N. Visualizing Data

To access the video version of this tutorial, click SCOOP Grid Appliance Tutorial.

Basic Grid Appliance Commands

Go to the SCOOP folder you created in the G. Downloading and Installing lesson
Open the grid appliance folder
Click on Grid Appliance VMware configuration file to launch the grid appliance
Click on "Start this virtual machine"
Wait for the virtual machine to load {it might take a couple minutes)
Once it is fully loaded, commands can be typed in to carry out different functions
Enter in ls to check which folders are available
You will see different names come up
Go to the start menu on your computer and select run
Type in the IP address with two backslashes at the beginning (the ip address is an 11-12 digit number located in the top box named xmessage)
It should look something like \\www.xxx.yy.zzz
This should open a folder called Samba Server 3.0.24
Open the griduser folder
Notice the names that were listed in the grid appliance; they are the names available in this folder
We will use Grid Appliance commands to navigate through the files
Go back to the grid appliance window
Type in cd viz
The command cd allows you to change directories
Now enter in ls to see what files or folders there are in this directory

Go back to the Samba folder you opened on your computer
Open the viz folder
Notice there are only 3 files (demo, draw and SCH*.nc)
Go back to the grid appliance
Again notice the listed files correlate to the files you could see in the folder
We will now run the demo
Type in ./demo and hit enter
As the demo runs, a new folder will be created to store output files
Go back to the Samba folder
Open the folder SCH3CH01-UFL_WANAFe11-UFL_20070927T1800_12gsr1 which is in the viz folder (you might need to reopen or refresh the viz folder)
Look at the files created in the new folder
There should be more, named the same as the files you saw listed from running the demo
Open one of the png files
The file name describes what the image will show
All of the images in the folder will be of the Charlotte Harbor
You can look through the rest of the images
Go back to the grid appliance
Enter in cd .. (cd space period period) to go back to the past directory

You will now make plots from the data you downloaded in M. Downloading Data
Open the viz folder as you did in the previous section
Enter in ls to show the files in the current folder
Enter in cd viz to change directories and go to the viz folder
There should be a folder from the previous section containing png files
Copy the nc file you downloaded earlier in M. Downloading Data into this viz folder
If you did not save an nc file, go back to M. Downloading Data and follow the steps to do so now
Once the nc file is in the viz folder, go back to grid appliance
To open the file SCH3CH01-UFL_WANAFe06-UFL_20050823T1200_20050823T0600_20050828T1800_12gsr1_Z.nc.gz, type in ./demo S and then hit the tab button
The rest of the file name will appear until the point when it differs from the other file in the directory
It should now look like ./demo SCH3CH01-UFL_WANAFe
The file that the demo ran had an 11 next, but this one has a 06
Enter in 06 and press tab again
The rest of the file name should come up
Once you do this, press enter
The data will run and make another new folder containing the plots
Go back to the viz folder and enter the new folder
Open one of the png plots
These are different plots of Charlotte Harbor
In this demo, there are preset times and locations
The times and locations can be changed so that different areas or times can be included, but we will not cover that in this lesson

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