Version: release/midas-2020-12

In the new history display, the checkbox "Change all time axes together" works 
well with the mouse-based zoom, but does not apply to the +- buttons.

> Version: release/midas-2020-12
> 
> In the new history display, the checkbox "Change all time axes together" works 
> well with the mouse-based zoom, but does not apply to the +- buttons.

Fixed in current commit.

Stefan

Version: release/midas-2020-12

I'm exporting the history data shown in elog:2132/1 to CSV, but when I look at the 
CSV data, the step no longer occurs at the same time in both data sets (elog:2132/2)

History is from two separate equipments/frontends, but both have "Log history" set to 1.

Tried with export of two different time ranges, and the shift appears to remain the same, 
about 4040 rows.

I confirm there is a problem. If variables are from the same equipment, they have the same 
time stamps, like

t1 v1(t1) v2(t1)
t2 v1(t2) v2(t2)
t3 v1(t3) v2(t3)

when they are from different equipments, they have however different time stamps

t1 v1(t1)
t2    v2(t2)
t3 v1(t3)
t4    v2(t4)

The bug in the current code is that all variables use the time stamps of the first variable, 
which is wrong in the case of different equipments, like

t1 v1(t1) v2(*t2*)
t3 v1(t3) v2(*t4*)

So I can change the code, but I'm not sure what would be the bast way. The easiest would be to 
export one array per variable, like

t1 v1(t1)
t2 v1(t2)
...
t3 v2(t3)
t4 v2(t4)
...

Putting that into a single array would leave gaps, like

t1 v1(t1) [gap]
t2 [gap]  v2(t2)
t3 v1(t3) [gap]
t4 [ga]]  v2(t4)

plus this is programmatically more complicated, since I have to merge two arrays. So which 
export format would you prefer?

Stefan

I think from my perspective the separate files are fine. I personally don't really like the format 
with the gaps, so don't see an advantage in putting in the extra work.
I'm surprised the shift is this big, though, it was more than a whole hour in my case, is it the 
time difference between when the frontends were started?

I finally found some time to fix this issue in the latest commit. Please update and check if it's 
working for you.

Stefan

We have to request of a 64-bit integer data type to be included in MIDAS banks.
Since 64-bit integers are on some systems "long" and on other systems "long long",
I decided to create the two new data types

TID_INT64
TID_UINT64

which follows more the standard C++ tradition:

https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/types/integer

To be consistent, I renamed the old types:

TID_BYTE       -> TID_UINT8
TID_SBYTE      -> TID_INT8
TID_WORD       -> TID_UINT16
TID_SHORT      -> TID_INT16
TID_DWORD      -> TID_UINT32
TID_INT        -> TID_INT32

I left the old definitions in midas.h, so old code will still compile fine and be binary
compatible. But if you write new code, the new types are recommended.

If you save the ODB in ASCII format, the new types are used as stings as well, like

[/Experiment]
ODB timeout = INT32 : 10000

but the old types are still understood when you load an old ODB file.

I hope I didn't break anything, please report if you have any issue.

Stefan

> We have to request of a 64-bit integer data type to be included in MIDAS banks.
> Since 64-bit integers are on some systems "long" and on other systems "long long",
> I decided to create the two new data types
> 
> TID_INT64
> TID_UINT64
> 

These 64-bit data types do not work with ODB and they do not work with the MIDAS history.

As of commits on 30 March 2021, mlogger will refuse to write them to the history and 
db_create_key() will refuse to create them in ODB.

Why these limitations:

a1) all reading of history is done using the "double" data type, IEEE-754 double precision 
floating point numbers have around 53 bits of precision and are too small to represent all 
possible values of 64-bit integers.
a2) SQL, SQLite and FILE history know nothing about reading and writing 64-bit integer data 
types (this should be easy to fix, as long as MySQL/MariaDB and PostgresQL support it)

b1) in ODB, odbedit and mhttd web pages do not display INT64/UINT64/QWORD data
b2) ODB save and restore from odb, xml and json formats most likely does not work for these 
data types

Fixing all this is possible, with a medium amount of work. As long as somebody needs it. 
Display of INT64/UINT64/QWORD on history plots will probably forever be truncated to 
"double" precision.

K.O.

> These 64-bit data types do not work with ODB and they do not work with the MIDAS history.

They were never meant to work with the history. They were primarily implemented to put large 64-
bit data words into midas banks. We did not yet have a request to put these values into the ODB. 
Once such a request comes, we can address this.

Stefan

> 
> To be consistent, I renamed the old types:
> 
> TID_DWORD      -> TID_UINT32
> TID_INT        -> TID_INT32
> 

this created an incompatibility with old XML save files,
old versions of midas cannot load new XML save files,
variable types have changed i.e. from "INT" to "INT32".

it would have been better if XML save files kept using the old names.

now packages that read midas XML files also need updating.

specifically, in ROOTANA:
- the old TVirtualOdb/XmlOdb.cxx (no longer used, deleted),
- mvodb/mxmlodb.cxx

K.O.

Hi all,

I'm running into a curious problem when I try to run a program using my custom 
script button. I have been using a script button to start my DAQ, this button 
has always worked. It starts by exporting an absolute path to scripts and then 
runs scripts, my frontend, my analyzer, and mlogger relative to this path.

I recently added a line of code to run a new script "logic_controller". If I run 
the script_daq from my terminal (./start_daq), mhttpd accepts the client and the 
program works as intended. But, if I use the script button, the logic_controller 
program is immediately deleted by MIDAS. It can be seen appearing in the status 
page clients list and then immediately gets deleted. This is a client that runs 
on the local experiment host.

What might be the issue? What is the difference between running the script 
through the terminal as opposed to running it through the mhttpd button?

I have added a picture of my simple script and the logic_controller code.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers.

Isaac

> if I use the script button, the logic_controller program is immediately deleted by MIDAS.

This is indeed very curious, and I can't reproduce it on my test experiment. Can you redirect stdout and stderr from the logic_controller program into a file, to see how far the program gets? If it gets to the while loop at the end, then it would be useful to add some debug statements to see what condition causes it to exit the loop.

Are there any relevant messages in the midas message log about the program being killed? What's the value of "/Programs/logic_controller/Watchdog timeout"? 

> > if I use the script button, the logic_controller program is immediately deleted by MIDAS.
> 
> This is indeed very curious, and I can't reproduce it on my test experiment. Can you redirect stdout and stderr from the logic_controller program into a file, to see how far the program gets? If it gets to the while loop at the end, then it would be useful to add some debug statements to see what condition causes it to exit the loop.

I have redirected stdout and stderr into a text file and I have attached it to this entry. From what the stdout says, it seems that the lambda
function gets called 4 times before the program disconnects from the experiment. Somehow the status must become SS_ABORT or RPC_SHUTDOWN.

> Are there any relevant messages in the midas message log about the program being killed? What's the value of "/Programs/logic_controller/Watchdog timeout"? 

There are no interesting messages in the midas.log and "/Programs/logic_controller/Watchdog timeout" is 10000 when I run the command from the terminal window.
What happens when you run it on your test experiment?

I'll try some more debugging.

Thanks for helping me out! Cheers.

Isaac

I think it would be useful to find the minimal example that exhibits this behaviour.

What happens if your logic controller code is simply the 17 lines below? What happens if you create another script button that only starts the logic controller, not any of the other programs? etc. Gradually re-add features until you hit the problem (or scream in horror if it breaks with 17 lines of C++ and a 1 line shell script).



#include "midas.h"
#include "stdio.h"

int main() {
   cm_connect_experiment("", "", "logic_controller", NULL);

   do {
     int status = cm_yield(100);
     printf("cm_yield returned %d\n", status);
     if (status == SS_ABORT || status == RPC_SHUTDOWN)
       break;
   } while (!ss_kbhit());

   cm_disconnect_experiment();

   return 0;
}

> I think it would be useful to find the minimal example that exhibits this behaviour.
> 
> What happens if your logic controller code is simply the 17 lines below? What happens if you create another script button that only starts the logic controller, not any of the other programs? etc. Gradually re-add features until you hit the problem (or scream in horror if it breaks with 17 lines of C++ and a 1 line shell script).
> 

Hi Ben,

I have followed your suggestions and the program still stops immediately. My status as returned from "cm_yield(100)" is always 412 (SS_TIMEOUT) which is fine. 
The issue is that, when run with the script button, the do-wile loop stops immediately because the !ss_kbhit() always evaluates to FALSE.

My temporary solution has been to let the loop run forever :)

Let me know what think. Thanks again!

Isaac

> 
> 
> #include "midas.h"
> #include "stdio.h"
> 
> int main() {
>    cm_connect_experiment("", "", "logic_controller", NULL);
> 
>    do {
>      int status = cm_yield(100);
>      printf("cm_yield returned %d\n", status);
>      if (status == SS_ABORT || status == RPC_SHUTDOWN)
>        break;
>    } while (!ss_kbhit());
> 
>    cm_disconnect_experiment();
> 
>    return 0;
> }

> I have followed your suggestions and the program still stops immediately. My status as returned from "cm_yield(100)" is always 412 (SS_TIMEOUT) which is fine. 
> The issue is that, when run with the script button, the do-wile loop stops immediately because the !ss_kbhit() always evaluates to FALSE.
> 
> My temporary solution has been to let the loop run forever :)

Ahh, could be that ss_kbhit() misbehaves if there is no keyboard, meaning that it is started in the background as a script. 
We never had the issue before, since all "standard" midas programs like mlogger, mhttpd etc. also use ss_kbhit() and they 
can be started in the background via the "-D" flag, but maybe the stdin is then handled differentlhy. 

So just remove the ss_kbhit(), but keep the break, so that you can stop your program via the web page, like

#include "midas.h"
#include "stdio.h"

int main() {
  cm_connect_experiment("", "", "logic_controller", NULL);

  do {
    int status = cm_yield(100);
    printf("cm_yield returned %d\n", status);
    if (status == SS_ABORT || status == RPC_SHUTDOWN)
      break;
  } while (TRUE);

  cm_disconnect_experiment();

  return 0;
}

In April 4th 2020 Stefan added a new data format that fixes the well known problem with alternating banks being 
misaligned against 64-bit addresses. (cannot find announcement on this forum. midas commit 
https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/commits/541732ea265edba63f18367c7c9b8c02abbfc96e)

This brings the number of midas data formats to 3:

bk_init: bank_header_flags set to 0x0000001 (BANK_FORMAT_VERSION)
bk_init32: bank_header_flags set to 0x0000011 (BANK_FORMAT_VERSION | BANK_FORMAT_32BIT)
bk_init32a: bank_header_flags set to 0x0000031 (BANK_FORMAT_VERSION | BANK_FORMAT_32BIT | BANK_FORMAT_64BIT_ALIGNED;

TMEvent (midasio and manalyzer) support for "bk_init32a" format added today (commit 
https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midasio/commits/61b7f07bc412ea45ed974bead8b6f1a9f2f90868)

TMidasEvent (rootana) support for "bk_init32a" format added today (commit 
https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/rootana/commits/3f43e6d30daf3323106a707f6a7ca2c8efb8859f)

ROOTANA should be able to handle bk_init32a() data now.

TMFE MIDAS c++ frontend switched from bk_init32() to bk_init32a() format (midas commit 
https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/commits/982c9c2f8b1e329891a782bcc061d4c819266fcc)

K.O.

Until commit a4043ceacdf241a2a98aeca5edf40613a6c0f575 today, mdump mostly did not work with bank32a data.
K.O.


> In April 4th 2020 Stefan added a new data format that fixes the well known problem with alternating banks being 
> misaligned against 64-bit addresses. (cannot find announcement on this forum. midas commit 
> https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/commits/541732ea265edba63f18367c7c9b8c02abbfc96e)
> 
> This brings the number of midas data formats to 3:
> 
> bk_init: bank_header_flags set to 0x0000001 (BANK_FORMAT_VERSION)
> bk_init32: bank_header_flags set to 0x0000011 (BANK_FORMAT_VERSION | BANK_FORMAT_32BIT)
> bk_init32a: bank_header_flags set to 0x0000031 (BANK_FORMAT_VERSION | BANK_FORMAT_32BIT | BANK_FORMAT_64BIT_ALIGNED;
> 
> TMEvent (midasio and manalyzer) support for "bk_init32a" format added today (commit 
> https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midasio/commits/61b7f07bc412ea45ed974bead8b6f1a9f2f90868)
> 
> TMidasEvent (rootana) support for "bk_init32a" format added today (commit 
> https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/rootana/commits/3f43e6d30daf3323106a707f6a7ca2c8efb8859f)
> 
> ROOTANA should be able to handle bk_init32a() data now.
> 
> TMFE MIDAS c++ frontend switched from bk_init32() to bk_init32a() format (midas commit 
> https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/commits/982c9c2f8b1e329891a782bcc061d4c819266fcc)
> 
> K.O.

For my analyzer I generate the experim.h file from the odb.

Before midas commit 13c3b2b this generates structs with INT data types. compiles fine with my analysis code (using the old mana.cpp)

newer midas versions generate INT32, ... types. I get a 

‘INT32’ does not name a type   

although I include midas.h 

how to fix this?

> For my analyzer I generate the experim.h file from the odb.
> 
> Before midas commit 13c3b2b this generates structs with INT data types. compiles fine with my analysis code (using the old mana.cpp)
> 
> newer midas versions generate INT32, ... types. I get a 
> 
> ‘INT32’ does not name a type   
> 
> although I include midas.h 
> 
> how to fix this?

You could run experim.h through "sed" to replace the "wrong" data types with the correct data types.

You can also #define the "wrong" data types before doing #include experim.h.

I put your bug report into our bug tracker, but for myself I am very busy
with the alpha-g experiment and cannot promise to fix this quickly.

https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/289/int32-types-in-experimh

Here is an example to substitute things using "sed" (it can also do "in-place" editing, "man sed" and google sed examples)
sed "sZshm_unlink(.*)Zshm_unlink(SHM)Zg"

K.O.

> > For my analyzer I generate the experim.h file from the odb.
This issue is still open. Shouldn't midas.h provide the 'new' data types as typedefs like  

typedef int INT32;

etc. Of course you would need to deal with all the supported targets and wrap it accordingly.

A.S.

> > 
> > Before midas commit 13c3b2b this generates structs with INT data types. compiles fine with my analysis code (using the old mana.cpp)
> > 
> > newer midas versions generate INT32, ... types. I get a 
> > 
> > ‘INT32’ does not name a type   
> > 
> > although I include midas.h 
> > 
> > how to fix this?
> 
> You could run experim.h through "sed" to replace the "wrong" data types with the correct data types.
> 
> You can also #define the "wrong" data types before doing #include experim.h.
> 
> I put your bug report into our bug tracker, but for myself I am very busy
> with the alpha-g experiment and cannot promise to fix this quickly.
> 
> https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/289/int32-types-in-experimh
> 
> Here is an example to substitute things using "sed" (it can also do "in-place" editing, "man sed" and google sed examples)
> sed "sZshm_unlink(.*)Zshm_unlink(SHM)Zg"
> 
> K.O.

Ok, I added

/* define integer types with explicit widths */
#ifndef NO_INT_TYPES_DEFINE
typedef unsigned char      UINT8;
typedef char               INT8;
typedef unsigned short     UINT16;
typedef short              INT16;
typedef unsigned int       UINT32;
typedef int                INT32;
typedef unsigned long long UINT64;
typedef long long          INT64;
#endif

to cover all new types. If there is a collision with user defined types, compile your program with -DNO_INT_TYPES_DEFINE and you remove the 
above definition. I hope there are no other conflicts.

Stefan

works!

> Ok, I added
> 
> /* define integer types with explicit widths */
> #ifndef NO_INT_TYPES_DEFINE
> typedef unsigned char      UINT8;
> typedef char               INT8;
> typedef unsigned short     UINT16;
> typedef short              INT16;
> typedef unsigned int       UINT32;
> typedef int                INT32;
> typedef unsigned long long UINT64;
> typedef long long          INT64;
> #endif
> 
> to cover all new types. If there is a collision with user defined types, compile your program with -DNO_INT_TYPES_DEFINE and you remove the 
> above definition. I hope there are no other conflicts.
> 
> Stefan

> > 
> > /* define integer types with explicit widths */
> > #ifndef NO_INT_TYPES_DEFINE
> > typedef unsigned char      UINT8;
> > typedef char               INT8;
> > typedef unsigned short     UINT16;
> > typedef short              INT16;
> > typedef unsigned int       UINT32;
> > typedef int                INT32;
> > typedef unsigned long long UINT64;
> > typedef long long          INT64;
> > #endif
> > 

NIH at work. In C and C++ the standard fixed bit length data types are available
in #include <stdint.h> as uint8_t, uint16_t, uint32_t, uint64_t & co.

BTW, the definition of UINT32 as "unsigned int" is technically incorrect, on 16-bit machines
"int" is 16-bit wide and on some 64-bit machines "int" is 64-bit wide.

K.O.

Hello!

Could you help me solve the problem of compatibility between our frontend (created in 2017) and the fresh MIDAS? The old MIDAS (2017) worked well, then we did not use it.
While compiling the frontend, I get a lot of warnings and a few compilation errors.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
With the best regards,
Svetlana

Hi everyone,

I am currently trying to access a ROOT file produced by manalyzer. By calling JSROOT.openFile("MIDAS_DOMAIN/outputRUN.root"). I can download the rootfile via MIDAS_DOMAIN/outputRUN.root. Using JSROOT.openFile results in an 501 error, 
since the request feature is not provided. Using a simple API and uploading outputRUN.root there worked fine (when the run finised). 

Is there a way to use JSROOT.openFile with the current analyzed root file in Midas (so during the run)? I know that one can access histograms of the THttpServer via JSON but I need to get the full root tree.

Cheers,
Marius

> 
> I am currently trying to access a ROOT file produced by manalyzer. By calling JSROOT.openFile("MIDAS_DOMAIN/outputRUN.root"). I can download the rootfile via MIDAS_DOMAIN/outputRUN.root. Using JSROOT.openFile results in an 501 error, 
> since the request feature is not provided. Using a simple API and uploading outputRUN.root there worked fine (when the run finised). 
> 
> Is there a way to use JSROOT.openFile with the current analyzed root file in Midas (so during the run)? I know that one can access histograms of the THttpServer via JSON but I need to get the full root tree.
> 

Good questions. Right now in manalyzer I do not do anything more than starting the ROOT web server (so whatever
they support should work) and providing two "standard" location: one in the output file for histograms
and other permanent output and one in memory for transient objects, such as waveform plots, etc.

At some point I would like to provide a function to "get" TAFlowEvent objects so you can do things
like event displays in javascript. But I need a c++ to json serializer and standard c++ does not have it.
So I will have to use the clang serializer (also used by ROOT) and it will take me a few days
to figure it out.

Back to "openFile".

If you figure out the missing bits that need to be added to our code,
please post them here or submit them as a pull request or a bug report in bitbucket.

Also it would be good if you can provide a code example of "openFile" working elsewhere
but not with manalyzer, if I can run it, maybe I can figure out what's missing. But lacking
some example code, there is nothing for me to hack at.

K.O.

Thank you for the answer :)

> At some point I would like to provide a function to "get" TAFlowEvent objects so you can do things
> like event displays in javascript. But I need a c++ to json serializer and standard c++ does not have it.
> So I will have to use the clang serializer (also used by ROOT) and it will take me a few days
> to figure it out.

That sounds exactly what I was searching for. Because I wanted to create an interface between rootana and 
an event display build in javascript. Since all I tried did not really worked with the current rootana
I have now a "solution". I use the MIDAS python client, read directly events from the MIDAS buffer and provided
the events in a JSON format with the python flask API. Since the rendering of the event display is the bottleneck 
and I only need a view events to display this solution worked really well for me. Maybe having such a JSON API of 
the event buffer in MIDAS directly would also work for most of the event display applications or other simple javescript 
applications (my opinion).

> If you figure out the missing bits that need to be added to our code,
> please post them here or submit them as a pull request or a bug report in bitbucket.

One of the problems I had was the CORS domain of the THttpServer. In manalyzer:1894 you do 
sprintf(str, "http:127.0.0.1:%d", httpPort); but there are additional options for the THttpServer (like "?cors=DOMAIN").
So maybe a flag while starting manalyzer passing such options would be nice. I will create a pull request passing them later.

> Also it would be good if you can provide a code example of "openFile" working elsewhere
> but not with manalyzer, if I can run it, maybe I can figure out what's missing. But lacking
> some example code, there is nothing for me to hack at.

The problem is that it was not even running on simple THttpServer using interactive root:

    serv = new THttpServer("http:8088?cors=*");
    TFile *_file0 = TFile::Open("example_root.root")
    serv->Register("File", _file0);

So I tried just saving the file in the $MIDAS_DIR and tried to use mserver with JSROOT.openFile. I attached the html file and 
a test root file.

Cheers,
Marius

well, if this is something in ROOT, perhaps you can pursue it with the ROOT crowd,
they are quite friendly.

on my side, if all you need is to pull event data banks, this is easy to add
in mhttpd.

the jsonrpc request will look something like this:

get_event {
"buffer":"system",
"get_type":"GET_LATEST", (or whatever bm_receive_event() can do)
"include_banks":["AAAA","BBBB"],
"exclude_banks":["CCCC","DDDD"]
}

and return something like this:

event {
"header":{"event_id":1,...},
"banks":{
"AAAA":[1,2,3,4],
"BBBB":NULL (you asked for it, so you always get it, but it is NULL if bank does not exist)
}
}

would this work for what you are doing?

(this is not good enough if data has to be pre-digested by c++ analysis in rootana)

K.O.

I also need midas events going back to the browser for single event display, so put +1 for me.

Please also consider to use JavaScript typed arrays instead of JSON. For large midas banks, type 
arrays are 5-10 times faster than JSON encoding/decoding.

Best,
Stefan

> would this work for what you are doing?

Yes, having such a function would be perfect for the applications I have a the moment.

> (this is not good enough if data has to be pre-digested by c++ analysis in rootana)

Also agree, if one wants to have a more sophisticated applications it is definitely needed to preprocess the data.

Cheers,
Marius

Hi all,

I'm currently experiencing an issue during run transitions. It comes in the form 
of an alert saying "TypeError: Cannot read property 'length' of undefined" 
whenever I'm in the "transition" window on mhttpd. I have attached an image of 
what the transition window looks like when this happens. 

By the looks of it and by peering at the lines in transition.html where the 
error occurs, it's pretty obvious that there is some strange undefined client 
that the web page tries to access.

I don't know how to find what this client is. Is there a way to see it in the 
ODB? 

The issues happens in show_client() of transition.html (called by callback()). 
Here's the trace:

Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: Cannot read property 'length' of undefined
    at show_client (?cmd=Transition:227)
    at callback (?cmd=Transition:420)
    at ?cmd=Transition:430

Any help would be very appreciated!

Thanks so much.

Isaac

Clearly something goes wrong with the STARTABORT transition. Actually from your 
sceenshot, it is not clear why the STARTABORT transition was initiated.

Usually it is called after some client fails the "start run" transition to inform 
other clients that the run did not start after all. (mlogger uses this to close the 
output file, etc).

But in the screenshot, we do not see any client fail the transition (only rootana1 
was called, and it returned "green").

So, a puzzle. One possibility is that the transition code gets so confused
that it does not record correct transition data to ODB, then the web page
gets even more confused.

One way to see what happens, is to run the odbedit command "start now -v".

Can you try that? And attach all it's output here?

K.O.

> Clearly something goes wrong with the STARTABORT transition. Actually from your 
> sceenshot, it is not clear why the STARTABORT transition was initiated.
> 
> Usually it is called after some client fails the "start run" transition to inform 
> other clients that the run did not start after all. (mlogger uses this to close the 
> output file, etc).
> 
> But in the screenshot, we do not see any client fail the transition (only rootana1 
> was called, and it returned "green").
> 
> So, a puzzle. One possibility is that the transition code gets so confused
> that it does not record correct transition data to ODB, then the web page
> gets even more confused.
> 
> One way to see what happens, is to run the odbedit command "start now -v".
> 
> Can you try that? And attach all its output here?
> 
> K.O.

Thanks for getting back to me right away. I've attached two screenshots. The first one 
is the output after running "start now -v" (everything seemed to work nicely there), the 
second output is after using odbedit to stop the run with "stop". Notice that the DAQ 
never stops because it gets stuck in between transitions (You can see the run status 
being "stopping run" with the cancel transition button).

Thanks.

Isaac

So there is no error on run start anymore? To debug the stuck run stop, please use "stop -v" 
to see where it got stuck. You can also play with the RPC timeouts (the connect timeout and 
the response timeout), to make it get "unstuck" quicker. Definitely it should not be stuck 
forever, it should timeout at maximum of "rpc timeout * number of clients". K.O.

> So there is no error on run start anymore? To debug the stuck run stop, please use "stop -v" 
> to see where it got stuck. You can also play with the RPC timeouts (the connect timeout and 
> the response timeout), to make it get "unstuck" quicker. Definitely it should not be stuck 
> forever, it should timeout at maximum of "rpc timeout * number of clients". K.O.

You're right it does not stay stuck forever, it eventually gets unstuck. I forgot to mention this. 
I will try to play with these timeout parameters. It does not get stuck if I run my DAQ using the 
odbedit commands (start/stop). I don't know if this is relevant information that could help us 
identify the problem.

Thanks for all your help as always!

Isaac

> It does not get stuck if I run my DAQ using the odbedit commands (start/stop).

Interesting. Run start/stop from odbedit works but from mhttpd gets stuck.

I think they do not run the transition quite the same way. mhttpd uses the multithreaded transition.

So we can debug this using the "mtransition" program. Try:

- mtransition -v -d 1 START/STOP -- this should be same as odbedit
- mtransition -m -v -d 1 START/STOP -- this should be same as mhttpd

The "-v" and "-d 1" flags should cause lots of output, for failed transitions,
cut-and-paste it all into this elog here, should give us plenty of meat to debug.

K.O.

since I am implementing a polled equipment, I was curious what is the smallest possible sleep time on current computers.

in current UNIX, there are 2 system calls available for sleeping: select() (with microsecond granularity) and nanosleep() (with nanosecond granularity).

So I wrote a little test program to check it out (progs/test_sleep).

First, Linux result using select(). Typical run on AMD 3700X CPU (4.1 GHz turbo boost) with Ubuntu LTS 20, linux kernel 5.8:

daq13:midas$ ./bin/test_sleep 
sleep      10 loops, 0.100000 sec per loop, 1.000000 sec total,  1003368.855 usec actual, 100336.885 usec actual per loop, oversleep 336.885 usec, 0.3%
sleep     100 loops, 0.010000 sec per loop, 1.000000 sec total,  1008512.020 usec actual, 10085.120 usec actual per loop, oversleep 85.120 usec, 0.9%
sleep    1000 loops, 0.001000 sec per loop, 1.000000 sec total,  1062137.842 usec actual, 1062.138 usec actual per loop, oversleep 62.138 usec, 6.2%
sleep   10000 loops, 0.000100 sec per loop, 1.000000 sec total,  1528650.999 usec actual, 152.865 usec actual per loop, oversleep 52.865 usec, 52.9%
sleep   99999 loops, 0.000010 sec per loop, 0.999990 sec total,  6250898.123 usec actual, 62.510 usec actual per loop, oversleep 52.510 usec, 525.1%
sleep 1000000 loops, 0.000001 sec per loop, 1.000000 sec total, 54056918.144 usec actual, 54.057 usec actual per loop, oversleep 53.057 usec, 5305.7%
sleep 1000000 loops, 0.000000 sec per loop, 0.100000 sec total,   210875.988 usec actual, 0.211 usec actual per loop, oversleep 0.111 usec, 110.9%
sleep 1000000 loops, 0.000000 sec per loop, 0.010000 sec total,   204804.897 usec actual, 0.205 usec actual per loop, oversleep 0.195 usec, 1948.0%
daq13:midas$ 

How to read this:

First line is 10 sleeps of 100 ms, for a total of 1 sec. this actually sleeps for a bit longer,
average over-sleep is 300 usec out of 100 ms is 0.3%.

Next few lines use progressively shorter sleep, 10 ms, 1 ms and 0.1 ms. over-sleep is consistently around 50-60 usec,
which I conclude to be this linux sleep granularity.

Last two lines try sleep for 0.1 usec and 0.01 usec, resulting in a zero-time sleep of select(),
so we just measure the average time cost of a linux syscall, around 200 ns in this machine.

Going to different machines:

Intel E-2236 (4.8 GHz tutboboost), Ubuntu LTS 20, linux kernel 5.8: over-sleep is 60 usec, zero-sleep is 400 ns.
Intel E-2226G (same, see arc.intel.com), CentOS-7, linux kernel 3.10: over-sleep is 60 usec, zero-sleep is 600 ns.
VME processor (2 GHz Intel T7400), Ubuntu 20, linux kernel 5.8: over-sleep is 60 usec, zero-sleep is 1700 ns.

This is pretty consistent, select() over-sleep is 60 usec on all hardware, zero-sleep tracks CPU GHz ratings.

Next, MacOS result, MacBookAir2020, MacOS 10.15.7, CPU 1.2 GHz i7-1060G7:

4ed0:midas olchansk$ ./bin/test_sleep 
sleep      10 loops, 0.100000 sec per loop, 1.000000 sec total,  1031108.856 usec actual, 103110.886 usec actual per loop, oversleep 3110.886 usec, 3.1%
sleep     100 loops, 0.010000 sec per loop, 1.000000 sec total,  1091104.984 usec actual, 10911.050 usec actual per loop, oversleep 911.050 usec, 9.1%
sleep    1000 loops, 0.001000 sec per loop, 1.000000 sec total,  1270800.829 usec actual, 1270.801 usec actual per loop, oversleep 270.801 usec, 27.1%
sleep   10000 loops, 0.000100 sec per loop, 1.000000 sec total,  1370345.116 usec actual, 137.035 usec actual per loop, oversleep 37.035 usec, 37.0%
sleep   99999 loops, 0.000010 sec per loop, 0.999990 sec total,  1706473.112 usec actual, 17.065 usec actual per loop, oversleep 7.065 usec, 70.6%
sleep 1000000 loops, 0.000001 sec per loop, 1.000000 sec total,  5150341.034 usec actual, 5.150 usec actual per loop, oversleep 4.150 usec, 415.0%
sleep 1000000 loops, 0.000000 sec per loop, 0.100000 sec total,   595654.011 usec actual, 0.596 usec actual per loop, oversleep 0.496 usec, 495.7%
sleep 1000000 loops, 0.000000 sec per loop, 0.010000 sec total,   591560.125 usec actual, 0.592 usec actual per loop, oversleep 0.582 usec, 5815.6%
4ed0:midas olchansk$ 

things are quite different here, OS is Mach microkernel with an oldish FreeBSD UNIX single-server (from NextSTEP),
so the sleep granularity is different, better than linux. zero-sleep still measures the syscall time, 600 ns on this machine.

Next we measure the same using the nansleep() syscall.

daq13:midas$ ./bin/test_sleep 
sleep      10 loops, 0.100000 sec per loop, 1.000000 sec total,  1004133.940 usec actual, 100413.394 usec actual per loop, oversleep 413.394 usec, 0.4%
sleep     100 loops, 0.010000 sec per loop, 1.000000 sec total,  1046117.067 usec actual, 10461.171 usec actual per loop, oversleep 461.171 usec, 4.6%
sleep    1000 loops, 0.001000 sec per loop, 1.000000 sec total,  1096894.979 usec actual, 1096.895 usec actual per loop, oversleep 96.895 usec, 9.7%
sleep   10000 loops, 0.000100 sec per loop, 1.000000 sec total,  1526744.843 usec actual, 152.674 usec actual per loop, oversleep 52.674 usec, 52.7%
sleep   99999 loops, 0.000010 sec per loop, 0.999990 sec total,  6250154.018 usec actual, 62.502 usec actual per loop, oversleep 52.502 usec, 525.0%
sleep 1000000 loops, 0.000001 sec per loop, 1.000000 sec total, 53344123.125 usec actual, 53.344 usec actual per loop, oversleep 52.344 usec, 5234.4%
sleep 1000000 loops, 0.000000 sec per loop, 0.100000 sec total, 52641665.936 usec actual, 52.642 usec actual per loop, oversleep 52.542 usec, 52541.7%
sleep 1000000 loops, 0.000000 sec per loop, 0.010000 sec total, 52637501.001 usec actual, 52.638 usec actual per loop, oversleep 52.628 usec, 526275.0%
daq13:midas$ 

Here everything is simple. sleep longer than 1000 usec works the same as select(), sleep for shorter than 100 usec sleeps for 52 usec, regardless of what 
we ask for.

MacOS does no better, long sleeps are same as select(), sleeps is 1 usec or less sleep for too long. no improvement over select().

4ed0:midas olchansk$ ./bin/test_sleep 
sleep      10 loops, 0.100000 sec per loop, 1.000000 sec total,  1023327.827 usec actual, 102332.783 usec actual per loop, oversleep 2332.783 usec, 2.3%
sleep     100 loops, 0.010000 sec per loop, 1.000000 sec total,  1130330.086 usec actual, 11303.301 usec actual per loop, oversleep 1303.301 usec, 13.0%
sleep    1000 loops, 0.001000 sec per loop, 1.000000 sec total,  1333846.807 usec actual, 1333.847 usec actual per loop, oversleep 333.847 usec, 33.4%
sleep   10000 loops, 0.000100 sec per loop, 1.000000 sec total,  1402330.160 usec actual, 140.233 usec actual per loop, oversleep 40.233 usec, 40.2%
sleep   99999 loops, 0.000010 sec per loop, 0.999990 sec total,  2034706.831 usec actual, 20.347 usec actual per loop, oversleep 10.347 usec, 103.5%
sleep 1000000 loops, 0.000001 sec per loop, 1.000000 sec total,  6646192.074 usec actual, 6.646 usec actual per loop, oversleep 5.646 usec, 564.6%
sleep 1000000 loops, 0.000000 sec per loop, 0.100000 sec total,  7556284.189 usec actual, 7.556 usec actual per loop, oversleep 7.456 usec, 7456.3%
sleep 1000000 loops, 0.000000 sec per loop, 0.010000 sec total, 15720005.035 usec actual, 15.720 usec actual per loop, oversleep 15.710 usec, 157100.1%
4ed0:midas olchansk$ 

On Linux, strace tells us that the actual syscall behind nanosleep() is this:
clock_nanosleep(CLOCK_REALTIME, 0, {tv_sec=0, tv_nsec=10000}, 0x7fffc159e200) = 0

Let's try it directly... result is the same.
Let's try it with CLOCK_MONOTONIC... result is the same.

The man page of clock_nanosleep() specifies that this syscall always suspends the calling thread,
so what we see here is the Linux scheduler tick size.

Bottom line.

On current linux, shortest sleep is around 100 usec both select() and nanosleep().
On MacOS, shortest sleep is down to 5 usec using select(), but I cannot tell if CPU sleeps or busy-loops.

select() is still the best syscall for sleeping.

K.O.

Why do you need that? Periodic equipment typically runs ever ten seconds or so, meaning one can do this easily in a scheduler.

For polled equipment, you don't want to sleep at all. Because if you sleep, you might miss an event. That's why I put my poll in mfe.c into a for() loop. No 
sleep, maximum polling rate. I just double checked on my macbook air. 

- If poll is always false (no event available), the loop executes 50M times in 100ms (calibrated during startup of the frontend). That means one iteration 
takes 2ns (!). So if an event occurs, the readout is started with a 2ns overhead. No sleep can beat that. In a real world application, one has to add of course 
the VME access or so to poll for the event.

- If poll is always true, the framework generates about 700k events each second (returning jus a few bytes of event data).

So if one adds any sleep here, things can get only worse, so I don't see the point for that. Of course polling eats one kernel at 100%, but these days every 
CPU has more than one, even my 800 MHz Xilinx embedded ARM CPU (Zynq).

Best,
Stefan

> Why do you need that?

UNIX/POSIX advertises functions for sleeping in microseconds and nanoseconds,
for sure it is interesting to know what they actually do and what happens
when you ask them to sleep for 1 microsecond or 1 nanosecond.

To sleep or not to sleep that is a question.

But if I do decide to sleep, and I call the sleep function, I want to know what actually happens.

Now I do and I share it with all.

On current Linux, shortest sleep is around 60 usec. select() with sleep
shorter than that will not sleep at all, nanosleep() will always sleep for
the shortest amount.

P.S. For fans of interrupts ("because they are fast"), sleep waiting for interrupt
probably has same latency/granularity as above (60 usec), so if I drive a DMA engine
and I except the DMA transfer to complete under 60 usec, I should use a busy loop
to poll the "DMA done" bit instead of going to sleep and wait for the DMA interrupt.

K.O.

The most recent commit (b43aef648c2f8a7e710a327d0b322751ae44afea) throws this 
compiler error:
src/tmfe_main.cxx:39:11: error: 'SIGPIPE' was not declared in this scope
    signal(SIGPIPE, SIG_IGN);

It's fixed by adding #include <signal.h> to that file.

> The most recent commit (b43aef648c2f8a7e710a327d0b322751ae44afea) throws this 
> compiler error:
> src/tmfe_main.cxx:39:11: error: 'SIGPIPE' was not declared in this scope
>     signal(SIGPIPE, SIG_IGN);
> 
> It's fixed by adding #include <signal.h> to that file.

"but it works just fine on my mac!"

anyhow, thank you for reporting this problem, it already fixed. the bitbucket auto-
build also caught it. I also boogered up "make remoteonly", also fixed now.

BTW, for production use I recommend midas from the "release" branches, unless one 
needs a bug fix or new feature from the development branch.

K.O.

> BTW, for production use I recommend midas from the "release" branches, unless one 
> needs a bug fix or new feature from the development branch.

Fair point. I would suggest adding that recommendation to the wiki instructions. I 
forget to add that step otherwise.

Hi all,

I am encountering a Javascript error (TypeError: client.error is undefined) when 
I transition between run states. Does anybody have an idea of what my problem 
might be? I have pasted an example of what MIDAS logs during such sequences.

Thanks for all the help!

Isaac


09:24:08.611 2021/02/10 [mhttpd,INFO] Executing script 
"~/ANIS_20210106/scripts/start_daq.sh" from ODB "/Script/Start DAQ"

09:24:13.833 2021/02/10 [Logger,LOG] Program Logger on host localhost started

09:24:28.598 2021/02/10 [fevme,LOG] Program fevme on host localhost started

09:24:33.951 2021/02/10 [mhttpd,INFO] Run #234 started

09:26:30.970 2021/02/10 [mhttpd,ERROR] [midas.cxx:4260:cm_transition_call,ERROR] 
Client "Logger" transition 2 aborted while waiting for client "fevme": 
"/Runinfo/Transition in progress" was cleared

09:26:31.015 2021/02/10 [mhttpd,ERROR] [midas.cxx:5120:cm_transition,ERROR] 
transition STOP aborted: "/Runinfo/Transition in progress" was cleared

09:27:27.270 2021/02/10 [mhttpd,ERROR] 
[system.cxx:4937:ss_recv_net_command,ERROR] timeout receiving network command 
header

09:27:27.270 2021/02/10 [mhttpd,ERROR] [midas.cxx:12262:rpc_client_call,ERROR] 
call to "fevme" on "localhost" RPC "rc_transition": timeout waiting for reply

> I am encountering a Javascript error (TypeError: client.error is undefined) when 
> I transition between run states. Does anybody have an idea of what my problem 
> might be? I have pasted an example of what MIDAS logs during such sequences.


Not enough information. Can you do this:

a) for the javascript error, if you get it every time, open the javascript debugger 
and capture the stack trace? or at least the file name, function name and line number 
where the javascript exception is thrown?

b) for the run start failure, start the run from odbedit "start now -v" or from 
"mtransition -v -d 1 START" (or "stop" as the case may be). capture the output, email 
to me directly or put in this elog here.

K.O.


> 
> Thanks for all the help!
> 
> Isaac
> 
> 
> 09:24:08.611 2021/02/10 [mhttpd,INFO] Executing script 
> "~/ANIS_20210106/scripts/start_daq.sh" from ODB "/Script/Start DAQ"
> 
> 09:24:13.833 2021/02/10 [Logger,LOG] Program Logger on host localhost started
> 
> 09:24:28.598 2021/02/10 [fevme,LOG] Program fevme on host localhost started
> 
> 09:24:33.951 2021/02/10 [mhttpd,INFO] Run #234 started
> 
> 09:26:30.970 2021/02/10 [mhttpd,ERROR] [midas.cxx:4260:cm_transition_call,ERROR] 
> Client "Logger" transition 2 aborted while waiting for client "fevme": 
> "/Runinfo/Transition in progress" was cleared
> 
> 09:26:31.015 2021/02/10 [mhttpd,ERROR] [midas.cxx:5120:cm_transition,ERROR] 
> transition STOP aborted: "/Runinfo/Transition in progress" was cleared
> 
> 09:27:27.270 2021/02/10 [mhttpd,ERROR] 
> [system.cxx:4937:ss_recv_net_command,ERROR] timeout receiving network command 
> header
> 
> 09:27:27.270 2021/02/10 [mhttpd,ERROR] [midas.cxx:12262:rpc_client_call,ERROR] 
> call to "fevme" on "localhost" RPC "rc_transition": timeout waiting for reply

> > I am encountering a Javascript error (TypeError: client.error is undefined) when 
> > I transition between run states. Does anybody have an idea of what my problem 
> > might be? I have pasted an example of what MIDAS logs during such sequences.
> 
> 
> Not enough information. Can you do this:
> 
> a) for the javascript error, if you get it every time, open the javascript debugger 
> and capture the stack trace? or at least the file name, function name and line number 
> where the javascript exception is thrown?

I've attached a screenshot of the call stack showing the file names and line numbers.

> b) for the run start failure, start the run from odbedit "start now -v" or from 
> "mtransition -v -d 1 START" (or "stop" as the case may be). capture the output, email 
> to me directly or put in this elog here.

I have also attached a screen capture of the output.

Thanks for your help as always.

Isaac

> K.O.
> 
> 
> > 
> > Thanks for all the help!
> > 
> > Isaac
> > 
> > 
> > 09:24:08.611 2021/02/10 [mhttpd,INFO] Executing script 
> > "~/ANIS_20210106/scripts/start_daq.sh" from ODB "/Script/Start DAQ"
> > 
> > 09:24:13.833 2021/02/10 [Logger,LOG] Program Logger on host localhost started
> > 
> > 09:24:28.598 2021/02/10 [fevme,LOG] Program fevme on host localhost started
> > 
> > 09:24:33.951 2021/02/10 [mhttpd,INFO] Run #234 started
> > 
> > 09:26:30.970 2021/02/10 [mhttpd,ERROR] [midas.cxx:4260:cm_transition_call,ERROR] 
> > Client "Logger" transition 2 aborted while waiting for client "fevme": 
> > "/Runinfo/Transition in progress" was cleared
> > 
> > 09:26:31.015 2021/02/10 [mhttpd,ERROR] [midas.cxx:5120:cm_transition,ERROR] 
> > transition STOP aborted: "/Runinfo/Transition in progress" was cleared
> > 
> > 09:27:27.270 2021/02/10 [mhttpd,ERROR] 
> > [system.cxx:4937:ss_recv_net_command,ERROR] timeout receiving network command 
> > header
> > 
> > 09:27:27.270 2021/02/10 [mhttpd,ERROR] [midas.cxx:12262:rpc_client_call,ERROR] 
> > call to "fevme" on "localhost" RPC "rc_transition": timeout waiting for reply

> 
> I have also attached a screen capture of the output.
> 

so the error is gone?

K.O.

Hello!
Sometimes when I mess around with the history plots I get the following error:

[mhttpd,ERROR] [history.cxx:97:xread,ERROR] Error: Unexpected end-of-file when 
reading file "/home/wagasci-ana/Data/online/210219.hst"

I have tried the following without success:

- Remove the MIDAS history files
- Restart mhttpd and mlogger

I do not know what triggers the error but when it triggers the above message is 
printed hundres of times a second, completely spamming the message log.

It happened again today after I set the label of a frontend too long making 
mlogger crash. After fixing the label length, the above message appeared and it 
does not seem to go away.

It appears that the issue is trigger by a nonexisting Event and Variable as shown 
in the attached picture. This issue can arise when restoring the ODB from a 
previous version or importing ODB values from other MIDAS instances.
It might be useful if the error message were more clear about the source of the 
problem.

> Hello!
> Sometimes when I mess around with the history plots I get the following error:
> 
> [mhttpd,ERROR] [history.cxx:97:xread,ERROR] Error: Unexpected end-of-file when 
> reading file "/home/wagasci-ana/Data/online/210219.hst"
> 
> I have tried the following without success:
> 
> - Remove the MIDAS history files
> - Restart mhttpd and mlogger
> 
> I do not know what triggers the error but when it triggers the above message is 
> printed hundres of times a second, completely spamming the message log.
> 
> It happened again today after I set the label of a frontend too long making 
> mlogger crash. After fixing the label length, the above message appeared and it 
> does not seem to go away.

> > [mhttpd,ERROR] [history.cxx:97:xread,ERROR] Error: Unexpected end-of-file when 
> > reading file "/home/wagasci-ana/Data/online/210219.hst"

I am puzzled. We can try two things:

a) look inside the "bad" hst file, maybe we can see something. run "mhdump -L 
/home/wagasci-ana/Data/online/210219.hst". If there is anything wrong with the file, it 
will be probably at the end. You can also try to run it without "-L".

b) switch from "midas" history (.hst files) to "FILE" history (mh*.dat files), the 
"FILE" history code is newer and the file format is more robust, with luck it may 
survive whatever trouble is happening in your experiment. This is controlled in ODB 
/Logger/History/XXX/Active (set to "y/n").

c) the output of "mlogger -v" may give us some clue, it usually complains if something 
is not right with definitions of history data.

K.O.

Am I right in thinking that the TMFE HandlePoll function is calle once per 
PollMidas()? And what is the difference to HandleRead()?

> Am I right in thinking that the TMFE HandlePoll function is calle once per 
> PollMidas()? And what is the difference to HandleRead()?

Actually, polled equipment is not implemented yet in TMFE, as you noted, the 
internal scheduler needs to be reworked.

Anyhow, I think with modern c++ and with threads, both "periodic" and "polled" 
equipments are not strictly necessary.

Periodic equipment is effectively this:

in a thread:
while (1) {
do stuff, read data, send events
sleep
}

Polled equipment is effectively this:

in a thread:
while (1) {
if (poll()) { read data, send events }
else { sleep for a little bit }
}

Example of such code is the "bulk" equipment in progs/fetest.cxx.

But to implement the same in a single threaded environment (eliminates
problems with data locking, race conditions, etc) and to provide additional
structure to the user code, the plan is to implement polled equipment in TMFE
frontends. (periodic equipment is already implemented).

K.O.

I have a history that is embedded in a custom page using

<div class="mjshistory" data-group="SampleCryo" data-panel="SampleTemp" data-scale="30m" style="'+size+' position: relative;left: 640px;top: -205px;"></div>

this works fine when I load the page but seems to cause a timeout when reloading (F5) the page. It used to work fine last year but since a midas update this year it does not work. 

When I manually stop the script when firefox reports that it is slowing down the browse I get the following in the console:

Script terminated by timeout at:
binarySearch@http://xxx.psi.ch:8081/mhistory.js:1051:11
MhistoryGraph.prototype.findMinMax@http://xxx.psi.ch:8081/mhistory.js:1583:28
MhistoryGraph.prototype.loadInitialData/<@http://xxx.psi.ch:8081/mhistory.js:780:15

any ideas what may be causing this?

thanks.

Another hint to the problem, the custom page is accessible via 
http://xxx.psi.ch:8081/?cmd=custom&page=SampleCryo&
once loaded the address changes to where A and B change values as time passes (I guess B-A=30m).
http://xxx.psi.ch:8081/?cmd=custom&page=SampleCryo&&A=1614173369&B=1614175169

I have to reproduce the problem. Can you please send me the full link by direct email. As you know, I'm also at PSI.

Stefan

there is a problem with mlogger between commits xxx (17 Nov 2020) and a762bb8 (12 feb 2021). because of 
confusion between seconds and milliseconds, FILE (mhf*.dat files) and SQL history are recording with 
incorrect timestamps.

- traditional MIDAS history (*.hst files) does not have this problem (because of a buglet)
- midas-2020-12 release does not have this problem (it has mlogger from midas-2020-08 release)

there are some additional changes in mlogger that we are sorting out, when ready, we will make a new 
release of midas.

K.O.

midas-2020-12-a is here, see https://midas.triumf.ca/MidasWiki/index.php/Changelog#2020-12

notable change from previous midas releases:

Use of ODB "Common" by mfe.c frontends has changed. New preferred behaviour
is to have the values defined in the equipment structure in the source code
to always overwrite values in ODB /Equipment/Foo/Common, except for the value
of "Common/enabled" (equipment_common_overwrite set to TRUE).

All mfe.c frontends will need to be modified for this change:

- for old behaviour (use ODB "Common"), add: BOOL equipment_common_overwrite = false;
- for new behaviour (use equipment values in the source code), add: BOOL equipment_common_overwrite = true;

The TMFE C++ frontend does not implement this change yet, it uses all "Common" values from ODB
and there is no way to overwrite things like the MIDAS event buffer name from C++ code. This may
change with the next version.

notable updates since midas-2020-08:

- new ODB variable /Experiment/Enable sound can be used to globally prevent mhttpd from playing sounds.
- Lazylogger now supports writing data over SFTP.
- odbvalue elements on custom pages now support an onload() callback as well as onchange(). Most elements now also 
support a data-validate callback.
- custom pages can now tie a select drop-down box to an ODB value using modbselect.
- ability to choose whether the code or the current ODB values take precendence for the "Common" settings of an 
equipment when starting a frontend. See elog thread 2014 for more details, and the "Upgrade guide" below for 
instructions.
- minor improvements to mdump program - support for 64-bit data types and ability to load larger events if needed.
- minor improvements to History plots and Buffers webpage.
- bug fixes

plans for next development: major update of mlogger to simplify channel 
configuration in odb, improvements to mhttpd multithreading, new history plot 
configuration page, more c++ification.

To obtain this release, either checkout the top of branch release/midas-2020-12 
(recommended) or checkout the tag midas-2020-12-a.

K.O.

I have a more subtle point about the new ODB key for using an external elog I mentioned in [1].  I was very confused after changing the ODB "External Elog" because mhttpd still wasn't using my external elog URL.  I started trying to debug mhttpd.cxx, but found a lot of bits of mhttpd didn't seem to be getting called.  I eventually realized that my browser had been caching the responses for some (though not all) of the MIDAS navigation buttons.  Clearing my browser cache fixed the problem and allowed me to use the MIDAS button to the external ELOG.  This caching happens on my macbook for both Firefox 84.0.2 and Safari 13.1.

Many of the requests to mhttpd end up going to send_fp(), where we explicitly set the cache time to 24 hours.

   // send HTTP cache control headers                                                                                               
   time_t now = time(NULL);
   now += (int) (3600 * 24);
   struct tm* gmt = gmtime(&now);
   const char* format = "%A, %d-%b-%y %H:%M:%S GMT";
   char str[256];
   strftime(str, sizeof(str), format, gmt);
   r->rsprintf("Expires: %s\r\n", str);

Some other MIDAS buttons don't seem to be cached by the browser; for instance the response for the 'OldHistory' button doesn't get cached.

Should we remove the cache instruction for at least some of the buttons?  At least for the elog button where we want the link direction to get switched by an ODB key the caching seems a bad idea.

[1] https://midas.triumf.ca/elog/Midas/2078

Let me first explain a bit why caching is there. Once we had the case that someone from 
TRIUMF opened a midas custom page at T2K. It took about one minute (!) to load the page. 

When we looked at it, we found that the custom page pulled about 100 items with individual
HTTP requests from Japan, each taking about one second for the roundtrip. Then we redesigned
the custom page communication so that many ODB entries could be retrieved in one operation,
which improved the loading time from 100s to about 2s.

With the buttons we will have to make the same compromise. If we do not cache anything,
loading the midas status page over the Pacific takes many seconds. If we cache all, any
change on the midas side will not be reflected on the web page. So there is a compromise
to be made. I thought I designed it such that the side menu is cached locally, but when
the user presses "reload", then the full menu is fetched from the server. Of course one
has to remember this, so changing the ELOG URL or other things on the menu require a
reload (or wait a certain time for the cache to expire). So try again if that's working
for you. If not, I can visit it again and check if there is any bug.

If we go the route to disable the cache, better try this to T2K and see what you get before
we commit ourselves to that. Last time TRIUMF people were complaining a lot about long
load times.

Best,
Stefan

I tried reloading the pages.  If I reloaded the actual elog page 

https://server.triumf.ca/?cmd=Elog

then it bypassed the cache and got the correct updated page from mhttpd.

However, if when I reloaded the status page

https://server.triumf.ca/?cmd=Status

and then clicked the Elog button then I just got the cached (old) page.  Admittedly reloading the status page doesn't make so much sense (once I thought about it), but it is what I tried first (I'm good at modelling unexpected user behaviour); so there is some risk that the user will try reloading the wrong page and will be stuck not getting the external elog page (until 24 hours runs out).

Anyway, I will update the documentation to note that you need to reload the elog page after changing this variable.  That's probably an adequate solution.

I certainly don't suggest getting rid of caching entirely.  I was trying to think whether there was a set of pages where it would make sense to disable the cache (like the elog page).  But maybe that will just cause more problems.


> Let me first explain a bit why caching is there. Once we had the case that someone from 
> TRIUMF opened a midas custom page at T2K. It took about one minute (!) to load the page. 
> 
> When we looked at it, we found that the custom page pulled about 100 items with individual
> HTTP requests from Japan, each taking about one second for the roundtrip. Then we redesigned
> the custom page communication so that many ODB entries could be retrieved in one operation,
> which improved the loading time from 100s to about 2s.
> 
> With the buttons we will have to make the same compromise. If we do not cache anything,
> loading the midas status page over the Pacific takes many seconds. If we cache all, any
> change on the midas side will not be reflected on the web page. So there is a compromise
> to be made. I thought I designed it such that the side menu is cached locally, but when
> the user presses "reload", then the full menu is fetched from the server. Of course one
> has to remember this, so changing the ELOG URL or other things on the menu require a
> reload (or wait a certain time for the cache to expire). So try again if that's working
> for you. If not, I can visit it again and check if there is any bug.
> 
> If we go the route to disable the cache, better try this to T2K and see what you get before
> we commit ourselves to that. Last time TRIUMF people were complaining a lot about long
> load times.
> 
> Best,
> Stefan

>    r->rsprintf("Expires: %s\r\n", str);

The best I can tell, none of this works in current browsers. with google-chrome,
I see it cache pretty much everything regardless of "expires", "no cache", etc
and anything else I tried.

Things like shift-<reload>, etc used to work to refresh the cache, but not any more.

So, I too, see confusing side-effects of caching, where I change something in ODB,
but "nothing happens". Then I scratch my head for 30 minutes until I remember
to open the javascript debugger where shift-<reload> (or is it ctrl-<reload>) actually works.

It seems that the only reliable way to bypass the browser cache is to add
a tag with a random number to the URL ("&ts=currenttime").

This is for HTTP GET requests. HTTP POST does not seem to be cached, so I do not worry
about this nonsense for json-rpc requests.

Perhaps we should do this random number trick for all user actions. User can
press buttons only so fast, we should be able to sustain the rate. Anything
loaded automatically or from a timer, we should allow caching.

BTW, things like midas.js are also cached, and it is common to see problems
after updating midas, where status.html is newly loaded, but midas.js is an old
stale version from cache.

Messy.

K.O.

> It seems that the only reliable way to bypass the browser cache is to add
> a tag with a random number to the URL ("&ts=currenttime").

Indeed that's the only reliable way to avoid caching across browsers. An alternative is

("&r=" + Math.random())

to add a random number.


> BTW, things like midas.js are also cached, and it is common to see problems
> after updating midas, where status.html is newly loaded, but midas.js is an old
> stale version from cache.

Reloading JavaScript file NOT from the cache is really tricky these days. I added a
special Google Chrome extension to clear my browser cache, which works reliably:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clear-cache/cppjkneekbjaeellbfkmgnhonkkjfpdn

Stefan

Hi all,

I'm currently trying to see if I can speed up polling in a frontend I'm testing. 
Currently it seems like I can't get 'lam's to happen faster than 120 times/second. 
There must be a way to make this faster. From what I understand, changing the poll 
time (500ms by default) won't affect the frequency of polling just the 'lam' 
period.

Any suggestions?

Thanks for your help!

Isaac

Hi,

What is the actual readout time, event size?
Do you have multiple equipment and of what type if any?

PAA

> 
> I'm currently trying to see if I can speed up polling in a frontend I'm testing. 
> Currently it seems like I can't get 'lam's to happen faster than 120 times/second. 
> There must be a way to make this faster. From what I understand, changing the poll 
> time (500ms by default) won't affect the frequency of polling just the 'lam' 
> period.
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 

You could switch from the traditional midas mfe.c frontend to the C++ TMFE frontend,
where all this "lam" and "poll" business is removed.

At the moment, there are two example programs using the C++ TMFE frontend,
single threaded (progs/fetest_tmfe.cxx) and multithreaed (progs/fetest_tmfe_thread.cxx).

K.O.

> > 
> > I'm currently trying to see if I can speed up polling in a frontend I'm testing. 
> > Currently it seems like I can't get 'lam's to happen faster than 120 times/second. 
> > There must be a way to make this faster. From what I understand, changing the poll 
> > time (500ms by default) won't affect the frequency of polling just the 'lam' 
> > period.
> > 
> > Any suggestions?
> > 
> 
> You could switch from the traditional midas mfe.c frontend to the C++ TMFE frontend,
> where all this "lam" and "poll" business is removed.
> 
> At the moment, there are two example programs using the C++ TMFE frontend,
> single threaded (progs/fetest_tmfe.cxx) and multithreaed (progs/fetest_tmfe_thread.cxx).
> 
> K.O.

Ok. I did not know that there was a C++ OOD frontend example in MIDAS. I'll take a look at 
it. Is there any documentation on it works?

Thanks for the support!

Isaac

Something must be wrong on your side. If you take the example frontend under

midas/examples/experiment/frontend.cxx

and let it run to produce dummy events, you get about 90 Hz. This is because we have a

  ss_sleep(10);

in the read_trigger_event() routine to throttle things down. If you remove that sleep, 
you get an event rate of about 500'000 Hz. So the framework is really quick.

Probably your routine which looks for a 'lam' takes really long and should be fixed.

Stefan

> Something must be wrong on your side. If you take the example frontend under
> 
> midas/examples/experiment/frontend.cxx
> 
> and let it run to produce dummy events, you get about 90 Hz. This is because we have a
> 
>   ss_sleep(10);
> 
> in the read_trigger_event() routine to throttle things down. If you remove that sleep, 
> you get an event rate of about 500'000 Hz. So the framework is really quick.
> 
> Probably your routine which looks for a 'lam' takes really long and should be fixed.
> 
> Stefan

Sorry if I am going off-topic but, because the ss_sleep function was mentioned here, I 
would like to take the chance and report an issue that I am having.

In all my slow control frontends, the CPU usage for each frontend is close to 100%. This 
means that each frontend is monopolizing a single core. When I did some profiling, I 
noticed that 99% of the time is spent inside the ss_sleep function. Now, I would expect 
that the ss_sleep function should not require any CPU usage at all or very little.

So my two questions are:
Is this a bug or a feature?
Would you able to check/reproduce this behavior or do you need additional info from my 
side?

> Something must be wrong on your side. If you take the example frontend under
> 
> midas/examples/experiment/frontend.cxx
> 
> and let it run to produce dummy events, you get about 90 Hz. This is because we have a
> 
>   ss_sleep(10);
> 
> in the read_trigger_event() routine to throttle things down. If you remove that sleep, 
> you get an event rate of about 500'000 Hz. So the framework is really quick.
> 
> Probably your routine which looks for a 'lam' takes really long and should be fixed.
> 
> Stefan

Hi Stefan,

I should mention that I was using midas/examples/Triumf/c++/fevme.cxx. I was trying to see 
the max speed so I had the 'lam' always = 1 with nothing else to add overhead in the 
poll_event(). I was getting <200 Hz. I am assuming that this is a bug. There is no 
ss_sleep() in that function.

Thanks for your quick response!

Isaac

> I should mention that I was using midas/examples/Triumf/c++/fevme.cxx

this is correct, the fevme frontend is written to do 100% CPU-busy polling.

there is several reasons for this:
- on our VME processors, we have 2 core CPUs, 1st core can poll the VME bus, 2nd core can run 
mfe.c and the ethernet transmitter.
- interrupts are expensive to use (in latency and in cpu use) because kernel handler has to call 
use handler, return back etc
- sub-millisecond sleep used to be expensive and unreliable (on 1-2GHz "core 1" and "core 2" 
CPUs running SL6 and SL7 era linux). As I understand, current linux and current 3+GHz CPUs can 
do reliable microsecond sleep.

K.O.

A warning, in case others have the same problem I had.

In the past you could configure mhttpd so that the 'Elog' button would redirect to an external ELOG server; to do this you only needed to create and set the ODB variable '/Elog/URL' to the URL of your external ELOG server.

But with the newer MIDAS you need to set two ODB variables:

* "/Elog/URL" needs to be set to the URL of the external ELOG.
* "/Elog/External Elog" needs to be set to 'y'

I hadn't noticed this and was confused why my Elog button wasn't working after upgrading MIDAS.

MIDAS documentation was updated to reflect this change:

https://midas.triumf.ca/MidasWiki/index.php/Electronic_Logbook_(ELOG)