I'm brand new to MIDAS, and C system programming in general, so please be
gentle. I've compiled and installed MIDAS 2.3.0 on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. I've built
the kernel driver, khyt1331.ko and installed it. It appears to be working, since
the camactest and esonetest programs included with the driver work just fine.

So I attempted to build the example experiment distributed with MIDAS, with the
following changes to the Makefile:

DRV_DIR   = $(MIDASSYS)/drivers/kernel/khyt1331_26

and

DRIVER = camac

The programs build without error but when I try to start the frontend, I get:

$ ./frontend
Frontend name          :     CSM-Nuclear Portable DAQ Frontend
Event buffer size      :     1000000
User max event size    :     10000
User max frag. size    :     5242880
# of events per buffer :     100

Connect to experiment...
*** buffer overflow detected ***: ./frontend terminated
======= Backtrace: =========
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(__fortify_fail+0x50)[0x6de390]
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(+0xe12ca)[0x6dd2ca]
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(__strcpy_chk+0x44)[0x6dc644]
./frontend[0x805611f]
./frontend[0x806f656]
./frontend[0x8053d82]
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xe6)[0x612bd6]
./frontend[0x804bb81]
======= Memory map: ========
00110000-0012d000 r-xp 00000000 08:05 7471187    /lib/libgcc_s.so.1
0012d000-0012e000 r--p 0001c000 08:05 7471187    /lib/libgcc_s.so.1
0012e000-0012f000 rw-p 0001d000 08:05 7471187    /lib/libgcc_s.so.1
00264000-00277000 r-xp 00000000 08:05 7603242    /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libnsl-2.11.1.so
00277000-00278000 r--p 00012000 08:05 7603242    /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libnsl-2.11.1.so
00278000-00279000 rw-p 00013000 08:05 7603242    /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libnsl-2.11.1.so
00279000-0027b000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 
002db000-002dd000 r-xp 00000000 08:05 7603265   
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libutil-2.11.1.so
002dd000-002de000 r--p 00001000 08:05 7603265   
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libutil-2.11.1.so
002de000-002df000 rw-p 00002000 08:05 7603265   
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libutil-2.11.1.so
003b1000-003c6000 r-xp 00000000 08:05 7603257   
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libpthread-2.11.1.so
003c6000-003c7000 r--p 00014000 08:05 7603257   
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libpthread-2.11.1.so
003c7000-003c8000 rw-p 00015000 08:05 7603257   
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libpthread-2.11.1.so
003c8000-003ca000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 
004ea000-004f1000 r-xp 00000000 08:05 7603261    /lib/tls/i686/cmov/librt-2.11.1.so
004f1000-004f2000 r--p 00006000 08:05 7603261    /lib/tls/i686/cmov/librt-2.11.1.so
004f2000-004f3000 rw-p 00007000 08:05 7603261    /lib/tls/i686/cmov/librt-2.11.1.so
005fb000-005fc000 r-xp 00000000 00:00 0          [vdso]
005fc000-0074f000 r-xp 00000000 08:05 7603231    /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc-2.11.1.so
0074f000-00750000 ---p 00153000 08:05 7603231    /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc-2.11.1.so
00750000-00752000 r--p 00153000 08:05 7603231    /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc-2.11.1.so
00752000-00753000 rw-p 00155000 08:05 7603231    /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc-2.11.1.so
00753000-00756000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 
00783000-00796000 r-xp 00000000 08:05 7471302    /lib/libz.so.1.2.3.3
00796000-00797000 r--p 00012000 08:05 7471302    /lib/libz.so.1.2.3.3
00797000-00798000 rw-p 00013000 08:05 7471302    /lib/libz.so.1.2.3.3
008ab000-008c6000 r-xp 00000000 08:05 7471129    /lib/ld-2.11.1.so
008c6000-008c7000 r--p 0001a000 08:05 7471129    /lib/ld-2.11.1.so
008c7000-008c8000 rw-p 0001b000 08:05 7471129    /lib/ld-2.11.1.so
008e4000-00908000 r-xp 00000000 08:05 7603239    /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libm-2.11.1.so
00908000-00909000 r--p 00023000 08:05 7603239    /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libm-2.11.1.so
00909000-0090a000 rw-p 00024000 08:05 7603239    /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libm-2.11.1.so
08048000-0809d000 r-xp 00000000 08:11 20318114   /home/midas/online/test/frontend
0809d000-0809e000 r--p 00055000 08:11 20318114   /home/midas/online/test/frontend
0809e000-080a3000 rw-p 00056000 08:11 20318114   /home/midas/online/test/frontend
080a3000-080c5000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 
0835f000-08380000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0          [heap]
b7881000-b7884000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 
b7893000-b7895000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 
bf938000-bf94d000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0          [stack]
Aborted

Please help me figure out what's going wrong!

Thank you,
Jon

Can the MIDAS Sequencer call an external script? It seems that it should be able to. I have a simple 
test script to do so. It claims to execute, but the bash script never appears to be executed. Any 
suggestions?

1 COMMENT "This is a MSL test file"
  2 RUNDESCRIPTION "Test run"
  3 
  4 LOOP setting, 1,2, 3
  5      SCRIPT test_wheel.sh ,$setting 
  6      TRANSITION START
  7      WAIT Seconds 10
  8      TRANSITION STOP
  9 ENDLOOP

I've also tried using an xml script with <Script params="1">test_wheel.sh</Script>, but with the same 
result.

Thanks!

Nevermind. I just had to give it a path to my script. Now it's fine. 

> Can the MIDAS Sequencer call an external script? It seems that it should be able to. I have a simple 
> test script to do so. It claims to execute, but the bash script never appears to be executed. Any 
> suggestions?
> 
> 1 COMMENT "This is a MSL test file"
>   2 RUNDESCRIPTION "Test run"
>   3 
>   4 LOOP setting, 1,2, 3
>   5      SCRIPT test_wheel.sh ,$setting 
>   6      TRANSITION START
>   7      WAIT Seconds 10
>   8      TRANSITION STOP
>   9 ENDLOOP
> 
> I've also tried using an xml script with <Script params="1">test_wheel.sh</Script>, but with the same 
> result.
> 
> Thanks!

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

> 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

> > /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?

I think the "set clock" function is a holdover from embedded operating systems
that did not keep track of clock time, i.e. VxWorks, and similar. Here a midas program
will get the time from the mserver and set it on the local system. Poor man's ntp,
poor man's ntpd/chronyd.

We should check if this function is called by anything, and if nothing calls it, maybe remove it?

K.O.

> > > /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?
> 
> I think the "set clock" function is a holdover from embedded operating systems
> that did not keep track of clock time, i.e. VxWorks, and similar. Here a midas program
> will get the time from the mserver and set it on the local system. Poor man's ntp,
> poor man's ntpd/chronyd.
> 
> We should check if this function is called by anything, and if nothing calls it, maybe remove it?
> 
> K.O.

It's called in mfe.cxx via cm_synchronize:

/* set time from server */
#ifdef OS_VXWORKS
   cm_synchronize(NULL);
#endif

This was for old VxWorks systems which had no ntp/crond. Was asked for by Pierre long time ago. I don't use it 
(have no VxWorks). We can either remove it completely, or remove just the MacOSX part and just exit the program 
if called with an error message "not implemented on this OS".

Stefan

> > Affected files:
> > Makefile (add cnaf_callback.o)
> That's a good idea.
> To make things a bit easier, I modified the midas\examples\experiment\fronted.c to
> contain this call, so people should be guided by that. I also added cnaf_callback.c
> to the Makefile of the example frontend.

A request was made to remove cnaf_callback.o from libmidas as it creates a unwanted dependency on the CAMAC 
hardware driver when libmidas.so is used in programs that do not use CAMAC.

After looking around, it appears that removing cnaf_callback.o from libmidas would not break anything critical, 
other than CAMAC frontends that would fail to link with an obvious and easy to fix error.

I am leaving cnaf_callback.o in the Makefile - so it will be built and placed in linux/lib/cnaf_callback.o for anybody 
who wants to use it.

svn revision 4130.

K.O.

Some time ago, the "remote CAMAC" functionality in mfe.c was made conditional on
HAVE_CAMAC. This flag is not set by default so remote camac calls silently do
not work, unless midas is compiled in a special way. I am too lazy to compile
midas differently depending on what hardware I use, so I split
register_cnaf_callback() into a separate file and made it easy to call directly
from the user front end.

I left the HAVE_CAMAC bits in mfe.c so people who use that would see no change.

Affected files:
Makefile (add cnaf_callback.o)
midas.h (add void register_cnaf_callback(int debug);
mfe.c (move the rpc code to cnaf_callback.c, call register_cnaf_callback())
cnaf_callback.c (new file)

K.O.

> Some time ago, the "remote CAMAC" functionality in mfe.c was made conditional on
> HAVE_CAMAC. This flag is not set by default so remote camac calls silently do
> not work, unless midas is compiled in a special way. I am too lazy to compile
> midas differently depending on what hardware I use, so I split
> register_cnaf_callback() into a separate file and made it easy to call directly
> from the user front end.
> 
> I left the HAVE_CAMAC bits in mfe.c so people who use that would see no change.
> 
> Affected files:
> Makefile (add cnaf_callback.o)
> midas.h (add void register_cnaf_callback(int debug);
> mfe.c (move the rpc code to cnaf_callback.c, call register_cnaf_callback())
> cnaf_callback.c (new file)
> 
> K.O.

That's a good idea. The frontend framework should be independent of the used
hardware (CAMAC or VME or whatever). I event went further and removed the HAVE_CAMAC
completely. This means that people have to add the call to register_cnaf_callback()
explicitly into the frontend user init routine. I think this inconvenience is not a
big deal because even before that people had to add the cnaf_callback.c file
explicitely into their Makefile. So they have to be aware of that change, and then
it's not a big deal to modify the init routine as well. But this way we have mfe.c
completely independen of the DAQ hardware which is how it should be.

To make things a bit easier, I modified the midas\examples\experiment\fronted.c to
contain this call, so people should be guided by that. I also added cnaf_callback.c
to the Makefile of the example frontend.

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

Hello all, 

as discussed in the thread about Interrupt triggered readout
(https://midas.triumf.ca/elog/Midas/1016) I send you out driver for the CAEN
V1742 modules.

The code is separated into two different parts, first the real midas driver
(attachment 1).
Here the non trivial part is reading the modules internal flash pages to get to
correction patterns for the DRS4 chips, this is not documented in the manual.

The functions to apply the correction patters to the data is in the second
archive (attachment 2). I have to say this is C++ code as we use this with rootana.

The driver including the signal correction was used for data taking in 2012 with
4 synchronized V1742 modules for Antihydrogen experiment by the ASACUSA
collaboration at cern. We'll use it gain this year.

I hope the archives contain all necessary information, some parts were
distributed in various files..

Cheers,
Clemens

EDIT: the driver is based on the v1740 driver

Hello all,

As an addition to the driver functions I uploaded in this thread I would also have a
C++ class that handles everything for the V1742 modules and can be directly used
integrated into a C++ frontend. 

I would like to ask if you have policy for user supplied code like this? It's not a low
level driver but a frontend module that reads and controls the module, creates odb
hotlinks and handles the bank creating and storing of the data.

Best regards,
Clemens

EDIT: the question is, do you like to have  codes like this collected somewhere for
example this forum or would you prefer if I would post a link to some online repository =

I am having some trouble creating a frontend that interacts with some libraries that use C++11. 

The flag I added to my MIDAS Makefile to get the C++11 part of the code to work is -std=c++0x. This 
causes an error in the equipment description in the frontend code.

The error I get is:

frontend.cpp:149: error: narrowing conversion of ‘-0x00000000000000001’ from ‘int’ to ‘WORD’ inside { 
}

This corresponds to the following in the MIDAS frontend code.

EQUIPMENT equipment[] = { 
  {
   "MWPC",                           /* equipment name */
   {1, TRIGGER_ALL,                  /* event ID, trigger mask */
     "BUF2",                        /* event buffer */
     EQ_POLLED | EQ_EB,              /* equipment type */
     LAM_SOURCE(0, 0xFFFFFF),        /* event source crate 0, all stations */
     "MIDAS",                        /* format */
     TRUE,                           /* enabled */
     RO_RUNNING,                     /* read only when running */
     1,                              /* poll for 1ms */
     0,                              /* stop run after this event limit */
     0,                              /* number of sub events */
     0,                              /* don't log history */
     "", "", "",},
    read_trigger_event,              /* readout routine */
  },

   {""}
};  <- this is line 149
#ifdef __cplusplus
}
#endif

Do you know a way to make this compatible with C++11?

Thanks!

> I am having some trouble creating a frontend that interacts with some libraries that use C++11. 
> 
> The flag I added to my MIDAS Makefile to get the C++11 part of the code to work is -std=c++0x. This 
> causes an error in the equipment description in the frontend code.
> 
> The error I get is:
> 
> frontend.cpp:149: error: narrowing conversion of ‘-0x00000000000000001’ from ‘int’ to ‘WORD’ inside { 
> }
> 
> This corresponds to the following in the MIDAS frontend code.
> 
> EQUIPMENT equipment[] = { 
>   {
>    "MWPC",                           /* equipment name */
>    {1, TRIGGER_ALL,                  /* event ID, trigger mask */
>      "BUF2",                        /* event buffer */
>      EQ_POLLED | EQ_EB,              /* equipment type */
>      LAM_SOURCE(0, 0xFFFFFF),        /* event source crate 0, all stations */
>      "MIDAS",                        /* format */
>      TRUE,                           /* enabled */
>      RO_RUNNING,                     /* read only when running */
>      1,                              /* poll for 1ms */
>      0,                              /* stop run after this event limit */
>      0,                              /* number of sub events */
>      0,                              /* don't log history */
>      "", "", "",},
>     read_trigger_event,              /* readout routine */
>   },
> 
>    {""}
> };  <- this is line 149
> #ifdef __cplusplus
> }
> #endif
> 
> Do you know a way to make this compatible with C++11?
> 
> Thanks!

Is this maybe related to the LAM_SOURCE(0, 0xFFFFFFFF) where 0xFFFFFFFF is -1. I guess you are not using CAMAC, so just replace the 
LAM_SOURCE(...) with zero and try again.

/Stefan

> > I am having some trouble creating a frontend that interacts with some libraries that use C++11. 
> > 
> > The flag I added to my MIDAS Makefile to get the C++11 part of the code to work is -std=c++0x. This 
> > causes an error in the equipment description in the frontend code.
> > 
> > The error I get is:
> > 
> > frontend.cpp:149: error: narrowing conversion of ‘-0x00000000000000001’ from ‘int’ to ‘WORD’ inside { 
> > }
> > 
> > This corresponds to the following in the MIDAS frontend code.
> > 
> > EQUIPMENT equipment[] = { 
> >   {
> >    "MWPC",                           /* equipment name */
> >    {1, TRIGGER_ALL,                  /* event ID, trigger mask */
> >      "BUF2",                        /* event buffer */
> >      EQ_POLLED | EQ_EB,              /* equipment type */
> >      LAM_SOURCE(0, 0xFFFFFF),        /* event source crate 0, all stations */
> >      "MIDAS",                        /* format */
> >      TRUE,                           /* enabled */
> >      RO_RUNNING,                     /* read only when running */
> >      1,                              /* poll for 1ms */
> >      0,                              /* stop run after this event limit */
> >      0,                              /* number of sub events */
> >      0,                              /* don't log history */
> >      "", "", "",},
> >     read_trigger_event,              /* readout routine */
> >   },
> > 
> >    {""}
> > };  <- this is line 149
> > #ifdef __cplusplus
> > }
> > #endif
> > 
> > Do you know a way to make this compatible with C++11?
> > 
> > Thanks!
> 
> Is this maybe related to the LAM_SOURCE(0, 0xFFFFFFFF) where 0xFFFFFFFF is -1. I guess you are not using CAMAC, so just replace the 
> LAM_SOURCE(...) with zero and try again.
> 
> /Stefan

Thanks for the suggestion. It looks like it is instead the TRIGGER_ALL that is causing the problem. TRIGGER_ALL is defined as -1 in midas.h. If I replace TRIGGER_ALL with 0 in the 
frontend, it compiles, but if I use -1, I get the same error. I do not think that I want my trigger mask set to 0. Do you have a suggestion of how to get around this?

To answer the other questions, we are running on SLF6. I am building a frontend for a MWPC to read data from CAEN TDCs.

> Thanks for the suggestion. It looks like it is instead the TRIGGER_ALL that is causing the problem. TRIGGER_ALL is defined as -1 in midas.h. If I replace TRIGGER_ALL with 0 in the 
> frontend, it compiles, but if I use -1, I get the same error. I do not think that I want my trigger mask set to 0. Do you have a suggestion of how to get around this?

Ok, then it's clear. The trigger mask inside the EQUIPMENT_INFO is defined as 16-bit unsigned int (WORD). So the -1 gets expanded into a 64-bit signed int, then the compiler complains about truncating this to 16-bit. 

Just try instead TRIGGER_ALL to write

(WORD)(-1)

or even

0xFFFF

that should do the job. Basically you want all 16 bits to be "1" if yo do not use this feature.

Best regards,
Stefan