MDSplus on PPPL Mac's

Installing MDSplus on PPPL Mac's

To access MDSplus tools and data on a Macintosh at PPPL, you will probably find it easier and more maintainable to simply ssh in from X11 windows to the PPPL Linux cluster and run MDSplus applications there (after typing "module load nstx"). If, however, you wish to run MDSplus directly on your Macintosh, you can (assuming you have Administrative privileges).

You might want to download the latest MDSplus for MacOSX from http://mdsplus.org/, but as of December, 2009, the following was necessary (for Intel Macs, at least):

see http://mdsplus.org :Documentation:Tutorial:MDS_ServerOSX
To get jScope to work at PPPL on NSTX data, type jScope at the command line (ignore the initial error about LocalDataProvider) and then go into "File...Properties..." and replace all the lines at the top, down to "jScope.reversed=false", with the following:
```
   jScope.directory= ~/jscp
   jScope.default_server = 1

   jScope.data_server_1.name = NSTX
   jScope.data_server_1.argument = skylark.pppl.gov:8501
   jScope.data_server_1.class = MdsDataProvider

   jScope.cache_directory=~/
   jScope.cache_size=1024
```
Click on "Save" and then "Close" at the bottom of this window and then restart jScope. You can find useful instructions under the "Help...About jScope" menu.
The above assumes you will keep most of your files in a subdirectory called jscp. Create this by typing at the command line:
```
   mkdir ~/jscp
```
You may wish to get NSTX jscp files for use with jScope. These are on the PPPL Linux Cluster in the /p/nstxusr/util/jscp directory.
To test your installation of MDSplus, run: "jScope wfplus.jscp" (whatever scope file you have) and enter a valid shot number, like 130000.
If you would also like to install IDL on your Mac, see IDLonMACOSX.html.

If you have additional questions, please send email to dmueller or rbell or tcarroll

Installing MDSplus on PPPL Mac's

Edited 08-Nov-2012 by: Bill Davis