I'm not sure if these issues are related or not, but I'm getting an error
message when I want to access the root of the ODB via the webserver:
[mhttpd,ERROR] [mhttpd.cxx:563:rread,ERROR] Cannot read file '/root', read of
4096 returned -1, errno 21 (Is a directory)

I also tried turning the re-direct from http to https off, but this does not
seem to work. I also noticed that the redirect changes the localhost into a
hostname. Where does mongoose take this hostname from?

EDIT: Seems that the change of the hostname is due to a setting in /etc/hosts,
i.e. all my fault ...

EDIT: I think there was some issue with the mhttpd. When I checked the output (I
used screen to run it), it was full of these messages:

ss_semaphore_wait_for: semop/semtimedop(2588679) returned -1, errno 43
(Identifier removed)
al_check: Something is wrong with our semaphore, ss_semaphore_wait_for()
returned 408, aborting.
al_check: Cannot abort - this will lock you out of odb. From this point, MIDAS
will not work correctly. Please read the discussion at
https://midas.triumf.ca/elog/Midas/945

Restarted it and it stopped redirecting. So accessing the root of the ODB via
the webserver is the only issue now.

I keep on getting messages like this:

16:25:35 [fecaen,ERROR] [odb.c:4567:db_get_data,ERROR] data for key
"/DAQ/params/VX1730/custom/Board 0/Channel 0/Input range" truncated

whenever I start my frontend. Input range is defined to be a BOOL and using
odbedit to read it shows:

Key name                        Type    #Val  Size  Last Opn Mode Value
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Input range                     BOOL    1     4     75h  0   RWD  y

without any error message. The entry is read using

         size = sizeof(fInputRange);
         db_get_data(hDb, hSubKey, &fInputRange, &size, TID_BOOL);

where fInputRange is a bool.

Where does this message come from and how can I resolve this?

I am getting a series of errors from MIDAS that I do not understand, so I hope
someone can help me figure this out.

I am attempting to run many frontends on one machine. I can run 8 with no
problem, but if I try to add a 9th I get errors relating to send_tcp. 

I have tried adjusting the max event sizes and buffer sizes, but it has not
resolved the problem. I also tried adjusting the data rates and the total data
volume going through each frontend, but there was no change. And as far as I can
tell I am not up against any hardware limits.

The errors are repeated continuously while a run is going. The three errors I
get are:

16:45:22 [FakeData09,ERROR] [midas.c:9958:rpc_client_call,ERROR] send_tcp() failed
16:45:22 [FakeData09,ERROR] [frontend_rpc.c:191:rpc_call,ERROR] No RPC to master
16:45:22 [FakeData09,ERROR] [system.c:4166:send_tcp,ERROR]
send(socket=9,size=16) returned -1, errno: 32 (Broken pipe)

If you have any suggestions of how I can debug this, please let me know. Thanks!

> > I am getting a series of errors from MIDAS that I do not understand, so I hope
> > someone can help me figure this out.
> > 
> > I am attempting to run many frontends on one machine. I can run 8 with no
> > problem, but if I try to add a 9th I get errors relating to send_tcp. 
> > 
> > I have tried adjusting the max event sizes and buffer sizes, but it has not
> > resolved the problem. I also tried adjusting the data rates and the total data
> > volume going through each frontend, but there was no change. And as far as I can
> > tell I am not up against any hardware limits.
> > 
> > The errors are repeated continuously while a run is going. The three errors I
> > get are:
> > 
> > 16:45:22 [FakeData09,ERROR] [midas.c:9958:rpc_client_call,ERROR] send_tcp() failed
> > 16:45:22 [FakeData09,ERROR] [frontend_rpc.c:191:rpc_call,ERROR] No RPC to master
> > 16:45:22 [FakeData09,ERROR] [system.c:4166:send_tcp,ERROR]
> > send(socket=9,size=16) returned -1, errno: 32 (Broken pipe)
> > 
> > If you have any suggestions of how I can debug this, please let me know. Thanks!
> 
> Can you tell me
> 
> - why you need 9 frontends
> - what kind of data your frontends produce
> - how your event builder looks like and how you assemble the fragments
> - what messages/errors you see when you run odbedit BEFORE the crash
> 
> /Stefan

Our experiment will need 24 frontends that will each run on its own machine. For now we
want to run 24 "fake" frontends on one machine for testing purposes. 9 is the limit
where it stops working properly. 

We have a pulser that is giving us periodic data at a constant rate. We have a master
frontend running on a different PC in interrupt mode that assembles the events, and then
N "FakeData" frontends running in polled mode on a single PC. 

We do have an event builder, but we get these errors whether the event builder is
running or not.

At the start of a run, I see the following messages:

[mtransition,INFO] Run #21 started
Sat Feb 9 16:14:57 2013 [FakeData09,ERROR] [system.c:4166:send_tcp,ERROR]
send(socket=9,size=16) returned -1, errno: 104 (Connection reset by peer)
Sat Feb 9 16:14:57 2013 [FakeData09,ERROR] [midas.c:9958:rpc_client_call,ERROR]
send_tcp() failed
Sat Feb 9 16:14:57 2013 [FakeData09,ERROR] [frontend_rpc.c:191:rpc_call,ERROR] No RPC to
master
Sat Feb 9 16:14:57 2013 [master,ERROR] [midas.c:10844:recv_tcp_server,ERROR] Cannot
allocate 268435512 bytes for network buffer
Sat Feb 9 16:14:57 2013 [master,ERROR] [midas.c:12893:rpc_server_receive,ERROR]
recv_tcp_server() returned -1, abort
Sat Feb 9 16:14:57 2013 [master,TALK] Program 'FakeData09' on host 'fe01' aborted

After this it recycles just the first three errors that I mentioned above.

Thank you for the help. As it turns out, the problem was due to the fact that we were compiling MIDAS on our 64 bit backend machine, but one of the frontend machines is 32 bit. The problem was resolved by compiling a 32 bit version of MIDAS in
addition to the 64 bit version.

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

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.

For our MIDAS installation at Fermilab, it is necessary that we be able to write to a PosgresQL 
database (MySQL is not supported here). This will be required of both mlogger and mscb. 

Has anyone done this before? And do you know of a relatively simple way of implementing it, or do 
we need to replicate the mysql functions that are already in the mlogger/mscb code to add functions 
that perform the equivalent Posgres commands?

Thanks!
Wes

SIGSEGV is a segmentation fault. Most often it means some ODB parameter is out of bounds or there is 
an invalid memcpy somewhere in your code.

> Hello, I am new in the forum. We are running an experiment for a week with no
> problems. Now we add a detector a we found an error. Even we come back to our
> previous configuration the error continues appearing. Please, may someone help
> us? You can find the error in the attachment. Thanks!

After pulling the newest version of midas, our compilation would fail on
bk_create, with the error:

frontend.cpp:954: error: invalid conversion from ‘DWORD**’ to ‘void**’
frontend.cpp:954: error:   initializing argument 4 of ‘void bk_create(void*,
const char*, WORD, void**)’

I noticed a change to the function in midas.c that changes the type of pdata
from a pointer to a double pointer, and changes 

      *((void **) pdata) = pbk + 1;
to
      *pdata = pbk + 1;

The fix is simple. In each call to bk_create, I changed it to:

bk_create(pevent, bk_name, TID_DWORD, (void**)&pdata); 

I suggest updating the documentation. Also, why the change? Does it add some
improvement in efficiency?

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!

Hi. Is it currently possible to automatically save the MIDAS ODB as a JSON file?
I can do it manually in odbedit, but it looks like the only option for the
automatic ODB save for each run is the standard .ODB format. Is there a way to
change this?

Since updating to the most recent midas commit, we get the following error if we try running mhttpd without su privileges: 

>mhttpd -e CR --http 8081
mhttpd is running in setuid-root mode.
mhttpd is listening on port 80
Mongoose version 4 cannot listen to port 80 in setuid mode. Please use mongoose version 6. Sorry, bye!
[mhttpd,ERROR] [midas.c:1960:,ERROR] cm_disconnect_experiment not called at end of program

It works if we run it as root, but that creates other problems. Is there a flag to turn off setuid-root mode? Or some other fix?

Thanks,
Wes

Hi everyone, 

We have recently been experiencing a lot of lag with our midas control webpage,
which is making it very frustrating to use. Has anyone experienced this, and do
you have any advice to speed it up? Are there particular web browsers that work
better than others, or certain settings that can make respond more quickly?

Thanks!
Wes

Below are the steps we used to increase the maximum number of frontends that we could run.

In midas.h

#define MAX_CLIENTS            64

changed to

#define MAX_CLIENTS            128

In msystem.h:

#define MAX_RPC_CONNECTION     64

changed to

#define MAX_RPC_CONNECTION     128

In odb.c:

assert(sizeof(BUFFER_HEADER) == 16444); 

GUESS: 256*64+60 = 16444, so change 64 to 128

changed to:                                                                                                                         

assert(sizeof(BUFFER_HEADER) == 32828); //256*128+60

 

DATABASE_HEADER = 64 + 64*DATABASE_CLIENT = 64 + 64*8256 = 528448

changed to:

DATABASE_HEADER = 64 + 128*DATABASE_CLIENT = 64 + 128*8256 = 1056832.

Hi. We've just updated our midas installation to the newest version, and we now see repeated errors from the 
mserver in messages. Mostly we see

11:17:02.994 2018/08/21 [ODBEdit,TALK] Program mserver restarted

which happens 2-3 times per minute. 

We have also been seeing occasional dropped rpc connections to our frontends, which could be related. 

The version we were running with previously was ~1 year old, and we have just updated to the newest version 
on bitbucket. 

Thanks,
Wes

Hi,

I am attempting to compile and run analysis code on a completely different,
unconnected system than the DAQ computer for the experiment. The analyzer was
developed previously and my goal is to get it running and then update it to
achieve my needs. Before compiling the analyzer, I load a backup ODB file in
odbedit, and compile experim.h. I then compile the analyzer with that experim.h
file. When I run the analyzer I get the following output:

> MIDAS version 2.1ROOT version 5.34/36Root server listening on port 9090...
> Running analyzer offline. Stop with "!"
> Configuration file "/somedir/switches.odb" loaded
> [Analyzer,INFO] Set run number 1290 in ODB
> Load ODB from run 1290...[Analyzer,INFO] cannot load value "Client Notify":
write protected
> [Analyzer,INFO] cannot load value "Prompt": write protected
.
.
.
> [Analyzer,INFO] cannot load value "LANSCE-ops": write protected
> MIDAS version 2.1ROOT version 5.34/36OK
> Configuration file "/somedir/switches.odb" loaded
> Data_Raw/run01290.mid.gz:16355  Data_Analyzed/run01290.root:15208  events, 0.43s

I have confirmed all files being used have read/write access to all users. The
analyzer does populate a .root output file with filled histograms, however not
all histograms are filled. I believe this is because histograms that relied on
an ODB paramater that failed to load did not populate. Any idea as to what I am
doing wrong or how I could resolve this issue are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
William Moore

Hi,

I have been trying to use db_check_record() in order to verify that a subtree in the ODB has the correct 
variables, variable order, and overall size. I'm going off the documentation 
(https://midas.psi.ch/htmldoc/group__odbfunctionc.html) and use a string to compare against the ODB 
structure.  Since the string format is not specified for db_check_record(), I'm formatting my string 
according to the db_create_record() example.

Instead of db_check_record() checking the entire ODB subtree against all the variables represented in the 
string, I'm finding that only the first variable is checked.  The later variables in the string can be 
misspelled, out of order, or inexistent, and db_check_record() will still return 1.

Am I using db_check_record incorrectly?  

Thank you for any help with this issue.


I also believe that some of the documentation for db_check_record is outdated.  For example, init_string 
is referenced in the documentation but isn't part of the function definition.

Hi,

Attempting to copy a subtree to a new location in the ODB using odbedit with "copy <src> <dest>" is 
occasionally not copying the entire <src> subtree.

I am experiencing this issue consistently when trying to copy subtrees from the "/Equipment" ODB tree to 
a new location.  The first 2-3 variables/directories of the <src> subtree will be copied to <dest> but the 
full subtree will not be copied over.