> 
> > At Konstantin's suggestion, I committed the function I found for checking if a string was UTF-8 compatible to
> > odb.c.  The function is currently not used; I commented out a proposed use in db_create_key.  Experts can decide
> > if the code was good enough to use.
> 
> After more discussion, I have enabled the parts of the ODB code that check that key names are UTF-8 compliant. 
> 
> This check will show up in (at least) two ways:
> 
> 1) Attempts to create a new ODB variable if the ODB key is not UTF-8 compliant.  You will see error messages like
> 
> [fesimdaq,ERROR] [odb.c:572:db_validate_name,ERROR] Invalid name "Eur€" passed to db_create_key: UTF-8 incompatible
> string
> 
> 2) When a program first connects to the ODB, it runs a check to ensure that the ODB is valid.  This will now include
> a check that all key names are UTF-8 compliant. Any non-UTF8 compliant key names will be replaced by a string of the
> pointer to the key.  You will see error messages like:
> 
> [fesimdaq,ERROR] [odb.c:572:db_validate_name,ERROR] Invalid name "Eur€" passed to db_validate_key: UTF-8
> incompatible string
> [fesimdaq,ERROR] [odb.c:647:db_validate_key,ERROR] Warning: corrected key "/Equipment/SIMDAQ/Eur€": invalid name
> "Eur€" replaced with "0x7f74be63f970"
> 
> This behaviour (checking UTF-8 compatibility and automatically fixing ODB names) can be disabled by setting an
> environment variable
> 
> MIDAS_INVALID_STRING_IS_OK
> 
> It doesn't matter what the environment variable is set to; it just needs to be set.  Note also that this variable is
> only checked once, when a program starts.



I see you put some switches into the environment ("MIDAS_INVALID_STRING_IS_OK"). Do you think this is a good idea? Most variables are 
sitting in the ODB (/experiment/xxx), except those which cannot be in the ODB because we need it before we open the ODB, like MIDAS_DIR. 
Having them in the ODB has the advantage that everything is in one place, and we see a "list" of things we can change. From an empty 
environment it is not clear that such a thing like "MIDAS_INVALID_STRING_IS_OK" does exist, while if it would be an ODB key it would be 
obvious. Can I convince you to move this flag into the ODB?

> > > I switched mhttpd to use the new javascript based run start and stop pages.
> > 
> > One initial complaint: the transition.html page doesn't seem to deal well with a frontend program using
> > a deferred transition.
> >
> 
> We now have a test frontend for deferred transitions, and this problem will likely be fixed.
> 
> > 
> > I separately still think that the transition page should automatically go away after 5 seconds
> >
> 
> This is a user-interface philosophy issue.
> 
> Instead of using personal preferences one should follow established design principles
> (there is research done and books written about this).
> 
> I did not recently look at current recommendations for this type of interaction, but generally
> one expects web pages to "do things" (such as switch to a different page) only when directed
> by user input (press a button).
> 
> My personal opinion is that half the users will find 5 sec delay too slow, the other half will
> find 5 sec too fast and the 3rd half will wonder "what happened, the web page flashed and disappeared,
> did I miss something important, how do I get back to whatever is was?!?".
> 
> One idea is to implement the transition page as a implant on the state page - after the "start" page
> you go back to the status page where you can see the progress of the transition. After the transition
> completes, it's progress window "collapses" into a "success/failure" display with a link to the full
> transition page to see any details of what happened. Any volunteers? (I would html-ize the status page first).
> 
> K.O.

I agree with Konstantin's plans and volunteer for the "collapsable" display. We will address this during my next visit to TRIUMF.

> > 
> > If you compile with the included Makefile, you will see a 
> > 
> > -DOS_LINUX -DOS_DARWIN
> > 
> 
> Moving forward, it looks like I can define these variables in midas.h and remove the need to define them on the compiler command line.
> 
> This would be part of the Makefile and header files cleanup to get things working on Windows10.
> 
> K.O.

Will you detect the underlying OS automatically in midas.h? Note that you have several compilers in MacOS (llvm and gcc), and they might use different 
predefined symbols. I appreciate however getting rid of these flags in the Makefile.

Stefan

> Some additional explanation.
> 
> Time passed, the world turned, and the current web-compatible standard for text strings is UTF-8 encoded Unicode, see 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
> (ObCanadianContent, UTF-8 was invented the Canadian Rob Pike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Pike)
> (and by some other guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Thompson).
> 
> It turns out that not every combination of 8-bit characters (char*) is valid UTF-8 Unicode.
> 
> In the MIDAS world we run into this when MIDAS ODB strings are exported to Javascript running inside web
> browsers ("custom pages", etc). ODB strings (TID_STRING) and ODB key names that are not valid UTF-8
> make such web pages malfunction and do not work right.
> 
> One solution to this is to declare that ODB strings (TID_STRING) and ODB key names *must* be valid UTF-8 Unicode.
> 
> The present commits implemented this solution. Invalid UTF-8 is rejected by db_create() & co and by the ODB integrity validator.
> 
> This means some existing running experiment may suddenly break because somehow they have "old-style" ODB entries
> or they mistakenly use TID_STRING to store arbitrary binary data (use array of TID_CHAR instead).
> 
> To permit such experiments to use current releases of MIDAS, we include a "defeat" device - to disable UTF-8 checks
> until they figure out where non-UTF-8 strings come from and correct the problem.
> 
> Why is this defeat device non an ODB entry? Because it is not a normal mode of operation - there is no use-case where
> an experiment will continue to use non-UTF-8 compatible ODB indefinitely, in the long term. For example, as the MIDAS user
> interface moves to more and more to HTML+Javascript+"AJAX", such experiments will see that non-UTF-8 compatible ODB entries
> cause all sorts of problems and will have to convert.
> 
> 
> K.O.

Ok, I agree.

Stefan

In my opinion this makes sense. If KO agrees, you should commit your change.

Stefan

> We use the customHeader to display some useful information. Currently I do not
> like its style. What about to make it more alike the footer?
> 
> I just changed in resources/mhttpd.css
> 
> diff --git a/resources/mhttpd.css b/resources/mhttpd.css
> index fb0070d..f3264c8 100644
> --- a/resources/mhttpd.css
> +++ b/resources/mhttpd.css
> @@ -280,6 +280,15 @@ table.headerTable td{
>         border: none;
>  }
>  
> +div.headerDiv{
> +       background-color: #6F6F6F;
> +       text-align: center;
> +       padding:1em;
> +       color:#EEEEEE;
> +       border-bottom:1px solid #000000;
> +       height:3em;
> +}
> +
>  div.footerDiv{
>         background-color: #808080;
>         text-align: center;
> 
> and
> 
> diff --git a/resources/mhttpd.js b/resources/mhttpd.js
> index de8bc6c..972c261 100644
> --- a/resources/mhttpd.js
> +++ b/resources/mhttpd.js
> @@ -172,7 +172,7 @@ function mhttpd_goto_page(page) {
>  
>  function mhttpd_navigation_bar(current_page, path)
>  {
> -   document.write("<div id=\"customHeader\">\n");
> +   document.write("<div class=\"headerDiv\" id=\"customHeader\">\n");
>     document.write("</div>\n");
>  
>     document.write("<div class=\"mnavcss\">\n");
> 
> What do you think?

> I'd liked very much the possibility to hide away Equipment on the main page. It
> is also nice to have the '+' to get it quickly back when needed. However, this
> seems not to work anymore (git c9d9d604803). Is this a feature or something went
> wrong?

The expansion of the equipment list is handled by a Cookie ("expeq" being 1 or 0). When Konstantin 
implemented the mongoose server instead of the internal mhttp server, he neglected to evaluate 
this cookie. I fixed this now (also renamed the cookie to "midas_expeq") in the current development 
branch. Please check if it's working.

Stefan

ODB name lengths (the name of a key) are limited to 256 characters, the length of strings in the ODB should NOT be limited. At some point we wanted to have complete web pages inside the ODB, 
which for sure are longer than 256 characters. While this was the idea, I see now that db_paste & co. is hopelessly broken. To fix it, everything should be changed to std::string which is in my opinion 
the only 'clean' solution. That would also remove the cumbersome strlcpy and strlcat.

But looking at odb.c, replacing everything with std::string would probably take a brave programmer a couple of weeks. Not sure if we should dive into that adventure right now. The quick fix would be:

a) The strings "CSS File", "Sqlite dir" etc. reported below get reduced to 256 characters (MAX_STRING_LENGTH). The value of 256 characters came from the file system limitation in linux (some many 
years ago), where a full path of a file could not exceed 256 characters. Not sure if this limit is still valid today, but having all file names in the ODB limited to 256 characters is maybe not a bad idea 
anyhow (who wants to type in file names with more than 256 characters ???).

b) Change the max string length in db_paste to 1024 to cover the few exceptions above.


If we go with a), KO has to change his ODB file names, in case of b) I can do the change.

So what is your opinion?

Best regards,
Stefan

> > 
> > I shall check on the use of MAX_STRING_LENGTH at least in odb itself...
> > 
> 
> Ok, I looked at the use of MAX_STRING_LENGTH in ODB (odb.c):
> 
> a) it is not used in any critical places for the database itself, so it is not a limit on maximum length of TID_STRING data. good.
> b) it is used in the code for saving/loading odb from .odb files (old format), not sure how it works against overlong strings, but probably 
> truncates/corrupts/crashes.
> c) it is used in the code for saving odb to odb.xml files. Overlong strings are truncated (I added a message about it).
> d) code for loading/saving to json files handles overlong strings okey.
> e) odbedit "ls" truncates overlong strings, mhttpd has some oddities against overlong strings.
> f) db_sprintf() truncates string text to MAX_STRING_LENGTH to avoid output buffer overflow (should use db_snprintf() instead).
> 
> Conclusion, overlong strings should be okey, but do not use the old .odb and .xml save files. (mlogger saves odb to output .mid file in xml 
> format, we should switch it to use json format).
> 
> > > CSS File = STRING : [1024] mhttpd.css
> > > Sqlite dir = STRING : [1024]
> > > History dir = STRING : [1024]
> > > Sound = STRING : [1000] alarm.mp3
> > > are exceeding the MAX_STRING_LENGTH 256 (defined in msystem.h)
> 
> So these should not cause any corruption or problem unless actual content length exceeds 255 bytes,
> even then they are okey if odb is only saved and loaded into json files.
> 
> > > 1) I get the error message that some strings are too long (exceeding
> > > MAX_STRING_LENGTH). Unfortunately the underlying routine doesn't tell which ODB
> > > variables this is.
> 
> this is in db_check_record(), where it compares odb content with user-supplied data descriptions (there is no system-supplied
> data descriptions with strings longer than MAX_STRING_LENGTH).
> 
> so I think what happened is you created a data structure with overlong strings, passed it to db_paste() or something,
> db_check_record() complained about it, and db_paste() corrupted memory.
> 
> > > 
> > > 2) After this reload, essentially nothing is working anymore. Any client I tried to start just crashed.
> > > 
> 
> Somebody corrupted some shared memory, most likely it was db_paste() corrupted odb shared memory.
> 
> K.O.

> Fixed a small buglet, now saving and reloading odb in the old ".odb" format will silently truncate all overlong strings to 256 bytes. (I think it always did that).

Not sure that we want that. There might be cases where people want to store long strings. I would remove the truncation completely when saving .odb or .xml files, and fix the load routines to 
deal with overlong strings.

Stefan

> CSS File = STRING : [1024] mhttpd.css
> Sqlite dir = STRING : [1024]
> History dir = STRING : [1024]
> Sound = STRING : [1000] alarm.mp3

After a quick discussion with Konstantin, I changed these strings to a length of 256 chars 
(MAX_STRING_LENGTH). Actually all changes I had to made was on code introduced by KO, so I hope I 
did everything correctly. He should carefully check my changes (actually I would have preferred if he 
could change his code himself...).

I agree with KO that the preferred format for saving the ODB should be JSON, but there might be 
experiments with have some old ODB dumps in other formats, so we should not remove the possibility to 
read those formats back.

Stefan

Dear Francesco,

Your error (No route to host) typically means that you have a network problem outside of MIDAS. Your computer has to "find itself" and 
this is probably broken. Try to do a "ping scarlett" or "nslookup scarlett" and you will see that the DNS server can't be reached or is 
wrongly configured. Sometimes it helps to put scarlett explicitly into /etc/hosts

Stefan


> Dear experts,
>     we have a problem when trying to run a MIDAS DAQ which worked in the past on the same PC (but on a different
> network). We get the following error messages when starting a new run:
> 
> Wed Apr 26 23:03:12 2017 [mhttpd,ERROR] [midas.c:9106:rpc_client_connect,ERROR] cannot connect to host "scar
> lett", port 44858: connect() returned -1, errno 113 (No route to host)
> Wed Apr 26 23:03:12 2017 [mhttpd,ERROR] [midas.c:3539:cm_transition_call,ERROR] cannot connect to client "Lo
> gger" on host scarlett, port 44858, status 503
> 
> (scarlett is indeed the hostname of the PC). The error occurs even if the PC is disconnected from the network.
> 
> Any suggestion?
> 
> Best Regards,
>         Francesco

Just some thought for discussion:

Rather than "spicing up" the MIDAS library here and there with C++ objects such as std::string, wouldn't it make more sense to "cleanly" wrap an ODB value in a C++ class? We could use then 
both APIs in parallel, and encourage the C++ API for new developments. We could then write things like:

   ODBKEY<std::string> name("/Experiment/Name"); // constructor calls automatically db_get_value
   name = "New Name"; // overloading the "=" operator, will call db_set_value()

or even

   ODBKEY<std::vector, std::string> nameArray("...");
   for (auto &s : nameArray)
      std::cout << s << std::endl; // print all elements of string array

so we treat ODB arrays as vectors, which fixes array boundary violations nicely.

If the key does not exist, we could properly throw exceptions and forget about tons of nested return parameters for error conditions.

Many nice things could be done, common errors could be prevented, and we can do a "smooth" migration: We don't have to change the whole library completely, just where we feel it's currently 
needed. So over time the code would be "objectified". Would be nice if we could rely on C++11 (like the "auto" feature above). Not sure about VxWorks, but every other OS should be fine.

Stefan

> Since we have been regularly running into problems with db_get_xxx(TID_STRING) and string buffers of mismatched size,
> I now implemented db_get_value_string(hdb, hkey, key_name, index, &string, create).
> 
> It works the same as db_get_value(TID_STRING), except that the string value is returned into an std::string object,
> memory allocation is handled by std::string and there is no string length limit (other than std::string limits).
> 
> Accessing string arrays is done explicitly via an "index" parameter, if index is bigger than odb array size DB_OUT_OF_RANGE is returned
> without logging an error message (e.g. db_get_data_index() will log an error). This makes is safe to iterate over array entries with a simple
> loop of index from 0 and up until db_get returns an error.
> 
> As before, if the odb entry does not exist, it will be created (if create==true) and initialized with the value of the string parameter (zero-terminated in odb).
> 
> There is also newly added db_set_value_string() and cm_get_path_string(). if you want more of these, please ask, or send patches.
> 
> K.O.

That all makes sense to me. 

Stefan

> > What a mess.
> 
> The mess with db_get_record() and db_open_record() is even deeper than I thought. There are several anomalies.
> 
> Records opened by db_open_record() are later accessed via db_get_record() which requires
> that the odb structure and the C structure match exactly.
> 
> Of course anybody can modify anything in odb at any time, so there are protections against
> modifying the odb structures "from under" db_open_record():
> 
> a) db_open_record(MODE_WRITE) makes the odb structure immutable by setting the "exclusive" flag. This works well. In the past 
> there were problems with "exclusive mode" getting stuck behind dead clients, but these days it is efficiently cleaned and recovered 
> by the odb validation code at the start of all midas programs.
> 
> b) db_create_record(), db_reorder_key() and db_delete_key() refuse to function on watched/hotlinked odb structures. One would 
> think this is good, but there is a side-effect. If I run "odbedit watch /", all odb delete operations fail (including deletion of temporary 
> items in /system/tmp).
> 
> c) db_create_key() and db_set_data()/db_set_value() do not have such protections, and they can (and do) add new odb entries and 
> change size of existing entries (especially size of strings), and make db_get_record() fail. note that db_get_record() inside 
> db_open_record() fails silently and odb hotlinks mysteriously stop working.
> 
> One could keep fixing this by adding protections against modification of hotlinked odb structures, but unfortunately, one cannot tell
> db_watch() hotlinks from db_open_record() hotlinks. Only the latter ones require protection. db_watch() does not require such 
> protections because it does not use db_get_record() internally, it leaves it to the user to sort out any mismatches.
> 
> Also it would be nice if "odbedit watch /" did not have the nasty side effect of making all odb unchangable (presently it only makes
> things undeletable).
> 
> To sort it all out, I am moving in this direction:
> 
> 1) replace all uses of db_get_record() with db_get_record1() which automatically cures any structure mismatch
> 2) replace all uses of db_open_record(MODE_READ) with db_watch() in conjunction with db_get_record1(). This is done in mfe.c 
> and seems to work ok.
> 2a) automatic repair of structure mismatch is presently defeated by db_create_record() refusing to work on hotlinked odb entries.
> 3) with db_get_record() and db_open_record(MODE_READ) removed from use, turn off hotlink protection in item (b) above. This will 
> fix problem (2a).
> 4) maybe replace db_open_record(MODE_WRITE) with explicit db_set_record(). I personally do not like it's "magical" operation, 
> when in fact, it is just a short hand for "db_get_key/db_set_record" hidden inside db_send_changed_records().
> 4a) db_open_record(MODE_WRITE) works well enough right now, no need to touch it.
> 
> 
> K.O.

Dear all,

we are currently undergoing major modifications in the way mhttpd is working. I realized that 
we are now at a state where mhttpd is currently broken, and it will take a few weeks in order to 
get everything converted to the new scheme we plan to use. Therefore I moved the git branch 
"master" to the last known stable version of midas. So for any practical purpose, please do 
NOT update your "develop" branch until further notice. To get the last stable version, you can 
do a 

$ git checkout master

which moves you right before we started to make major modifications. Once we are finished, 
we will announce this here in the forum.

Best regards,
Stefan

Thanks for documenting this in detail. A few suggestions:

- is it really necessary to call odbedit three times? Maybe two or even three functions can be merged. Like you call odbinit, it checks if the environment is 
there, and creates it automatically if not. Same with the exptab.

- can we make "http redirecto to https = n" and "midas https port = 0" as the default? Of course this has to go with binding to localhost only.

- does it make sense to define default directories for history, data files and midas.log? Maybe we could come with a "default scheme" which can then later 
adjusted if needed.

- will you take care of the wrong logger channel config and history config?

Best regards,
Stefan

> Notes on installing midas from scratch. The instruction on midaswiki will be synced with this later.
> 
> cd ~/packages
> git clone ...
> cd midas
> make
> cd ~
> mkdir ~/online
> cd ~/online
> ~/git/midas/darwin/bin/odbinit --env
> source env.sh
> ~/git/midas/darwin/bin/odbinit --exptab
> ~/git/midas/darwin/bin/odbinit
> ls -la
> send:online olchansk$ ls -la
> total 2376
> drwxr-xr-x   15 olchansk  staff      510 Aug  4 15:34 .
> drwxr-xr-x+ 244 olchansk  staff     8296 Aug  4 15:33 ..
> -rw-r--r--    1 olchansk  staff        0 Aug  4 15:34 .ALARM.SHM
> -rw-r--r--    1 olchansk  staff        0 Aug  4 15:34 .ELOG.SHM
> -rw-r--r--    1 olchansk  staff        0 Aug  4 15:34 .HISTORY.SHM
> -rw-r--r--    1 olchansk  staff        0 Aug  4 15:34 .MSG.SHM
> -rw-r--r--    1 olchansk  staff  1183808 Aug  4 15:34 .ODB.SHM
> -rw-r--r--    1 olchansk  staff        8 Aug  4 15:34 .ODB_SIZE.TXT
> -rw-r--r--    1 olchansk  staff       15 Aug  4 15:34 .SHM_HOST.TXT
> -rw-r--r--    1 olchansk  staff       12 Aug  4 15:34 .SHM_TYPE.TXT
> -rw-r--r--    1 olchansk  staff        0 Aug  4 15:34 .SYSMSG.SHM
> -rw-r--r--    1 olchansk  staff      341 Aug  4 15:33 env.csh
> -rw-r--r--    1 olchansk  staff      322 Aug  4 15:33 env.sh
> -rw-r--r--    1 olchansk  staff       40 Aug  4 15:34 exptab
> -rw-r--r--    1 olchansk  staff      287 Aug  4 15:34 midas.log
> send:online olchansk$
> 
> odbedit ### works
> mhttpd ### bombs, requires SSL certificate https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/57/initial-mhttpd-should-bind-to-localhost
> odbedit ### cd /experiment, set "http redirect to https" to no, set "midas https port" to 0
> mhttpd ### runs now
> connect to http://localhost:8080 ### status page works
> restart mhttpd as mhttpd -D
> mlogger -D
> fetest ### runs, prints time and data
> start a run from web page ### works
> ### fetest generates crazy data rate https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/58/fetest-crazy-data-rate
> ### go to history, define plot for SLOW/SLOW, see sine wave ### works
> ### history is written to expt dir, no good, go to "history"
> ### data files written to expt dir, no good, go to "data"
> ### midas.log written to data dir, no good (want expt dir)
> ### elog written to expt dir, go to "elog"
> ### logger channel config is wrong - gzip compression and crc32c should be enabled by default
> ### history config is wrong - FILE per-variable history should be enabled by default
> 
> K.O.
>  

The sizeof checks were originally invented by KO to check for binary compatibility between processes attached to the same ODB and event buffers. So if a 
compiler generates different structure sizes due to different padding, one would see that immediately. I wonder however if the absolute numbers make sense 
here. We could replace the 16444 by

NAME_LENGTH + 7*sizeof(INT) + MAX_CLIENTS *(NAME_LENGTH+13*sizeof(INT)+sizeof(float)+2*sizeof(DWORD)+MAX_EVENT_REQUESTS*4*sizeof(INT))

which makes this value automatically scale when one changes MAX_CLIENTS.

People of course have to be aware that if one changes MAX_CLIENTS, then all programs connected to the same ODB or event buffer need to be re-compiled 
and the ODB needs to be re-created from an ASCII file, but at least this would avoid tedious manual calculations.

Any opinion?

Stefan


> Below are the steps we used to increase the maximum number of frontends that we could run.
> 
> In midas.h
> 
> #define MAX_CLIENTS            64
> 
> changed to
> 
> #define MAX_CLIENTS            128
> 
> In msystem.h:
> 
> #define MAX_RPC_CONNECTION     64
> 
> changed to
> 
> #define MAX_RPC_CONNECTION     128
> 
> In odb.c:
> 
> assert(sizeof(BUFFER_HEADER) == 16444); 
> 
> GUESS: 256*64+60 = 16444, so change 64 to 128
> 
> changed to:                                                                                                                         
> 
> assert(sizeof(BUFFER_HEADER) == 32828); //256*128+60
> 
>  
> 
> DATABASE_HEADER = 64 + 64*DATABASE_CLIENT = 64 + 64*8256 = 528448
> 
> changed to:
> 
> DATABASE_HEADER = 64 + 128*DATABASE_CLIENT = 64 + 128*8256 = 1056832.

I agree that the binary compatibility checks are crucial. But I kind of find it strange if one gets an assert failure some where if one tries to change MAX_CLIENTS. It is then not straight 
forward to relate both things and understand the consequences. That's why I put a comment next to the definition of MAX_CLIENTS saying:

/* note that if you change any of the following items, the ODB and the event shared memory buffers 
   become binary incopatible and one has to recompile ALL programs which are locally connected to the 
   ODB and to event buffers */

I think this is more descriptive than just a failing assert. 

If you look carefully in my proposal below, you will see that I rather used

sizeof(INT)

and not 

sizeof(int)

since as KO stated correctly sizeof(int) can change between different architectures. The derived type INT (all uppercase) has been carefully designed to have 32 bits on all architectures. So 
it will NOT change between them. If it does change, then we have a principal problem and many more things will break down. We should therefore have something like

if (sizeof(INT) != 4) then severe_error_and_stop_all_programs()

Now given that sizeof(INT) is everywhere the same, we can use it in the test

sizeof(BUFFER_HEADER) == NAME_LENGTH + 7*sizeof(INT) + MAX_CLIENTS *(NAME_LENGTH+13*sizeof(INT)+sizeof(float)+2*sizeof(DWORD)+MAX_EVENT_REQUESTS*4*sizeof(INT))

which then basically tests the structure byte alignment and padding. The comment above should warn users to change MAX_CLIENTS without thinking. 

Another strategy would be to put sizeof(BUFFER_HEADER) as the first two byes of the structure itself. We can the dynamically test the size of each bm_open_buffer(), and if the local size 
differs from the one saved in the buffer header, the program refuses to start, so we know exactly which program should have to be recompiled. The downside of this would be that the 
header structure has to be changed and we break binary compatibility with all existing programs. But maybe we should do this step once and be safe in the future.

Stefan


> The checks for byte sizes of critical data structures have been added to ensure (enforce) binary compatibility
> of midas with itself on different platforms (32-bit and 64-bit intel, on PPC, on ARM, etc).
> 
> This has worked well in the past and helped avoid problems and subtle bugs in the transition
> from 32-bit to 64-bit machines a few years ago. Of course now 32-bit machines are back
> as ARM CPUs and FPGA synthetic CPUs.
> 
> Replacing the checks with "computed" values will defeat this purpose because the values may be computed
> differently on different machines.
> 
> Specifically as proposed by Stefan, sizeof(int) can change depending on the target machine and depending
> on the compiler settings.
> 
> Of course this needs to be balanced against flexibility to adjust important settings like MAX_CLIENTS and MAX_EVENT_REQUESTS.
> 
> I would say the present system is just fine. You can change MAX_CLIENTS, rebuild MIDAS and it will not run (assert failure) giving
> you an indication that you are doing something non-trivial that will cause problems if you do it without thinking about it.
> 
> For example, one may think nothing of changing midas.h and recompiling MIDAS. But having to change odb.c
> may ring the little bell to tell you that you *also* have to rebuild *all* of your frontends. Even one unrebuilt frontend
> will corrupt all shared memory and crash everything.
> 
> I guess one other way to look at this is as a balance between something a few people do rarely against
> a function that protects everybody all the time.
> 
> That said, I think the checks should be reworked, instead of an assert failure they should give the error message
> and tell the user exactly what number to adjust in the size test. Also some checks are obsolete, there is no longer
> need to check the size of many ODB structures (equipment, etc). Once we are done with the db_get_record() rework,
> only checks for data structures in shared memory shall remain.
> 
> As the bottom line, to change MAX_CLIENTS, you already have to edit midas.h, asking you to also edit odb.c does
> not add much to the burden.
> 
> P.S. We are thinking how to make all these values dynamically changable, but basically it requires rolling out
> a new binary-incompatible version of MIDAS with added bugs. Maybe some day.
> 
> K.O.
> 
> 
> > The sizeof checks were originally invented by KO to check for binary compatibility between processes attached to the same ODB and event buffers. So if a 
> > compiler generates different structure sizes due to different padding, one would see that immediately. I wonder however if the absolute numbers make sense 
> > here. We could replace the 16444 by
> > 
> > NAME_LENGTH + 7*sizeof(INT) + MAX_CLIENTS *(NAME_LENGTH+13*sizeof(INT)+sizeof(float)+2*sizeof(DWORD)+MAX_EVENT_REQUESTS*4*sizeof(INT))
> > 
> > which makes this value automatically scale when one changes MAX_CLIENTS.
> > 
> > People of course have to be aware that if one changes MAX_CLIENTS, then all programs connected to the same ODB or event buffer need to be re-compiled 
> > and the ODB needs to be re-created from an ASCII file, but at least this would avoid tedious manual calculations.
> > 
> > Any opinion?
> > 
> > Stefan
> > 
> > 
> > > Below are the steps we used to increase the maximum number of frontends that we could run.
> > > 
> > > In midas.h
> > > 
> > > #define MAX_CLIENTS            64
> > > 
> > > changed to
> > > 
> > > #define MAX_CLIENTS            128
> > > 
> > > In msystem.h:
> > > 
> > > #define MAX_RPC_CONNECTION     64
> > > 
> > > changed to
> > > 
> > > #define MAX_RPC_CONNECTION     128
> > > 
> > > In odb.c:
> > > 
> > > assert(sizeof(BUFFER_HEADER) == 16444); 
> > > 
> > > GUESS: 256*64+60 = 16444, so change 64 to 128
> > > 
> > > changed to:                                                                                                                         
> > > 
> > > assert(sizeof(BUFFER_HEADER) == 32828); //256*128+60
> > > 
> > >  
> > > 
> > > DATABASE_HEADER = 64 + 64*DATABASE_CLIENT = 64 + 64*8256 = 528448
> > > 
> > > changed to:
> > > 
> > > DATABASE_HEADER = 64 + 128*DATABASE_CLIENT = 64 + 128*8256 = 1056832.

The type INT has been defined in 1989 when I for the first time sent data between a 16-bit MS-DOS computer and a 32-bit VAX computer (good old 
days!). At that time, uint32_t was not available at all. So much for the historical background.

I agree that switching from INT to int32_t is getting closer to standards and might help new people better understand things. This means however to 
touch all midas files and change about 5000 (!) locations:

BYTE -> uint8_t
WORD -> uint16_t
DWORD -> uint32_t
INT -> int32_t

Next we have the midas data types TID_xxx?

The nice thing now is that for example WORD and TID_WORD belong together and this is obvious. For uint16_t and TID_WORD is is not so obvious 
any more, so I guess we should rename TID_WORD to TID_UINT16_t. The same fore 

TID_BYTE -> TID_UINT8_T
TID_SBYTE -> TID_INT8_T
TID_WORD -> TID_UINT16_T
TID_DWORD -> TID_UINT32_T
TID_INT -> TID_INT32_T

But if we changer TID_XXX, the ASCII representations of the ODB break compatibility! Right now we have for example

[/Experiment]
midas http port = INT : 8080

which will become

[/Experiment]
midas http port = INT32_T : 8080

so one cannot load old ODB files any more!

With JSON encoding it's better because only the type number is stored, not the string. So INT -> 7 could stay, although in my opinion encoding the 
type in an integer number is not good for readability. Nobody knows what "7" means as a type. You always have to do a look-up in midas.c and count 
array indices manually.

I'm not sure how many experiments use the ASCII ODB format in one way or the other in some custom scripts. It might be that changing the format 
might have severe side effects for some experiments, so before we undertake this endeavor I would like to get some feedback here on the forum 
about people from other experiments and see what they think.

Stefan

> > if (sizeof(INT) != 4) then severe_error_and_stop_all_programs()
> 
> Quick reply.
> 
> Today, for fixed size data types one should use uint32_t & co, see
> stdint.h
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_data_types#stdint.h
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C99 (scroll down and click to open "implementation -> compiler support"
> 
> The other popular convention is "u32" used by the Linux kernel, you will see it in the linux kernel drivers.
> 
> If I remember right, WORD and DWORD grow legs from the 16-bit Motorolla 68xxx processors,
> VxWorks and the VME bus. At some point the data buses were 16-bit wide and that we the WORD.
> 
> (I do not think UNIX ever used the WORD/DWORD names, i.e. MacOS has int32_t and u_int32_t).
> 
> K.O.

> bug in init
> -----------
> 
> I used the lv.c class driver, combined with a custom device driver, to control 
> our Keithley2611B source meter. This to set negative voltage on Si detectors.
> 
> In the 'init' routing, the class driver sets the hv:
> 
>   hv_info->demand_mirror[i] = MIN(hv_info->demand[i], hv_info->voltage_limit[i]);
> 
> This fails for negative voltage, as it sets the (negative) voltage limit, instead 
> of the demand voltage. A simple 'fabs' solves this.
> 
> suggestion for 'idle'
> ---------------------
> 
> I let the device do the ramping, not the driver. This also means I have to reset 
> the state of the device (current limit) after ramping. The easiest way to to 
> this, is using CMD_IDLE of the device driver. This is currently not done in the 
> hv.c class driver.

I can't find the line you quote in the class driver. Why don't you make a git pull request
and I will approve it.

The original idea behind the hv driver is that all voltages in the ODB and the class driver are
positive. If you have a negative power supply, then the voltage is inverted at the device
driver level. That's why you have MIN and MAX in the class driver.

Stefan

> > Currently one has to set the required flag in the ODB (e.g., /Programs/Logger/Required) to "y" for the program 
> > to appear on the "Programs page" and being able to start and stop the program easily.
> > 
> > However, if one wants to run with the "Prevent start on required progs" in /Experiment enabled, all the 
> > programs in the "Programs page" need to be running and one cannot have one of them stopped while still 
> > taking a run.
> > 
> > It would be nice to separate these two functionalities: Have a flag that makes the program appear on the 
> > "Programs page" and have a flag that controls the "Prevent start on required frogs" functionality.
> 
> I agree. All the programs should be always visible on the "programs" page, there should be /Programs/xxx/hidden to 
> hide them, and /Programs/xxx/required should be used for "Prevent start on required progs".

Konstantin, since you wrote the current "Programs" page, can you add that feature to the display (well, when you have time). I guess we 
event don't have to change the subdirectory structure (which might lead to incopatibilities), but just show a program if the "Start command" 
is non-null. If there is no start command, it does not make sense to start that program, so it can be hidden.

Stefan

> There is a small bug in the mfe.c initialization for the EQ_POLLED mode. There 
> is a routine where the number of polls fitting in eq_info->period is counted:
> 
> 
>          count = 1;
>          do {
>             if (display_period)
>                printf(".");
> 
>             start_time = ss_millitime();
> 
>             poll_event(equipment[idx].info.source, (INT)count, TRUE);
> 
>             delta_time = ss_millitime() - start_time;
> 
>             ...
> 
>             if (delta_time > 0)
>                count = count * eq_info->period / delta_time;
>             else
>                count *= 100;
>             
>             // avoid overflows
>             if (count > 2147483647.0) {
>                count = 2147483647.0;
>                break;
>             }
>             
>          } while (delta_time > eq_info->period * 1.2 || delta_time < eq_info-
> >period * 0.8);
> 
> As "start_time = ss_millitime();" resets "delta_time" each time, only the 
> "avoid overflows" addition saves the day. 
> 
> start_time = ss_millitime(); show be out of the loop.

Nope.

What I want is to determine how often I have to call poll_event to stay there for a certain time (usually 100ms). So I iterate "count" until I roughly get to my 100ms. Each call to 
poll_event with a different count is a new measurement, therefore I initialize start_time before each measurement. If i do it outside the loop, and kind of incrementally increase 
it, then the whole code inside the loop is added to the measurement which makes it (slightly) wrong.

The whole loop optimization has some background. Polling can be sow (think of talking to a device via Ethernet which can easily take milli seconds). So how often do we poll 
before we do other things in the main look (like looking if a run has been started). If I only poll once, then the average front-end response time would be poor, because I mostly 
look if a run has been started in the main loop. This is not effective. If I poll too often inside the poll_event loop, then the front-end does not react on run stops any more. So 
there is some optimum, and this is set by the polling time of usually 100ms. This ensures that the front-end does optimal polling - without ANYTHING in between - for about 
100ms. But how can I know how often I should poll for 100 ms? As said above, polling can be very fast (reading a memory cell) or very slow (network). The the best method I 
found is to do a calibration at the startup, and this is what the code above does. Maybe there are better ways today, but that code worked nicely in the last 25 years.

Stefan