UsingNetCDF

Using NetCDF files for your data =Introduction=

=Software Installation=

On Ubuntu
The Ubuntu package manager makes this very easy. Go to System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager (you will need to enter your password) and select the packages:

along with:
 * python-scientific (this provides a python interface for reading/writing NetCDF files)
 * python-tk
 * python-matplotlib) (these provide a means to view your data graphically)

Compiling from Source
This is not as convenient as using a package manager and is a bit messy!

Compiling the NetCDF Libraries from Unidata
The source code can be downloaded from Unidata:

wget http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/downloads/netcdf/ftp/netcdf-4.0.tar.gz

Now, unpack the tarball and build the libraries:

tar -xzf netcdf-4.0.tar.gz cd netcdf-4.0 ./configure --prefix=/opt/netcdf/netcdf-4.0 --enable-shared FC=ifort CC=gcc CXX=g++ CPPFLAGS="-DpgiFortran" \ FCFLAGS="-fpic" CFLAGS="-fPIC" CXXFLAGS="-fPIC" make make check make install

Note that we need to build the shared libraries. Hence the addition of the -fPIC flags

Installing the Python Interface
wget http://sourcesup.cru.fr/frs/download.php/1833/Numeric-23.8.2.tar.gz tar -xzf ... cd Numeric... python setup.py install

wget http://sourcesup.cru.fr/frs/download.php/2309/ScientificPython-2.8.tar.gz cd .. tar ...

but now need to hack setup.py for:
 * netcdf path
 * problems with /usr/lib and /usr/lib64

perhaps easiest to just patch with a symbolic link:

cd /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages ln -s /usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/Scientific

=An Example Session=