I'm thinking of this already since some time, and it was part of my motivation switching to C++11.
I was delighted to see that what we do in system.c (encapsulate system functions such as threads
and shared memory) is now done natively in C++11, and it's done by experts and not amateurs like us.

I see that with std::timed_mutex and try_lock_for we have the desired timeout function. Pity that
C++11 does not contain inter-process communication like semaphores, so there we still have to use
our old functions. 

But for threads switching to std::thread, I'm all in.

Stefan

> Hi, Stefan & co - now that midas is c++11 and c++11 comes with a threads library, should we 
> switch midas to use the c++11 threads instead of pthreads? (Of course on Linux c++11 
> threads are a layer on top of pthreads, the best I know).
> 
> This should remove the dependency on pthreads.h and use a more native implementation of 
> threads on MacOS and Windows. (again, the best I can tell).
> 
> Of course this depends on c++11 threads having all the functions we need. Specifically, "lock 
> with timeout" is useful to deal with "gah! everything stopped! what do I do!", a problem 
> bedeviling midas in the early days (and still happens today!). Current midas kills everything 
> after 5 minutes of deadlock - then the user knows how to restart everything and the developer 
> has core dumps to look at. (to see which program/thread holds the lock and would not give it 
> up).
> 
> Any thoughts on this?
> 
> K.O.

For your reference, here on my MacOSX 10.14.6 with XCode 11.3.1 the pthread.h file is present in locations listed below.

Did you execute "xcode-select --install" ?


~$ locate pthread.h
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/AppleTVOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/AppleTVOS.sdk/usr/include/pthread/pthread.h
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/AppleTVOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/AppleTVOS.sdk/usr/include/pthread.h
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/AppleTVSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/AppleTVSimulator.sdk/usr/include/pthread/pthread.h
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/AppleTVSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/AppleTVSimulator.sdk/usr/include/pthread.h
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/include/pthread/pthread.h
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/include/pthread.h
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/WatchOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/WatchOS.sdk/usr/include/pthread/pthread.h
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/WatchOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/WatchOS.sdk/usr/include/pthread.h
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/WatchSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/WatchSimulator.sdk/usr/include/pthread/pthread.h
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/WatchSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/WatchSimulator.sdk/usr/include/pthread.h
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS.sdk/usr/include/pthread/pthread.h
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS.sdk/usr/include/pthread.h
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator.sdk/usr/include/pthread/pthread.h
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator.sdk/usr/include/pthread.h
/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/include/pthread/pthread.h
/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/include/pthread.h

Thanks for pointing out this error. The "All Bank Size" contains the size of all banks including their 
bank headers, but NOT the global bank header itself. I modified the documentation accordingly.

If you want to study the C code which tells you how to fill these headers, look at midas.cxx line 
14788.

Best,
Stefan

> Dear all,
> 
> we are trying to build Midas events on FPGAs and send them directly to the midas
> ring buffer via copy_n. According to the wiki
> https://midas.triumf.ca/MidasWiki/index.php/Event_Structure Event Data Size is:
> "The event data size contains the size of the event in bytes excluding the
> header." and All Bank Size is: "Size in bytes of the following data plus the
> size of the bank header". So are they actually the same or what header is the
> header in the first sentence also the bank header?
> 
> Cheers,
> Marius
> 
>  

Another thought: Can you delete the build directory and run cmake again? Like

$ cd /midas/build
$ rm -rf *
$ cmake ..

If you have the old build cache and upgraded the OS in meantime, the cache needs to be rebuild.

Stefan

Another thought: Can you delete the midas build directory and run cmake again? Like

$ cd midas/build
$ rm -rf *
$ cmake ..
$ make VERBOSE=1

If you have the old build cache and upgraded your OS in meantime, the cache needs to be rebuild. The VERBOSE 
flag tells you the compiler options, and you see where the compiler looks for the SDK directory.

Cheers,
Stefan

Now you are stuck with openssl, which is optional for mhttpd. If you only use mhttpd locally, you maybe don't need SSL support. In that case you can jus do

[midas/build] $ cmake -D NO_SSL=1 ..

To disable that. If you do need SSL, maybe you can try to install openssl11 via mac ports.

Stefan

The rb_xxx functions are (thoroughly tested) robust against high data rate given that you use them as intended:

1) Once you create the ring buffer via rb_create(), specify the maximum event size (midas event, not bank size!). Later there is not protection any more, so if you obtain pdata from rb_get_wp, you can of course write 4GB to pdata, overwriting everything in your memory, causing a fatal crash. It's your duty not to write more bytes into pdata then what you specified in rb_create()

2) Once you obtain a write pointer to the ring buffer via rb_get_wp(), this function might fail when the receiving side reads data slower than the producing side, simply because the buffer is full. In that case the producing side was to wait to get new buffer space. If you call to rb_get_wp() returns DB_TIMEOUT, it means that the function did not obtain enough free space for the next event. In that case you have to wait (like ss_sleep(10)) and try again. Only when rb_get_wp() returns DB_SUCCESS, you are allowed to write into pdata (up to the maximum event size specified in rb_create() of course).

/Stefan


> Dear all,
> 
> we creating Midas events directly inside a FPGA and send them off via DMA into the PC RAM. For reading out this RAM via Midas the FPGA sends as a pointer where it has written the last 4kB of data. We use this pointer for telling the ring buffer of midas where the new events are. The buffer looks something like:
> 
> // event 1
> dma_buf[0] = 0x00000001; // Trigger and Event ID
> dma_buf[1] = 0x00000001; // Serial number
> dma_buf[2] = TIME; // time
> dma_buf[3] = 18*4-4*4; // event size
> dma_buf[4] = 18*4-6*4; // all bank size
> dma_buf[5] = 0x11; // flags
> // bank 0
> dma_buf[6] = 0x46454230; // bank name
> dma_buf[7] = 0x6; // bank type TID_DWORD
> dma_buf[8] = 0x3*4; // data size
> dma_buf[9] = 0xAFFEAFFE; // data
> dma_buf[10] = 0xAFFEAFFE; // data
> dma_buf[11] = 0xAFFEAFFE; // data
> // bank 1
> dma_buf[12] = 0x1; // bank name
> dma_buf[12] = 0x46454231; // bank name
> dma_buf[13] = 0x6; // bank type TID_DWORD
> dma_buf[14] = 0x3*4; // data size
> dma_buf[15] = 0xAFFEAFFE; // data
> dma_buf[16] = 0xAFFEAFFE; // data
> dma_buf[17] = 0xAFFEAFFE; // data
> 
> // event 2
> .....
> 
> dma_buf[fpga_pointer] = 0xXXXXXXXX;
> 
> 
> And we do something like:
> 
> while{true}
>    // obtain buffer space
>    status = rb_get_wp(rbh, (void **)&pdata, 10);
>    fpga_pointer = fpga.read_last_data_add();
> 
>    wlen = last_fpga_pointer - fpga_pointer; \\ in 32 bit words
>    copy_n(&dma_buf[last_fpga_pointer], wlen, pdata);
>    rb_status = rb_increment_wp(rbh, wlen * 4); \\ in byte
> 
>    last_fpga_pointer = fpga_pointer;
> 
> Leaving the case out where the dma_buf wrap around this works fine for a small data rate. But if we increase the rate the fpga_pointer also increases really fast and wlen gets quite big. Actually it gets bigger then max_event_size which is checked in rb_increment_wp leading to an error. 
> 
> The problem now is that the event size is actually not to big but since we have multi events in the buffer which are read by midas in one step. So we think in this case the function rb_increment_wp is comparing actually the wrong thing. Also increasing the max_event_size does not help.
> 
> Remark: dma_buf is volatile so memcpy is not possible here.
> 
> Cheers,
> Marius

The rb_xxx function are (thoroughly tested!) robust against high data rate given that you use them as intended:

1) Once you create the ring buffer via rb_create(), specify the maximum event size (overall event size, not bank size!). Later there is no protection any more, so if you obtain pdata from rb_get_wp, you can of course write 4GB to pdata, overwriting everything in your memory, causing a total crash. It's your responsibility to not write more bytes into pdata then 
what you specified as max event size in rb_create()

2) Once you obtain a write pointer to the ring buffer via rb_get_wp, this function might fail when the receiving side reads data slower than the producing side, simply because the buffer is full. In that case the producing side has to wait until space is freed up in the buffer by the receiving side. If your call to rb_get_wp returns DB_TIMEOUT, it means that the 
function did not obtain enough free space for the next event. In that case you have to wait (like ss_sleep(10)) and try again, until you succeed. Only when rb_get_wp() returns DB_SUCCESS, you are allowed to write into pdata, up to the maximum event size specified in rb_create of course. I don't see this behaviour in your code. You would need something 
like

do {
   status = rb_get_wp(rbh, (void **)&pdata, 10);
   if (status == DB_TIMEOUT)
      ss_sleep(10);
   } while (status == DB_TIMEOUT);

Best,
Stefan


> Dear all,
> 
> we creating Midas events directly inside a FPGA and send them off via DMA into the PC RAM. For reading out this RAM via Midas the FPGA sends as a pointer where it has written the last 4kB of data. We use this pointer for telling the ring buffer of midas where the new events are. The buffer looks something like:
> 
> // event 1
> dma_buf[0] = 0x00000001; // Trigger and Event ID
> dma_buf[1] = 0x00000001; // Serial number
> dma_buf[2] = TIME; // time
> dma_buf[3] = 18*4-4*4; // event size
> dma_buf[4] = 18*4-6*4; // all bank size
> dma_buf[5] = 0x11; // flags
> // bank 0
> dma_buf[6] = 0x46454230; // bank name
> dma_buf[7] = 0x6; // bank type TID_DWORD
> dma_buf[8] = 0x3*4; // data size
> dma_buf[9] = 0xAFFEAFFE; // data
> dma_buf[10] = 0xAFFEAFFE; // data
> dma_buf[11] = 0xAFFEAFFE; // data
> // bank 1
> dma_buf[12] = 0x1; // bank name
> dma_buf[12] = 0x46454231; // bank name
> dma_buf[13] = 0x6; // bank type TID_DWORD
> dma_buf[14] = 0x3*4; // data size
> dma_buf[15] = 0xAFFEAFFE; // data
> dma_buf[16] = 0xAFFEAFFE; // data
> dma_buf[17] = 0xAFFEAFFE; // data
> 
> // event 2
> .....
> 
> dma_buf[fpga_pointer] = 0xXXXXXXXX;
> 
> 
> And we do something like:
> 
> while{true}
>    // obtain buffer space
>    status = rb_get_wp(rbh, (void **)&pdata, 10);
>    fpga_pointer = fpga.read_last_data_add();
> 
>    wlen = last_fpga_pointer - fpga_pointer; \\ in 32 bit words
>    copy_n(&dma_buf[last_fpga_pointer], wlen, pdata);
>    rb_status = rb_increment_wp(rbh, wlen * 4); \\ in byte
> 
>    last_fpga_pointer = fpga_pointer;
> 
> Leaving the case out where the dma_buf wrap around this works fine for a small data rate. But if we increase the rate the fpga_pointer also increases really fast and wlen gets quite big. Actually it gets bigger then max_event_size which is checked in rb_increment_wp leading to an error. 
> 
> The problem now is that the event size is actually not to big but since we have multi events in the buffer which are read by midas in one step. So we think in this case the function rb_increment_wp is comparing actually the wrong thing. Also increasing the max_event_size does not help.
> 
> Remark: dma_buf is volatile so memcpy is not possible here.
> 
> Cheers,
> Marius

rb_xxx functions are midas event agnostic. The receiving side in mfe.cxx (lines 1418 in receive_trigger_event) however pulls one event at a time. If you 
have some inconsistency I would put some debugging code there.

Stefan

> Hello Stefan,
> is there a difference for the later data processing (after writing the ring buffer blocks)
> if we write single events or multiple in one rb_get_wp - memcopy - rb_increment_wp cycle?
> Both Marius and me have seen some inconsistencies in the number of events produced that is reported in the status page when writing multiple 
events in one go,
> so I was wondering if this is due to us treating the buffer badly or the way midas handles the events after that.
> 
> Given that we produce the full event in our (FPGA) domain, an option would be to always copy one event from the dma to the midas-system buffer 
in a loop.
> The question is if there is a difference (for midas) between
> [pseudo code, much simplified]
> 
> while(dma_read_index < last_dma_write_index){
>   if(rb_get_wp(pdata)!=SUCCESS){
>     dma_read_index+=event_size;
>     continue;   
>   }
>   copy_n(dma_buffer, pdata, event_size);
>   rb_increment_wp(event_size);
>   dma_read_index+=event_size;
> } 
> 
> and
> 
> while(dma_read_index < last_dma_write_index){
>   if(rb_get_wp(pdata)!=SUCCESS){
>      ...
>   };
>   total_size=max_n_events_that_fit_in_rb_block();
>   copy_n(dma_buffer, pdata, total_size);
>   rb_increment_wp(total_size);
>   dma_read_index+=total_size;
> }
> 
> Cheers,
> Konrad
> 
> > The rb_xxx function are (thoroughly tested!) robust against high data rate given that you use them as intended:
> > 
> > 1) Once you create the ring buffer via rb_create(), specify the maximum event size (overall event size, not bank size!). Later there is no protection 
any more, so if you obtain pdata from rb_get_wp, you can of course write 4GB to pdata, overwriting everything in your memory, causing a total crash. 
It's your responsibility to not write more bytes into pdata then 
> > what you specified as max event size in rb_create()
> > 
> > 2) Once you obtain a write pointer to the ring buffer via rb_get_wp, this function might fail when the receiving side reads data slower than the 
producing side, simply because the buffer is full. In that case the producing side has to wait until space is freed up in the buffer by the receiving side. 
If your call to rb_get_wp returns DB_TIMEOUT, it means that the 
> > function did not obtain enough free space for the next event. In that case you have to wait (like ss_sleep(10)) and try again, until you succeed. 
Only when rb_get_wp() returns DB_SUCCESS, you are allowed to write into pdata, up to the maximum event size specified in rb_create of course. I 
don't see this behaviour in your code. You would need something 
> > like
> > 
> > do {
> >    status = rb_get_wp(rbh, (void **)&pdata, 10);
> >    if (status == DB_TIMEOUT)
> >       ss_sleep(10);
> >    } while (status == DB_TIMEOUT);
> > 
> > Best,
> > Stefan
> > 
> > 
> > > Dear all,
> > > 
> > > we creating Midas events directly inside a FPGA and send them off via DMA into the PC RAM. For reading out this RAM via Midas the FPGA 
sends as a pointer where it has written the last 4kB of data. We use this pointer for telling the ring buffer of midas where the new events are. The 
buffer looks something like:
> > > 
> > > // event 1
> > > dma_buf[0] = 0x00000001; // Trigger and Event ID
> > > dma_buf[1] = 0x00000001; // Serial number
> > > dma_buf[2] = TIME; // time
> > > dma_buf[3] = 18*4-4*4; // event size
> > > dma_buf[4] = 18*4-6*4; // all bank size
> > > dma_buf[5] = 0x11; // flags
> > > // bank 0
> > > dma_buf[6] = 0x46454230; // bank name
> > > dma_buf[7] = 0x6; // bank type TID_DWORD
> > > dma_buf[8] = 0x3*4; // data size
> > > dma_buf[9] = 0xAFFEAFFE; // data
> > > dma_buf[10] = 0xAFFEAFFE; // data
> > > dma_buf[11] = 0xAFFEAFFE; // data
> > > // bank 1
> > > dma_buf[12] = 0x1; // bank name
> > > dma_buf[12] = 0x46454231; // bank name
> > > dma_buf[13] = 0x6; // bank type TID_DWORD
> > > dma_buf[14] = 0x3*4; // data size
> > > dma_buf[15] = 0xAFFEAFFE; // data
> > > dma_buf[16] = 0xAFFEAFFE; // data
> > > dma_buf[17] = 0xAFFEAFFE; // data
> > > 
> > > // event 2
> > > .....
> > > 
> > > dma_buf[fpga_pointer] = 0xXXXXXXXX;
> > > 
> > > 
> > > And we do something like:
> > > 
> > > while{true}
> > >    // obtain buffer space
> > >    status = rb_get_wp(rbh, (void **)&pdata, 10);
> > >    fpga_pointer = fpga.read_last_data_add();
> > > 
> > >    wlen = last_fpga_pointer - fpga_pointer; \\ in 32 bit words
> > >    copy_n(&dma_buf[last_fpga_pointer], wlen, pdata);
> > >    rb_status = rb_increment_wp(rbh, wlen * 4); \\ in byte
> > > 
> > >    last_fpga_pointer = fpga_pointer;
> > > 
> > > Leaving the case out where the dma_buf wrap around this works fine for a small data rate. But if we increase the rate the fpga_pointer also 
increases really fast and wlen gets quite big. Actually it gets bigger then max_event_size which is checked in rb_increment_wp leading to an error. 
> > > 
> > > The problem now is that the event size is actually not to big but since we have multi events in the buffer which are read by midas in one step. 
So we think in this case the function rb_increment_wp is comparing actually the wrong thing. Also increasing the max_event_size does not help.
> > > 
> > > Remark: dma_buf is volatile so memcpy is not possible here.
> > > 
> > > Cheers,
> > > Marius

You are the first one reporting this error, so it must be due to your values in the ODB. Can you track it down to specific ODB contents? If so, can you post it so that I can reproduce your error?

Stefan

Actually the cause of all of the is a real bug in the midas functions. We want each bank 8-byte aligned, so there is code in bk_close like:

midas.cxx:14788:
     ((BANK_HEADER *) event)->data_size += sizeof(BANK32) + ALIGN8(pbk32->data_size);

While the old sizeof(BANK)=8, the extended sizeof(BANK32)=12, so not 8-byte aligned. This code should rather be:

     ((BANK_HEADER *) event)->data_size += ALIGN8(sizeof(BANK32) +pbk32->data_size);

But if we change that, it would break every midas data file on this planet!

The only chance I see is to use the "flags" in the BANK_HEADER to distinguish a current bank from a "correct" bank. 
So we could introduce a flag BANK_FORMAT_ALIGNED which distinguishes between the two pieces of code above. 
Then bk_iterate32 would look at that flag and do the right thing.

Any thoughts?

Best,
Stefan

> Hi, Stefan - is this our famous 64-bit misalignement? Where we have each alternating bank aligned and misaligned at 64 bits? Without changing the data
> format, one can always store data in 64-bit aligned banks by inserting a dummy banks between real banks:
> 
> event header
> bank header
> bank1 --- 64-bit aligned --- with data
> bank2 --- misaligned, no data
> bank3 --- 64-bit aligned --- with data
> bank4 --- misaligned, no data
> ...
> 
> for sure, wastes space for bank2, bank4, etc, but at 12 bytes per bank, maybe this is negligible overhead compared to total event size.
> 
> BTW, aligned-to-64-bit is old news. The the PWB FPGA, I have 128-bit data paths to DDR RAM, the data has to be aligned to 128 bits, or else!

Ok, so what about the following: When we do a bk_init32, we add a parameter "alignment", which might be 1,4,8,16 and "old". We store this alignment in the bank header, so the 
decoding works correctly. Now "old" means the current encoding, which is screwed up and produces the results you mention above, but we have to keep it (actually make it the 
default!) for backward compatibility. But then we can ask for 64-bit alignment or even 128-bit alignment if that helps the DAQ speed.

The only problem I see is if one writes data with the new library using 128-bit alignment for example, and wants to read it back with old code. Then it would explode. So if we 
make this modification, we have to announce it carefully and also adjust all ROOTANA & Co libraries to read back any midas data.

Stefan

Logging directly from the midas logger to FTP is a bit cumbersome. In case of delays during login etc. this can throttle the whole DAQ chain. 
What we use in our lab is to write to local disk, then use the lazylogger (https://midas.triumf.ca/MidasWiki/index.php/Lazylogger) to copy the 
local files to a remote FTP server. This way we de-couple data taking from backup, making the system much more swift.

Best,
Stefan

Dear simplest solution seems to me to just remove the error message generation and silently ignore the BOE EOR events. 

Committed that change.

Stefan

Ok, changed.

Stefan

I had some quick look at the new mongoose code and didn't find anything I dislike. Did a quick test of the proxy which worked and is nice to have. 
Agree with all KO said about authentication.

So if there are no complaints, I would suggest that we move the summary of this thread into the official documentation.

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

> Dear all,
>        I'm trying to compile MIDAS on MacOS 10.10 and I get this error:
> 
> /Users/francesco/MIDAS/midas/src/system.cxx:3187:18: error: use of undeclared identifier 
> 'CLOCK_REALTIME'
>    clock_settime(CLOCK_REALTIME, &ltm);
> 
> Is it related to my (old) version of MacOS? Can I fix it somehow?
> 
> Thank you,
>       Francesco

If I see this correctly, you need at least MacOSX 10.12. If you can't upgrade, you can just remove line 3187 
from system.cxx. This function is only used in an online environment, where you would run a frontend on your 
Mac, which you probably don't do. So removing it does not hurt you.

Stefan

> I am using the Midas sequencer to run subsequent measurements in a loop, without 
> knowing how many iterations in advance. Therefore, I am using the "infinity" 
> option. Since I have other commands after the loop, it would be nice to have the 
> possibility to break the loop, but let the sequencer then finish the rest of the 
> commands. 
> Cheers,
> Ivo

You can do that with the "GOTO" statement, jumping to the first line after the loop.

Here is a working example:


LOOP runs, 5
     WAIT Seconds 3
     IF $runs > 2
         GOTO 7
     ENDIF
ENDLOOP
MESSAGE "Finished", 1

Best,
Stefan