that one can have a customized set
of REDIRECTions that matches the individual institutions setup.  LOCAL.NAM
being in the ~mcidas/data directory insures that it can be read by all
user sessions that run on the same machine and have ~mcidas/data (i.e.
/home/mcidas/data) in MCPATH.

Tom