USGS Home Contact USGS Search USGS

AutoFF

Name:
AutoFF - A utility to automatically retrieve station information for an electronic"field folder" for each station.

Information:
AutoFF is a program to automatically consolidate available electronic records for a group of stations into an electronic field folder for each station that can then be synced to field devices. The purpose is to:

• Ensure that all field staff have access to the latest station information at all times;
• Provide that information in an easy to read and transport electronic format;
• Eliminate the inefficiency of hand producing and collecting numerous paper documents;
• Allow for the efficient sharing of station material with hydrographers from other WSCs, discipline office reviewers, cooperating agencies, or other non-WSC personnel visiting a station.

The program is designed to retrieve material from a number of sources, including swreview output, go2 output, SIMS, ADAPS, SiteVisit, files on the local Sun, and files on an accessible Windows network drive. The program is highly tied to the script swreview but is also customizable. Please read the manual for more details.

Installation:
Full install instructions are included in the user manual.

NWIS 5.0 Update Instructions:

1. If installing a new server, tar up the old server's AFF area and transfer it to the new server (skip this step if not installing a new server)
   As root or owner of AFF area on old server, cd to directory containing the AFF area then:
   tar -cvf AFF.tar ./AFF

   As root or owner of AFF area on new server, place the tar file where you want it, cd to that area then:
   tar -xvf AFF.tar
   rm AFF.tar

2. Unzip the upgrade folder below and copy the AutoFF file into your current AFF directory (after migrating it to the new server from the old server if necessary), replacing the one already there.
3. Change permissions as needed to ensure all files are executable by the user running AutoFF (chmod +x file if necessary).

Script Language:
ksh

Requirements:
There are no special requirements, but please read the manual prior to installation. In particular check with your IT staff regarding your use of the smbclient if you plan to retrieve files from your Windows directories. You may need their help and you will certainly want to let them know of your use.

Original Author(s): Joseph Nielsen, OSW

Note the original author is noted on this page for the purposes of giving credit only. Please address questions/comments to OSW (GS-W OSW Scripts@usgs.gov).

Known Problems/Limitations/Need Improvements:

• The script can be very slow to run depending on the options used. There is not much that can be done about this due to the time necessary to pull the various retrievals.
• The reports retrieved from swreview output could be more specifically tailored to what is useful in the field. For now this work has not been done because of a desire to not slow the script down any more.
• It may be a useful feature to allow the script to use SIMS as the source of the station list. This may or may not create too many unncessary station folders and clutter the output.

Scripts:

Version 5.0.0: Posted 11/8/12
Updates were made to make AutoFF compatible with NWIS 5.0 and add SIMS Traffic Control Plan images. Only the AutoFF script file was updated in this release:

Full install package:
AutoFF 5.0.0 Full download (Zip file = 112K )

Upgrade package (migrate old AFF area to new NWIS server if necessary first:
AutoFF 5.0.0 upgrade download (Zip file = 8.9K )