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System Requirements

The system requirements for running McIDAS-XCD are the same as those for running McIDAS-X. Please refer to Unidata McIDAS-X - Supported Platforms for additional information.

The McIDAS-XCD 2022 software package was tested by SSEC on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.x Intel and is supported by them on RHEL 7.x and 8.x.
Unidata has been tested on 64-bit Rocky 8.x Linux.

McIDAS-X 2022 must be installed in the mcidas account according to the specifications in Chapter 1, Installing and Configuring McIDAS-X, in the McIDAS User's Guide. Be sure to include the directory ~mcidas/bin in the PATH environment variable.

McIDAS-XCD is designed to process data from the NOAAPORT data stream that is broadcast by the National Weather Service. The standard method for receiving these data in the Unidata community is through the use of the Unidata LDM.

The user mcidas on the Unix workstation running the McIDAS-XCD software must be in the same group name as the user ldm.

In addition, the workstation must have enough disk space to run the McIDAS-XCD software package and store its data files. The table below lists the approximate disk space requirements per day for each data type decoded with the -XCD package. The space requirements were derived from the NOAAPORT broadcast in June 2022.

Data type	Daily space requirements
* ASCII text stream	3,500 MB
* MD files (all types/schemas)	198 MB
All GRIB1 and GRIB2 data	550,000 MB
All radar (WSR-88D and TDWR) products and stations	60,000 MB
All BUFR data	2,700 MB
* These data are generated by default for first-time installations. The GRIB, GRID and NEXRAD decoders are inactive by default.
NOAAPORT approximate total	616,000 MB (616 GB)

In addition, there is a static requirement of 500 to 1,000 MB for other -XCD files. If enabled, the MySQL/MariaDB database (60 MB) and LDM product queue also consume significant disk space. Note: The LDM product queue can be set as large as 4 GB on a 32 bit Linux workstation and much larger on a 64 bit Linux workstation.

Remember that the space requirements above are approximates and are per day. If you save multiple days of data you must multiply the figures by the number of days for your disk space requirements.