> > Dear all
> > 
> > We just started our beam time at ILL and just found yesterday that for certain 
> > settings of our detector the data is not saved into the .mid files. Running "mdump 
> > -l 10" online we see the data coming in as they should. Nevertheless, if we run 
> > "mdump -x runXXXXXX.mid" offline, the data file has no events and the banks are 
> > missing. Any ideas where the data could go lost?
> > 
> > Thanks in advance,
> > Ivo
> 
> Have you checked 
> 
> /Logger/Channels/0/Settings/Event ID = -1
> /Logger/Channels/0/Settings/Trigger mask = -1
> 
> If these settings are not -1, they filter the data stream for certain events and trigger 
> masks.
> 
> Stefan

Good morning Stefan

Both set to -1. We only have one logging channel. If we run a sequence with a few runs and the 
same settings, sometimes data is in the .mid file and sometimes it is not.

Best,
Ivo 

> Then I'm running out of ideas. Things I would check:
> 
> - Are the file sizes about the same? 
> 
> - When you dump the .mid file, you do you see your bank names? 
> 
> This would tell you if the events are really missing or if mdump would just not find them.
> 
> But I guess without being able to debug the system at ILL I cannot be of any more help. You are the 
> first one reporting such a problem, so it must have to do with your local setup.
> 
> Stefan

So I did a quick check. The file size is about the same (322K and 329K). When I dump the .mid I don't see 
the banks. It only prints two lines with "------ Event# 0 ------" and "------ Event# 1 ------" whereas for 
the file with data I get the two banks with all the data. Our online analyzer also fails to see the banks. 
Is there another way to check what is in the .mid file?

Best,
Ivo

> with "dump" I meant a true object dump like "hexdump -C run000001.mid". I produced a file with ADC0 and TDC0 
> banks (that's the example from the distribution under exampels/experiments/frontend.cxx), and I get
> 
> ....
> 00024220  01 00 00 00 41 44 43 30  04 00 08 00 eb 06 35 04  |....ADC0......5.|
> 00024230  31 09 4f 06 54 44 43 30  04 00 08 00 93 04 fb 07  |1.O.TDC0........|
> 00024240  5c 09 88 0b 01 00 00 00  01 00 00 00 2a 0b 31 5f  |\...........*.1_|
> 00024250  28 00 00 00 20 00 00 00  01 00 00 00 41 44 43 30  |(... .......ADC0|
> 00024260  04 00 08 00 c3 09 24 05  85 05 f3 06 54 44 43 30  |......$.....TDC0|
> 00024270  04 00 08 00 88 08 2d 03  3b 0d d6 02 01 00 00 00  |......-.;.......|
> 00024280  02 00 00 00 2a 0b 31 5f  28 00 00 00 20 00 00 00  |....*.1_(... ...|
> 00024290  01 00 00 00 41 44 43 30  04 00 08 00 a5 0a 69 09  |....ADC0......i.|
> 
> where you clearly see the ADC0 and TDC0 banks.
> 
> Stefan

So at least I learned something new. I tried it with the hexdump and the banks are not existent in the .mid file. I 
only have the ODB inside the file. The 7K difference in size is actually just about what I expect to be the data 
(1792 x 4 bytes)

Best, Ivo

> Have you tried longer files? Maybe a few 100 MB or so. Maybe a buffer is not flushed correctly at the end of a run.

Yes, I did. This 7 KB of the data bank is about the limit. If we go only 1 KB higher it seems that we save all data. In 
our specific case, this is the number of time bins (256 pixels with 7 time bins results in data loss, with 8 time bins it 
seems to be okay, data type is DWORD). 

Of course, a workaround for us is to save at least 8 time bins and throw 7 of them away later on. Nevertheless, since we 
are only in the commissioning phase now this is okay, I would just like to avoid data loss in the data taking phase of the 
experiment so knowing where the problem origins could help. 

I did another test with another FE running that produces a lot of data. The behavior is the same though. If the bank size 
is less than about 8 KB, the bank is not saved anymore. But probably this is anyway the expected behavior since it is a 
different FE that produces the data. 

So if it is coming from the buffer, is there something I could change to test or solve the problem?

Best, Ivo

> It would be good to pin point there the data is lost. This is the sequence:
> 
> frontend user code -> mfe.c code -> SYSTEM buffer -> mlogger -> disk
> 
> To see if correct data arrives to the SYSTEM buffer, run:
> mdump -z SYSTEM
> 
> To see if mlogger is receiving events from the SYSTEM buffer, run:
> mlogger -v ### mlogger should report all events, history and data
> 
> To see if mlogger writes events to disk, examine the disk file (in this case, you already did, data is not there).
> 
> I would guess that your data does not make it out from the frontend (mdump shows "nothing"),
> if data were to arrive into the SYSTEM buffer, it would make it to disk, unless
> mlogger is misconfigured (but you already checked that).
> 
> If you have trouble with the frontend framework code, you can try to switch from the mfe.c frontend
> to the newer c++ tmfe frontend (see progs/fetest_tmfe.cxx and progs/fetest_tmfe_thread.cxx).
> 
> K.O.

Good evening

I tried to reproduce the behavior in a very simple FE but it did not work out. The next thing for me would be to take the FE that is producing this behavior, replace all the device communication and data with dummies. If the problem is still there I would start to simplify as much as possible. 

Following the inputs of KO, I pin-pointed the data loss. The system buffer still gets the data but the mlogger does not write the data event. Then of course the data is also not anymore present in the data file. Therefore, I checked the logger settings again, Event ID and Trigger Mask still -1. Nothing else, at least from my point of view, that is misconfigured. Nevertheless, if it helps I can send my ODB settings. 

When doing the tests just before I found something else that probably can give a hint to the problem. The data is only lost if the time between two runs is long (a few seconds). As an example: If I run a sequence with a loop and after the FE stops the run the loop ends and the next run is started automatically, then only the first run has no data, which is the one after a longer time of no data taking. When I add a "WAIT Seconds 5" after the run before starting the next, not data is written to the disk for any run. I also found this once when adding a sleep(1) at the end of the FE readout function but back then did not think about it any further. 

Best, Ivo

Thanks for the investigation. Back in 2020, we had some issues of losing data between the system buffer and the logger writing them to disk (https://daq00.triumf.ca/elog-midas/Midas/1966). This was polled equipment but we had a multithreaded FE running at the same time. Could this be related to the same problem?

Best, Ivo

Good evening, 

I am setting up Midas (v2.1) for a new experiment. We want to save the data in the ROOT format. We installed ROOT from source (v6.28/06), and ROOTSYS is set. When we compile Midas, it says that it found ROOT. We set up a second logger channel where we set the filename to run%05d.root, the format to ROOT, and the output to ROOT. Nevertheless, when starting a run, the logger writes the error that "channel '1' requested ROOT output, but mlogger is built without HAVE_ROOT". From the CMake file, I would assume that it is set automatically if ROOT is found. Do you have any idea why the mlogger does not find ROOT or save the data in the ROOT format?

Thanks in advance for your ideas, input, and help. 

Cheers,
Ivo

> Stefan is right. I forgot this. As solution to our troubles, mlogger is built without root support. use rmlogger instead.
> 
> K.O.

Thanks, Stefan and Konstantin, for your feedback. 

So I checked the cmake file, and already the existence of the rmlogger shows that HAVE_ROOT was set. It was really only the problem of not being aware of rmlogger. This now works, and it produces root files that are readable. 

However, we encountered a new problem not that it does not find a bank that is produced by a multi-threaded slow-control frontend. The logger triggers the error "mlogger.cxx:3328:root_book_bank,ERROR] received unknown bank 'MSRD' in event #8". After this, we get a segmentation violation, but I guess this is then coming from the error. If we run only the polled FE, it works fine. If we run the polled and the multi-threaded FE with only the logger saving mid files, it works fine as well. Are you aware of issues with multi-threaded slow-control frontends and saving their banks in root format?

Cheers,
Ivo

> No, I'm not aware of this problem, but I suspect that your events somehow got corrupted. You can try the mdump utility
> or the "Event Dump" web page to peek into your events, maybe you see an issue there. To give you more detailed information,
> I would have to reproduce your problem, which is probably hard without your hardware.
> 
> Stefan

Hi Stefan,

So I did a few things:
- I checked with mdump online, the data stream looks good, and I can see the bank name properly
- I checked with mdump offline the .mid files, the banks are there, and the data look good
- I removed the creating of the bank MSRD in the class driver. This stopped the writing of the data in the midas/root file but kept the stream to the history files. In principle, this is a quick and dirty fix because we still have all the data in the history files. Do you see any bigger problem with that solution?
- I tried to run the multi-threaded slow-control frontend with the generic class driver (generic.cxx) and the nulldev device driver (nulldev.cxx). This produces the DMND and MSRD bank with and also produces the error in the with the logger when trying to save in the root format (received unknown bank "DMND" in event #8). This means it is not related to the devices (maybe some other part of my user code of course). 

Cheers,
Ivo

Good morning, 

In our setup, we have a neutron detector that creates up to 16 MB of polled (EQ_POLLED) data in one event (event limit = 1) that we do not want to have saved into the ODB. Nevertheless, I cannot disable it. The equipment has only the read-on-flag RO_RUNNING, and the read-on value in the ODB is 1. The data are also not saved to the history. I also tried with a minimal example frontend with the same settings, but also those "data" get written to the ODB. For now, I increased the size of the ODB to 40 MB (50% for keys and 50% for data is automatic), but in principle, I do not want it to be saved to the ODB at all. Is there something I am missing?

Thanks in advance for your advice. 

Cheers,
Ivo

To build a frontend task, the user code and system code are compiled and linked 
together with the required libraries, by running a Makefile (e.g. 
../midas/examples/experiment/Makefile in the MIDAS package).

I tried building the CAMAC example frontend and I get this error:

g++: error: /home/rcmp/packages/midas/drivers/camac/ces8210.c: No such file or 
directory
g++: error: /home/rcmp/packages/midas/linux/lib/libmidas.a: No such file or 
directory
make: *** [camac_init.exe] Error 1

Obviously, I'm running the "make all" command from the camac directory. Why 
would I get this "no such file" error? Do I need to download the MIDAS packages 
inside my experiment directory?

Thanks for helping me out.

Isaac

Hey folks,

I'm currently working on setting up a MIDAS experiment and I am following the 
"Setup MIDAS experiment at Triumf" page on 
MidasWiki(https://midas.triumf.ca/MidasWiki/index.php/Setup_MIDAS_experiment_at_
TRIUMF).

The 3rd line of the hardware checklist under the "Prepare VME hardware section" 
has a link to a page that doesn't exit anymore, I'm trying to figure out how to 
setup the VME address jumpers on the VME modules.

Does anyone know how to setup the VME modules? Or, can anyone send me a link to 
instructions?

Thanks a lot for your time.

Isaac

> Hi, if you are not using any VME hardware, then you have no VME address jumpers to 
> set. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMEbus
> 
> K.O.

Hi thanks for taking the time to help me out. I am using a VME-MWS in this experiment.

Let me know what you think.

Isaac

Hey everyone,

When I run mhttpd I get the following error message:

[mhttpd,ERROR] [odb.cxx:1720:db_open_database,ERROR] Removed ODB client 
'mhttpd', index 0 because process pid 4531 does not exists
[mhttpd,INFO] Removed open record flag from "/Experiment/Security/RPC 
hosts/Allowed hosts"
[mhttpd,INFO] Removed exclusive access mode from "/Experiment/Security/RPC 
hosts/Allowed hosts"
[mhttpd,INFO] Removed open record flag from "/Experiment/Security/mhttpd 
hosts/Allowed hosts"
[mhttpd,INFO] Removed exclusive access mode from "/Experiment/Security/mhttpd 
hosts/Allowed hosts"
[mhttpd,INFO] Removed open record flag from "/Sequencer/State"
[mhttpd,INFO] Removed exclusive access mode from "/Sequencer/State"
[mhttpd,INFO] Corrected 3 ODB entries
[mhttpd,INFO] Deleted entry '/System/Clients/4531' for client 'mhttpd' because 
it is not connected to ODB
[mhttpd,INFO] Client 'mhttpd' on buffer 'SYSMSG' removed by bm_open_buffer 
because process pid 4531 does not exist
Mongoose web server will not use password protection
mongoose web server is listening on the HTTP port 8080

So mhttpd works as I have access to it through my browser but mlogger does not 
work when I try running it (Alarm: Program Logger is not running). I've 
managed to get mlogger working before and I think that the problem might be 
from maybe having another instance of ODB running without me knowing. 

Has anyone ever had this issue?

Thanks so much for your time.

Isaac

Hi everyone,

I have been building an experiment using the v1718 CAEN interface to talk to my modules and I am using the CAENVMElib Linux Library (2.50). I've managed to deal with data type issues by including additional libraries to my driver code but there is one type error that persists:


In file included from /usr/include/CAENVMElib.h:27:0,
             	from include/v1718.h:25,
             	from v1718.c:26:
/usr/include/CAENVMEtypes.h:323:9: error: unknown type name ‘VARIANT_BOOL’
     	CAEN_BOOL cvDS0;  	/* Data Strobe 0 signal                     	*/


The header file used to defined the CAEN types (CAENVMEtypes.h) defines 'CAEN_BOOL' like this:


#ifdef LINUX
#define CAEN_BYTE   	unsigned char
#define CAEN_BOOL   	int
#else
#define CAEN_BYTE   	byte
#define CAEN_BOOL   	VARIANT_BOOL
#endif


Has anyone ever ran into that problem when setting up an experiment using the CAEN standard?

Thanks for your help.

Isaac

> Hi,
> 
> You're building under Linux like. You want to define the LINUX and skip the VARIANT_BOOL all together.
> PAA
> 
> > Hi everyone,
> > 
> > I have been building an experiment using the v1718 CAEN interface to talk to my modules and I am using the CAENVMElib Linux Library (2.50). I've managed to deal with data type issues by including additional libraries to my driver code but there is one type error 
> that persists:
> > 
> > 
> > In file included from /usr/include/CAENVMElib.h:27:0,
> >              	from include/v1718.h:25,
> >              	from v1718.c:26:
> > /usr/include/CAENVMEtypes.h:323:9: error: unknown type name ‘VARIANT_BOOL’
> >      	CAEN_BOOL cvDS0;  	/* Data Strobe 0 signal                     	*/
> > 
> > 
> > The header file used to defined the CAEN types (CAENVMEtypes.h) defines 'CAEN_BOOL' like this:
> > 
> > 
> > #ifdef LINUX
> > #define CAEN_BYTE   	unsigned char
> > #define CAEN_BOOL   	int
> > #else
> > #define CAEN_BYTE   	byte
> > #define CAEN_BOOL   	VARIANT_BOOL
> > #endif
> > 
> > 
> > Has anyone ever ran into that problem when setting up an experiment using the CAEN standard?
> > 
> > Thanks for your help.
> > 
> > Isaac

Yes, you are right. That fixed it and my frontend is compiling.

Thanks Pierre-Andre.

Isaac


> Hi,
> 
> You're building under Linux like. You want to define the LINUX and skip the VARIANT_BOOL all together.
> PAA
> 
> > Hi everyone,
> > 
> > I have been building an experiment using the v1718 CAEN interface to talk to my modules and I am using the CAENVMElib Linux Library (2.50). I've managed to deal with data type issues by including additional libraries to my driver code but there is one type error 
> that persists:
> > 
> > 
> > In file included from /usr/include/CAENVMElib.h:27:0,
> >              	from include/v1718.h:25,
> >              	from v1718.c:26:
> > /usr/include/CAENVMEtypes.h:323:9: error: unknown type name ‘VARIANT_BOOL’
> >      	CAEN_BOOL cvDS0;  	/* Data Strobe 0 signal                     	*/
> > 
> > 
> > The header file used to defined the CAEN types (CAENVMEtypes.h) defines 'CAEN_BOOL' like this:
> > 
> > 
> > #ifdef LINUX
> > #define CAEN_BYTE   	unsigned char
> > #define CAEN_BOOL   	int
> > #else
> > #define CAEN_BYTE   	byte
> > #define CAEN_BOOL   	VARIANT_BOOL
> > #endif
> > 
> > 
> > Has anyone ever ran into that problem when setting up an experiment using the CAEN standard?
> > 
> > Thanks for your help.
> > 
> > Isaac

Hi everyone,

I've recently took the analyzer template from $MIDASSYS/examples/experiment and 
modified it to be able to use Roody on a very simple frontend setup. The 
analyzer works fine and I am able to view the online histograms but my console 
prints out this error:

[Analyzer,ERROR] [odb.cxx:919:db_validate_name,ERROR] Invalid name 
"/Analyzer/Tests/Always true/Rate [Hz]" passed to db_create_key_wlocked: should 
not contain "["                      
[Analyzer,ERROR] [odb.cxx:919:db_validate_name,ERROR] Invalid name 
"/Analyzer/Tests/low_sum/Rate [Hz]" passed to db_create_key_wlocked: should not 
contain "["
[Analyzer,ERROR] [odb.cxx:919:db_validate_name,ERROR] Invalid name 
"/Analyzer/Tests/high_sum/Rate [Hz]" passed to db_create_key_wlocked: should not 
contain "["

The error keeps getting printed even after stopping the run.

I do have these 3 keys under Analyzer/Tests/ in my ODB but I do not know where 
they come from. Any suggestions on what the root of the issue is?

Thanks for the help!

Isaac

> https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/298/invalid-odb-names-in-example-midas
> K.O.

Hi K.O.

Ok I see, I will use the most up to date analyzer.

Thanks a ton for your help.

Isaac

Hi all,

I'm currently trying to build events through doing block transfers. The worry was 
that organizing and packaging bank data into an array would produce too much dead 
time causing too many missed events. Trying out that method, I'm running into all 
sorts of issues such as unaligned transfers where the QDC events are unaligned, or 
improperly aligned banks. Giving me a headache.

My question is, if I were to revert back to simple 32 bit read cycles and using 
the fevme.cxx template's method of organizing data before sending them to the 
buffer, what kind of deadtime should I expect? Am I wrong to assume that this 
would result in deadtime at all? I'm using a CAEN V792n 16 channel QDC and the hit 
frequency that I'm using to test is 20kHz.

Thanks.

Isaac