wview Quick Start Guide for Macintosh

Oct. 20, 2009

Purpose

This guide will provide the basic procedure for a "standard" wview install. Detailed description of the steps, advanced configuration of features and troubleshooting tips are found in the wview User Manual. Also, please see the wview homepage for a detailed description of wview, the latest news on releases, the wview User's Forum and other interesting links.

Mac OSX Requirements

xcode - development tools including gcc required to build source packages - see http://developer.apple.com/tools/xcode/ to download the dmg installer
MacPorts - package management system - used to install the library prerequisites listed below - see http://www.macports.org/ to download the latest version - once installed, add /opt/local/bin to your path by adding the following line to your ~/.profile file: "export PATH=$PATH:/opt/local/bin" - then execute the following:

sudo port -d selfupdate (this may take a while)
Note: All wview binaries and scripts will be found at /opt/local/bin instead of /usr/local/bin, so all instructions in the User Manual should have "/usr/local" replaced with "/opt/local" for Mac installs

System Requirements

Sufficient Kernel Share Memory - check the following line in the /etc/rc file, making sure the two sizes (shmmax and shmall) are similar in magnitude to this line:
sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmmax=536870912 kern.sysv.shmmin=1 kern.sysv.shmmni=32 kern.sysv.shmseg=8 kern.sysv.shmall=131072
ntp/xntp - Network Time Protocol - a configured and functional NTP daemon should be enabled on the host system to keep system and weather station time accurate
apache - in order to serve your weather site to the world, an http server is required - other http servers will work too. If you are going to export your site to another server or to your ISP account site, then an http server is not required on the wview server
php5 and php5-sqlite3 - optionally needed for browser-based configuration (requires apache or similar)
Serial/Ethernet/USB port - an available interface port is required to connect to the weather station

Weather Station - one of the following:

Vantage Pro or Vantage Pro2 Weather Station with Console
- WeatherLink for Vantage Pro or Pro2, Macintosh Version - the java software is not required, but this is the only way to obtain the USB-to-Serial convertor, driver and serial data logger
  
  Optionally, you can use the windows version with the serial data logger if you obtain separately a USB-to-Serial convertor with a MacOSX compatible driver - the Prolific chipset PL-2303 and driver have been confirmed to work with wview on a Mac Mini - Note: USB data loggers are NOT supported by MacOSX (in particular, there is no CP2101 driver for Darwin/FreeBSD) - unless you have a serial port on your Mac, you must use a USB-to-Serial adapter connected to a Weatherlink serial data logger (or just use the adapter provided with the Macintosh version of Weatherlink)
Vaisala WXT-510
La Crosse WS-2300 Series
Oregon Scientific WMR918 Series
Station Simulator (for demos and testing)

Install Procedure

      Note: execute these commands in a terminal session while logged into an account 
            with administration privileges - the sudo command requires you to enter your 
            password before it will execute the command following it.
      
      1)  Install wview directly from MacPorts: 

          sudo port install wview
      
      2)  If a new Vantage Pro station, use the on-screen console configuration 
          wizard
      
      3)  Configure wview: 

          Note: Refer to Chapter 6 of the wview User Manual for new browser-based
                configuration options.

          > sudo /opt/local/bin/wviewconfig

      4)  Configure wview HTML Templates:

          > sudo /opt/local/bin/wviewhtmlconfig

      5)  Run wview: 

          > sudo /sbin/SystemStarter start "wview"
          
          Note: You can stop or restart wview as follows:
          sudo /sbin/SystemStarter stop "wview"
          sudo /sbin/SystemStarter restart "wview"
      
      6)  See wview startup and run logs:

          > sudo tail -n 100 -f /var/log/system.log
          
          Note: Unless you configured wview to include ftp, ssh, alarms or CWOP 
                support, these daemons will start up, determine they are disabled, 
                then exit. This is normal behavior. 

      7)  Confirm proper operation:

          > sudo ps aux | grep wv
          (you should see at least "wviewd_[station]" - maybe others if you enabled them)

          > sudo ps aux | grep htmlgend
          (you should see "htmlgend")

          You should see the log message "doing initial html generation now..." 
          at the end of the wview initialization log messages.

          > ls -al /opt/local/var/wview/img/index.html
          (you should see the file listed)

          Open /opt/local/var/wview/img/index.html with your favorite browser - this is your 
          new wview homepage.