Concerning naming of shared memories I went one step further due to some requirement of a local experiment. 
The experiment needs to change the experiment name shown on the web status page depending on the exact 
configuration, but we do not want to change the whole midas experiment each time.

So I simple removed the check that the experiment name coming from the environment and used for the shared 
memory gets checked against the experiment name in the ODB. The only connection there is that the ODB name 
gets set to the environment name is it does not exist or is empty, just to have some default value. So for 
most people nothing should change. If one changes however the name in the ODB (under /Experiment/Name), 
nothing will change internally, just the web display via mhttpd changes its title.

I hope this has no bad side-effects, so please have a look if you see any issue in your experiment.

Stefan

> RFE filed:
> https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/367/odb-should-be-saved-to-disk-periodically

Implemented and closed: https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/367/odb-should-be-saved-to-disk-periodically

Stefan

Hello,

At our lab we are currently in the process of migrating more of our systems over to Midas. However, all of our working systems are dependent on SBCs with the Tsi-148 chips of which we only have a handful. In order to have some backups and spares for testing, we have been attempting to get Midas working with some borrowed SBCs (Concurrent Technologies VX 40x/04x) with Universe-II chips. The SBC is running CentOS 7. I have tried to follow the instructions posted here. The universe-II kernel module appears to load correctly, dmesg gives:

[   32.384826] VME: Board is system controller
[   32.384875] VME: Driver compiled for SMP system
[   32.384877] VME: Installed VME Universe module version: 3.6.KO6
 

However, running vmescan.exe fails with a segfault. Running with gdb shows:

vmic_mmap: Mapped VME AM 0x0d addr 0x00000000 size 0x00ffffff at address 0x80a01000
mvme_open:
Bus handle              = 0x7
DMA handle              = 0x6045d0
DMA area size           = 1048576 bytes
DMA    physical address = 0x7ffff7eea000
vmic_mmap: Mapped VME AM 0x2d addr 0x00000000 size 0x0000ffff at address 0x86ff0000

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
mvme_read_value (mvme=0x604010, vme_addr=<optimized out>)
    at /home/jam/midas/packages/midas/drivers/vme/vmic/vmicvme.c:352
352        dst  = *((WORD *)addr);
 

With the pointer addr originating from a call to vmic_mapcheck within the  mvme_read_value functions in the vmicvme.c file. Help with where to go from here would be appreciated.

-Caleb 

I maintain the tsi148 and the universe-II drivers. I confirm -KO6 is my latest 
version, last updated for 32-bit Debian-11, and we still use it at TRIUMF.

It is good news that the vme_universe kernel module built, loaded and reported 
correct stuff to dmesg.

It is not clear why mvme_read_value() crashed. We need to know the value of 
vme_addr and addr, can you add printf()s for them using format "%08x" and try 
again?

K.O.

<p>&nbsp;</p>

<table align="center" cellspacing="1" style="border:1px solid #486090; 
width:98%">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td style="background-color:#486090">Caleb Marshall 
wrote:</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td style="background-color:#FFFFB0">
			<p>Hello,</p>

			<p>At our lab we are currently in the process of 
migrating more of our systems over to Midas. However, all of our working systems 
are dependent on SBCs with the Tsi-148 chips of which we only have a handful. In 
order to have some backups and spares for testing, we have been attempting to 
get Midas working with some borrowed SBCs (Concurrent Technologies VX 40x/04x) 
with Universe-II chips. The SBC is running&nbsp;CentOS 7.&nbsp;I have tried to 
follow the instructions posted <a 
href="https://daq00.triumf.ca/DaqWiki/index.php/VME-
CPU#V7648_and_V7750_BIOS_Settings">here</a>. The universe-II kernel module 
appears to load correctly, dmesg gives:</p>

			<p>[ &nbsp; 32.384826] VME: Board is system 
controller<br />
			[ &nbsp; 32.384875] VME: Driver compiled for SMP 
system<br />
			[ &nbsp; 32.384877] VME: Installed VME Universe module 
version: 3.6.KO6<br />
			&nbsp;</p>

			<p>However, running vmescan.exe fails with a segfault. 
Running with gdb shows:</p>

			<p>vmic_mmap: Mapped VME AM 0x0d addr 0x00000000 size 
0x00ffffff at address 0x80a01000<br />
			mvme_open:<br />
			Bus handle &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 
&nbsp;= 0x7<br />
			DMA handle &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 
&nbsp;= 0x6045d0<br />
			DMA area size &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; = 
1048576 bytes<br />
			DMA &nbsp; &nbsp;physical address = 0x7ffff7eea000<br />
			vmic_mmap: Mapped VME AM 0x2d addr 0x00000000 size 
0x0000ffff at address 0x86ff0000</p>

			<p>Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
<br />
			mvme_read_value (mvme=0x604010, vme_addr=&lt;optimized 
out&gt;)<br />
			&nbsp; &nbsp; at 
/home/jam/midas/packages/midas/drivers/vme/vmic/vmicvme.c:352<br />
			352&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;dst &nbsp;= *((WORD 
*)addr);<br />
			&nbsp;</p>

			<p>With the pointer addr originating from a call 
to&nbsp;vmic_mapcheck within the&nbsp;&nbsp;mvme_read_value functions in the 
vmicvme.c file. Help with where to go from here would be appreciated.</p>

			<p>-Caleb&nbsp;</p>

			<p>&nbsp;</p>
			</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

<p>&nbsp;</p>

> > Our default configuration of apache httpd logs every request. MIDAS custom web pages can easily make a huge number of RPC calls creating a 
> > huge log file and filling system disk to 100% capacity
> perhaps use existing logrotate, add limit on file size (size) and limit of 2 old log files (rotate).

logrotate was ineffective.

following apache httpd config seems to disable logging of mjsonrpc requests. note that we cannot filter on the "mjsonrpc" string because 
Request_URI excludes the query string (ouch!).

#SetEnvIf Request_URI "^POST /?mjsonrpc.*" nolog 
SetEnvIf Request_Method "POST" envpost 
SetEnvIf Request_URI "^\/$" envuri 
SetEnvIfExpr "-T reqenv('envpost') && -T reqenv('envuri')" envnolog 
 
CustomLog logs/ssl_request_log "%t %h %{SSL_PROTOCOL}x %{SSL_CIPHER}x \"%r\" %b" env=!envnolog 

K.O.

We sporadically (like once per few hours) have an error message when we access the 
history plots through mhttpd:

07:21:35.109 2023/08/03 [mhttpd,ERROR] 
[history_schema.cxx:2345:FileHistory::read_data,ERROR] Cannot read 
'/data2/history/mhf_1690890685_20230801_dc_hv.dat', read() errno 2 (No such file 
or directory)

When I log in to the machine, I properly see the file and also can access it

[meg@megon02 history]$ ls -l mhf_1690890685_20230801_dc_hv.dat
-rw-rw-r--. 1 meg meg 34176312 Aug  3 07:23 mhf_1690890685_20230801_dc_hv.dat

and I also can dump that file. 

When I try again with mhttpd, I properly see that file. 

Now in principle this is not a problem, but the error message is annoying, since this 
is the only error we get in 24 hours. I attached a 24h log to see what I mean. If this 
is an OS issue, I wonder if we should add code to retry the file access in case we get 
that error.

Anybody seen a similar thing?

Best,
Stefan

Here is the output:

vmic_mmap: Mapped VME AM 0x0d addr 0x00000000 size 0x00ffffff at address 0x80a01000
mvme_open:
Bus handle              = 0x3
DMA handle              = 0x158f5d0
DMA area size           = 1048576 bytes
DMA    physical address = 0x7f91db553000
vmic_mmap: Mapped VME AM 0x2d addr 0x00000000 size 0x0000ffff at address 0x86ff0000
vme addr: 00000000 
addr: db543000 

> Here is the output:
> 
> vmic_mmap: Mapped VME AM 0x0d addr 0x00000000 size 0x00ffffff at address 0x80a01000
> mvme_open:
> Bus handle              = 0x3
> DMA handle              = 0x158f5d0
> DMA area size           = 1048576 bytes
> DMA    physical address = 0x7f91db553000
> vmic_mmap: Mapped VME AM 0x2d addr 0x00000000 size 0x0000ffff at address 0x86ff0000
> vme addr: 00000000 
> addr: db543000 

I see the problem. A24 is mapped at 0x80xxxxxx, A16 is mapped at 0x86ffxxxx, but 
mvme_read computed address 0xdb543000, out of range of either mapped vme address. ouch.

One more thing to check, AFAIK, this universe-II codes were never used on 64-bit CPU 
before, we only have 32-bit Pentium-3 and Pentium-4 machines with these chips. The 
tsi148 codes used to work both 32-bit and 64-bit, we used to have both flavours of 
CPUs, but now only have 64-bit.

What is your output for "uname -a"? does it report 32-bit or 64-bit kernel?

If you feel adventurous, you can build 32-bit midas (cd .../midas; make linux32), 
compile vmescan.o with "-m32" and link vmescan.exe against .../midas/linux-m32/lib, and 
see if that works. Meanwhile, I can check if vmicvme.c is 64-bit clean. Checking if 
kernel module is 64-bit clean would be more difficult...

K.O.

I am looking into compiling the 32 bit midas.

In the meantime, here is the kernel info:

3.10.0-1160.11.1.el7.x86_64 

Thank you for the help.
-Caleb

> > > Our default configuration of apache httpd logs every request. MIDAS custom web pages can easily make a huge number of RPC calls creating a 
> > > huge log file and filling system disk to 100% capacity
> > perhaps use existing logrotate, add limit on file size (size) and limit of 2 old log files (rotate).
>  
> CustomLog logs/ssl_request_log "%t %h %{SSL_PROTOCOL}x %{SSL_CIPHER}x \"%r\" %b" env=!envnolog 
> 

TransferLog is not conditional and has to be commented out to stop logging every jsonrpc request.

K.O.

I can compile 32 bit midas. Unless I am interpreting the linking error, I don't 
think I can use the driver as built. 

While trying to compile vme_scan, most of the programs fail with:

/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-redhat-
linux/4.8.5/../../../../lib/libvme.so when searching for -lvme
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /lib/../lib/libvme.so when searching for -lvme
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib/../lib/libvme.so when searching for -
lvme
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-redhat-
linux/4.8.5/../../../libvme.so when searching for -lvme
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible //lib/libvme.so when searching for -lvme
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible //usr/lib/libvme.so when searching for -lvme

with libvme.so being built by the universe-II driver. Not sure if I can get around 
this without messing with the driver? Is it possible to build a 32 bit version of 
that shared library without having to touch the actual kernel module? 

-Caleb

> I can compile 32 bit midas. Unless I am interpreting the linking error, I don't 
> think I can use the driver as built.

I think you are right, Makefile from the Universe package does not build a -m32 version 
of libvme.so. I think I can fix that...

K.O.

> The compilation of midas was broken by the last modification. The reason is that 
>    Pgsql *fPgsql = NULL;
> was not protected by #ifdef HAVE_PGSQL

confirmed, my mistake, I forgot to test with "make cmake NO_PGSQL". your fix is correct, thanks.

K.O.

I confirm I see same on the agmini system. Two problems: (a) error message is wrong, it's a 
short read, not a read error (clue: read() syscall does not return "no such file"). (b) 
mlogger is supposed to write history in record-size blocks, read in the same record size 
blocks. UNIX file semantics require that both reader and writer see read() and write() as 
atomic, even on NFS, so mhttpd should never see partially written history records. I can 
debug this on the agmini system. Probably should.

Problem (a) fixed in commit bb423c8680cc67220312534403840442868f2b3b, if you update, you 
should see error messages about "short read" and the read sizes it reports are very 
interesting, please put them in the elog here.

K.O.


> We sporadically (like once per few hours) have an error message when we access the 
> history plots through mhttpd:
> 
> 07:21:35.109 2023/08/03 [mhttpd,ERROR] 
> [history_schema.cxx:2345:FileHistory::read_data,ERROR] Cannot read 
> '/data2/history/mhf_1690890685_20230801_dc_hv.dat', read() errno 2 (No such file 
> or directory)
> 
> When I log in to the machine, I properly see the file and also can access it
> 
> [meg@megon02 history]$ ls -l mhf_1690890685_20230801_dc_hv.dat
> -rw-rw-r--. 1 meg meg 34176312 Aug  3 07:23 mhf_1690890685_20230801_dc_hv.dat
> 
> and I also can dump that file. 
> 
> When I try again with mhttpd, I properly see that file. 
> 
> Now in principle this is not a problem, but the error message is annoying, since this 
> is the only error we get in 24 hours. I attached a 24h log to see what I mean. If this 
> is an OS issue, I wonder if we should add code to retry the file access in case we get 
> that error.
> 
> Anybody seen a similar thing?
> 
> Best,
> Stefan

> > RFE filed:
> > https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/367/odb-should-be-saved-to-disk-periodically
> 
> Implemented and closed: https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/367/odb-should-be-saved-to-disk-periodically
> 
> Stefan

Stefan's comments from the closed bug report:

Ok I implemented some periodic flushing. Here is what I did:

Created

/System/Flush/Flush period : TID_UINT32 /System/Flush/Last flush : TID_UINT32

which control the flushing to disk. The default value for “Flush period” is 60 seconds or one minute.

All clients call db_flush_database() through their cm_yield() function
db_flush_database() checks the “Last flush” and only flushes the ODB when the period has expired. This test is 
done inside the ODB semaphore so that we don’t get a race condigiton
If the period has expired, db_flush_database() calls ss_shm_flush()
ss_shm_flush() tries to allocate a buffer of the shared memory. If the allocation is not successful (out of 
memory), ss_shm_flush() writes directly to the binary file as before.
If the allocation is successful, ss_shm_flush() copies the share memory to a buffer and passes this buffer to a 
dedicated thread which writes the buffer to the binary file. This causes ss_shm_flush() to return immediately and 
not block the calling program during the disk write operation.
Added back the “if (destroy_flag) ss_shm_flush()” so that the ODB is flushed for sure before the shared memory 
gets deleted.
This means now that under normal circumstances, exiting programs like odbedit do NOT flush the ODB. This allows to 
call many “odbedit -c” in a row without the flush penalty. Nevertheless, the ODB then gets flushed by other 
clients latest 60 seconds (or whatever the flush period is) after odbedit exits.

Please note that ODB flushing has two purposes:

When all programs exit, we need a persistent storage for the ODB. In most experiments this only happens very 
seldom. Maybe at the end of a beam time period.
If the computer crashes, a recent version of the ODB is kept on disk to simplify recovery after the crash.
Since crashes are not so often (during production periods we have maybe one hardware failure every few years) the 
flushing of the ODB too often does not make sense and just consumes resources. Flushing does also not help from 
corrupted ODBs, since the binary image will also get corrupted. So the only reason for periodic flushes is to ease 
recovery after a total crash. I put the default to 60 seconds, but if people are really paranoid they can decrease 
it to 10 seconds or so. Or increase it to 600 seconds if their system does not crash every week and disks are 
slow.

I made a dedicated branch feature/periodic_odb_flush so people can test the new functionality. If there are no 
complaints within the next few days, I will merge that into develop.

Stefan

This is an important improvement, should have a post of it's own. K.O.

> > > RFE filed:
> > > https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/367/odb-should-be-saved-to-disk-
periodically
> > 
> > Implemented and closed: https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/367/odb-
should-be-saved-to-disk-periodically
> > 
> > Stefan
> 
> Stefan's comments from the closed bug report:
> 
> Ok I implemented some periodic flushing. Here is what I did:
> 
> Created
> 
> /System/Flush/Flush period : TID_UINT32 /System/Flush/Last flush : TID_UINT32
> 
> which control the flushing to disk. The default value for “Flush period” is 60 
seconds or one minute.
> 
> All clients call db_flush_database() through their cm_yield() function
> db_flush_database() checks the “Last flush” and only flushes the ODB when the 
period has expired. This test is 
> done inside the ODB semaphore so that we don’t get a race condigiton
> If the period has expired, db_flush_database() calls ss_shm_flush()
> ss_shm_flush() tries to allocate a buffer of the shared memory. If the 
allocation is not successful (out of 
> memory), ss_shm_flush() writes directly to the binary file as before.
> If the allocation is successful, ss_shm_flush() copies the share memory to a 
buffer and passes this buffer to a 
> dedicated thread which writes the buffer to the binary file. This causes 
ss_shm_flush() to return immediately and 
> not block the calling program during the disk write operation.
> Added back the “if (destroy_flag) ss_shm_flush()” so that the ODB is flushed 
for sure before the shared memory 
> gets deleted.
> This means now that under normal circumstances, exiting programs like odbedit 
do NOT flush the ODB. This allows to 
> call many “odbedit -c” in a row without the flush penalty. Nevertheless, the 
ODB then gets flushed by other 
> clients latest 60 seconds (or whatever the flush period is) after odbedit 
exits.
> 
> Please note that ODB flushing has two purposes:
> 
> When all programs exit, we need a persistent storage for the ODB. In most 
experiments this only happens very 
> seldom. Maybe at the end of a beam time period.
> If the computer crashes, a recent version of the ODB is kept on disk to 
simplify recovery after the crash.
> Since crashes are not so often (during production periods we have maybe one 
hardware failure every few years) the 
> flushing of the ODB too often does not make sense and just consumes resources. 
Flushing does also not help from 
> corrupted ODBs, since the binary image will also get corrupted. So the only 
reason for periodic flushes is to ease 
> recovery after a total crash. I put the default to 60 seconds, but if people 
are really paranoid they can decrease 
> it to 10 seconds or so. Or increase it to 600 seconds if their system does not 
crash every week and disks are 
> slow.
> 
> I made a dedicated branch feature/periodic_odb_flush so people can test the 
new functionality. If there are no 
> complaints within the next few days, I will merge that into develop.
> 
> Stefan

> Our default configuration of apache httpd logs every request.
> MIDAS custom web pages can easily make a huge number of RPC calls creating a 
> huge log file and filling system disk to 100% capacity.

close but no cigar. mhttpd is not running and /var/log got filled to 100% capacity by http error messages. I do not see any apache facility to filter 
error messages, hmm...

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1864421376 Aug 14 12:53 ssl_error_log

[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.416247 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 18608] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.416538 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19686] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.416603 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19681] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.416775 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19588] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.417022 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19311] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.421864 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 18620] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.422051 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19693] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.422199 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19673] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.422222 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 18608] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.422230 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19657] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.422259 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 18633] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.427513 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19686] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.427549 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19681] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.427645 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19588] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.427774 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19693] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.427800 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 18620] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)

K.O.

A bit of update to the mlogger. In preparation for more cleanup when Stefan is 
here at TRIUMF.

1) fix overwrite of existing files if run number is reset (check for existing 
files was missing in the LZ4, BZ2 & co data path)
2) made output files read-only (midas, json and checksum files)
3) commented out the old code paths

Currently active per-channel ODB settings:

Active - enable or disable mlogger channel
Type - NOT USED
Filename - output filename template, %d are replaced by run number and subrun 
number, also pipe command for PIPE output
Format - NOT USED
Compression - NOT USED
ODB dump - enable/disable writing ODB dump to data file
ODB dump format - "json" is recommended for new experiments
Log messages - write log messages to output file, 0=off, -1=write all messages
Buffer - "SYSTEM" read events from this event buffer
EventID - "-1" for all events
Trigger Mask - "-1" for all events
Event Limit - stop run after so many events
Byte Limit - stop run after so many bytes
Subrun Byte limit - switch to next subrun file after writing so many bytes. 
actual file size is longer than subrun_byte_limit because of ODB dumps.
Tape Capacity - NOT USED
Subdir Format - if not empty, output file name is DIR/SUBDIR/FILENAME, "%" 
format things are expanded by strftime().
Current Filename - updated by mlogger, contains the currently written file name
Data checksum - checksum before compression, use CRC32C for maximum speed, 
SHA512 for maximum security.
File checksum - checksum after compression, CRC32C is good against accidental 
file corruption, SHA512 is cryptographically strong, good against purposeful 
tampering.
Compress - use "lz4" for maximum speed, bzip2 or pbzip2 for maximum compression. 
no compression and gzip are not recommended. (ZFS may apply lz4 compression to 
uncompressed data).
Output - "NULL" do not write anything, "FILE" write to disk, "FTP" write to FTP 
server, "ROOT" write via the mlogger ROOT writer (docs?), "PIPE" pipe data 
through an external command (i.e. for bzip2 compression).
Gzip compression - gzip compression flags (see gzip docs, 1=max speed, 9=max 
compression)
Bzip2 compression - if non-zero, bzip2 compression level (see "bzip2 -h", 1=max 
speed, 9=max compression)
Pbzip2 num cpu - number of CPUs used by parallel bzip2 compression, pbzip2 -p 
flag
Pbzip2 compression - if non-zero, pbzip2 compresison level (see "pbzip2 -h", 
default is 9=max compression)
Pbzip2 options - any additional pbzip2 options, i.e. -l, -m, -p, etc.

Currently active /Logger options:

Data Dir - where to write all output files, if empty, cm_get_path() is used.
Message file date format - not used in mlogger
Message dir - not used in mlogger
Write data - if set to "no", midas file, runlog, etc will not be written.
ODB Dump - at run stop, save odb to disk
ODB Dump File - file name for "ODB Dump" save file. "%d" is replaced by run 
number. "json" format is recommended for new experiments.
ODB Last Dump File - at run start, save ODB to disk. "json" format is 
recommended for new experiments.
Auto restart - run stopped by time limit or event limit is automatically 
restarted
Auto restart delay - wair for some many seconds before restarting the run
Tape message - NOT USED
Run duration - stop the run after so many seconds
Next subrun - change from "no" to "yes" to force mlogger to open a new subrun 
file (should this be per-channel?)
Subrun duration - open new subrun file after so many seconds (should this be 
per-channel?)
History dir - not used in mlogger
Detached transition - "no" use the normal multithreaded transtions 
(recommended), "yes" use mtransition helper to stop and restart runs. sometimes 
files because mtransition is not in the user $PATH or wrong version of 
mtransition is in the user $PATH.

K.O.

I started to get web browser popups about "midas wants to show notifications, 
block/allow/x". is this a glitch or a new unannounced/undocumented feature? 
google chrome on macos. K.O.

> I started to get web browser popups about "midas wants to show notifications, 
> block/allow/x". is this a glitch or a new unannounced/undocumented feature? 
> google chrome on macos. K.O.

https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/commits/e101dea764c647211c560a68db7ecda1834198db

I did not consider this a significant feature to be announced here. Just a few lines 
of code. You can turn it on/off via the "Config" web page.

Stefan