tricks and treats..

Here are a few 'postit' type notes that will come in handy. I will keep adding to this list whenever I catch a fish or two to add :

NMRSim installation

• When you install TS1.3 or TS2.1 in a EL 5 or Fedora 10 like environment, you might get a complaint from NMRSim that it is not able to find : /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults.  Simply do this :
• ln -sf /usr/share/X11/app-defaults /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults
• Now reinstall NMRSim and the error will evaporate away.  

curdir and write permisssion :

• Whenever you install a newer version of TS or XWIN, it often happens that the write permissions for the tree is changed en masse to a given user like nmrsu. It important that many of the directories need to have write access for all users for normal operation, on one hand, but a global write is a bad choice from security viewpoint, on the other.  You can create a separate group for all the NMR users involved and chgrp the tree to that special group and provide write permission for the tree and this is an acceptable solution. 
• But, there is one directory, i.e. $TSHOME/prog/curdir/$nmruser, for which this does not work i.e. the respective nmruser needs to be the owner of this branch of the tree.  So, you must remember to chown the curdir/$nmruser to nmruser:nmruser for proper fucntioning of TS for that user's login. Also, don't forget the '-R' switch while you do this.

smoking out the port on which the CPRserver is running - the easy way..

• Let me add that this tip is relevant when you are not  sitting at 'the spectrometer' console. If you are, simply enter hist on command line and find out the port number from there. But, if your spectrometer is in planet Mars and if you are at your desk, travelling back and fro is a bit trying.  That is where this tip becomes quite useful.
• First of,  ssh into the remote host.
• Then,
• cd /opt/topspin/prog/curdir/current TS user
• cat CPR.ref
• The text output of CPR.ref will show a string such as :  corbaloc:iiop::5500/CPRMsg
•  5500 is the port number on which the cpr server is running, according to the above output.

restarting the dataserver 

• It might  happen that the data tree could not be opened sometimes (in the local TS session). If so, you can enter the command dataserver and this will launch another fresh dataserver thread. You can access the tree then on.

about remote connections 

• If you are connecting to a remote TS server with a client, you have to make sure that the port into which you are connecting on the server is indeed the port at which the server is listening. To find this out, refer to the "smoking out the port on which the CPRserver is running" above.  If your remote connection is disabled from within Topspin on the remote server, you should enable the same by going to the Preferences - Misc - remote connections section.  You must restart Topspin on the remote server for your connection from a client to succeed.