20051129: NetCDF decoder pqact entries (cont.) (fwd)

• To: bit-bucket <bit-bucket@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Subject: 20051129: NetCDF decoder pqact entries (cont.) (fwd)
• From: Robb Kambic <rkambic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 13:49:34 -0700 (MST)

==============================================================================
Robb Kambic                                Unidata Program Center
Software Engineer III                      Univ. Corp for Atmospheric Research
rkambic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx                   WWW: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/
==============================================================================

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 14:57:57 -0700
From: Unidata Support <support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Mark Seefeldt <mark.seefeldt@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
     rkambic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: 20051129: NetCDF decoder pqact entries (cont.)

>From: Mark Seefeldt <mark.seefeldt@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Organization: CU
>Keywords: 200511292028.jATKSH7s028630 LDM pqact DOS netcdf decoders

Hi Mark,

>I have been working with Robb on problems with my NetCDF decoders.  Most
>of the exchange is included below.  The quick summary is:

>-LDM 6.4.3 on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux v.4
>-installed:
>     netcdf-3.6.0-p1
>     netcdf-perl-1.2.3
>     udunits-1.12.4
>     decoders-4.0.0

>-I placed the pqact entries into a separate pqact file named
>  pqact.netcdf.

>-The pqact.netcdf file is then called from ldmd.conf with the following:
>   exec    "pqact etc/pqact.netcdf"

>-When I do a process listing I see:
>   ldm      12491 12487  0 12:58 ?        00:00:04 pqact etc/pqact.netcdf

>
>-I have found this error in the ldmd.log
>Nov 29 19:58:14 foehn pqact[12491] NOTE: Configuration-file
>"etc/pqact.netcdf" has no entries. You should probably not start this
>program instead.

Chiz and I noted that nothing seemed to be happening wrt the pqact
invocation using etc/pqact.netcdf, but we didn't pursue this.

>Robb has emphasized checking the syntax of pqact.netcdf.  I have done
>so, and have not found any problems.

OK.

>On top of that, my pqact.netcdf
>file is based on the pqact.entries file which Rob sent me.  I added some
>header comments, and changed the appropriate directories for my system.

OK.

>Robb did suggest checking the syntax and it passes:
>[ldm@foehn etc]$ ldmadmin pqactcheck -p /usr/local/ldm/etc/pqact.netcdf
>/usr/local/ldm/etc/pqact.netcdf is syntactically correct
>
>Therefore I am looking for the next suggestion.
>P.S.  Feel free to go on the system to check this out.

I logged onto foehn and took a harder look at your etc/pqact.netcdf
file.  What I found was that you had apparently edited it using a DOS
(or Windows) editor.  This leaves the file in a state where it is not
correctly readable by pqact.  I converted the file as follows:

<as 'ldm'>
cd ~/etc
dos2unix < pqact.netcdf > pqact.netcdf.linux

After inspecting pqacdt.netcdf.linux, I replaced your original with
it:

mv pqact.netcdf pqact.netcdf.dos
mv pqact.netcdf.linux pqact.netcdf

You can see the difference in the current pqact.netcdf and pqact.netcdf.dos
files by doing a 'diff':

cd ~ldm/etc
diff pqact.netcdf pqact.netcdf.dos

or by using 'vi' to edit pqact.netcdf.dos:

vi pqact.netcdf.dos
<immediately upon running 'vi' look at the bottom of your screen.
You should see the following:

"pqact.netcdf.dos" [dos] 122L, 4216C
                     ^_______________ indicates that the file is in DOS format

After the change, I sent a HUP so that all pqacts would reread their
configuration files:

ldmadmin pqactHUP

I then saw that every decoder invocation in pqact.netcdf was exiting
with errors.  A quick read of the LDM log file (logs/ldmd.log) showed
that the UDUNITS_PATH environment variable (defined in ~/.bash_profile)
was pointing to a file that did not exist:

UDUNITS_PATH=/usr/local/ldm/etc/udunits.dat

I then used the Linux 'locate' utility to find where you had built the
UDUNITS packate:

locate udunits.dat

warning: locate: warning: database /var/lib/slocate/slocate.db' is more than 8 
days old
/usr/local/udunits-1.12.4/etc/udunits.dat
/kukpuk1/cullathe/UDUNITS/udunits-1.11.7/src/lib/udunits.dat

Suspecting that the copy of udunits.dat was the one you intended to
use, I copied it to ~ldm/etc.

After the udunits.dat change, I still saw decoders exiting with error.
A quick inspection of the netcdf-decoders log files (e.g.,
~ldm/data/netcdf/surface/synoptic/synLog.log) showed that '.tbl' files
needed by the netcdf decoders (e.g., systns_upc.tbl) were not being
found.  I grepped for systns_upc.tbl in the netcdf decoder scripts in
~ldm/decoders and found that they are expected to live in the ~ldm/etc
directory.  Since you had setup your netcdf decoders installation so
that configuration files are located in ~ldm/etc/netcdf, I decided to
simply soft link the '.tbl' files:

cd ~ldm/etc
ln -s netcdf/*.tbl .

After this last change, the netcdf textual decoders stopped reporting
errors.

Please let me know if you see anything amiss or have questions.

Cheers,

Tom
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