> (preliminary, untested. I will keep this updated as I get testing feedback)
> 
> With recent changes to mana.c, creation of user ROOT objects in the MIDAS
> analyser has changed. Here is the new example code for creating ROOT objects
> that are visible in ROODY and are saved into the histogram file.
> 
> 1) in the "global" context (outside of any function)
> 
> #include <TH1D.h>
> #include <TProfile.h>
> 
> static TH1D* gMyHist1 = 0;
> static TProfile* gMyHist2 = 0;
> 
> 2) In the analyzer "init" or "begin run" method, create the histogram:
> 
> //extern TFolder *gManaHistosFolder; // from midas.h
> gMyHist1 = new TH1D("gMyHist1",...);
> gMyHist2 = new TProfile("gMyHist2",...);
> gManaHistosFolder->Add(gMyHist1);
> gManaHistosFolder->Add(gMyHist2);
> 
> (note: this will produce an warning about "possible memory leak")
> 
> 3) In the per-event method, fill the histograms
> 
> gMyHist1->Fill(x);
> gMyHist2->Fill(x,y);
> 
> K.O.


the book functions provide a convenient place to check against object duplication
and memory leaks etc., and a place to ensure that consistent subfolders are being
used.  eg. a while back we decided that TCutGs should be in a "cuts" subfolder.

To extend the booking to TProfile is fairly easy.  In fact if you want to
use the simple constructor TProfile::TProfile (const char *, const char *, Int_t,
Axis_t, Axis_t), then you could infact just use h1_book<TProfile>.

It now seems to me that the names h1_book, h2_book, cut_book are all too long
and even more upsetting are inconsistent.  Some of them are templates (most) and
some are not.  Perhaps they should all be templates, and all have the same name.
The attached patch accomplishes this (without deleting the old names).  With this
patch you can now do

gMyHist1 = book<TProfile>( "gMyHist2",...);

New book templates are needed when you (1) wish to change the subfolder, or (2)
need to use a different argument list in the constructor.  If you need help with
this for the TProfile constructors which are different from TH1D constructors then
let me know.  They should be easy to do.

For TGraph at lot depends on how you want to initialise the data points.

is there a reason why histograms are not saved after a replay?

   /* save histos if requested */
   if (out_info.histo_dump && clp.online) {
                              ^^^^^^^^^^

perhaps the && should be ||?

We stopped using tapes at Los Alamos a while ago.  The model we use is:

write data with mlogger to a local RAID system.  This is NFS mounted read only on teh analysis machines, and
becomes the working copy for most tasks.  Copy data to external hardrives.  We have been using USB.  The USB
system is sometime a little flaky (lnux 2.4.21-7, so we have a computer dedicated to this task.  The USB driver
can be reloaded, or if the user is not so knowledgeable, the copmuter can be rebooted.  users on this computer
have sudo privs, so they can format hard drives.  The disks are inserted into boxes while in use, and stored on
a shelf for data archival, so we don't have a lot of enclosures.

I use the automounter to mount and unmount the drives.  With a 10 second timeout, the user needs only to wait a
few seconds before unplugging the disk.  (cat /proc/mounts allows them to check if they want.) dmesg allows
them to find the drive letter.  This works for any device which appears later as a SCSI disk.  The automounter
manages /mnt/usb for vfat formatted devices, and /mnt/usbl for ext3 formatted devices (preferred for data
archiving).

autofs config files are:

/etc/auto.usb

# This is an automounter map and it has the following format
# key [ -mount-options-separated-by-comma ] location
# Details may be found in the autofs(5) manpage
 
*       -fstype=auto,nosuid,nodev,umask=0000,noatime    :/dev/&

/etc/auto.usbl

# This is an automounter map and it has the following format
# key [ -mount-options-separated-by-comma ] location
# Details may be found in the autofs(5) manpage
 
*       -fstype=auto,nosuid,nodev       :/dev/&

/etc/auto.master contains

/mnt/usb                /etc/auto.usb  --timeout=10
/mnt/usbl               /etc/auto.usbl --timeout=10


John.

> At triumf, we are developing a system to use removable hard drives to store data collected by midas 
> daq stations. The basic idea is to replace storage on 300 GB DLT tapes with storage on removable 
> esata, usb2 or firewire 750 GB hard drives.
> 
> To minimize culture shock, we stay as close as possible to the "tape" paradigm. Two removable disks 
> are used in tandem. Data is written to the first removable disk until it is full. Then midas automatically 
> switches to the second disk and asks the operator to replace the full disk with a blank disk. Similar to 
> handling tapes, the operator takes the full disk and stores it on the shelf (offline); takes a blank disk 
> and connects it to the computer. To read data from one of the disks, the operator takes the disk from 
> the shelf and connects it to the daq computer or to some other computer equipped with a compatible 
> removable storage bay. The full data disks are mounted read-only to prevent accidental data 
> modifications.
> 
> Two pieces of software are needed to implement this system:
> 
> 1) midas support for switching to alternate output disks as they become full. Data could be written to 
> the removable disk directly by the mlogger (no extra data copy on local disks) or by the lazylogger 
> (mlogger writes the data to the local disk, then the lazylogger copies it to the removable disk). Writing 
> directly to the removable disk is more efficient as it avoids the one extra data copy operation by the 
> lazylogger.
> 
> 2) a user interface utility for mounting and dismounting removable disks. Handling of removable disks 
> cannot be fully automatic: before unplugging a removable disk, the user has to inform the system; after 
> connecting a removable disk, the user has to tell the system to mount it read-only (for existing data), 
> read-write (to add more data) or to initialize a blank disk (fdisk+mkfs). (Also, some SATA interfaces do 
> not implement automatic hot-plug: they have to be manually told "please look for new disks").
> 
> We are presently evaluating various internal SATA hot-plug enclosures. We evaluated external eSATA 
> and USB2 enclosures and decided not to use them: while the performance is adequate, presence of 
> extra bulky components (eSATA and USB cables, non-standardized power bricks) and the extra cost of 
> eSATA and USB hard drive enclosures makes them unattractive.
> 
> I am open to suggestions and comments. I am most interested in hearing which data path (mlogger or 
> the lazylogger) would be most useful for other users.
> 
> K.O.

At Los Alamos, we have 15+1 frontends - the 15 between them read about 2 or 3
TB/hour and reduce it to 1 to 5 GB/hour which is then sent to the mevb on a 17th
computer.  The 16th frontend handles deadtime issues and scalers (small data rate).

frontends are 1GHz pentium 3, and backend is 2.8GHz dual CPU with hyperthreading.
Interconnect is 100Mb ethernet from frontends to switch, and 1Gb ethernet from
switch to backend.

Our bottle neck is (a) compactPCI backplane reading data from waveform digitizers
to the frontend CPUs and (b) CPU power on the frontend CPUs to analyzer the waveforms.

John

I am in favor of tcp_wrappers.

tcp_wrappers is well understood.

It works well in combination with a firewall.

mhttpd hangs when our security folks scan us.  We are not allowed to block them
with a firewall, but we can use tcpwrappers.

Would it make sense to put the same mechanism on mserver?

the man page for libtcpwrappers.a (taken from the tcpwrappers7.6 tar ball) is
attached. And the output after running it through nroff -man.

The odb is too fragile for security.  It is not understood well enough by many
experimenters.

As you can see I am in favor of tcp_wrappers.  This is mainly because it is part
of an existing and tested security model.  I don't know about the windows
world, but as you can also see, I vote for using something that is already part
of the windows security model.  Here's an example of how well the integrated
security model works:

    if an person is part of an experiment I make sure they can ssh to the
    experiment's computer

    the same rules could provide them with web access

Second is that when a change is needed to the security model then it is easy to
keep it current.  What if somebody restores an old ODB?  What if they setup a
small test with a new ODB?

If mhttpd used tcp_wrappers, then all our machines here at LANL would already be
configured!  No need for
users to do any root access (though those that need it have it anyway).

John.

The following program handles regular directories in a file, or folders (ugh).
Most histograms are added bin by bin.

For scaler events it is convenient to see the counts as a function of time (ala
sclaer history plots in mhttpd).  If the histogram looks like a scaler plot versus
time, then new bins are added on to the end (or into the middle!) of the histogram.

All different versions of cuts are kept.

TTrees are not explicitly supported, so probably don't do the right thing...

John.

> Dear MIDAS users,
> 
> I want to add several .root-files produced by the MIDAS analyzer, in a fast 
> and convenient way. ROOT's hadd fails because it does not know how to treat 
> TFolders. I guess this problem is not unique to me, so I hope that somebody of 
> you might already have found a solution.
> 
> Why don't I just run "analyzer -r 1 10000"?
> We have taken lots of runs under (rapidly) varying conditions, so it would be 
> lots of "-r". And the analysis is quite involved, so rerunning all data takes 
> about one hour on a fast PC making this quite painful.
> Therefore, I would like to rerun all data only once, and then add the result 
> files depending on different criteria.
> 
> Of course, I tried to write a script that does the adding. But somehow it is 
> incredibly slow. And I am not the Master Of C++, too.
> 
> Is there any deeper reason for MIDAS using TFolders, not TDirectorys? ROOT's 
> hadd can treat TDirectory. Can I simply patch "my" MIDAS? Is there general 
> interest in a change like this? (Does anyone have experience with the speed of 
> hadd?)
> 
> Looking forward to comments from the Forum.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Randolf

some semi-random thoughts:

no templates strictly means you can't use std::string, std::vector etc.

printf is in any case part of C++ (#include <cstdio>), but std::ostreams can be faster (for std::cout, endl line causes buffer flushing, whereas "\n" does not flush the buffer but printf
always flushes the buffer), and formatting is possible (though very long winded).  printf does not allow to print things other than simple data, e.g. BANK_HEADER* bh; printf( "%?", *bh);

I've been writing all our DAQ code in C++ for a while now.

> > >
> > > With the removal of the requirement to make it possible to write MIDAS frontends in C, we can switch the MIDAS 
> > > default build to C++ and start using C++ features in the MIDAS API (std::string, std::vector, etc).
> > > 
> 
> C++ is a big animal. Obviously we want to use std::string, std::vector and similar improvements over plain C (we already use "//" for comments).
> 
> But in keeping with the Camel's nose fable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel%27s_nose), there are some parts of C++ we definitely do not want to use in MIDAS. Even the C++ FAQ talks 
> about "evil features", see https://isocpp.org/wiki/faq/big-picture#use-evil-things-sometimes
> 
> Here is my list of things to use and to avoid. Comments on this are very welcome - as everybody's experience with C++ is different (and everybody's experience is very valuable and very 
> welcome).
> 
> - std::string, std:vector, etc are in. I am already using them in the MIDAS API (midas.h)
> - extern "C" is out, everything has to be C++, will remove "extern "C"" from all midas header files.
> - exceptions are out, see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1736146/why-is-exception-handling-bad
> - std::thread and std::mutex are in, at least for writing new frontends, but see discussion of "cannot use c++11". (maybe replace ss_mutex_xxx() with out own std::mutex look-alike).
> - heavy use of templates and heavy use of argument overloading is out - just by looking at the code, impossible to tell what function will be called
> - "auto" is on probation. I need to know if "auto v=f()" is an integer or a double when I write "auto w=v/2" or "auto w=v/2.0". see 
> https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/180216/does-auto-make-c-code-harder-to-understand
> - unreadable gibberish is out (lambdas, etc)
> - C-style malloc()/free() is in. C++ new and delete are okey, but "delete[]" confuses me.
> - C-style printf() is in. C++ cout and "<<" gunk provide no way to easily format the output for easy reading.
> 
> K.O.

Hi All,

I'm testing MIDAS SVN rev-4113 on Scientific Linux 5.1 (i386) and the Analyzer 
can't start as Daemon. What I mean "can't" is that it stops running 
immediately without leaving any error messages. However, it can run offline or 
without becoming a Daemon. I have tested with ROOT 5.14e/5.16/5.18 and 
the "Experiment" example coming with MIDAS and this problem always happens. 
Any ideas?

Best Regards,
Jimmy

Hi All,

Is there any example code for using MIDAS with the CAEN VME-USB Bridge V1718? 
Thanks.

Regards,
Jimmy

Hi All,

I am testing the libraries provided by CAEN with the sample softwares in the 
bundle CD. The Windows sample program works fine, but I cannot get started with 
the Linux sample program. When I run CAENVMEDemo in Scientific Linux 5.1, it 
gives me a message "Error opening the device". I have followed the instructions 
in CAENVMElibReadme.txt: 
- compile and load the device driver v1718.ko
- install the library libCAENVME.so

Does anyone have any experience of using V1718 in Scientific Linux? Thanks.

Regards,
Jimmy


> Hi All,
> 
> Is there any example code for using MIDAS with the CAEN VME-USB Bridge V1718? 
> Thanks.
> 
> Regards,
> Jimmy

Dear All,

I have a problem when testing the V792N 16 CH QDC with the V1718 VME-USB 
Bridge on Scientific Linux 5.1 i386 (kernel 2.6.18-53.1.21.e15).

The problem is that the V792N does not response normally after a few minutes 
of continuous polling and readout of data. It seems like the V792N is hanged 
and a hardware reset of the VME system is required to bring it working again. 
If I do not poll for DREADY first and directly read the Output Buffer 
continuously, the system can work properly.

I have worked on this problem many days but I cannot find any clues to solve 
it. I have tried to use the CAENVMEDemo program (with some modifications) to 
do the same thing (polling and readout) and it works fine. CAEN technical 
support also doesn't know why the VME system is hanged. I think it might be a 
problem of MIDAS itself. I have tried with MIDAS revision 4132 and the trunk 
version, but the problem is still there. Is there any parameter in MIDAS 
(buffer size etc?) which may cause this problem? I have attached my frontend 
code and drivers for your reference.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Best Regards,
Jimmy

Dear All,

Is there any recommended platforms for running MIDAS? Have anyone encountered 
problems when running MIDAS on Scientific Linux?

Thanks.

Jimmy

Dear All,

We have a temperature/humidity sensor in MIDAS now and will add a liquid level 
sensor to MIDAS soon. We want the operators to get alerted ASAP when the 
laboratory environment or the liquid level reached some critical levels. Can 
MIDAS send email alerts or SMS alerts to cell phones when the alarms are 
triggered? If yes, how can I config it?

Many thanks!

Best Regards,
Jimmy

Dear All,

How can I add a button at the top of the "Status" webpage which will show a 
page similar to the "CNAF" one after I click on it? and how can I make a 
custom page similar to "CNAF" which allow me to call some custom funtions? I 
want to make a page which is particularly for doing calibration.

Thank you for your attention!

Best Regards,
Jimmy Ngai

Dear All,

I have created a custom page (please see the attachment) and imported into 
MIDAS with key name "Control panel&" (without the ""). I have the following 
two questions:

1) I display the status of the run with <odb src="/Runinfo/State">, but it 
returns numbers which is not user friendly. How can I make something 
like "Running" with green background and "Stopped" with red background in the 
default status page?

2) When I click either Start/Stop/Pause/Resume, it can performs the right 
things, but afterward it jumps to the page "http://domain.name:8081/CS/" which 
shows "Invalid custom page: NULL path". How can I make it returns to the 
correct page "http://domain.name:8081/CS/Control%20panel"?

Thank you for your attention.

Best Regards,
Jimmy

Dear All,

I have one more question. I use <odb src="odb field" edit=1> to display an 
editable ODB value, but how can I show this value in hexadecimal?

Thanks.

Best Regards,
Jimmy


> Dear All,
> 
> I have created a custom page (please see the attachment) and imported into 
> MIDAS with key name "Control panel&" (without the ""). I have the following 
> two questions:
> 
> 1) I display the status of the run with <odb src="/Runinfo/State">, but it 
> returns numbers which is not user friendly. How can I make something 
> like "Running" with green background and "Stopped" with red background in the 
> default status page?
> 
> 2) When I click either Start/Stop/Pause/Resume, it can performs the right 
> things, but afterward it jumps to the page "http://domain.name:8081/CS/" which 
> shows "Invalid custom page: NULL path". How can I make it returns to the 
> correct page "http://domain.name:8081/CS/Control%20panel"?
> 
> Thank you for your attention.
> 
> Best Regards,
> Jimmy

Dear All,

Can one set a time limit for each run? I can only find event limit in ODB. 
Thanks.

Jimmy

Dear All,

I'm using SL5 and MIDAS rev 4528. Occasionally, when I stop a run in odbedit, 
a timeout would occur: 
[midas.c:9496:rpc_client_call,ERROR] rpc timeout after 121 sec, routine 
= "rc_transition", host = "computerB", connection closed
Error: Unknown error 504 from client 'Frontend' on host computerB

This error seems to be random without any reason or pattern. After this error 
occurs, I cannot start or stop any run. Sometime restarting MIDAS can bring 
the system working again, but sometime not.

Another transition timeout occurs after I change any ODB value using the web 
interface:
[midas.c:8291:rpc_client_connect,ERROR] timeout on receive remote computer 
info: 
[midas.c:3642:cm_transition,ERROR] cannot connect to client "Frontend" on host 
computerB, port 36255, status 503
Error: Cannot connect to client 'Frontend'

This error is reproducible: start run -> change ODB value within webpage -> 
stop run -> timeout!

Any idea?

Thanks,
Jimmy

Hi All,

I set "/Analyzer/ODB Load" to true and analyzed a run in offline mode. After
that, I found the start time and stop time in /RunInfo did not reflect the
correct time as in online. How do I retrieve the correct start/stop time from
the ODB in offline mode?

Thanks!

Jimmy

Dear All,

I want to run two frontend programs (one for trigger and one for slow control)
concurrently on the same computer, but I failed. The second frontend said: 

Semaphore already present
 There is another process using the semaphore.
 Or a process using the semaphore exited abnormally.
 In That case try to manually release the semaphore with:
   ipcrm sem XXX.

The two frontends are connected to the same experiment. Is there any way I can
overcome this problem?

Thanks!

Jimmy