Introduction
The Geophysical Instrument Pool Potsdam (GIPP) provides seismic and magnetotelluric recorders as well as sensors for academic research. It is hosted by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Potsdam Deutsches GeoForschungsZenrum GFZ. The GIPPtools main motivation is to provide a collection of software utilities that aid with initial pre-processing of recorded data to support users that borrow instruments from the GIPP.
Hopefully it is also useful for others that work with miniSEED or Cube data files.
Description
The programs in the GIPPtools collection are designed and tested to work with files produced by Data-Cube3 recorders (produced by DiGOS Potsdam GmbH) and with miniSEED files written by PR6-24 or EDR-210 portable recorder (produced by Earth Data). However, there is absolutely no reason why the utilities should not work with miniSEED or Cube files produced by other instruments or software as well.
The programs will help you to "manage" your recorded data and to prepare the dataset for import into whatever processing software you use for further scientific analysis. You can use the utilities, among other things, to convert, re-organize and cut out (seismic) data from miniSEED and Cube data files.
The following is a summary of all utilities that are part of the GIPPtools collection as well as a one sentence synopsis of their intended use. Detailed information about each program can be found in the separate manual pages.
- cube2ascii
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Convert Cube files to various ASCII text format.
- cube2mseed
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Convert Cube files to miniSEED format.
- cube2segy
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Convert Cube files to SEG-Y format.
- cubeevent
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List events captured by the Cube "event recorder" hardware.
- cubeinfo
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Inspect and summarize the content of Cube recordings.
- mseed2ascii
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Convert miniSEED data to various ASCII text formats.
- mseed2mseed
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Modify header fields of miniSEED records.
- mseed2pdas
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Convert miniSEED data to PDAS format.
- mseed2segy
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Convert miniSEED files to SEG-Y format.
- mseedcut
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Cut out the miniSEED input into pieces.
- mseedinfo
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Inspect and summarize the content of miniSEED files.
- mseedrecover
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Recover miniSEED records from damaged files and disks.
- mseedrename
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Batch rename miniSEED files using a template.
Usage
All utilities of the GIPPtools collection are written in the programming language Java. Usually they are run from the command line by executing a little start script named after the respective GIPPtool utility. This script will start-up the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) that is then used to execute the code of the requested tool.
Alternatively, you can also use the "universal" start script called gipptools and specify the desired utility via the --run-tool command line option. The gipptools start script supports the following options:
- -h, --help
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Print a brief help text and an up-to-date list of all GIPPtool utilities available. The help and utility list is also displayed if gipptools is called without command line arguments.
- --version
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Print the GIPPtools release information and exit.
- --sysinfo
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Provide some basic system information and exit.
- --run-tool=TOOL
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Select the TOOL from the list of of GIPPtools utilities that you want to execute. All following command line options (displayed as TOOLPARAM in the synopsis above) will be forwarded to the selected utility. (Please see the examples section below.)
Examples
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Executing the gipptools start script without any command line argument will display a brief help text including an up-to-date list of all GIPPtool utilities supported by this release.
gipptools
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To obtain basic system information about the currently used GIPPtools installation use the --sysinfo command line option:
gipptools --sysinfo*
This will display information about the used GIPPtools release, the Java Runtime Environment (JRE), the operating system, the source of the leap seconds list as well as the values of selected environment variables.
-
Display the online help of the cubeinfo utility:
gipptools --run-tool=cubeinfo --help
This is equivalent to calling the start script for the cubeinfo utility directly:
cubeinfo --help
-
Use the cubeinfo utility to show a short summary of the content of the input.cube file.
gipptools --run-tool=cubeinfo --format=summary input.cube
All command line options after --run-tool=cubeinfo are directly passed on to the cubeinfo utility. This makes the above command functionally equivalent to calling:
cubeinfo --format=summary input.cube
Environment
The following environment variables can optionally be used to influence the behavior of the various GIPPtool utilities during startup.
- GIPPTOOLS_HOME
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This environment variable is used to find the location of the GIPPtools installation directory. In particular, the Java class files that make up the GIPPtools are expected to be in the java subdirectory of GIPPTOOLS_HOME.
- GIPPTOOLS_LEAP
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Use this environment variable to name a file (e.g. leap-seconds.list) containing leap seconds information. Setting this variable will override any leap seconds information placed elsewhere.
- GIPPTOOLS_JAVA
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The utilities of the GIPPtools are written in the programming language Java and consequently need a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) to execute. Use this variable to specify the location of the JRE which should be used.
- GIPPTOOLS_OPTS
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You can use this environment variable for additional fine-tuning of the Java runtime environment. This is typically used to set the Java heap size available to GIPPtool programs.
It is usually not necessary to define any of those variables as suitable values should be selected automatically. However, if the automatic detection build into the start script fails or you need to choose between different GIPPtool or Java runtime releases installed on your computer, these environment variables might become quite helpful to troubleshoot the situation.
Files
- $GIPPTOOLS_HOME/bin
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Directory containing the start scripts for the various GIPPtool utilities. Usually, the scripts are simply a copy of or a link to the central gipptools start script in the same directory.
- $GIPPTOOLS_HOME/java
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Contains the actual java classes that make up the GIPPtools.
- $GIPPTOOLS_HOME/config
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Default settings and other supporting files (e.g. leap-seconds.list).
- $GIPPTOOLS_HOME/doc
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Documentation and example files.
- $GIPPTOOLS_HOME/man
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Directory containing the GIPPtools manual page hierarchy.
See also
cube2ascii(1), cube2mseed(1), cube2segy(1), cubeevent(1), cubeinfo(1), mseed2ascii(1), mseed2mseed(1), mseed2pdas(1), mseed2segy(1), mseedcut(1), mseedinfo(1), mseedrecover(1), mseedrename(1)
Home page
Contact
The GIPPtools are written and maintained by Christof Lendl (lendl@gfz-potsdam.de). If you are having trouble installing and/or running the software, feel free to e-mail me. However, please study the documentation before contacting me. Im not your ghostreader!
When reporting a bug, please be sure to include the GIPPtools release number and the computer platform you are using.
All GIPPtool utilities have a build-in --sysinfo command line option that can be used to obtain this as well as other helpful information. |