VAPOR PREPERAE does not work with VAPOR 3.7

[Tsironisa]

Hi
I am trying to use VAPOR PREPARE icon to convert grib files to vdf file. The docs give the following guidelines
'"To make this interface work Metview has to be started up with the MV_VAPOR_BIN environmental variable set to the directory of the VAPOR executables."
So i set the environmental variable to the folder with $MV_VAPOR_BIN=/home/.../VAPOR-3.7.1/bin
But still the process fails
Is there something wrong with the command or the target directory?
OS:Ubuntu 22
VAPOR version 3.7.1
Metview version >5

[iainrussell]

Hi @Tsironisa,

Check your command, it may just be a typo when you wrote this issue, but $MV_VAPOR_BIN=/home/.../VAPOR-3.7.1/bin should not have the dollar sign at the start, and it should probably also have export at the start. Also, if you're using the Python interface, set env var export METVIEW_PYTHON_DEBUG=1 and if you're starting via the UI, or Macro, add the -slog argument after the metivew command.

https://metview.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install.html
https://metview.readthedocs.io/en/latest/metview/using_metview/startup.html

Cheers,
Iain

[Tsironisa]

Thank for your quick response!
Yes i made a typo, i use the correct command since the printenv command gives me
MV_VAPOR_BIN=/home/.../VAPOR-3.7.1/bin

I still get the error:
Failed to perform VAPOR Prepare!
Error message:
vdfcreate failed!
command: . $MV_VAPOR_BIN/vapor-setup.sh; cd /tmp; vdfcreate -dimension 41x31x15 -gridtype layered -mapprojection "+proj=latlong +ellps=sphere" -level 2 -numts 2 -extents -1111770:3891195:0:3335310:7226505:16000 -vars3d t:u:v:r:ELEVATION -vars2dxy HGT:v2t:v10u:v10v tut_vdl.vdf > /tmp/mv.2197.apostolis/vapor_1671901284_2239/log.txt
Log file is available at:

/tmp/mv.2197.apostolis/vapor_1671901284_2239/m_log.txt
VaporPrepare-> Failed to perform VAPOR Prepare!

What files are supposed to be at the VAPOR-3.7.1/bin directory? should there be the file for setting up VAPOR or some other files?
When the setup file is in the directory, the icon is orange for way too long >20 hours without any resutls

[iainrussell]

Hi,
We no longer have a working VAPOR setup here, so I can't say what should be in the directory apart from vapor-setup.sh. But if I were you, I'd look in the logfiles suggested in the out put - they should hopefully tell you something (they are the output from the vdfcreate command itself. What I notice there is that vapor-setup.sh is prefixed with $MV_VAPOR_BIN, but vdfcreate is not - it might be necessary to add the bin directory to your $PATH, but I suspect this is what vapor-setup.sh does (sorry, it's been a long time since we set up this facility, so I'm a bit foggy on the details!).

[Tsironisa]

Hi,
Thank you for your help and guidelines, i will look into it and if anything comes up i will comment here!

Cheers,
Apostolis

[sandorkertesz]

Hi @Tsironisa,

The Metview Vapor interface was written a long time ago for Vapor version 2 (namely 2.2). I have just tried Vapor 3.7.0 on MacOS and it seems vapor_prepare() in Metview does not work with this version at all. E.g. the vdfcreate command is not there any longer, but it requires further investigation to see what actually is needed to make it work.

I will update the documentation to better highlight this fact. I will also update the title of this issue to better reflect the nature of the problem. A fix will be available, but as to when I cannot give you an estimate because it depends on our other commitments.

Cheers,
Sandor