[OpenMadrigal-developers] Madrigal 2.4 plans - auto updating of geo parameters

[William Rideout]

In a previous email I described our plans to add dynamic plotting in Madrigal 
2.4.  In this email I describe our plans to automate the updating of the various 
geomagnetic parameter files in Madrigal.

Right now, we have a manual process at Haystack to create a file that contains 
updated geomagnetic parameters.  Individual Madrigal sites must manually 
download this file and install it to get the latest data.

With Madrigal 2.4, this creation of an updated geomagnetic parameter file will 
be automated.  To ensure data quality, this automated process will notify 
various people at Haystack each time the file is updated, so we can check on its 
success.  This updated file will be automatically placed on the OpenMadrigal web 
site, with the name geofil_YYYYMMDD.tar.Z, so that Madrigal sites can tell 
whether they need to update.

When each Madrigal site runs updateMaster, the program will check if it needs to 
get a newer version of geofil_YYYYMMDD.tar.Z by comparing to a small local 
metadata file.  If so, updateMaster will download and install the latest version.

Since the ultimate source of this geomagnetic data is other web sites over which 
we have no control, it can be assumed that the automated creation of the updated 
geomagnetic parameter file will occasionaly break.  This is the reason why this 
process will run only at Haystack.  When this process breaks we'll fix it here, 
isolating these inevitable changes from all the Madrigal sites.

Bill

-- 
Bill Rideout
MIT Haystack Observatory
Email: brideout at haystack.mit.edu
Phone: 781 981-5624