After pondering over the holidays, I decided to use the widely used LLVM code formatting, 
just adapted slightly for 3 spaces and "case" indentation in a "switch" statement. This 
formatting is now very close to our original one. Nevertheless, I did not reformat all 
existing code, since that would screw up the git repository, and you cannot see then anymore 
who wrote which line of code. But having the .clang-format file now in the midas root, all 
NEW files fill follow that standard. 

The CLion editor automatically picks up the .clang-format file if your enable ClangFomrat 
via Preferences -> Code Style -> General -> Enable ClangFormat.

EMACS can also use this file by adding following lines to your .emacs:

(load "<path-to-clang>/tools/clang-format/clang-format.el")
(global-set-key [C-M-tab] 'clang-format-region)

One problem left is if you check out midas on a new machine, you might not have there your 
personal .emacs file. If there is a way to ship a .emacs with midas, which gets 
automatically loaded, I would be happy to put this into the distribution.

Stefan

Hi all,

I'm running into a curious problem when I try to run a program using my custom 
script button. I have been using a script button to start my DAQ, this button 
has always worked. It starts by exporting an absolute path to scripts and then 
runs scripts, my frontend, my analyzer, and mlogger relative to this path.

I recently added a line of code to run a new script "logic_controller". If I run 
the script_daq from my terminal (./start_daq), mhttpd accepts the client and the 
program works as intended. But, if I use the script button, the logic_controller 
program is immediately deleted by MIDAS. It can be seen appearing in the status 
page clients list and then immediately gets deleted. This is a client that runs 
on the local experiment host.

What might be the issue? What is the difference between running the script 
through the terminal as opposed to running it through the mhttpd button?

I have added a picture of my simple script and the logic_controller code.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers.

Isaac

> if I use the script button, the logic_controller program is immediately deleted by MIDAS.

This is indeed very curious, and I can't reproduce it on my test experiment. Can you redirect stdout and stderr from the logic_controller program into a file, to see how far the program gets? If it gets to the while loop at the end, then it would be useful to add some debug statements to see what condition causes it to exit the loop.

Are there any relevant messages in the midas message log about the program being killed? What's the value of "/Programs/logic_controller/Watchdog timeout"? 

> > if I use the script button, the logic_controller program is immediately deleted by MIDAS.
> 
> This is indeed very curious, and I can't reproduce it on my test experiment. Can you redirect stdout and stderr from the logic_controller program into a file, to see how far the program gets? If it gets to the while loop at the end, then it would be useful to add some debug statements to see what condition causes it to exit the loop.

I have redirected stdout and stderr into a text file and I have attached it to this entry. From what the stdout says, it seems that the lambda
function gets called 4 times before the program disconnects from the experiment. Somehow the status must become SS_ABORT or RPC_SHUTDOWN.

> Are there any relevant messages in the midas message log about the program being killed? What's the value of "/Programs/logic_controller/Watchdog timeout"? 

There are no interesting messages in the midas.log and "/Programs/logic_controller/Watchdog timeout" is 10000 when I run the command from the terminal window.
What happens when you run it on your test experiment?

I'll try some more debugging.

Thanks for helping me out! Cheers.

Isaac

I think it would be useful to find the minimal example that exhibits this behaviour.

What happens if your logic controller code is simply the 17 lines below? What happens if you create another script button that only starts the logic controller, not any of the other programs? etc. Gradually re-add features until you hit the problem (or scream in horror if it breaks with 17 lines of C++ and a 1 line shell script).



#include "midas.h"
#include "stdio.h"

int main() {
   cm_connect_experiment("", "", "logic_controller", NULL);

   do {
     int status = cm_yield(100);
     printf("cm_yield returned %d\n", status);
     if (status == SS_ABORT || status == RPC_SHUTDOWN)
       break;
   } while (!ss_kbhit());

   cm_disconnect_experiment();

   return 0;
}

> I think it would be useful to find the minimal example that exhibits this behaviour.
> 
> What happens if your logic controller code is simply the 17 lines below? What happens if you create another script button that only starts the logic controller, not any of the other programs? etc. Gradually re-add features until you hit the problem (or scream in horror if it breaks with 17 lines of C++ and a 1 line shell script).
> 

Hi Ben,

I have followed your suggestions and the program still stops immediately. My status as returned from "cm_yield(100)" is always 412 (SS_TIMEOUT) which is fine. 
The issue is that, when run with the script button, the do-wile loop stops immediately because the !ss_kbhit() always evaluates to FALSE.

My temporary solution has been to let the loop run forever :)

Let me know what think. Thanks again!

Isaac

> 
> 
> #include "midas.h"
> #include "stdio.h"
> 
> int main() {
>    cm_connect_experiment("", "", "logic_controller", NULL);
> 
>    do {
>      int status = cm_yield(100);
>      printf("cm_yield returned %d\n", status);
>      if (status == SS_ABORT || status == RPC_SHUTDOWN)
>        break;
>    } while (!ss_kbhit());
> 
>    cm_disconnect_experiment();
> 
>    return 0;
> }

> I have followed your suggestions and the program still stops immediately. My status as returned from "cm_yield(100)" is always 412 (SS_TIMEOUT) which is fine. 
> The issue is that, when run with the script button, the do-wile loop stops immediately because the !ss_kbhit() always evaluates to FALSE.
> 
> My temporary solution has been to let the loop run forever :)

Ahh, could be that ss_kbhit() misbehaves if there is no keyboard, meaning that it is started in the background as a script. 
We never had the issue before, since all "standard" midas programs like mlogger, mhttpd etc. also use ss_kbhit() and they 
can be started in the background via the "-D" flag, but maybe the stdin is then handled differentlhy. 

So just remove the ss_kbhit(), but keep the break, so that you can stop your program via the web page, like

#include "midas.h"
#include "stdio.h"

int main() {
  cm_connect_experiment("", "", "logic_controller", NULL);

  do {
    int status = cm_yield(100);
    printf("cm_yield returned %d\n", status);
    if (status == SS_ABORT || status == RPC_SHUTDOWN)
      break;
  } while (TRUE);

  cm_disconnect_experiment();

  return 0;
}

This is a super small pull request, simple replace deprecated sprintf with snprintf

https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/manalyzer/pull-requests/9

> This is a super small pull request, simple replace deprecated sprintf with snprintf
> https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/manalyzer/pull-requests/9

sprintf() is not deprecated and "char buf[256]; sprintf(buf, "%05d", 64-bit-int);" is safe, will never overflow.

we could bulk-convert all these sprintf() to snprintf() but I would rather wait for this:

https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/utility/format/format

let me think on this for a bit.

K.O.

> > This is a super small pull request, simple replace deprecated sprintf with snprintf
> > https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/manalyzer/pull-requests/9
> 
> sprintf() is not deprecated and "char buf[256]; sprintf(buf, "%05d", 64-bit-int);" is safe, will never overflow.
> 
> we could bulk-convert all these sprintf() to snprintf() but I would rather wait for this:
> 
> https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/utility/format/format
> 
> let me think on this for a bit.
> 
> K.O.

I completely agree that the 64-bit int is safe and will never overflow. Doing a little digging, both clang and gcc don't raise warnings on x86_64 (even with -Wall -Wextra -Wpedantic), even when I give it a buffer impossibly small (two bytes). However I've narrowed down the depreciation warning comes from: MacOS

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/kernel/1441083-sprintf

I like the look of std::format, looks cleaner than string streams

> I like the look of std::format, looks cleaner than string streams

I fully agree. String streams is a pain if you want to do zero-leading hex output mixed with decimal output. Yes it's easier to read if you don't know printf syntax,
but 10-20 times more chars to write and not necessarily cleaner.

Proble is that we would have to convert about a few thousand of sprintf's() in midas.

Stefan

> > I like the look of std::format, looks cleaner than string streams
> 
> I fully agree. String streams is a pain if you want to do zero-leading hex output mixed with decimal output. Yes it's easier to read if you don't know printf syntax,
> but 10-20 times more chars to write and not necessarily cleaner.
>

IMO c++ string streams formatting is optimized for "hello world" and is useless for printing hex numbers, table-formatted data and generally anything real-life.

plus the borked std::to_string() (it takes a global lock for the "C" locale), "fixed" it by introducing std::to_chars() in C++17,
with "ultimate fix" in std::format in C++26.

no question why C++ has the bad reputation. for a "done right" example, take a look at the Go standard library.

> 
> Probable is that we would have to convert about a few thousand of sprintf's() in midas.
> 

surprising few bare sprintf() remaining in MIDAS, most of them overflow-safe and most of them to be converted to msprintf().

K.O.

> Is there currently an easy way to check from javascript if a midas client is running? I mean an equivalent 
to cm_exist.

Yes, I can add an ajax method for cm_exist. While at it, maybe ajax methods for starting and stopping 
clients - to permit fully ajaxed implementation of the "programs" page?

K.O.

(But only under the condition that you post elog messages in "plain" format - fancy formatted messages 
with highlighted word "very" show up as complete dog breakfast in my text based email. If you want to 
highlight something, just say "***!!!***very***!!!***", add more bangs to taste).

Not sure how many people are using it, but the Chat facility in midas was broken 
for some time now and got fixed today again.

Just for your information: Chat can be used like WhatsApp & Co, and connects all 
people who access a midas experiment through their browser. It's good to 
communicate between shift crew members located at different places. One advantage 
is that the chat messages can get 'spoken' by the text-to-speech engine of your 
browser, so it can be used to "wake up" shifters. Can be configured through the 
"Config" page.

Stefan

I had to change the pointer type of mvme_read and mvme_write to (void *) instead
to (mvme_locaddr_t *) to avoid warnings under 64-bit linux. Please adjust your
VME drivers if necessary.

- Stefan

> I had to change the pointer type of mvme_read and mvme_write to (void *) instead
> to (mvme_locaddr_t *) to avoid warnings under 64-bit linux. Please adjust your
> VME drivers if necessary.

Updated: vmicvme.c (VMIVME-7750/7805) and gefvme.c (GEFANUC V7865)

K.O.