>> [hh19285@it038146 ~]$ which root-config
> /software/root/v6.06.08/bin/root-config
> [hh19285@it038146 ~]$ root-config --cflags
> -pthread -std=c++11 -Wno-deprecated-declarations -m64 -I/software/root/v6.06.08/include
> 
> [hh19285@it038146 build]$ ./analyzer
> Warning in <TClassTable::Add>: class TApplication already in TClassTable
> ...
> ...
> #2  0x00007f7e911b21a4 in TUnixSystem::StackTrace() () from /usr/lib64/root/libCore.so.6.16

You have a mismatch. Your root-config thinks ROOT is installed in /software/..., but the crash
dump says your ROOT libraries are in /usr/lib64/root (not in /software/...).

You can confirm that you are linking against the correct ROOT by running cmake with VERBOSE=1
and examine the linker command line to see what library link path is specified for ROOT.

You can confirm which ROOT library is actually used when you run the analyzer
by running "ldd ./analyzer". You should see the same library paths as specified
to the linker (/software/.../lib*.so). A mismatch can be caused by the setting of LD_LIBRARY_PATH
and by 100 other reasons.

I suggest that you remove the "wrong" ROOT before you continue debugging this.

K.O.

> You can confirm that you are linking against the correct ROOT by running cmake with VERBOSE=1
> and examine the linker command line to see what library link path is specified for ROOT.

Actually you don't call cmake with the verbose flag but specify it during the make phase

$ make VERBOSE=1

to see the command lines.

Stefan

> > You can confirm that you are linking against the correct ROOT by running cmake with VERBOSE=1
> > and examine the linker command line to see what library link path is specified for ROOT.
> 
> $ make VERBOSE=1
> to see the command lines.
>

Most likely, they forgot to rerun "cmake" after installing a new ROOT. The joys of a two-step build (cmake; make).

K.O.

Hi

I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this query (if it is not, I would truly appreciate it if someone could point me at the right forum). I'm having a little bit of trouble with the setup of a Midas system.

Now, this is a system that I inherited after the previous guy who was looking after it went to other employment. There was a point at which it was working. And then there was an unrelated issue in the electrical system which, as a side effect, meant that the building lost power for a time, and the entire system had to be rebooted.

No problem, I thought. I'll just reset and restart all of the software...

...and I can't seem to get it to work. I keep getting the error message "mvme_read_value: Could not perform read!: Bad address". So far as I can tell, this seems to be related to the idea that the base address being used to read from the boards is incorrect. The base addresses are hardcoded in the software (not autogenerated) and, aside from the power going down and up again, the hardware hasn't been touched since the system was working.

I imagine that there is something that needs to be set, twiddled, tweaked, or turned on in the driver. The output of 'lsmod | grep vme' is:

vmedriver             117742  0

so presumably the driver is at least *present*, even if I have no idea how to twiddle anything on it.

Could anyone perhaps suggest a way forward? Is there some way to gather the information that I need, perhaps, or some way to twiddle anything twiddle-able on the driver?

Casey

> I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this query

this might be the right place, depending.

> I'm having a little bit of trouble with the setup of a Midas system ...
> inherited after the previous guy ...

a rather major problem, but a typical situation.

> There was a point at which it was working.

this is very good. if it worked before, there is good chance it will work again.

> And then there was an unrelated issue in the electrical system which, as a side effect,
> meant that the building lost power for a time, and the entire system had to be rebooted.
> No problem, I thought. I'll just reset and restart all of the software...
> ...and I can't seem to get it to work.

this happens often enough. several things are likely to happen:
- unexpected software updates, i.e. new linux kernel was installed but inactive, waiting for a reboot
- hardware failures, i.e. we usually see blown up power supplies. check that all VME crate voltages are okey. (ask me how).
- firmware corruption, i.e. we have seen VME modules lose their firmware after power outage, had to be reloaded by jtag

> I keep getting the error message "mvme_read_value: Could not perform read!: Bad address".

this is a generic error, it does not mean that software suddenly is trying to read from wrong address.

> I imagine that there is something that needs to be set, twiddled, tweaked, or turned on in the driver. The output of 'lsmod | grep vme' is:
> vmedriver             117742  0

this is not the vme driver we use at TRIUMF, so I am not familiar with it's errors. we use the vme_tsi148 driver and the vme_universe driver. (ask me about them).

> so presumably the driver is at least *present*, even if I have no idea how to twiddle anything on it.

could be the wrong version of the driver or the wrong version of the linux kernel. worth checking log files
to see if kernel and driver version numbers are the same.

> Could anyone perhaps suggest a way forward?

Yes. You will have to tell me much more about your system. You can do this publicly here or privately by email to olchansk@triumf.ca

To start, I need to know your VME setup, what is the crate, what is the VME processor, what OS you run, what VME driver you use, what VME modules you have installed.

K.O.

It appears that all midas applications are now required to link with the
pthreads library even if they do not use threads. This is caused by a
pthread_create() call from ss_thread_create() in system.c.

Is this the intended behaviour?

K.O.

The change is required to support implementation of pthreads in the Linux
compile of Midas. This was added recently. I believe pthreads is also needed
for ROOT based compiles.

David

> It appears that all midas applications are now required to link with the
> pthreads library even if they do not use threads. This is caused by a
> pthread_create() call from ss_thread_create() in system.c.
> 
> Is this the intended behaviour?
> 
> K.O.

There have been times in ALPHA that an alarm is triggered and the shift crew 
are unclear who to contact if they aren't trained to fix the specific 
failure mode.

I wish to add the property 'Users responsible' to the ODB for Alarms and 
Programs.

I have drafted what this might look like in a new pull request:
https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/pull-requests/22/add-users-responsible-
field-for-specific

It requires changing of several data structures, I think I have found all 
instances of the definitions so the ODB should 'repair' any of the old 
structures adding in users responsible.

If 'Users responsible' is set, MIDAS messages append them after the message 
in brackets '()'. If used in conjunction with the MIDAS messenger 
(mmessenger), the users responsible can be 'tagged' directly.

I.e, for slack, simply set the 'users responsible' to <@UserID|Nickname>, 
for mattermost '@username', for discord '<@userid>'. Note that discord 
doesn't allow you to tag by username, but numeric userid



I have expanded char array in 'al_trigger_class' to handle the potentially 
longer MIDAS messages. Perhaps since I'm touching these lines I should 
change these temporary containers to std::string (line 383 and 386 of 
alarm.cxx)?

I have tested this quite a bit for my system, I am not sure how I can test 
mjsonrpc.

I think this is a good idea and I support it. We have a similar problem in MEG and 
we solved that with external (bash) scripts called in case of alarms. One feature 
there we have is that for some alarms, several people want to get notified. So 
people can "subscribe" to certain alarms. The subscription are now handled inside 
Slack which I like better, but maybe it would be good to have more than one "user 
responsible". Like if one person is sleeping/traveling, it's good to have a 
substitute. Can you make an array out of that? Or a comma-separated list?

Best,
Stefan

> I think this is a good idea and I support it. We have a similar problem in MEG and 
> we solved that with external (bash) scripts called in case of alarms. One feature 
> there we have is that for some alarms, several people want to get notified. So 
> people can "subscribe" to certain alarms. The subscription are now handled inside 
> Slack which I like better, but maybe it would be good to have more than one "user 
> responsible". Like if one person is sleeping/traveling, it's good to have a 
> substitute. Can you make an array out of that? Or a comma-separated list?
> 
> Best,
> Stefan

Presently there are 256 characters in the 'users responsible' field, so you can just 
list many users (no space, space or comma whatever). Discord, slack and mattermost 
don't care, they just parse the user tags.

I can still make this an array and pass a std::vector<std::string> into 
al_trigger_class function?

> I can still make this an array and pass a std::vector<std::string> into 
> al_trigger_class function?

Maybe 256 chars are enough at the moment. If other people complain in the future, we can 
re-visit.

Stefan

> > I can still make this an array and pass a std::vector<std::string> into 
> > al_trigger_class function?
> 
> Maybe 256 chars are enough at the moment. If other people complain in the future, we can 
> re-visit.
> 
> Stefan

Thinking about it, an array of maybe 80 character would give enough space for a name, a tag 
and phone number. Do I need to budget memory very strictly? Would 32 entries of 80 
characters be too much? 

> > > I can still make this an array and pass a std::vector<std::string> into 
> > > al_trigger_class function?
> > 
> > Maybe 256 chars are enough at the moment. If other people complain in the future, we can 
> > re-visit.
> > 
> > Stefan
> 
> Thinking about it, an array of maybe 80 character would give enough space for a name, a tag 
> and phone number. Do I need to budget memory very strictly? Would 32 entries of 80 
> characters be too much? 

On that level memory is cheap.

Stefan

I've updated the branch / pull request to use an array of 10 entries (80 chars each). 32 felt a 
little overkill when I saw it on screen, but absolutely happy to set it to any number you 
recommend.

The array gets flattened out when an alarm is triggered, currently the formatting produces

AlarmClass : AlarmMessage (Flattened List Of Users Responsible Array With Space Separators)

If experiments want to use Discord / Slack / Mattermost tags and or add phone numbers, that 
should fit in 80 characters

This list of responsible being attached to alarm message strings will be great for the 
mmessenger, however, perhaps its going to generate very long messages for the speaker programs 
(web interface and mlxspeaker ):

AlarmClass : AlarmMessage (ResponsibleUser1 ResponsibleUser2 ResponsibleUser3 ResponsibleUser4 
... ResponsibleUser4)

especially if people put in user tags or emergency contact details...

Should we add a key word or character for the programs that create audio to parse that silence 
the list of responsible users? I'd be tempted to use a single character but there is a risk 
users might have that in a custom alarm message. Maybe something usual like the 'bel' 
character? '|'? 

Perhaps use the string 'Responsible:' or 'Users:' to trim out the Users Responsible list from 
the message string?

AlarmClass : AlarmMessage Responsible:(ResponsibleUser1 ResponsibleUser2 ResponsibleUser3 
ResponsibleUser4 ... ResponsibleUser4)

AlarmClass : AlarmMessage Users:(ResponsibleUser1 ResponsibleUser2 ResponsibleUser3 
ResponsibleUser4 ... ResponsibleUser4)

> This list of responsible being attached to alarm message strings ...

This is a great idea. But I think we do not need to artificially limit ourselves
to string and array lengths.

The code in alarm.c should be changes to use std::string and std::vector<std::string> (STRING_LIST 
#define), db_get_record() should be replaced with individual ODB reads (that's what it does behind 
the scenes, but in a non-type and -size safe way).

I think the web page code will work correctly, it does not care about string lengths.

K.O.

> > This list of responsible being attached to alarm message strings ...
> 
> This is a great idea. But I think we do not need to artificially limit ourselves
> to string and array lengths.
> 
> The code in alarm.c should be changes to use std::string and std::vector<std::string> (STRING_LIST 
> #define), db_get_record() should be replaced with individual ODB reads (that's what it does behind 
> the scenes, but in a non-type and -size safe way).
> 
> I think the web page code will work correctly, it does not care about string lengths.
> 
> K.O.

Ok, I'm working on this... I see a design choice to make, 1. Keep 'ALARM' as a struct, or 2. Replace ALARM struct with a class (keeping memory layout the same). Since we are adding STRING_LIST, I'd lean towards a C++ style with a class

1. Keep 'ALARM' as a struct:
Get rid of ALARM_ODB_STR for the default values
Add static functions (that take a hkey) to interact with the ODB (to save duplicating logic in al_reset_alarm, al_check, al_define_odb_alarm and al_trigger_alarm)

2. Replace ALARM struct with a class:
default ctor: Do nothing special (so it behaves like the old struct)
default dtor: std::vector<std::string> dtor will

It seems an opportunity to convert the alarm struct to a class with member functions that take hkey pointers?

default ctor: Do nothing special (so it behaves like the old struct)
default dtor: std::vector<std::string> dtor will
SetToDefault: This is where default values are hard coded (functionally replace ALARM_ODB_STR )

> > This list of responsible being attached to alarm message strings ...
> 
> This is a great idea. But I think we do not need to artificially limit ourselves
> to string and array lengths.
> 
> The code in alarm.c should be changes to use std::string and std::vector<std::string> (STRING_LIST 
> #define), db_get_record() should be replaced with individual ODB reads (that's what it does behind 
> the scenes, but in a non-type and -size safe way).
> 
> I think the web page code will work correctly, it does not care about string lengths.
> 
> K.O.

Auto growing lists is an excellent plan. I am making decent progress and should have something to 
report soon

> > > This list of responsible being attached to alarm message strings ...
> > 
> > This is a great idea. But I think we do not need to artificially limit ourselves
> > to string and array lengths.
> > 
> > The code in alarm.c should be changes to use std::string and std::vector<std::string> (STRING_LIST 
> > #define), db_get_record() should be replaced with individual ODB reads (that's what it does behind 
> > the scenes, but in a non-type and -size safe way).
> > 
> > I think the web page code will work correctly, it does not care about string lengths.
> > 
> > K.O.
> 
> Auto growing lists is an excellent plan. I am making decent progress and should have something to 
> report soon

This has sent me down a little rabbit hole, and I'd like to check in with efforts to improve the efficiency and simplicity of the alarm code.

I can keep with the current 'C' style of the alarm.cxx code, replace struct read and writes to the odb with individual odb entries... put functions in alarm.cxx to create, read and write to the odb... 

If we go this 'C' style route, then I'll have duplication of the 'users responsible' setters and getter functions for structs ALARM and PROGRAM_INFO

What would the MIDAS developers thing of creating classes for ALARM and PROGRAM_INFO (I am thinking for binary compatibilities of not touching ALARM and PROGRAM_INFO structs, and inheriting from them:

class UsersResponsible
{
   public:
      STRING_LIST fUsersResponsible;
}

class Alarm: public ALARM, public UsersResponsible
{
}

class ProgramInfo: public PROGRAM_INFO, public UsersResponsible
{
}

Each of these three classes would have member to functions to Create, Read and Write to the ODB. We could get rid of the PROGRAM_INFO_STR precompiler macro and instead have a SetToDefault member function. 

It seems clear we should set the ODB path in the constructor of Alarm and ProgramInfo

When I wrote the musbstd.h "open" method, I kind of punted on the problem of
handling multiple identical USB devices. Instead of a real solution, I added an
"instance" parameter, which allows one to "open" the "first", "second", etc USB
device, as listed in a magic random system dependant order.

Normally, USB devices are identified by two 16-bit integers: manufacturer ID and
product ID (i.e. as reported by "lsusb"). This works well until one has more
than one "identical" device. Two years ago, I had 5 identical USB cameras
(optical alignement system for TRIUMF-TWIST); last year, I had multiple USB
serial adapters; today I have two identical USB-TPC interfaces.

Most of the time, the devices are plugged into the same USB ports, so
theoretically, one should be able to tell exactly which one is which ("upstream
camera is plugged into port 1, downstream camera is plugged into port 2"). But
in the magic system dependant enumeration order, they keep moving around,
depending on the order of enumeration, history of powering up and down, phase of
the Moon, etc.

So my generic "musbstd" method of "open first", "open second", etc turned out to
be completely disfunctional.

So far, I am unable to come up with a system independant solution. But I have a
solution for Linux and maybe for MacOSX:

1) on Linux, I can use the information parsed from /proc/bus/usb/devices to say
"please open the USB device on USB bus 1, port 1", the so called USB device
"path", as seen in the system log and in /sys/bus/usb/devices.

2) on MacOSX, I was unable to find a way to discover the USB topology, but they
seem to maintain an uint32_t "location", which they promise to keep at least
across reboots (did not check this yet).

3) Windows I did not look at yet.

So we have a choice:

a) use system dependant "musb_open_linux(usbpath,vendor,product)",
"musb_open_macosx(???,vendor,product)", etc

b) create order out of chaos by manually keeping a map of "instances" (first,
second, third device) to "persistant addresses". On Linux, it would be a file
containing something like this: "USB-TPC-0 is on bus1-port1, USB-TPC-1 is on
bus1-port2". Then again, I can say "please open USB-TPC interface instance 0" or
"instance 1", etc. There is a small difficulty with dealing with devices
temporarily or permanantly going away, or changing physical addresses ("I moved
the USB device from port 1 to port 3"). This could be handled by telling the
user "hmm... USB topology has changed, please delete the map file and try
again", or we could come up with something more user friendly.

Any thoughts?

P.S. For my immediate need (I need this tomorrow), I will write a
musb_open_linux(usbpath,vendor,product) function.

K.O.