Back Midas Rome Roody Rootana
  Midas DAQ System, Page 124 of 136  Not logged in ELOG logo
New entries since:Wed Dec 31 16:00:00 1969
ID Date Author Topicup Subject
  638   06 Sep 2009 Exaos LeeSuggestionUpdated "CMakeLists.txt"
Add installation commands. Please see the attachment.
  640   06 Sep 2009 Exaos LeeSuggestionCould not create strings other than 32 characters with odbedit -c "..." command
> > Ok, I added a command
> > 
> > odbedit -c "create STRING Test[8][40]"
> > 
> > which works now. Please update to SVN revision 4555 of odbedit.c
> > 
> > - Stefan
> 
> If I want to create only one string, should I write like this:
> 
>   odbedit -c "create STRING Test[] [256]"
> 
> OK. I need it. I will try the new odbedit.

"create STRING test[1][256]" works.
  663   15 Oct 2009 Exaos LeeSuggestionBuilding MIDAS using CMake
The attached zip file is the updated configurations for building MIDAS using CMake. It works with svn-r4604.
If you want to use it, please follow the steps here:

Quote:


  1. Unzip the attachment, copy CMakeLists.txt and directory "cmake" into the midas source tree.
    $ cp -rp CMakeLists.txt cmake/ <Path-to-MIDAS-tree>/
  2. Make a build dir, and change to it.
  3. Execute cmake as this
    $ cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<path-to-install> <path-to-MIDAS-tree>
  4. Make and install

You may use 'cmake -G <generator-name>' to generate building files for Unix Makefiles, Eclipse CDT4, KDevelop3 or Xcode, etc. I didn't test with other platforms. It now works with Unix Makefiles under Linux system. Please feedback any bugs to me: Exaos.Lee(AT)gmail.com .
  668   02 Nov 2009 Exaos LeeSuggestionNew cmake files
Though ended with ".c", "lazylogger.c" has to be build with C++ compiler. I have 
to modify my CMakeLists.txt. 
Please see the attachment if you need it. It works with svn-r4616.
  674   23 Nov 2009 Exaos LeeSuggestionScripts for "midas-config"
Supposing you have installed MIDAS to some directory such as "/opt/MIDAS/r4621", you have to write some Makefile as the following while building some applications based on the version installed:

Quote:
CFLAGS += -I/opt/MIDAS/r4621/include -DOS_LINUX -g -O2 -Wall -fPIC
LIBS += -lutil -lpthread -lodbc -lz
....

Why not use a script to record your MIDAS building options? When you want to build something based on it, just type something such as

Quote:
M_CFLAGS := `midas-config --cflags`
M_LIBS := `midas-config --libs`

You needn't to check your installed options each time when you build something against it. Each time you install a new version of MIDAS, you only need to update the script called 'midas-config'. I wrote a sample script named "genconf.sh" in the first zipped attachment. The 2nd "midas-config" is a sampled generated by it. Also a diff of Makefile is included. I hope it may help. Smile
  691   22 Dec 2009 Suzannah DavielSuggestionRedesign of status page links
> The custom and alias links in the standard midas status page were shown as HTML 
> links so far. If there are many links with names having spaces in their names, 
> it's a bit hard to distinguish between them. Therefore, they are packed now into 
> individual buttons (see attachment) starting from SVN revision 4633 on. This makes 
> also the look more homogeneous. If there is any problem with that, please report.

Would you consider using a different colour for the alias buttons (or background
colour)? At present it's hard to know whether a button is an alias link, a custom page
link or a user-button especially if you are not familiar with the button layout. 
  692   11 Jan 2010 Stefan RittSuggestionRedesign of status page links
> > The custom and alias links in the standard midas status page were shown as HTML 
> > links so far. If there are many links with names having spaces in their names, 
> > it's a bit hard to distinguish between them. Therefore, they are packed now into 
> > individual buttons (see attachment) starting from SVN revision 4633 on. This makes 
> > also the look more homogeneous. If there is any problem with that, please report.
> 
> Would you consider using a different colour for the alias buttons (or background
> colour)? At present it's hard to know whether a button is an alias link, a custom page
> link or a user-button especially if you are not familiar with the button layout. 

Ok, I changed the background colors for the button rows. There are now four different 
colors: Main menu buttons, Scripts, Manually triggered events, Alias & Custom pages. Hope 
this is ok. Of course one could have each button in a different color, but then it gets 
complicated... In that case I would recommend to make a dedicated custom page with all these 
buttons, which you can then tailor exactly to your needs.
  768   24 Jun 2011 Exaos LeeSuggestionBuild MIDAS debian packages using autoconf/automake.
Here is my story. I deployed several Debian Linux boxes as the DAQ systems in our lab. But I feel it's boring to build and install midas and its related softwares (such as root) on each box. So I need a local debian software repository and put midas and its related packages in it. First of all, I need a midas debian package. After a week's study and searching, I finally finished the job. Hope you feel it useful.

All the work is attached as "daq-midas_deb.tar.gz". The detail is followed. I also created several debian packages. But it's too large to be uploaded. I havn't my own site accessible from internet. So, if you need the debian packages, please give me an accessible ftp or other similar service, then I can upload them to you.

First, I use autoconf/automake to rewrite the building system of MIDAS. You can check it this way:
1. Untar daq-midas_deb.tar.gz somewhere, assumming ~/Temp.
2. cd ~/Temp/daq-midas
3. svn co -r 5065 svn+ssh://svn@savannah.psi.ch/repos/meg/midas/trunk midas
4. svn co -r 68 svn+ssh://svn@savannah.psi.ch/repos/meg/mxml/trunk mxml
5. cp -rvp debian/autoconf/* ./
6. ./configure --help
7. ./configure <--options>
8. make && make install

Then, I created the debian packages based on the new building files. You need to install root-system package from http://lcg-heppkg.web.cern.ch/lcg-heppkg/debian/. You can build debs this way:
1. untar daq-midas_deb.tar.gz somewhere, assuming ~/Temp.
2. cd ~/Temp/daq-midas
3. svn co -r 5065 svn+ssh://svn@savannah.psi.ch/repos/meg/midas/trunk midas
4. svn co -r 68 svn+ssh://svn@savannah.psi.ch/repos/meg/mxml/trunk mxml
5. dpkg-buildpackage -b -us -uc

I split the package into serverals parts:
  • daq-midas-doc -- The documents and references
  • daq-midas-root -- the midas runtime library and utilities built with root
  • daq-midas-noroot -- the midas runtime library and utilities built without root
  • daq-midas-dev-root -- the midas devel files (headers, objects, drivers, examples) built with root
  • daq-midas-dev-noroot -- the midas devel files (headers, objects, drivers, examples) built without root

Here are the installation:
  • executalbes -- /usr/lib/daq-midas/bin
  • library and objs -- /usr/lib/daq-midas/lib
  • headers -- /usr/lib/daq-midas/include
  • sources and drivers -- /usr/share/daq-midas/
  • docs and examples -- /usr/share/doc/daq-midas
  • mdaq-config -- /usr/bin/mdaq-config

I add an auto-generated shell script -- mdaq-config. It behaves just like "root-config". You can get midas build flags and link flags this way:
gcc `mdaq-config --cflags` -c -o myfe.o myfe.c
gcc `mdaq-config --libs` -o myfe myfe.o `mdaq-config --libdir`/mfe.o

Bugs and suggestions are welcomed.

P.S. Based on debian packages, I am planing to write another script, "mdaq.py":
  • each midas experiment will be configured in a file named "mdaq.yaml"
  • mdaq.py reads the configure file and prepare the daq environment, just like "examples/experiment/start_daq.sh"
  • mdaq.py will handle "start/stop/restart/info" about the daq codes.
The attached "mdaq.py" is the old one.
  769   27 Jun 2011 Konstantin OlchanskiSuggestionBuild MIDAS debian packages using autoconf/automake.
> I deployed several Debian Linux boxes as the DAQ systems in our lab. But I
feel it's boring to build and install midas and its related softwares (such as
root) on each box.


Our solution at TRIUMF is to install such packages on a shared NFS filesystem
visible to all client computers. This works well for ROOT and but MIDAS we found
it nearly impossible to keep MIDAS versions in sync between different projects
and expiments, so each experiment uses it's own copy of MIDAS, usually located
in the experiment home directory ($HOME/packages/midas). Because we often need
to make local modifications to MIDAS sources (Makefile, etc), we do not
"install" MIDAS into non-user-writable /usr/local & etc.


> I use autoconf/automake


The promise (premise) of autoconf/automake is to "hide" system dependencies. The
scripts are supposed to automatically probe the build environment and construct
an appropriate Makefile.

In practice, the autotool scripts always have bugs and incorrect assumptions
about the build environment and only work well for a few standardized systems
(RHEL and Debian derivatives) where the differences are so trivial that
autotools is an overkill and a normal Makefile is adequate for the job.

In my experience, as soon as I try to build an autotool-ized package on anything
that does not look like RHEL or Debian, autotool scripts explode and have to be
debugged and kludged by hand. Anybody who has ever done that would agree with me
that one would rather hack the ugliest Makefile than any of the  autotool
generated gibberish.

And of course autotools have never handled cross-compilation in any reasonable
way. Since we do cross-compile MIDAS (for VxWorks and embedded Linux, see "make
crosscompile") a Makefile is required and it so happens that the same Makefile
also works for normal Linux and MacOS, thank you very much.



> Here are the installation:
> [*] executalbes -- /usr/lib/daq-midas/bin
> [*] library and objs -- /usr/lib/daq-midas/lib


Is this in violation of the LSB (or LFS)? I though they mandate that files
controlled by package manager should be /usr/bin/odbedit, /usr/lib64/libmidas.a,
etc (/usr/bin/midas/odbedit no permitted).


> gcc `mdaq-config --cflags` -c -o myfe.o myfe.c


Please check if your config scripts correctly handle the "-m32" and "-m64" flags
- we frequently cross-compile 32-bit MIDAS executables on 64-bit machines.


K.O.
  846   14 Dec 2012 Vinzenz BildsteinSuggestionMidas + Elog with SSL
I've been trying to set up midas to create an automatic elog entry at the end of
each run and I've run into a problem. I've setup an elog on our server which
uses SSL and it seems that the melog provided by midas to create logbook entries
doesn't know any SSL.

My solution to this was to copy the crypt.c from the elog package to the
computer running midas and changed melog.c and the makefile to use SSL if a flag
-s is used. Does this seem like a sensible solution or did I oversee the obvious
and/or right way to do this?
  847   14 Dec 2012 Stefan RittSuggestionMidas + Elog with SSL
> I've been trying to set up midas to create an automatic elog entry at the end of
> each run and I've run into a problem. I've setup an elog on our server which
> uses SSL and it seems that the melog provided by midas to create logbook entries
> doesn't know any SSL.
> 
> My solution to this was to copy the crypt.c from the elog package to the
> computer running midas and changed melog.c and the makefile to use SSL if a flag
> -s is used. Does this seem like a sensible solution or did I oversee the obvious
> and/or right way to do this?

Indeed melog.c is an old version of the elog.c utility in the elog package, which has not been maintained since a 
long time. Can't you just use the recent elog.c utility from the elog package?
  848   17 Dec 2012 Vinzenz BildsteinSuggestionMidas + Elog with SSL
> > I've been trying to set up midas to create an automatic elog entry at the end of
> > each run and I've run into a problem. I've setup an elog on our server which
> > uses SSL and it seems that the melog provided by midas to create logbook entries
> > doesn't know any SSL.
> > 
> > My solution to this was to copy the crypt.c from the elog package to the
> > computer running midas and changed melog.c and the makefile to use SSL if a flag
> > -s is used. Does this seem like a sensible solution or did I oversee the obvious
> > and/or right way to do this?
> 
> Indeed melog.c is an old version of the elog.c utility in the elog package, which has not been maintained since a 
> long time. Can't you just use the recent elog.c utility from the elog package?

Well, that's essentially what I did, I just didn't want to install the whole elog package on the midas server. Whether
the utility is called elog or melog doesn't really matter. I just wanted to make sure that this is the right way to do
it. 

Thanks!
  851   04 Jan 2013 Nabin PoudyalSuggestionhow to start using midas
Please, tell me how to choose a value of a "key" like DCM, pulser period,
presamples, upper thresholds to run a experiment? where can I find the related
informations? 
  969   27 Feb 2014 Andreas SuterSuggestionrunlog is "ugly"
I have a couple of questions and suggestions concerning the "new" CSS style of the mhttpd, especially related to the runlog

  1. If I am not mistaken, the mhttpd.css is hard coded (path/name) into the mhttpd. Wouldn't it be beneficial to have ODB entries where to get is from? This way people could change the look and feel more freely.
  2. Especially the look and feel of the runlog is unsatisfactorily from my point of view. See . The old style was much more readable. I could recover the old style look and feel by slightly changing the mhttpd.cxx where I changed in show_rawfile(const char*) "dialogTable" to "runlogTable" in the table class. This way I could tinker around with the mhttpd.css by adding the following stuff there:
    • adding .runlogTable in line 289 :
    • adding some style information for the runlogTable :
This way the "old" runlog look and feel recovered : , which I think is much more readable.
  • If possible, I would love to have alternating background colors between the runs for readability reasons, but I am not sure how easy it would be to add something like this.
    I not much experience with HTML/CSS yet, though a concrete implementation might be different.
  •   970   27 Feb 2014 Konstantin OlchanskiSuggestionrunlog is "ugly"
    > If I am not mistaken, the mhttpd.css is hard coded (path/name) into the mhttpd.
    
    mhttpd.css is served from $MIDASSYS/resources/mhttpd.css. The actual path is reported on the mhttpd 
    "help" page.
    
    (I think the internal mhttpd.css and mhttpd.js should be removed as no longer useful - nothing will work 
    right if the real mhttpd.js and mhttpd.css cannot be served).
    
    > Especially the look and feel of the runlog is unsatisfactorily from my point of view.
    
    persons in charge of implementing the CSS stuff failed to convert quite a few pages, for example, the elog 
    and the history editor pages were left completely broken. (mostly fixed now).
    
    so thank you for reporting the runlog breakage, I hope Stefan & co can fix it quickly. (I cannot do - I have 
    have no runlog pages on any of my test experiments).
    
    > the old style was much more readable.
    
    I think the new style is not too bad, except for a few visual artefacts here and there, the general comment 
    that CSS is too complicated and hard to debug and the fact that over-subtle colouring yields inconsistent 
    visuals between different monitors and ambient lighting conditions. (persons who select the colours always 
    respond that "but to me, it looks just fine on my laptop", making it hard to resolve any issues).
    
    > I could recover the old style look and feel by slightly changing the mhttpd.cxx
    
    If you post the patches that fix it for you, I can commit them to midas. (git diff | mail olchansk@triumf.ca).
    
    K.O.
      973   28 Feb 2014 Andreas SuterSuggestionrunlog is "ugly"
    Understand me right, I mostly like the new style, except the runlog as reported.
    Attached you will find the diff's you were asking for. But as pointed out, I
    haven't worked so far on CSS and hence this should be checked!!
    
    I understand that the mhttpd.js needs to be the default one, however, mhttpd.css
    might be left to the end-user to adopt to their specific needs. I shortly
    checked in the mhttpd demon. It checks for the resources path in the ODB. If it
    also would check for a CSS name, mhttpd.css could be changed/adopted by the
    end-users without breaking things (at least it would then be their one business).
    
    > > If I am not mistaken, the mhttpd.css is hard coded (path/name) into the mhttpd.
    > 
    > mhttpd.css is served from $MIDASSYS/resources/mhttpd.css. The actual path is
    reported on the mhttpd 
    > "help" page.
    > 
    > (I think the internal mhttpd.css and mhttpd.js should be removed as no longer
    useful - nothing will work 
    > right if the real mhttpd.js and mhttpd.css cannot be served).
    > 
    > > Especially the look and feel of the runlog is unsatisfactorily from my point
    of view.
    > 
    > persons in charge of implementing the CSS stuff failed to convert quite a few
    pages, for example, the elog 
    > and the history editor pages were left completely broken. (mostly fixed now).
    > 
    > so thank you for reporting the runlog breakage, I hope Stefan & co can fix it
    quickly. (I cannot do - I have 
    > have no runlog pages on any of my test experiments).
    > 
    > > the old style was much more readable.
    > 
    > I think the new style is not too bad, except for a few visual artefacts here
    and there, the general comment 
    > that CSS is too complicated and hard to debug and the fact that over-subtle
    colouring yields inconsistent 
    > visuals between different monitors and ambient lighting conditions. (persons
    who select the colours always 
    > respond that "but to me, it looks just fine on my laptop", making it hard to
    resolve any issues).
    > 
    > > I could recover the old style look and feel by slightly changing the mhttpd.cxx
    > 
    > If you post the patches that fix it for you, I can commit them to midas. (git
    diff | mail olchansk@triumf.ca).
    > 
    > K.O.
      974   28 Feb 2014 Stefan RittSuggestionrunlog is "ugly"
     > If I am not mistaken, the mhttpd.css is hard coded (path/name) into the mhttpd.
    
    I agree that this should be removed, Unfortunately I'm away right now, so I will fix it next week. Also will put in 
    Andreas' diffs.
    
    /Stefan
      977   07 Mar 2014 Stefan RittSuggestionrunlog is "ugly"
    I put mhttpd.css and mhttpd.js into the ODB, so every experiment can change it. I put also Andreas' modifications of the CSS file for the runlog table and 
    committed the changes.
    
    /Stefan
      999   26 May 2014 Dan MelconianSuggestion"Edit-on-end" would be nice
    We use the "Edit-on-start" and it's great.  But sometimes, something breaks
    during the run, or you didn't realize you forgot to plug in a cable, or
    whatever.  It'd be nice to have an "Edit-on-end" where you could prompt the user
    to answer simple questions (like "Was this a good run?  [y/n]" or "Was the data
    polarized?  [y/n]") and/or add a quick summary of what happened that run.
    
    
    Thanks in advance,
    
    Dan
      1000   26 May 2014 Stefan RittSuggestion"Edit-on-end" would be nice
    We have similar demands, and we solve it in the following:
    
    We use a run database. In the simplest case, this can be a text file which gets written at the end of the file. The 
    mlogger has a built in SQL interface, so one can keep that table even inside a SQL interface. The per-run-
    information then contains the run number, start/stop time, number of events, some run parameters and a "junk" 
    flag. So if a run has a problem, one can set the junk flag by accessing the database (or text file) and setting this 
    flag. In many cases you see that a run had a problem not at the end of the run, but a bit later. You mayby realize 
    that the last two or three runs had the problem. With the run database approach, you can flag any run as "junk" 
    later, which we need often, An edit-on-end would not make this possible.
    
    So technically putting and edit-on-end is not a problem, but your life might be much easier if you use a run 
    database as outlined above.
    
    Best regards,
    Stefan
    ELOG V3.1.4-2e1708b5