WDSS-II

Real-time monitoring of WDSS-II processes

WDSS-II algorithms can be started individually on the command-line, but in a real-time environment, you'd typically want to set up multiple processes and link them together (so that the output of one process feeds into the input of another process). You'd also want to start and stop processes as a group (for example, all the processes depending upon data from the radar KAMA). To do that, you would use the "w2alg" capability.

Installation

Download and untar the w2algrun.tgz file somewhere. You'd want to keep this in a directory that gets periodically backed up.

cd $HOME
tar xvfz /tmp/w2algrun.tgz

cd into the w2algrun directory

cd w2algrun

run ./autogen.sh

./autogen.sh

Create a w2alg.conf. See the example at the end of this webpage for instructions on how to do this.
Softlink the w2alg in that directory to some directory that's already in your PATH.

cd ~/WDSS2/bin
ln -s ~/w2algrun/w2alg .

LDM Configuration

WDSS-II algorithms need to ingest data from remote sensors. The data need to make it to the workstation on which WDSS-II algorithms are running. Such data are typically transmitted through Unidata's LDM software. For more information on LDM, please consult your LDM user manual.

Here are example entries that would go into LDM's pqact.conf for some common meteorological sources. Make sure to request the data in your ldmd.conf.

Data Source	Name of file	Entry
WSR-88D (NWS radar network)	pqact.conf	NEXRD2 ^L2-([^/]*)/(....)/([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-1][0-9][0-3][0-9][0-2][0-9][0-5][0-9][0-9][0-9]) PIPE /home/ldm/bin/nexradII_bz /home/ldm/data/nexradII/\2/\3.raw
TDWR (FAA weather radar)	pqact.conf	EXP ([^/]*)/(OKC)([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9](-)[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9](-)[0-9]+(.)[0-9][0-9](-)[0-9]+(-)[0-9]+(-)[0-9]+(.)(bz2)) FILE /data/realtime/tdwr/Raw\2/\2\3
RUC (FSL Rapid Update Model)	pqact.conf	NMC2 [^/]/RUC2/#252/([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-1][0-9][0-3][0-9][0-2][0-9][0-5][0-9])/F000/([A-Z])/([^/]*)(!) ([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]) PIPE /home/wdssii/WDSS2/bin/gribToNetcdf -o /data/realtime/model/ruc2 -P

Quick Start

w2alg launches each algorithm process and sets it up with a time-stamped, rotating log and in an environment such that if the algorithm dies, it is restarted automatically.

w2alg reads w2alg.conf and uses that information to determine what processes to start and with what command-line parameters. These are some of the most useful commands:

w2alg start all	Starts all the algorithms
w2alg start ktlx	Starts all the algorithms in the group KTLX
w2alg start ktlx a2	Starts the a2 algorithms in the group KTLX
w2alg stop all	Stops all the algorithms
w2alg stop ktlx	Stops all the algorithms in the group KTLX
w2alg status kltx qcnn	Provides status of the qc algorithm on KTLX
w2alg status kltx	Provides status of all the KTLX algorithms.
w2alg tail kltx qcnn	Tails the log of the qc algorithm on KTLX
w2alg tail mainlog	Tails the mainlog which tells you which algorithms died and were restarted.

Typically, every data source (radar, satellite, etc.) is a group, and every algorithm in it is a manager. For every algorithm, you would set the following parameters:

PROCESS_EXE the name of the algorithm e.g: w2qcnn
PROCESS_PARAMS the command-line parameters to the algorithm. Type the name of the command (w2qcnn, for example) to find out what parameters that program takes.
NUM_LOGS default is 10, after which the logs will be rotated
LOG_SIZE in lines
LOG_DIR
DIR directory to run from

In the command-line parameters, you might find it useful to use globally defined variables (defined at the top of the w2alg.conf file -- $M1 in the example below defines a earth-centric domain specifying -t, -b and -s for all the algorithms that need them. See w2merger for example) and variables such as $GROUP.

Note that even though this example, for simplicity, directly includes the command-line parameters, you can avoid repetitiveness by starting the algorithms with a --configFile=something.xml and pass the command-line options using the configFile. This way, you can reuse command-line parameters across groups.

Example w2alg.conf file (for a regional WDSS-II domain)