Unidata McIDAS Learning Guide

Installing the Learning Guide Dataset

The Unidata McIDAS Learning Guide dataset consists of McIDAS data files from a 1993 spring snow storm over the East Coast of the United States. The data can be accessed through Unidata's remote ADDE server. If you wish to install this for use with your own remote ADDE server, or through your own local server, the data set is available on the Unidata passworded McIDAS FTP account in the data/tutorial directory in either compressed tar or ZIP format. Follow the instructions below to set the data files up for your own use.

Installing the Learning Guide dataset requires about 123 MB of disk space: 93 MB for the dataset and 30 MB for the compressed distribution file (tar or ZIP). The data set contains the following files:

fourteen AREA files (numbers 8000-8013) containing GOES-7 and METEOSAT-3 visible and infrared images of the strom
five MD files (numbers 8000-8004) containing hourly surface observations, mandatory and significant RAOB (radiosonde) observations, ship and buoy observations, and synoptic observations from 13 March 1993.
five GRID files (8000-8004) which contain the NGM forecast runs from 12 UTC/11 March 1993 to 12 UTC/13 March 1993.
a McIDAS BATCH file (BLIZADDE.BAT) which sets up the ADDE server names.

All Learning Guide examples use the ADDE. Access to the data can be provided through a remote McIDAS-X ADDE server, or it can provided through the local servers using REDIRECTions.

It is recommended that you use the McIDAS-X remote ADDE server to serve up the datafiles to McIDAS-X workstations. The instructions below are for setting up a remote ADDE server.

Setting up the dataset for the remote server

You should have set up the McIDAS-X ADDE remote server when you installed McIDAS-X. The following steps should be done on the machine running the remote server.

Logon as the user mcidas.
Download the Learning Guide dataset compressed tar file to the ~mcidas/data/tutorial directory.
Go into the ~mcidas/data/tutorial directory and unpack the compressed tar file.
After untar'ing the dataset, you can delete the compressed tar file:
Start a McIDAS-X session.
When you installed McIDAS-X, you created a REDIRECTion table (LOCAL.NAM) from the sample file (EXAMPLE.NAM) which has entries for the Learning Guide datasets. Make sure that the entries for the datafiles were included in LOCAL.NAM.
The following REDIRECTions should be in the list:
```
    AREA80* directory
    GRID80* directory
    MDXX80* directory
```
where directory is the full path to the ~mcidas/data/tutorial directory (ex: /home/mcidas/data/tutorial).
Add a REDIRECTion to BLIZADDE.BAT and run it to set up the ADDE dataset names and file associations. Delete the REDIRECTion when you are done.
where directory is the full path to the ~mcidas/data/tutorial directory (ex: /home/mcidas/data/tutorial).

Setting up user accounts

From each McIDAS-X account workstation that will access the BLIZZARD dataset from your remote server, run DATALOC to point to the remote server.
where fully_qualified_hostname is the IP address or fully qualified hostname of machine running the remote ADDE server.
Test your installation by using the DSINFO command to list out the information on the BLIZZARD dataset.