[Met_help] Re: MET FEEDBACK from Gerald van der Grijn

[John Halley Gotway]

Gerald,

OK, I think I've figured it out.  I was able to run the PB2NC tool in such a way as to reproduce that exact same error message you're seeing.

The issue has to do with how the input PREPBUFR file is "fortran blocked".  Before the input PREPBUFR file can be read by BUFRLIB, it must be fortran blocked to perform an unformatted read of the 
data.  I really don't understand this all that well, but I think we can fix the problem for you.  The sample data that's distributed with MET was fortran blocked on a machine here.  Since your machine 
isn't exactly the same as ours though, that fortran blocking done here won't necessarily work on yours.

You'll need to redo the fortran blocking for the sample PREPBUFR files on your machine.  And you'll need to use the "cwordsh" tool distributed by NCEP to do so.  If you don't already have a copy of 
"cwordsh", please see the link for it on the MET website: http://www.dtcenter.org/met/users/downloads/index.php

Once you have "cwordsh", here's how you'd go about redoing the fortran blocking:
cd /home/grijn/MET/METv1.0/data/sample_obs/prepbufr
chmod 777 .
cwordsh unblk ndas.t00z.prepbufr.tm12.20070401.nr.blk ndas.t00z.prepbufr.tm12.20070401.nr
cwordsh block ndas.t00z.prepbufr.tm12.20070401.nr     ndas.t00z.prepbufr.tm12.20070401.nr.blk

Then go back and rerun the test scripts.

Please let me know whether or not this worked.  Your machine may or may not be able to perform the unblocking step on this file.  If not, I'll send you the unblocked files to begin with.

Let me know, and thanks for your patience.

Once we figure this out, I'll post the fix to the MET known issues page: http://www.dtcenter.org/met/users/support/known_issues/METv1.0/METv1.0_known_issues.php

Thanks,
John

Gerald van der Grijn wrote:
> Hi John,
> 
> Thanks for your reply. I checked with the systems people and they are 
> pretty sure it is a 32-bit processor (albeit dual core).
> 
> I have attached the make.log which contains lots of warnings. However, I 
> don't think these warnings cause any harm.
> 
> Gerald
> 
> 
> 
> John Halley Gotway wrote:
>> Gerald,
>>
>> My guess is that you've installed and are running MET on a 64-bit 
>> machine.  Unfortunately, the BUFR library which MET links to for the 
>> PB2NC tool does not work well on a 64-bit machine.
>>
>> I have told the folks at NCEP who developed BUFRLIB about the issue 
>> and they're working to address it.  For the time being though, you've 
>> have a couple of options:
>> (1) If you have access to a 32-bit machine, install and build MET 
>> there.  You may even be able to copy over the executables you generate 
>> to your 64-bit machine and run them there.
>> (2) Try to build MET (and the libraries on which it depends) on your 
>> 64-bit machine using the 32-bit compiler options.  I've attempted to 
>> do this on a 64-bit machine we have here at NCAR, but ran into several 
>> issues.  I had a difficult time trying to get NetCDF to compile as 
>> 32-bit.
>>
>> I'll write the NCEP people and ask for an update.  I believe that once 
>> we resolve this issue in BUFRLIB for 64-bit machines, MET should run 
>> fine on them.
>>
>> Let me know if there's anything else I can help you with.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> John Halley Gotway
>>
>> MET.FEEDBACK at rap.ucar.edu wrote:
>>> First Name = Gerald
>>> Last Name = van der Grijn
>>> Institution = ARGOSS
>>> Email = grijn at argoss.nl
>>> MET Feedback = Hello,
>>>
>>> I have successfully installed the tool kit. However, when I run the 
>>> test script PB2NC does not seem to work. It gives the following message:
>>>
>>> *** Running PB2NC on a fortran-blocked PrepBufr file ***
>>> PrepBufr2NC config file: config/PB2NCConfig_G212
>>> Opening PrepBufr file: 
>>> ../data/sample_obs/prepbufr/ndas.t00z.prepbufr.tm12.20070401.nr.blk
>>>
>>>
>>> ERROR: main() -> No PrepBufr messages to process!
>>>
>>>
>>>  +++++++++++++++++++++++WARNING+++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>>  BUFRLIB: OPENBF - INPUT BUFR FILE IN UNIT  11 IS EMPTY
>>>  +++++++++++++++++++++++WARNING+++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>>
>>>
>>> Do you have any clue what the problem might be. It seems that my BUFR 
>>> library has not been correctly installed....
>>>
>>>
>>> Thx,
>>> Gerald
>>
>>
>