Preparing the mcidas Account

Follow the steps below to prepare the mcidas and mcadde accounts.

1. If the workstation does not have mcidas and mcadde accounts, have the system administrator create them.

   The mcidas account should allow logins; the mcadde account should not allow logins. Both of these accounts should be in the same group and both should have the SAME home directory.

2. If the mcidas and mcadde accounts are not in the same group as the user running the Unidata LDM, have the system administrator put them in the same group. This group should be different than the one that general users are in.

3. Log on to the workstation as the user mcidas.

4. Modify the shell-appropriate configuration file: .cshrc for non-conforming shells like csh and tcsh; .profile for Bourne Shell users; .bash_profile for bash; .kshrc for Korn Shell users; etc.
   • First, define the environment variable MCVER to match the version of McIDAS that is to be installed.
   • Next, define the MCHOME environment variable to be the fully qualified pathname of the directory under which McIDAS is installed. This is typically the same as HOME directory for the user mcidas.
   • Next, define the environment varible McINST_ROOT. Set this to the directory under which you want McIDAS installed. The most typical setting for this is the MCHOME directory set in the previous step.

   • Next, define the environment varible VENDOR. VENDOR specifies which supported compiler set to use. Unidata McIDAS can be built with operating system vendor compilers (-vendor) or the Free Software Foundation GNU compilers gcc and gfortran (-gfortran).

   • Finally, define a series of McIDAS environment variables and others needed to build packages included with the McIDAS. For convenience, files with the settings described below are included in the Unidata McIDAS-X distribution in the $HOME/admin directory.
     mcidas_env.csh - non-conforming shells (C-shell, TC-shell, etc.)
     mcidas_env.sh - conforming shells (Bourne shell, Bash, Korn-shell, etc.)
     

     NB: Defining all of these enviornment variables is most easily accomplished by adding the following lines to your shell definition file:

     non-Conforming shells (e.g., .cshrc)

     Conforming shells (e.g., .profile, .bash_profile, or .kshrc)

     # McINST_ROOT and VENDOR non-conforming shell defines # needed to build McIDAS setenv MCVER 2022 setenv MCHOME $HOME setenv McINST_ROOT $MCHOME setenv MCADMIN $McINST_ROOT/admin setenv VENDOR -gfortran # NOTE: uncomment the line that sets MySQL_ROOT if you want to # build with MySQL support: # - leave the value blank if MySQL is installed in a standard # location # - specify the value as the root directory of the MySQL # installation if MySQL is not installed in a standard # location # setenv MySQL_ROOT TRUE if ( -e $MCADMIN/mcidas_env.csh ) then source $MCADMIN/mcidas_env.csh endif

     # McINST_ROOT and VENDOR conforming shell defines # needed to bulid McIDAS MCVER=2022 MCHOME=$HOME McINST_ROOT=$MCHOME MCADMIN=$McINST_ROOT/admin VENDOR=-gfortran export MCVER MCHOME McINST_ROOT MCADMIN VENDOR # NOTE: uncomment the next two lines that set MySQL_ROOT if you # want to build with MySQL support: # - leave the value blank if MySQL is installed in a standard # location # - specify the value as the root directory of the MySQL # installation if MySQL is not installed in a standard # location # MySQL_ROOT=TRUE # export MySQL_ROOT if [ -e $MCADMIN/mcidas_env.sh ]; then . $MCADMIN/mcidas_env.sh fi

     NOTEs:

     • The MCADMIN directory will be created by the mcunpack script that is used to unpack the Unidata McIDAS source distribution file.
     • Uncomment the line(s) that define MySQL_ROOT (and define its value if MySQL is not installed in a standard location) if you want to build McIDAS-X/-XCD with MySQL support (used by the ADDE GRIB server for NOAAPORT model data).

     The names of environment variables that are needed and their meaning is listed in the following table.

     Environment Variable	Purpose
     MCVER	the version of the McIDAS-X installation
     MCHOME	the HOME directory of the user mcidas
     McINST_ROOT	the directory under which you wish to install Unidata McIDAS-X. This is usually the same as MCHOME)
     MCADMIN	the fully qualified pathname of the location of admin scripts
     MCDATA	working directory for McIDAS-X sessions
     MCPATH	MCPATH - a colon-separated list of directories that McIDAS routines will search when looking for data and ancillary data files
     MCBIN	the directory in which McIDAS executables reside
     MCGUI	the directory in which the Tcl/Tk GUI executables and scripts reside
     MCSRC	the directory in which McIDAS-X/-XCD source code can be found
     MCTABLE_READ	a semi-colon separated list of fully qualified pathnames of ADDE client routing tables that will be read by McIDAS applications when determining the server from which data will be requested
     MCTABLE_WRITE	the ADDE client routing table that will be modified when the McIDAS DATALOC command is run
     MCSTRETCH	set the EXPanded or ORIGinal stretch environment
     MCCOMPRESS	when set, makes McIDAS clients request that ADDE servers send them data in compressed format
     MySQL_ROOT	setting this environment variable to a non-blank value tells the McIDAS-X/-XCD build process to include MySQL support. If MySQL is installed in a standard location, specify the flag as TRUE). If MySQL is installed in a non-standard install location, specify the flag as MySQL=directory, where directory is the root MySQL install directory. NB: if MySQL is not installed setting this environment variable will cause the build to fail.
     XCD_disp_file	fully qualified pathname of the XCD decoder status file, DECOSTAT.DAT. This should be located in mcidas's working directory.
     PATH	add the MCGUI directory to the front of your PATH

5. Have the system administrator make sure that the umask setting for the user running the Unidata LDM is 0002.

6. If you are updating an existing McIDAS-X user and have locally developed McIDAS BATCH files, McBASI scripts, or Tcl/Tk scripts, you should back them up before beginning the installation process.

   All BATCH files and McBASI scripts in the $MCHOME/data directory that have the same name as ones in the Unidata McIDAS-X distribution will be automatically copied to a backup directory, $MCHOME/savedata, but these files can still be overwritten under certain circumstances. Saving the files you have modified before you begin will prevent loss of work later on.