Dear all,

we are trying to build Midas events on FPGAs and send them directly to the midas
ring buffer via copy_n. According to the wiki
https://midas.triumf.ca/MidasWiki/index.php/Event_Structure Event Data Size is:
"The event data size contains the size of the event in bytes excluding the
header." and All Bank Size is: "Size in bytes of the following data plus the
size of the bank header". So are they actually the same or what header is the
header in the first sentence also the bank header?

Cheers,
Marius

 

Thanks for pointing out this error. The "All Bank Size" contains the size of all banks including their 
bank headers, but NOT the global bank header itself. I modified the documentation accordingly.

If you want to study the C code which tells you how to fill these headers, look at midas.cxx line 
14788.

Best,
Stefan

> Dear all,
> 
> we are trying to build Midas events on FPGAs and send them directly to the midas
> ring buffer via copy_n. According to the wiki
> https://midas.triumf.ca/MidasWiki/index.php/Event_Structure Event Data Size is:
> "The event data size contains the size of the event in bytes excluding the
> header." and All Bank Size is: "Size in bytes of the following data plus the
> size of the bank header". So are they actually the same or what header is the
> header in the first sentence also the bank header?
> 
> Cheers,
> Marius
> 
>  

> Thanks for pointing out this error. The "All Bank Size" contains the size of all banks including their 
> bank headers, but NOT the global bank header itself. I modified the documentation accordingly.
> 
> If you want to study the C code which tells you how to fill these headers, look at midas.cxx line 
> 14788.

Also take a look at the midas event parser in ROOTANA midasio.cxx, the code is pretty clean c++
https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/rootana/src/master/libMidasInterface/midasio.cxx

But Stefan's code in midas.cxx and in the documentation is the authoritative information.

K.O.

Hi,
for some reason we occasionally get JSON errors in the browser when accessing MIDAS. It is then not possible to open a new window or tab, see attachment. The unexpected token is \0x6, so the acknowledge symbol.
If this happens, then all "alive sessions" keep being usable despite error messages, but show similar error messages:
>RPC Error
>json parser exception: SyntaxError: JSON.parse: bad control character in string literal at line 80 column 30 of the JSON data, method: "db_get_valus", params: [object Object], id: 1582020074098.

Do you have any idea why db_get_values yields ACK or other control characters?

Thanks

You are the first one reporting this error, so it must be due to your values in the ODB. Can you track it down to specific ODB contents? If so, can you post it so that I can reproduce your error?

Stefan

> The unexpected token is \0x6
> RPC Error json parser exception: SyntaxError: JSON.parse: bad control character in string literal at line 80 column 30 of the JSON data, method: "db_get_valus", params: [object Object], id: 1582020074098.

Yes, there is a problem.

Traditionally, midas strings in ODB have no restriction on the content (I think even the '\0x0' char is permitted).

But web browser javascript strings are supposed to be valid unicode (UTF-16, if I read this right: https://tc39.es/ecma262/#sec-ecmascript-language-types-string-type).

The collision between the two happens when ODB values are json-encoded by midas, then json-decoded by the web browser.

The midas json encoder (mjson.h, mjson.cxx) encodes ODB strings according to JSON rules, but does not ensure that the result is valid UTF-8. (valid UTF-8 is not required, if I read the specs correctly http://www.ecma-
international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/ECMA-404.pdf and https://www.json.org/json-en.html)

The web browser json decoder requires valid UTF-8 and throws exceptions if it does not like something. Different browsers it slightly differently, so we have an error handler for this in the mjsonrpc results processor.

What does this mean in practice?

Now that MIDAS is very web oriented, MIDAS strings must be web browser friendly, too:

a) all ODB key names (subdirectory names, link names, etc) must be UTF-8 unicode, and this has been enforced by ODB for some time now.
b) all ODB string values must be valid UTF-8 unicode. This is not enforced right now.

Historically, it was okey to use ODB TID_STRING to store arbitrary binary data, but now, I think, we must deprecate this,
at least for any ODB entries that could be returned to a web browser (which means all of them, after we implement a fully
html+javascript odb editor). For storing binary data, arrays of TID_CHAR, TID_DWORD & co are probably a better match.

The MIDAS and ROOTANA json decoders (the same mjson.h, mjson.cxx) do not care about UTF-8, so ODB dumps
in JSON format are not affected by any of this. (But I am not sure about the JSON decoder in ROOT).

Bottom line:

I think db_validate() should check for invalid UTF-8 in ODB key names and in TID_STRING values
and at least warn the user. (I am not sure if invalid UTF-8 can be fixed automatically). db_create()
should reject key names that are not valid UTF-8 (it already does this, I think). db_set_value(TID_STRING) should
probably reject invalid UTF-8 strings, this needs to be discussed some more.

https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/215/everything-in-odb-must-be-valid-utf-8

K.O.

INT idle (EQUIPMENT * pequipment)

Hi, Giorgio - I think you encountered a fundamental problem with what to do at the begin of 
run. There are two ways of thinking about it.

Some experiments want to start the run as quickly as possible, so they do not want 
begin_of_run() to do too much stuff.

Other experiments want to record all the current settings and conditions before starting a 
run, their begin_of_run() will read all the slow controls, interrogate all the power supplies, 
read all the voltages, temperatures, pressures, etc. By necessity this will slow down the 
starting of the run quite significantly.

The best I understand the midas class driver structure, it is more geared for the first case - 
fast starting of runs.

The thinking behind this choice considers the nature of most slow control data in typical 
physics experiments:
- if the data does not change quickly (say, room temperature, atmospheric pressure, etc), 
and you read it say every 1 minute, then you do not need to read it again at begin run time - 
the 1 minute old measurement is still good enough - nothing changed much since then
- if the opposite is true, the data changes wildly (i.e. detector high voltage current goes up 
and down in response to the quickly changing beam current), measuring it at the start of 
the run does us no good - by the time the first event comes around, it has already changed 
completely.

Hopefully Stefan can help you with your specific problem, he has better understanding of 
the midas class drivers.


K.O.


[quote="Pintaudi Giorgio"]Hello!
As you know, the generic MIDAS frontend has a class driver, device driver, bus driver
structure. Assuming a slow device frontend, its class driver should have a routine of type   
[CODE]INT idle (EQUIPMENT * pequipment)[/CODE]
This routine is called with a rate controlled by the 
"[I]/Equipment/<frontend name>/Common/Event limit[/I]" parameter.
The idle routine usually reads one channel of the frontend and stores the results
in the "[I]/Equipment/<frontend name>/Variables[/I]" ODB folder.

[B]My question is: it is possible to force (from the code) the frontend to call the idle routine 
at a 
certain point. This is because I need to update the "[I]/Equipment/<frontend 
name>/Variables[/I]"
variables inside the "[I]begin_of_run[/I]" routine, at a very specific time.[/B]

One dirty solution would be to increase a lot the reading rate ... but I need this
increased reading rate only during the run start while I need a low reading rate
during the run. So the question: is it possible to increase and decrease the reading
rate (event limit) of a frontend without stopping and restarting it?

If you need more info, please let me know.
Thank you
Giorgio[/quote]

@@ -411,6 +411,17 @@ static INT register_equipment(void)
             ss_sleep(3000);
             return 0;
          }
+#ifdef WAGASCI_OPEN_ODB_HOTLINK
+         status = db_open_record(hDB, hKey, eq_info, sizeof(EQUIPMENT), MODE_READ,
+                                 nullptr, nullptr);
+         if (status != DB_SUCCESS) {
+            printf("ERROR: Cannot open hotlink with equipment record \"%s\", db_open_record() status %d\n",
+                   str, status);
+            cm_disconnect_experiment();
+            ss_sleep(3000);
+            return 0;
+         }
+#endif
       } else if (status == DB_STRUCT_MISMATCH) {
          cm_msg(MINFO, "register_equipment", "Correcting \"%s\", db_check_record() status %d", str, status);
          db_create_record(hDB, 0, str, EQUIPMENT_COMMON_STR);

• Every change to the equipment "/Equipment/<frontend name>/Common" is instantaneously applied (and might crash the frontend?)
  

INT idle (EQUIPMENT * pequipment)

> We had a case where a detector produced electrostatic discharges which only lasted for a second or so
> and we were happy to detect this in spikes in the HV current. With measurements of only one per minute
> we would not have realized that so quicky.

For the T2K/ND280 TPC we implemented something similar. The TPC uses MicroMegas detector which sparks during 
normal operation. We asked Wiener/ISEG to implement a "spark counting mode" for us (and they did). In this mode,
high voltage over-current (a micromegas spark) sets a special flag (does not trip the high voltage). Our midas frontend
reads this flag at rate about 1/min, if flag is set, clears it, increments the software spark counter, reads the flag again,
if the flag is still set (failed to clear), it means this was not a normal spark but a high voltage breakdown
and the offending channel is shut down. I believe this mode is still part of the ISEG normal firmware.

Because the Wiener/ISEG interface uses SNMP to "read all data in one operation", the MIDAS "device driver" structure
was not useful, the readout was a simple loop, the readout frequency was easy to control, and indeed,
we read the high voltage with increased frequency during ramping. This was easy to implement because we
did not have to fight the MIDAS "device driver" framework.

If you want a similar solution, talk to the device, interpret the data, record values to odb and history, generate
midas events - all without hand holding from (arm wrestling with the rest of) midas - I recommend
the new tmfe.h/tmfe.cxx c++ frontend - see the two examples in midas/progs/fetest_tmfe.cxx
and fetest_tmfe_thread.cxx (single-threaded and multi-threaded).

K.O.

Hi, Stefan & co - now that midas is c++11 and c++11 comes with a threads library, should we 
switch midas to use the c++11 threads instead of pthreads? (Of course on Linux c++11 
threads are a layer on top of pthreads, the best I know).

This should remove the dependency on pthreads.h and use a more native implementation of 
threads on MacOS and Windows. (again, the best I can tell).

Of course this depends on c++11 threads having all the functions we need. Specifically, "lock 
with timeout" is useful to deal with "gah! everything stopped! what do I do!", a problem 
bedeviling midas in the early days (and still happens today!). Current midas kills everything 
after 5 minutes of deadlock - then the user knows how to restart everything and the developer 
has core dumps to look at. (to see which program/thread holds the lock and would not give it 
up).

Any thoughts on this?

K.O.

I'm thinking of this already since some time, and it was part of my motivation switching to C++11.
I was delighted to see that what we do in system.c (encapsulate system functions such as threads
and shared memory) is now done natively in C++11, and it's done by experts and not amateurs like us.

I see that with std::timed_mutex and try_lock_for we have the desired timeout function. Pity that
C++11 does not contain inter-process communication like semaphores, so there we still have to use
our old functions. 

But for threads switching to std::thread, I'm all in.

Stefan

> Hi, Stefan & co - now that midas is c++11 and c++11 comes with a threads library, should we 
> switch midas to use the c++11 threads instead of pthreads? (Of course on Linux c++11 
> threads are a layer on top of pthreads, the best I know).
> 
> This should remove the dependency on pthreads.h and use a more native implementation of 
> threads on MacOS and Windows. (again, the best I can tell).
> 
> Of course this depends on c++11 threads having all the functions we need. Specifically, "lock 
> with timeout" is useful to deal with "gah! everything stopped! what do I do!", a problem 
> bedeviling midas in the early days (and still happens today!). Current midas kills everything 
> after 5 minutes of deadlock - then the user knows how to restart everything and the developer 
> has core dumps to look at. (to see which program/thread holds the lock and would not give it 
> up).
> 
> Any thoughts on this?
> 
> K.O.

> Hi, Stefan & co - now that midas is c++11 and c++11 comes with a threads library, should we 
> switch midas to use the c++11 threads instead of pthreads? (Of course on Linux c++11 
> threads are a layer on top of pthreads, the best I know).
> 
> This should remove the dependency on pthreads.h and use a more native implementation of 
> threads on MacOS and Windows. (again, the best I can tell).
> 
> Of course this depends on c++11 threads having all the functions we need. Specifically, "lock 
> with timeout" is useful to deal with "gah! everything stopped! what do I do!", a problem 
> bedeviling midas in the early days (and still happens today!). Current midas kills everything 
> after 5 minutes of deadlock - then the user knows how to restart everything and the developer 
> has core dumps to look at. (to see which program/thread holds the lock and would not give it 
> up).
> 
> Any thoughts on this?
> 
> K.O.

Hi, I just wanted to say that I have seen this post and maybe that is the solution to the pthreads compiler problem in OS 10.15, but 
of course I am a total amateur in here. Thanks for thinking about this and I will wait and hold to see what gets decided. Thanks

Berta  

Hi all, 

I have a Mac with OS 10.13.6 and Xcode 10.1. I am following the instructions in the wiki to install Midas. 
I have installed openssl via MacPorts as per the instructions. But then I get an error related to open ssl 
when I try to compile Midas. See the results of cmake .. and make install 

Darrens-Mac-mini:build betacage$ cmake ..
-- MIDAS: cmake version: 3.16.3
-- MIDAS: CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX: /Users/betacage/packages/midas
-- MIDAS: Found ROOT version 6.18/04
-- MIDAS: Found ZLIB version 1.2.11
-- MIDAS: Found OpenSSL version 1.1.1d
-- MIDAS: MySQL not found
-- MIDAS: ODBC not found
-- MIDAS: Found SQLITE /usr/include/sqlite3.h
-- MIDAS: nvidia-smi not found
-- MIDAS example/experiment: MIDAS in-tree-build
-- MIDAS: Found ZLIB version 1.2.11
-- MIDAS example/experiment: Found ROOT version 6.18/04
-- Configuring done
-- Generating done
-- Build files have been written to: /Users/betacage/packages/midas/build
Darrens-Mac-mini:build betacage$ make install 
[  1%] Built target mfeo
[  3%] Built target mfe
[  4%] Built target rmana
[  5%] Built target manao
[  6%] Built target mana
[  6%] Built target git_revision_h
[ 30%] Built target objlib
[ 31%] Built target midas
[ 32%] Built target rmanao
[ 32%] Built target objlib-c-compat
[ 32%] Built target midas-c-compat
[ 33%] Built target midas-shared
[ 35%] Built target rmlogger
[ 36%] Linking CXX executable mhttpd
Undefined symbols for architecture x86_64:
  "_OPENSSL_init_ssl", referenced from:
      _mg_mgr_init in mongoose6.cxx.o
  "_SSL_CTX_set_options", referenced from:
      _mg_set_ssl in mongoose6.cxx.o
ld: symbol(s) not found for architecture x86_64
clang: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)
make[2]: *** [progs/mhttpd] Error 1
make[1]: *** [progs/CMakeFiles/mhttpd.dir/all] Error 2
make: *** [all] Error 2


I hope that this is the right forum to submit this kind of reports.
Any idea what do I have to do to continue ? Thanks is advance !

Berta 

Hi, yes, this is the right place to report problems and to ask questions about midas.

As for your trouble, I have the same macos 10.13.6, so we should be able to figure out what goes wrong.

Unfortunately, the posted instructions (to run cmake directly) hide all the information needed to debug build problems.

Instead of "cd build; cmake ..", please run "make cmake" and post the output. Printed should be all the compiler
and linker commands executed by the build. You can examine the mhttpd linker command to see if somehow
the wrong openssl library is being used.

If you do not need built-in https support in mhttpd, you can run "make cmake NO_SSL=1".

K.O.

> Hi all, 
> 
> I have a Mac with OS 10.13.6 and Xcode 10.1. I am following the instructions in the wiki to install Midas. 
> I have installed openssl via MacPorts as per the instructions. But then I get an error related to open ssl 
> when I try to compile Midas. See the results of cmake .. and make install 
> 
> Darrens-Mac-mini:build betacage$ cmake ..
> -- MIDAS: cmake version: 3.16.3
> -- MIDAS: CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX: /Users/betacage/packages/midas
> -- MIDAS: Found ROOT version 6.18/04
> -- MIDAS: Found ZLIB version 1.2.11
> -- MIDAS: Found OpenSSL version 1.1.1d
> -- MIDAS: MySQL not found
> -- MIDAS: ODBC not found
> -- MIDAS: Found SQLITE /usr/include/sqlite3.h
> -- MIDAS: nvidia-smi not found
> -- MIDAS example/experiment: MIDAS in-tree-build
> -- MIDAS: Found ZLIB version 1.2.11
> -- MIDAS example/experiment: Found ROOT version 6.18/04
> -- Configuring done
> -- Generating done
> -- Build files have been written to: /Users/betacage/packages/midas/build
> Darrens-Mac-mini:build betacage$ make install 
> [  1%] Built target mfeo
> [  3%] Built target mfe
> [  4%] Built target rmana
> [  5%] Built target manao
> [  6%] Built target mana
> [  6%] Built target git_revision_h
> [ 30%] Built target objlib
> [ 31%] Built target midas
> [ 32%] Built target rmanao
> [ 32%] Built target objlib-c-compat
> [ 32%] Built target midas-c-compat
> [ 33%] Built target midas-shared
> [ 35%] Built target rmlogger
> [ 36%] Linking CXX executable mhttpd
> Undefined symbols for architecture x86_64:
>   "_OPENSSL_init_ssl", referenced from:
>       _mg_mgr_init in mongoose6.cxx.o
>   "_SSL_CTX_set_options", referenced from:
>       _mg_set_ssl in mongoose6.cxx.o
> ld: symbol(s) not found for architecture x86_64
> clang: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)
> make[2]: *** [progs/mhttpd] Error 1
> make[1]: *** [progs/CMakeFiles/mhttpd.dir/all] Error 2
> make: *** [all] Error 2
> 
> 
> I hope that this is the right forum to submit this kind of reports.
> Any idea what do I have to do to continue ? Thanks is advance !
> 
> Berta 

I tried on my Mac (macOS 10.14.6, Xcode 11.3.1, current develop branch, openssl 1.1.1d) and it woks fine. Below is the transcript. I 
see that your cmake output is much shorter (no C compiler listed etc.). Did you remove some lines? For such comparisons, it's 
always good to start with an empty build directory.

OpenSSL libraries are the same (1.1.1d). Just for comparison, I run the build process with "make VERBOSE=1" and extract the line 
which fails for you when linking mhttp, so maybe you can compare.

Linking mhttpd
---------------

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/c++  -O2 -g -DNDEBUG -isysroot 
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.15.sdk -mmacosx-version-
min=10.14 -Wl,-search_paths_first -Wl,-headerpad_max_install_names  CMakeFiles/mhttpd.dir/mhttpd.cxx.o 
CMakeFiles/mhttpd.dir/mongoose6.cxx.o CMakeFiles/mhttpd.dir/mgd.cxx.o CMakeFiles/mhttpd.dir/__/mscb/src/mscb.cxx.o  -o 
mhttpd  -L/opt/local/lib/mysql57/mysql -lmysqlclient -lz ../libmidas.a /opt/local/lib/libssl.dylib /opt/local/lib/libcrypto.dylib -lz -
L/opt/local/lib/mysql57/mysql -lmysqlclient -lz 


Here is the full transcript
-------------------------

/midas/build$ cmake ..
-- MIDAS: cmake version: 3.16.3
-- The C compiler identification is AppleClang 11.0.0.11000033
-- The CXX compiler identification is AppleClang 11.0.0.11000033
-- Check for working C compiler: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/cc
-- Check for working C compiler: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/cc -- 
works
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info - done
-- Detecting C compile features
-- Detecting C compile features - done
-- Check for working CXX compiler: 
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/c++
-- Check for working CXX compiler: 
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/c++ -- works
-- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info
-- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info - done
-- Detecting CXX compile features
-- Detecting CXX compile features - done
-- MIDAS: CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX: /midas
-- MIDAS: Found ROOT version 6.16/00
-- Found ZLIB: /opt/local/lib/libz.dylib (found version "1.2.11") 
-- MIDAS: Found ZLIB version 1.2.11
-- Found OpenSSL: /opt/local/lib/libcrypto.dylib (found version "1.1.1d")  
-- MIDAS: Found OpenSSL version 1.1.1d
-- MIDAS: Found MySQL version 5.7.26
-- MIDAS: ODBC not found
-- MIDAS: SQLITE not found
-- MIDAS: nvidia-smi not found
-- Setting default build type to "RelWithDebInfo"
-- Found Git: /usr/bin/git (found version "2.21.1 (Apple Git-122.3)") 
-- MIDAS example/experiment: MIDAS in-tree-build
-- MIDAS: Found ZLIB version 1.2.11
-- MIDAS example/experiment: Found ROOT version 6.16/00
-- Configuring done
-- Generating done
-- Build files have been written to: /midas/build
/midas/build$ make
Scanning dependencies of target rmana
Scanning dependencies of target git_revision_h
Scanning dependencies of target mfe
Scanning dependencies of target manao
Scanning dependencies of target mfeo
Scanning dependencies of target objlib-c-compat
Scanning dependencies of target mana
Scanning dependencies of target rmanao
[  0%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib-c-compat.dir/src/midas_c_compat.cxx.o
[  2%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/mfe.dir/src/mfe.cxx.o
[  2%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/mfeo.dir/src/mfe.cxx.o
[  3%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/mana.dir/src/mana.cxx.o
[  4%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/manao.dir/src/mana.cxx.o
[  5%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/rmanao.dir/src/mana.cxx.o
[  6%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/rmana.dir/src/mana.cxx.o
[  6%] Built target git_revision_h
Scanning dependencies of target objlib
[  7%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/midas.cxx.o
[  7%] Built target objlib-c-compat
[  8%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/midas_cxx.cxx.o
[  8%] Linking CXX static library libmana.a
[  8%] Built target manao
[  8%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/odb.cxx.o
[  8%] Built target mana
[  9%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/device_driver.cxx.o
[  9%] Built target mfeo
[ 10%] Linking CXX static library libmfe.a
[ 11%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/system.cxx.o
[ 11%] Built target mfe
[ 11%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/alarm.cxx.o
[ 12%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/elog.cxx.o
[ 13%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/mrpc.cxx.o
[ 13%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/mjson.cxx.o
[ 14%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/tmfe.cxx.o
[ 15%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/mvodb.cxx.o
[ 15%] Built target rmanao
[ 15%] Linking CXX static library librmana.a
[ 16%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/nullodb.cxx.o
[ 16%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/midasodb.cxx.o
[ 16%] Built target rmana
[ 17%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/mxmlodb.cxx.o
[ 18%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/mjsonodb.cxx.o
[ 18%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/json_paste.cxx.o
[ 19%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/mjsonrpc.cxx.o
[ 20%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/mjsonrpc_user.cxx.o
[ 21%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/history.cxx.o
[ 21%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/history_common.cxx.o
[ 22%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/history_odbc.cxx.o
[ 23%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/history_schema.cxx.o
[ 23%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/lz4.cxx.o
[ 24%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/lz4frame.cxx.o
[ 25%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/lz4hc.cxx.o
[ 26%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/xxhash.cxx.o
[ 26%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/crc32c.cxx.o
[ 27%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/sha256.cxx.o
[ 28%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/sha512.cxx.o
[ 28%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/ftplib.cxx.o
[ 29%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/src/mdsupport.cxx.o
[ 30%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/mxml/mxml.cxx.o
[ 31%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/objlib.dir/mxml/strlcpy.cxx.o
[ 31%] Built target objlib
Scanning dependencies of target midas-shared
Scanning dependencies of target midas
[ 33%] Linking CXX shared library libmidas-shared.dylib
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/midas/build$ 

>
> .../c++  ...  /opt/local/lib/libssl.dylib
>

I get the same, libssl from /opt/local, so we are not using openssl shipped with mac os.

We still do not know were OP's libssl comes from and if there is a mismatch between
openssl header files and library (header files from one openssl, library from a different openssl).

OP's cmake output: (no VERBOSE=1)
> -- MIDAS: cmake version: 3.16.3
> -- MIDAS: Found OpenSSL version 1.1.1d

Stefan's and my cmake output: (VERBOSE=1)
> -- MIDAS: cmake version: 3.16.3
> -- Found OpenSSL: /opt/local/lib/libcrypto.dylib (found version "1.1.1d")  
> -- MIDAS: Found OpenSSL version 1.1.1d

Without VERBOSE=1 cmake does not tell is which OpenSSL it found (not useful).
With VERBOSE=1 cmake outputs a flood of gunk (not useful).

My solution is to filter the cmake output with grep in "make cmake" ("make cmake3").

So please use that: "make cmake" - the output is roughly the same as normal make - compiler command lines (CFLAGS, library paths, etc),
compiler error message and all of the useful cmake output.

K.O.

> >
> > .../c++  ...  /opt/local/lib/libssl.dylib
> >
> 
> I get the same, libssl from /opt/local, so we are not using openssl shipped with mac os.
> 

I note that latest mongoose 6.16 finally has a virtual ssl layer and appears to support mbedtls (polarssl) in addition to openssl.

I now think I should see if it works - as it gives us a way to support https without relying on the user having
pre-installed working openssl packages - we consistently run into problems with openssl on macos, and even
on linux there was trouble with preinstalled openssl packages and libraries.

With mbedtls, one will have to "git pull" and "make" it, but historically this causes much less trouble.

Also, with luck, mbedtls has better support for certificate expiration (I would really love to have openssl report an error
or a warning or at least some hint if I feed it an expired certificate) and (gasp!) certbot integration.

K.O.

> ... support for certbot

The certbot tool to use instead of certbot is this: https://github.com/ndilieto/uacme

K.O.

> > ... support for certbot
> 
> The certbot tool to use instead of certbot is this: https://github.com/ndilieto/uacme
> 
> K.O.


HI Stefan and Konstantin, 

Thanks a lot for your messages. Sorry for my late reply, I only work on this project from Tuesday to Thursdays. I have 
run " make cmake" instead of "cd build; cmake" and this is the output regarding mhttpd:

/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/c++  -O2 -g -DNDEBUG -Wl,-search_paths_first -Wl,-
headerpad_max_install_names  CMakeFiles/mhttpd.dir/mhttpd.cxx.o CMakeFiles/mhttpd.dir/mongoose6.cxx.o 
CMakeFiles/mhttpd.dir/mgd.cxx.o CMakeFiles/mhttpd.dir/__/mscb/src/mscb.cxx.o  -o mhttpd  -lsqlite3 ../libmidas.a 
/usr/lib/libssl.dylib /usr/lib/libcrypto.dylib -lz -lsqlite3 /usr/lib/libssl.dylib /usr/lib/libcrypto.dylib -lz 
Undefined symbols for architecture x86_64:
  "_OPENSSL_init_ssl", referenced from:
      _mg_mgr_init in mongoose6.cxx.o
  "_SSL_CTX_set_options", referenced from:
      _mg_set_ssl in mongoose6.cxx.o
ld: symbol(s) not found for architecture x86_64
clang: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)


I see that in your outputs the openssl libs are in /opt/local/lib/ while mine are in /usr/lib/, and that is the only difference. 
I have checked that the libraries libssl.dylib and libcrypto.dylib are in my /usr/lib/, and indeed they are, so I don't 
understand the reason for the error, I will continue investigating. 

Thanks 

Berta 

> I only work on this project from Tuesday to Thursdays.

No problem. No hurry.

> I have run " make cmake" instead of "cd build; cmake" and this is the output regarding mhttpd: ...

There should be also a line where mhttpd.cxx is compiled into mhttpd.o, we need to see what compiler
flags are used - I suspect the compiler uses header files from /usr/local/include while the linker
is using libraries from /usr/lib, a mismatch.

To save time, please attach the full output of "make cmake". There may be something else I want to see there.

If you do not use the mhttpd built-in https support (for best security I recommend using https from the apache httpd password protected https proxy),
then it is perfectly fine to build midas with NO_SSL=1.

K.O.

We're using the History Logger MIDAS feature and writing to mySQL tables, but 
in some cases have run into issues installing mySQL on centos7 systems.

Has anyone ever tried running this MIDAS feature with MariaDB rather than 
mySQL?

> We're using the History Logger MIDAS feature and writing to mySQL tables, but 
> in some cases have run into issues installing mySQL on centos7 systems.
> 
> Has anyone ever tried running this MIDAS feature with MariaDB rather than 
> mySQL?

Hi

I've used MIDAS Logger feature with MariaDB and had no issue thus far .

> We're using the History Logger MIDAS feature and writing to mySQL tables, but 
> in some cases have run into issues installing mySQL on centos7 systems.
> 
> Has anyone ever tried running this MIDAS feature with MariaDB rather than 
> mySQL?

The best I can tell, MariaDB is *the* mysql. "the other thing" is an abandonware fork.

I personally at this moment do not run any daq stations with mysql logging, and I accidentally
removed all the 25 versions and flavours of mysql from my home laptop, so if there
is any problems with mysql, please holler, and I will reinstall mysql (ahem, mariadb) and restore
my ability to test midas against it.

As a connected question, is there any need to have postgres support in midas as well?

K.O.

While upgrading to the latest MIDAS version

MIDAS version: 2.1 GIT revision: Tue Dec 31 17:40:14 2019 +0100 - midas-2019-09-i-1-gd93944ce-dirty on branch develop

ODB version: 3

I encountered two issues using cmake

1. on machines with NVIDIA drivers:

(nvml.h doesn't seem to be part of the standard nvidia driver package.)

2. Complile including ROOT throws an error with ROOT 6.12/06 on Centos7 and with ROOT 6.18/04 on Fedora 31:

A workaround (which works for me) is to compile with

cmake .. -DNO_ROOT=1 -DNO_NVIDIA=1

(please post messages in "plain" mode, they are much easier to answer)

- nvidia problems - this code was contributed by Joseph (I think?), with luck he will look into 
this problem.

- ROOT problem - it looks like the error is thrown by the ROOT header files, has nothing to do 
with MIDAS?

So what ROOT are you using? I recommend installing ROOT by following instructions at 
root.cern.ch.

Perhaps you used the ROOT packages from the EPEL repository? I have seen trouble with 
those packages before (miscompiled; important optional features turned off; very old 
versions; etc).

P.S.

Historically, ROOT has caused so many reports of "cannot build midas" that I consistently 
vote to "remove ROOT support from MIDAS". But Stefan's code for writing MIDAS data into 
ROOT files is so neat, cannot throw it away. And some people do use it. So at the latest MIDAS 
bash this Summer we decided to keep it.

(Only build targets to use ROOT are the rmlogger executable and the rmana.o object file (and 
it's one-man-army library)).

But.

In the past, one could use "make -k" to get past the errors caused by ROOT, everything will 
get built and installed, except for the code that failed to build.

Now with cmake, it is "all or nothing", if there is any compilation error, nothing gets installed 
into the "bin" directory. So one must discover and use "NO_ROOT=1" (which becomes sticky 
until the next "make cclean". Some people are not used to sticky "make" options, I just got 
burned by this very thing last week).

Perhaps there is a way to tell cmake to ignore compile errors for rmlogger and rmana.


K.O.



<p>&nbsp;</p>

<table align="center" cellspacing="1" style="border:1px solid #486090; width:98%">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td style="background-color:#486090">Peter Kunz wrote:</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td style="background-color:#FFFFB0">
			<p>While upgrading to the latest MIDAS version</p>

			<p>MIDAS version: 2.1 GIT revision: Tue Dec 31 17:40:14 2019 +0100 - midas-
2019-09-i-1-gd93944ce-dirty on branch develop</p>

			<p>ODB version: 3</p>

			<p>I encountered two issues using cmake</p>

			<p>1. on machines with NVIDIA drivers:</p>

			<div style="background:#eee;border:1px solid #ccc;padding:5px 
10px;">nvml.h: no such file or directory</div>

			<p>(nvml.h doesn&#39;t seem to be part of the standard nvidia driver 
package.)</p>

			<p>2. Complile including ROOT throws an error with ROOT 6.12/06 on Centos7 
and with ROOT 6.18/04 on Fedora 31:</p>

			<div style="background:#eee;border:1px solid #ccc;padding:5px 10px;">[ 29%] 
Building CXX object CMakeFiles/rmana.dir/src/mana.cxx.o In file included from 
/usr/include/root/TString.h:28, from /usr/include/root/TCollection.h:29, from 
/usr/include/root/TSeqCollection.h:25, from /usr/include/root/TList.h:25, from 
/usr/include/root/TQObject.h:40, from /usr/include/root/TApplication.h:30, from 
/home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mana.cxx:60:</div>

			<div style="background:#eee;border:1px solid #ccc;padding:5px 
10px;">/usr/include/root/ROOT/RStringView.hxx:32:37: error: &lsquo;experimental&rsquo; in 
namespace &lsquo;std&rsquo; does not name a type 32 | using basic_string_view = 
::std::experimental::basic_string_view&lt;_CharT,_Traits&gt;;</div>

			<p>A workaround (which works for me) is to compile with</p>

			<p><tt>cmake .. -DNO_ROOT=1 -DNO_NVIDIA=1</tt></p>
			</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

<p>&nbsp;</p>

Re: ROOT problem

I looked into how my ROOT based MIDAS analyzer compiles. It is using the flag -std=c++14.
MIDAS cmake compiles with -std=gnu++11 with the result:

 29%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/rmana.dir/src/mana.cxx.o
/usr/bin/c++  -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -I/home/pkunz/packages/midas/include -I/home/pkunz/packages/midas/mxml -I/usr/include/root  -O2 -g -DNDEBUG   -DHAVE_ZLIB -DHAVE_FTPLIB -Wall -Wformat=2 -Wno-format-nonliteral -Wno-strict-aliasing -Wuninitialized -Wno-unused-function -DHAVE_ROOT -std=gnu++11 -o CMakeFiles/rmana.dir/src/mana.cxx.o -c /home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mana.cxx
In file included from /usr/include/root/TString.h:28,
                 from /usr/include/root/TCollection.h:29,
                 from /usr/include/root/TSeqCollection.h:25,
                 from /usr/include/root/TList.h:25,
                 from /usr/include/root/TQObject.h:40,
                 from /usr/include/root/TApplication.h:30,
                 from /home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mana.cxx:60:
/usr/include/root/ROOT/RStringView.hxx:32:37: error: ‘experimental’ in namespace ‘std’ does not name a type
   32 |    using basic_string_view = ::std::experimental::basic_string_view<_CharT,_Traits>;


If I change this to

/usr/bin/c++  -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -I/home/pkunz/packages/midas/include -I/home/pkunz/packages/midas/mxml -I/usr/include/root  -O2 -g -DNDEBUG   -DHAVE_ZLIB -DHAVE_FTPLIB -Wall -Wformat=2 -Wno-format-nonliteral -Wno-strict-aliasing -Wuninitialized -Wno-unused-function -DHAVE_ROOT -std=c++14 -o CMakeFiles/rmana.dir/src/mana.cxx.o -c /home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mana.cxx

it compiles without error. I hope this helps. 






> (please post messages in "plain" mode, they are much easier to answer)
> 
> - nvidia problems - this code was contributed by Joseph (I think?), with luck he will look into 
> this problem.
> 
> - ROOT problem - it looks like the error is thrown by the ROOT header files, has nothing to do 
> with MIDAS?
> 
> So what ROOT are you using? I recommend installing ROOT by following instructions at 
> root.cern.ch.
> 
> Perhaps you used the ROOT packages from the EPEL repository? I have seen trouble with 
> those packages before (miscompiled; important optional features turned off; very old 
> versions; etc).
> 
> P.S.
> 
> Historically, ROOT has caused so many reports of "cannot build midas" that I consistently 
> vote to "remove ROOT support from MIDAS". But Stefan's code for writing MIDAS data into 
> ROOT files is so neat, cannot throw it away. And some people do use it. So at the latest MIDAS 
> bash this Summer we decided to keep it.
> 
> (Only build targets to use ROOT are the rmlogger executable and the rmana.o object file (and 
> it's one-man-army library)).
> 
> But.
> 
> In the past, one could use "make -k" to get past the errors caused by ROOT, everything will 
> get built and installed, except for the code that failed to build.
> 
> Now with cmake, it is "all or nothing", if there is any compilation error, nothing gets installed 
> into the "bin" directory. So one must discover and use "NO_ROOT=1" (which becomes sticky 
> until the next "make cclean". Some people are not used to sticky "make" options, I just got 
> burned by this very thing last week).
> 
> Perhaps there is a way to tell cmake to ignore compile errors for rmlogger and rmana.
> 
> 
> K.O.
> 
> 
> 
> <p>&nbsp;</p>
> 
> <table align="center" cellspacing="1" style="border:1px solid #486090; width:98%">
> 	<tbody>
> 		<tr>
> 			<td style="background-color:#486090">Peter Kunz wrote:</td>
> 		</tr>
> 		<tr>
> 			<td style="background-color:#FFFFB0">
> 			<p>While upgrading to the latest MIDAS version</p>
> 
> 			<p>MIDAS version: 2.1 GIT revision: Tue Dec 31 17:40:14 2019 +0100 - midas-
> 2019-09-i-1-gd93944ce-dirty on branch develop</p>
> 
> 			<p>ODB version: 3</p>
> 
> 			<p>I encountered two issues using cmake</p>
> 
> 			<p>1. on machines with NVIDIA drivers:</p>
> 
> 			<div style="background:#eee;border:1px solid #ccc;padding:5px 
> 10px;">nvml.h: no such file or directory</div>
> 
> 			<p>(nvml.h doesn&#39;t seem to be part of the standard nvidia driver 
> package.)</p>
> 
> 			<p>2. Complile including ROOT throws an error with ROOT 6.12/06 on Centos7 
> and with ROOT 6.18/04 on Fedora 31:</p>
> 
> 			<div style="background:#eee;border:1px solid #ccc;padding:5px 10px;">[ 29%] 
> Building CXX object CMakeFiles/rmana.dir/src/mana.cxx.o In file included from 
> /usr/include/root/TString.h:28, from /usr/include/root/TCollection.h:29, from 
> /usr/include/root/TSeqCollection.h:25, from /usr/include/root/TList.h:25, from 
> /usr/include/root/TQObject.h:40, from /usr/include/root/TApplication.h:30, from 
> /home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mana.cxx:60:</div>
> 
> 			<div style="background:#eee;border:1px solid #ccc;padding:5px 
> 10px;">/usr/include/root/ROOT/RStringView.hxx:32:37: error: &lsquo;experimental&rsquo; in 
> namespace &lsquo;std&rsquo; does not name a type 32 | using basic_string_view = 
> ::std::experimental::basic_string_view&lt;_CharT,_Traits&gt;;</div>
> 
> 			<p>A workaround (which works for me) is to compile with</p>
> 
> 			<p><tt>cmake .. -DNO_ROOT=1 -DNO_NVIDIA=1</tt></p>
> 			</td>
> 		</tr>
> 	</tbody>
> </table>
> 
> <p>&nbsp;</p>

Right. So the problem is mismatch in ROOT compile flags. The old Makefile build used CFLAGS from ROOT to build rmana and rmlogger, cmake uses some kind of generic CFLAGS, so here we have it. No idea how to fix it.

K.O.


> Re: ROOT problem
> 
> I looked into how my ROOT based MIDAS analyzer compiles. It is using the flag -std=c++14.
> MIDAS cmake compiles with -std=gnu++11 with the result:
> 
>  29%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/rmana.dir/src/mana.cxx.o
> /usr/bin/c++  -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -I/home/pkunz/packages/midas/include -I/home/pkunz/packages/midas/mxml -I/usr/include/root  -O2 -g -DNDEBUG   -DHAVE_ZLIB -DHAVE_FTPLIB -Wall -Wformat=2 -Wno-format-nonliteral -Wno-strict-aliasing -Wuninitialized -Wno-unused-function -DHAVE_ROOT -std=gnu++11 -o CMakeFiles/rmana.dir/src/mana.cxx.o -c /home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mana.cxx
> In file included from /usr/include/root/TString.h:28,
>                  from /usr/include/root/TCollection.h:29,
>                  from /usr/include/root/TSeqCollection.h:25,
>                  from /usr/include/root/TList.h:25,
>                  from /usr/include/root/TQObject.h:40,
>                  from /usr/include/root/TApplication.h:30,
>                  from /home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mana.cxx:60:
> /usr/include/root/ROOT/RStringView.hxx:32:37: error: ‘experimental’ in namespace ‘std’ does not name a type
>    32 |    using basic_string_view = ::std::experimental::basic_string_view<_CharT,_Traits>;
> 
> 
> If I change this to
> 
> /usr/bin/c++  -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -I/home/pkunz/packages/midas/include -I/home/pkunz/packages/midas/mxml -I/usr/include/root  -O2 -g -DNDEBUG   -DHAVE_ZLIB -DHAVE_FTPLIB -Wall -Wformat=2 -Wno-format-nonliteral -Wno-strict-aliasing -Wuninitialized -Wno-unused-function -DHAVE_ROOT -std=c++14 -o CMakeFiles/rmana.dir/src/mana.cxx.o -c /home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mana.cxx
> 
> it compiles without error. I hope this helps. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > (please post messages in "plain" mode, they are much easier to answer)
> > 
> > - nvidia problems - this code was contributed by Joseph (I think?), with luck he will look into 
> > this problem.
> > 
> > - ROOT problem - it looks like the error is thrown by the ROOT header files, has nothing to do 
> > with MIDAS?
> > 
> > So what ROOT are you using? I recommend installing ROOT by following instructions at 
> > root.cern.ch.
> > 
> > Perhaps you used the ROOT packages from the EPEL repository? I have seen trouble with 
> > those packages before (miscompiled; important optional features turned off; very old 
> > versions; etc).
> > 
> > P.S.
> > 
> > Historically, ROOT has caused so many reports of "cannot build midas" that I consistently 
> > vote to "remove ROOT support from MIDAS". But Stefan's code for writing MIDAS data into 
> > ROOT files is so neat, cannot throw it away. And some people do use it. So at the latest MIDAS 
> > bash this Summer we decided to keep it.
> > 
> > (Only build targets to use ROOT are the rmlogger executable and the rmana.o object file (and 
> > it's one-man-army library)).
> > 
> > But.
> > 
> > In the past, one could use "make -k" to get past the errors caused by ROOT, everything will 
> > get built and installed, except for the code that failed to build.
> > 
> > Now with cmake, it is "all or nothing", if there is any compilation error, nothing gets installed 
> > into the "bin" directory. So one must discover and use "NO_ROOT=1" (which becomes sticky 
> > until the next "make cclean". Some people are not used to sticky "make" options, I just got 
> > burned by this very thing last week).
> > 
> > Perhaps there is a way to tell cmake to ignore compile errors for rmlogger and rmana.
> > 
> > 
> > K.O.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > <p>&nbsp;</p>
> > 
> > <table align="center" cellspacing="1" style="border:1px solid #486090; width:98%">
> > 	<tbody>
> > 		<tr>
> > 			<td style="background-color:#486090">Peter Kunz wrote:</td>
> > 		</tr>
> > 		<tr>
> > 			<td style="background-color:#FFFFB0">
> > 			<p>While upgrading to the latest MIDAS version</p>
> > 
> > 			<p>MIDAS version: 2.1 GIT revision: Tue Dec 31 17:40:14 2019 +0100 - midas-
> > 2019-09-i-1-gd93944ce-dirty on branch develop</p>
> > 
> > 			<p>ODB version: 3</p>
> > 
> > 			<p>I encountered two issues using cmake</p>
> > 
> > 			<p>1. on machines with NVIDIA drivers:</p>
> > 
> > 			<div style="background:#eee;border:1px solid #ccc;padding:5px 
> > 10px;">nvml.h: no such file or directory</div>
> > 
> > 			<p>(nvml.h doesn&#39;t seem to be part of the standard nvidia driver 
> > package.)</p>
> > 
> > 			<p>2. Complile including ROOT throws an error with ROOT 6.12/06 on Centos7 
> > and with ROOT 6.18/04 on Fedora 31:</p>
> > 
> > 			<div style="background:#eee;border:1px solid #ccc;padding:5px 10px;">[ 29%] 
> > Building CXX object CMakeFiles/rmana.dir/src/mana.cxx.o In file included from 
> > /usr/include/root/TString.h:28, from /usr/include/root/TCollection.h:29, from 
> > /usr/include/root/TSeqCollection.h:25, from /usr/include/root/TList.h:25, from 
> > /usr/include/root/TQObject.h:40, from /usr/include/root/TApplication.h:30, from 
> > /home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mana.cxx:60:</div>
> > 
> > 			<div style="background:#eee;border:1px solid #ccc;padding:5px 
> > 10px;">/usr/include/root/ROOT/RStringView.hxx:32:37: error: &lsquo;experimental&rsquo; in 
> > namespace &lsquo;std&rsquo; does not name a type 32 | using basic_string_view = 
> > ::std::experimental::basic_string_view&lt;_CharT,_Traits&gt;;</div>
> > 
> > 			<p>A workaround (which works for me) is to compile with</p>
> > 
> > 			<p><tt>cmake .. -DNO_ROOT=1 -DNO_NVIDIA=1</tt></p>
> > 			</td>
> > 		</tr>
> > 	</tbody>
> > </table>
> > 
> > <p>&nbsp;</p>

Thanks for tracing the problem further down. Now I realized that the CMakeLists.txt for the ROOT analyzer did not contain the usual ROOT flags. I added that and committed the change, so please try again. Here is the diff:

examples/experiment/CMakeLists.txt:

       execute_process(COMMAND root-config --incdir OUTPUT_VARIABLE ROOT_INC)
       execute_process(COMMAND root-config --libs OUTPUT_VARIABLE ROOT_LIBS)
+      execute_process(COMMAND root-config --cflags OUTPUT_VARIABLE ROOT_CFLAGS)
       string(STRIP ${ROOT_LIBS} ROOT_LIBS)
-      string(REGEX REPLACE "\n$" "" ROOT_INC "${ROOT_INC}")
+      string(REGEX REPLACE "\n" "" ROOT_INC ${ROOT_INC})
+      separate_arguments(ROOT_CFLAGS UNIX_COMMAND "${ROOT_CFLAGS}")
       set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 11)

       target_include_directories(analyzer PUBLIC ${ROOT_INC} ${INC_PATH})
+      target_compile_options(analyzer PUBLIC ${ROOT_CFLAGS})
       target_link_libraries(analyzer rmana midas ${ROOT_LIBS} ${LIBS})


Best,
Stefan

> Re: ROOT problem
> 
> I looked into how my ROOT based MIDAS analyzer compiles. It is using the flag -std=c++14.
> MIDAS cmake compiles with -std=gnu++11 with the result:
> 
>  29%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/rmana.dir/src/mana.cxx.o
> /usr/bin/c++  -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -I/home/pkunz/packages/midas/include -I/home/pkunz/packages/midas/mxml -I/usr/include/root  -O2 -g -DNDEBUG   -DHAVE_ZLIB -DHAVE_FTPLIB -Wall -Wformat=2 -Wno-format-nonliteral -Wno-strict-aliasing -Wuninitialized -Wno-unused-function -DHAVE_ROOT -std=gnu++11 -o CMakeFiles/rmana.dir/src/mana.cxx.o -c /home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mana.cxx
> In file included from /usr/include/root/TString.h:28,
>                  from /usr/include/root/TCollection.h:29,
>                  from /usr/include/root/TSeqCollection.h:25,
>                  from /usr/include/root/TList.h:25,
>                  from /usr/include/root/TQObject.h:40,
>                  from /usr/include/root/TApplication.h:30,
>                  from /home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mana.cxx:60:
> /usr/include/root/ROOT/RStringView.hxx:32:37: error: ‘experimental’ in namespace ‘std’ does not name a type
>    32 |    using basic_string_view = ::std::experimental::basic_string_view<_CharT,_Traits>;
> 
> 
> If I change this to
> 
> /usr/bin/c++  -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -I/home/pkunz/packages/midas/include -I/home/pkunz/packages/midas/mxml -I/usr/include/root  -O2 -g -DNDEBUG   -DHAVE_ZLIB -DHAVE_FTPLIB -Wall -Wformat=2 -Wno-format-nonliteral -Wno-strict-aliasing -Wuninitialized -Wno-unused-function -DHAVE_ROOT -std=c++14 -o CMakeFiles/rmana.dir/src/mana.cxx.o -c /home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mana.cxx
> 
> it compiles without error. I hope this helps. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > (please post messages in "plain" mode, they are much easier to answer)
> > 
> > - nvidia problems - this code was contributed by Joseph (I think?), with luck he will look into 
> > this problem.
> > 
> > - ROOT problem - it looks like the error is thrown by the ROOT header files, has nothing to do 
> > with MIDAS?
> > 
> > So what ROOT are you using? I recommend installing ROOT by following instructions at 
> > root.cern.ch.
> > 
> > Perhaps you used the ROOT packages from the EPEL repository? I have seen trouble with 
> > those packages before (miscompiled; important optional features turned off; very old 
> > versions; etc).
> > 
> > P.S.
> > 
> > Historically, ROOT has caused so many reports of "cannot build midas" that I consistently 
> > vote to "remove ROOT support from MIDAS". But Stefan's code for writing MIDAS data into 
> > ROOT files is so neat, cannot throw it away. And some people do use it. So at the latest MIDAS 
> > bash this Summer we decided to keep it.
> > 
> > (Only build targets to use ROOT are the rmlogger executable and the rmana.o object file (and 
> > it's one-man-army library)).
> > 
> > But.
> > 
> > In the past, one could use "make -k" to get past the errors caused by ROOT, everything will 
> > get built and installed, except for the code that failed to build.
> > 
> > Now with cmake, it is "all or nothing", if there is any compilation error, nothing gets installed 
> > into the "bin" directory. So one must discover and use "NO_ROOT=1" (which becomes sticky 
> > until the next "make cclean". Some people are not used to sticky "make" options, I just got 
> > burned by this very thing last week).
> > 
> > Perhaps there is a way to tell cmake to ignore compile errors for rmlogger and rmana.
> > 
> > 
> > K.O.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > <p>&nbsp;</p>
> > 
> > <table align="center" cellspacing="1" style="border:1px solid #486090; width:98%">
> > 	<tbody>
> > 		<tr>
> > 			<td style="background-color:#486090">Peter Kunz wrote:</td>
> > 		</tr>
> > 		<tr>
> > 			<td style="background-color:#FFFFB0">
> > 			<p>While upgrading to the latest MIDAS version</p>
> > 
> > 			<p>MIDAS version: 2.1 GIT revision: Tue Dec 31 17:40:14 2019 +0100 - midas-
> > 2019-09-i-1-gd93944ce-dirty on branch develop</p>
> > 
> > 			<p>ODB version: 3</p>
> > 
> > 			<p>I encountered two issues using cmake</p>
> > 
> > 			<p>1. on machines with NVIDIA drivers:</p>
> > 
> > 			<div style="background:#eee;border:1px solid #ccc;padding:5px 
> > 10px;">nvml.h: no such file or directory</div>
> > 
> > 			<p>(nvml.h doesn&#39;t seem to be part of the standard nvidia driver 
> > package.)</p>
> > 
> > 			<p>2. Complile including ROOT throws an error with ROOT 6.12/06 on Centos7 
> > and with ROOT 6.18/04 on Fedora 31:</p>
> > 
> > 			<div style="background:#eee;border:1px solid #ccc;padding:5px 10px;">[ 29%] 
> > Building CXX object CMakeFiles/rmana.dir/src/mana.cxx.o In file included from 
> > /usr/include/root/TString.h:28, from /usr/include/root/TCollection.h:29, from 
> > /usr/include/root/TSeqCollection.h:25, from /usr/include/root/TList.h:25, from 
> > /usr/include/root/TQObject.h:40, from /usr/include/root/TApplication.h:30, from 
> > /home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mana.cxx:60:</div>
> > 
> > 			<div style="background:#eee;border:1px solid #ccc;padding:5px 
> > 10px;">/usr/include/root/ROOT/RStringView.hxx:32:37: error: &lsquo;experimental&rsquo; in 
> > namespace &lsquo;std&rsquo; does not name a type 32 | using basic_string_view = 
> > ::std::experimental::basic_string_view&lt;_CharT,_Traits&gt;;</div>
> > 
> > 			<p>A workaround (which works for me) is to compile with</p>
> > 
> > 			<p><tt>cmake .. -DNO_ROOT=1 -DNO_NVIDIA=1</tt></p>
> > 			</td>
> > 		</tr>
> > 	</tbody>
> > </table>
> > 
> > <p>&nbsp;</p>

> In the past, one could use "make -k" to get past the errors caused by ROOT, everything will 
> get built and installed, except for the code that failed to build.
> 
> Now with cmake, it is "all or nothing", if there is any compilation error, nothing gets installed 
> into the "bin" directory.

That's not correct. Indeed a "make -k" stops after an error, but "make -i" still works. Try it! Event "make install -i" 
installs all executables into the bin directory which successfully compiled even if there is an error.

Stefan

> Complile including ROOT throws an error with ROOT 6.18/04 on Fedora 31 ...
> /usr/include/root/ROOT/RStringView.hxx:32:37: error: ‘experimental’ in namespace ‘std’ ...

I was puzzled by this error about "experimental" in ROOT header files.

All ROOT kits that I have are configured and built with c++11, and I do not see this error. I now guess that you
only saw this on Fedora 31 with gcc 9 and ROOT that was configured for c++14 or c++17.

We now realize that MIDAS cmake does not use the ROOT CFLAGS when building code that uses ROOT,
and this is probably a mistake. Stefan added a fix to use ROOT CFLAGS to build the analyzer,
but I am not sure if this is sufficient, rmana and rmlogger probably also should use the ROOT CFLAGS.

In any case, we are setup for an eventual collision between MIDAS CFLAGS (-std=gnu++11) and ROOT CFLAGS (-std=something else).

K.O.

> In any case, we are setup for an eventual collision between MIDAS CFLAGS (-std=gnu++11) and ROOT CFLAGS (-std=something else).

Are there good reasons to not compile MIDAS with set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 14)? So far this was an easier "fix" for me than to recompile ROOT with c++11.

> > In any case, we are setup for an eventual collision between MIDAS CFLAGS (-std=gnu++11) and ROOT CFLAGS (-std=something else).
> 
> Are there good reasons to not compile MIDAS with set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 14)? So far this was an easier "fix" for me than to recompile ROOT with c++11.

Yes. We agreed to base MIDAS on C++11, not C++14, since C++11 is available on all relevant systems. By putting that requirement explicitly into the CMake file, we know that it 
correctly compiles with C++11. Of course feel free to overwrite this in your local installation.

Stefan

> > In any case, we are setup for an eventual collision between MIDAS CFLAGS (-std=gnu++11) and ROOT CFLAGS (-std=something else).
> 
> Are there good reasons to not compile MIDAS with set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 14)? So far this was an easier "fix" for me than to recompile ROOT with c++11.

We already have trouble enough even with requiring C++11:

We still run a number of SL6 DAQ stations at TRIUMF, and it is well known that SL6 gcc does not even do c++11.

The suggested solution to "simply just use the devtoolset-8" compilers turned out to be missing a critical 32-bit
library and cannot build midas for 32-bit VME processors. (straight or cross-compiled).

(A solution for this can be kludged using unofficial packages: https://midas.triumf.ca/elog/Midas/1748)

No, we cannot "just upgrade" SL6 and no, we cannot "just replace" the 32-bit-only VME processors.

If we move the midas requirements from c++11 to c++14, again, we have to see what compilers
are available on what platforms, and I am sure again we will miss some important case.

And then, where does this train stop?

I see c++17 has some really nice to use improvements. And I see c++20 added even some more nice improvements.

I say we follow ROOT: https://root.cern.ch/supported-platforms

> Supported Platforms
> ROOT 6
> The compiler needs to support -std=c++11 to be able to build version 6.

K.O.

> > In any case, we are setup for an eventual collision between MIDAS CFLAGS (-std=gnu++11) and ROOT CFLAGS (-std=something else).
> 
> Are there good reasons to not compile MIDAS with set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 14)? So far this was an easier "fix" for me than to recompile ROOT with c++11.

Per  https://root.cern.ch/supported-platforms, ROOTv6 is C++11.

Binary kits distributed from root.cern.ch seem to be built with c++11.

Where does ROOT built with c++14 come from?

K.O.

I'm still trying to upgrade my MIDAS system to midas-2019-09-i. Most frontends work fine with the modifications already discussed.
However, I ran into some trouble with the epics frontend. Even with the modifications it throws a lot of warnings and errors (see attached log file). I can reduce the errors with -fpermissive, but the following two errors are persistent:

/home/ays/packages/midas/drivers/device/epics_ca.cxx:167:38: error: ‘ca_create_channel’ was not declared in this scope
            , &(info->caid[i].chan_id))

/home/ays/packages/midas/drivers/device/epics_ca.cxx:178:37: error: ‘ca_create_subscription’ was not declared in this scope
            , &(info->caid[i].evt_id))

This is strange because the functions seem to be declared in base/include/cadef.h along with similar functions that don't throw an error.
I don't know what's going on. The frontend which is almost identical to the example in the midas distribution compiles without warnings or errors under the Midas2017 version. 

> I'm still trying to upgrade my MIDAS system to midas-2019-09-i. Most frontends work fine with the modifications already discussed.
> However, I ran into some trouble with the epics frontend. Even with the modifications it throws a lot of warnings and errors (see attached log file). I can reduce the errors with -fpermissive, but the following two errors are persistent:
> 
> /home/ays/packages/midas/drivers/device/epics_ca.cxx:167:38: error: ‘ca_create_channel’ was not declared in this scope
>             , &(info->caid[i].chan_id))
> 
> /home/ays/packages/midas/drivers/device/epics_ca.cxx:178:37: error: ‘ca_create_subscription’ was not declared in this scope
>             , &(info->caid[i].evt_id))
> 
> This is strange because the functions seem to be declared in base/include/cadef.h along with similar functions that don't throw an error.
> I don't know what's going on. The frontend which is almost identical to the example in the midas distribution compiles without warnings or errors under the Midas2017 version. 

Hi, Peter - it looks like epics_ca.cxx needs to be updated to proper C++ (char* warnings, etc).

As for the "function not declared" errors, it's the C++ way to say "you are calling a function with wrong arguments",
again, something I should be able to fix without too much trouble.

Thank you for reporting this, the midas version of epics_ca.cxx definitely needs fixing.

K.O.

I fixed the compiler errors in epics_ca.cxx, can you try again? (see https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/commits/)

But, I do not see errors with ca_create_channel() and ca_create_subscription().

Maybe I am using the wrong epics. If you still see these errors, let me know what epics you have, I will try the same one.

This is what I do (and I get epics 7.0).

mkdir -p $HOME/git
cd $HOME/git
git clone https://git.launchpad.net/epics-base
cd epics-base
make
ls -l include/cadef.h
ls -l lib/darwin-x86/libca.a # also linux-x86/libca.a

K.O.

> > I'm still trying to upgrade my MIDAS system to midas-2019-09-i. Most frontends work fine with the modifications already discussed.
> > However, I ran into some trouble with the epics frontend. Even with the modifications it throws a lot of warnings and errors (see attached log file). I can reduce the errors with -fpermissive, but the following two errors are persistent:
> > 
> > /home/ays/packages/midas/drivers/device/epics_ca.cxx:167:38: error: ‘ca_create_channel’ was not declared in this scope
> >             , &(info->caid[i].chan_id))
> > 
> > /home/ays/packages/midas/drivers/device/epics_ca.cxx:178:37: error: ‘ca_create_subscription’ was not declared in this scope
> >             , &(info->caid[i].evt_id))
> > 
> > This is strange because the functions seem to be declared in base/include/cadef.h along with similar functions that don't throw an error.
> > I don't know what's going on. The frontend which is almost identical to the example in the midas distribution compiles without warnings or errors under the Midas2017 version. 
> 
> Hi, Peter - it looks like epics_ca.cxx needs to be updated to proper C++ (char* warnings, etc).
> 
> As for the "function not declared" errors, it's the C++ way to say "you are calling a function with wrong arguments",
> again, something I should be able to fix without too much trouble.
> 
> Thank you for reporting this, the midas version of epics_ca.cxx definitely needs fixing.
> 
> K.O.

Hi Konstantin,
I have EPICS Base Release 3.14.8.2 and got your example running with it, though I had to make one change.
For some reason it wouldn't find libca.so, but when I linked the static library libca.a instead, it worked.
Also my midas frontend works now with the updated epics_ca.xx. There was a problem with an old local version of cadef.h
(probably a leftover from some previous testing). After removing it everything compiled well.

Thanks,
Peter


> I fixed the compiler errors in epics_ca.cxx, can you try again? (see https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/commits/)
> 
> But, I do not see errors with ca_create_channel() and ca_create_subscription().
> 
> Maybe I am using the wrong epics. If you still see these errors, let me know what epics you have, I will try the same one.
> 
> This is what I do (and I get epics 7.0).
> 
> mkdir -p $HOME/git
> cd $HOME/git
> git clone https://git.launchpad.net/epics-base
> cd epics-base
> make
> ls -l include/cadef.h
> ls -l lib/darwin-x86/libca.a # also linux-x86/libca.a
> 
> K.O.
> 
> > > I'm still trying to upgrade my MIDAS system to midas-2019-09-i. Most frontends work fine with the modifications already discussed.
> > > However, I ran into some trouble with the epics frontend. Even with the modifications it throws a lot of warnings and errors (see attached log file). I can reduce the errors with -fpermissive, but the following two errors are persistent:
> > > 
> > > /home/ays/packages/midas/drivers/device/epics_ca.cxx:167:38: error: ‘ca_create_channel’ was not declared in this scope
> > >             , &(info->caid[i].chan_id))
> > > 
> > > /home/ays/packages/midas/drivers/device/epics_ca.cxx:178:37: error: ‘ca_create_subscription’ was not declared in this scope
> > >             , &(info->caid[i].evt_id))
> > > 
> > > This is strange because the functions seem to be declared in base/include/cadef.h along with similar functions that don't throw an error.
> > > I don't know what's going on. The frontend which is almost identical to the example in the midas distribution compiles without warnings or errors under the Midas2017 version. 
> > 
> > Hi, Peter - it looks like epics_ca.cxx needs to be updated to proper C++ (char* warnings, etc).
> > 
> > As for the "function not declared" errors, it's the C++ way to say "you are calling a function with wrong arguments",
> > again, something I should be able to fix without too much trouble.
> > 
> > Thank you for reporting this, the midas version of epics_ca.cxx definitely needs fixing.
> > 
> > K.O.

> I have EPICS Base Release 3.14.8.2 and got your example running with it...

Ok, good.

> I had to make one change.
> For some reason it wouldn't find libca.so, but when I linked the static library libca.a instead, it worked.

Yes, libca.a is what I see in my epics, too. I recommend static linking (libxxx.a instead of libxxx.so) as it eliminates
all possible problems with "cannot find the shared library" and "found the wrong shared library" and "found
a shared library from a different version of epics".

> Also my midas frontend works now with the updated epics_ca.xx. There was a problem with an old local version of cadef.h
> (probably a leftover from some previous testing). After removing it everything compiled well.

Ok. good. I also see some old epics header files in the midas repository. I guess I should remove them.

K.O.


> 
> Thanks,
> Peter
> 
> 
> > I fixed the compiler errors in epics_ca.cxx, can you try again? (see https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/commits/)
> > 
> > But, I do not see errors with ca_create_channel() and ca_create_subscription().
> > 
> > Maybe I am using the wrong epics. If you still see these errors, let me know what epics you have, I will try the same one.
> > 
> > This is what I do (and I get epics 7.0).
> > 
> > mkdir -p $HOME/git
> > cd $HOME/git
> > git clone https://git.launchpad.net/epics-base
> > cd epics-base
> > make
> > ls -l include/cadef.h
> > ls -l lib/darwin-x86/libca.a # also linux-x86/libca.a
> > 
> > K.O.
> > 
> > > > I'm still trying to upgrade my MIDAS system to midas-2019-09-i. Most frontends work fine with the modifications already discussed.
> > > > However, I ran into some trouble with the epics frontend. Even with the modifications it throws a lot of warnings and errors (see attached log file). I can reduce the errors with -fpermissive, but the following two errors are persistent:
> > > > 
> > > > /home/ays/packages/midas/drivers/device/epics_ca.cxx:167:38: error: ‘ca_create_channel’ was not declared in this scope
> > > >             , &(info->caid[i].chan_id))
> > > > 
> > > > /home/ays/packages/midas/drivers/device/epics_ca.cxx:178:37: error: ‘ca_create_subscription’ was not declared in this scope
> > > >             , &(info->caid[i].evt_id))
> > > > 
> > > > This is strange because the functions seem to be declared in base/include/cadef.h along with similar functions that don't throw an error.
> > > > I don't know what's going on. The frontend which is almost identical to the example in the midas distribution compiles without warnings or errors under the Midas2017 version. 
> > > 
> > > Hi, Peter - it looks like epics_ca.cxx needs to be updated to proper C++ (char* warnings, etc).
> > > 
> > > As for the "function not declared" errors, it's the C++ way to say "you are calling a function with wrong arguments",
> > > again, something I should be able to fix without too much trouble.
> > > 
> > > Thank you for reporting this, the midas version of epics_ca.cxx definitely needs fixing.
> > > 
> > > K.O.

>
> > I have EPICS Base Release 3.14.8.2 ...
>

For the record, according to https://epics.anl.gov/

the 3.14 branch is "Closed, please upgrade!"
the 3.15 branch seems to be the current "stable" branch, and
the 7.0 branch is the "current release"

I forget which version of EPICS is currently recommended by the TRIUMF controls group. I will have to go and ask them.

K.O.

After upgrading to the lastes MIDAS version I got the DAQ frontend of my application running by changing all compiler directives from cc to g++ and using

#include "mfe.h"

extern HNDLE hDB

 extern "C" { 
 #include <CAENComm.h>  
 }

With these changes everything seems to work fine.

However, I'm having trouble with a slow control frontend using a tcpip driver. It compiled well with the older MIDAS version. Even though all the functions in question are defined in the frontend code, the following error comes up:

 I guess the the aforementioned DAQ frontend compiles because its equipment definitions don't call on the function `initialize_equipment()', but I can't figure out why it doesn't work. Help is appreciated. P.K.

(please use the "plain" text, much easier to answer).

Hi, Peter, I think you misread the error message. There is no error about initialize_equipment(), the error 
is about interrupt_configure(). initialize_equipment() is just one of the functions that calls it.

The cause of the error most likely is a mismatch between the declaration of interrupt_configure() in 
mfe.h and the definition of this function in your program (in feMotor.c, I guess).

Sometimes this mismatch is hard to identify just by looking at the code.

One fool-proof method to debug this is to extract the actual function prototypes from your object files, 
both the declaration ("U") in mfe.o and the definition ("T") in your program should be identical:

nm feMotor.o |  grep -i interrupt | c++filt
0000000000000f90 T interrupt_configure(int, int, long) <--- should be this

nm ~/packages/midas/lib/libmfe.a | grep -i interrupt | c++filt
U interrupt_configure(int, int, long)

If they are different, you adjust your program until they match. One way to ensure the match is to copy 
the declaration from mfe.h into your program.

K.O.




<p>&nbsp;</p>

<table align="center" cellspacing="1" style="border:1px solid #486090; width:98%">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td style="background-color:#486090">Peter Kunz wrote:</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td style="background-color:#FFFFB0">
			<p>After upgrading to the lastes MIDAS version I got the DAQ frontend of my application 
running by changing all compiler directives from cc to g++ and using</p>

			<p>#include &quot;mfe.h&quot;</p>

			<p>extern HNDLE hDB</p>

			<p>&nbsp;extern &quot;C&quot; {&nbsp;<br />
			&nbsp;#include &lt;CAENComm.h&gt; &nbsp;<br />
			&nbsp;}</p>

			<p>With these changes everything seems to work fine.</p>

			<p>However, I&#39;m having trouble with a slow control frontend using a tcpip driver. It 
compiled well with the older MIDAS version. Even though all the functions in question are defined in the 
frontend code, the following error comes up:</p>

			<div style="background:#eee;border:1px solid #ccc;padding:5px 10px;">g++ -o feMotor 
-DOS_LINUX -Dextname -g -O2 -fPIC -Wall -Wuninitialized &nbsp;-fpermissive -
I/home/pkunz/packages/midas/include -I. -I/home/pkunz/packages/midas/drivers/bus &nbsp; 
/home/pkunz/packages/midas/lib/libmidas.a feMotor.o 
/home/pkunz/packages/midas/drivers/bus/tcpip.o cd_Galil.o 
/home/pkunz/packages/midas/lib/libmidas.a /home/pkunz/packages/midas/lib/mfe.o -lm -lz -lutil -lnsl -
lpthread -lrt<br />
			/usr/bin/ld: /home/pkunz/packages/midas/lib/mfe.o: in function 
`initialize_equipment()&#39;:<br />
			/home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:687: undefined reference to 
`interrupt_configure(int, int, long)&#39;<br />
			/usr/bin/ld: /home/pkunz/packages/midas/lib/mfe.o: in function 
`readout_enable(unsigned int)&#39;:<br />
			/home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:1236: undefined reference to 
`interrupt_configure(int, int, long)&#39;<br />
			/usr/bin/ld: /home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:1238: undefined reference to 
`interrupt_configure(int, int, long)&#39;<br />
			/usr/bin/ld: /home/pkunz/packages/midas/lib/mfe.o: in function `main&#39;:<br />
			/home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:2791: undefined reference to 
`interrupt_configure(int, int, long)&#39;<br />
			/usr/bin/ld: /home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:2792: undefined reference to 
`interrupt_configure(int, int, long)&#39;<br />
			collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status<br />
			make: *** [Makefile:36: feMotor] Error 1</div>

			<p>&nbsp;I guess the the aforementioned DAQ frontend compiles because its equipment 
definitions don&#39;t call on the function `initialize_equipment()&#39;, but I can&#39;t figure out why 
it doesn&#39;t work. Help is appreciated. P.K.</p>
			</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

<p>&nbsp;</p>

Thanks for explaining this, Konstantin. 
After updating the function to

INT interrupt_configure(INT cmd, INT source, POINTER_T adr)
{
  return CM_SUCCESS;
}

it compiled without errors. In the original code the "INT source" variable was missing.



> (please use the "plain" text, much easier to answer).
> 
> Hi, Peter, I think you misread the error message. There is no error about initialize_equipment(), the error 
> is about interrupt_configure(). initialize_equipment() is just one of the functions that calls it.
> 
> The cause of the error most likely is a mismatch between the declaration of interrupt_configure() in 
> mfe.h and the definition of this function in your program (in feMotor.c, I guess).
> 
> Sometimes this mismatch is hard to identify just by looking at the code.
> 
> One fool-proof method to debug this is to extract the actual function prototypes from your object files, 
> both the declaration ("U") in mfe.o and the definition ("T") in your program should be identical:
> 
> nm feMotor.o |  grep -i interrupt | c++filt
> 0000000000000f90 T interrupt_configure(int, int, long) <--- should be this
> 
> nm ~/packages/midas/lib/libmfe.a | grep -i interrupt | c++filt
> U interrupt_configure(int, int, long)
> 
> If they are different, you adjust your program until they match. One way to ensure the match is to copy 
> the declaration from mfe.h into your program.
> 
> K.O.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> <p>&nbsp;</p>
> 
> <table align="center" cellspacing="1" style="border:1px solid #486090; width:98%">
> 	<tbody>
> 		<tr>
> 			<td style="background-color:#486090">Peter Kunz wrote:</td>
> 		</tr>
> 		<tr>
> 			<td style="background-color:#FFFFB0">
> 			<p>After upgrading to the lastes MIDAS version I got the DAQ frontend of my application 
> running by changing all compiler directives from cc to g++ and using</p>
> 
> 			<p>#include &quot;mfe.h&quot;</p>
> 
> 			<p>extern HNDLE hDB</p>
> 
> 			<p>&nbsp;extern &quot;C&quot; {&nbsp;<br />
> 			&nbsp;#include &lt;CAENComm.h&gt; &nbsp;<br />
> 			&nbsp;}</p>
> 
> 			<p>With these changes everything seems to work fine.</p>
> 
> 			<p>However, I&#39;m having trouble with a slow control frontend using a tcpip driver. It 
> compiled well with the older MIDAS version. Even though all the functions in question are defined in the 
> frontend code, the following error comes up:</p>
> 
> 			<div style="background:#eee;border:1px solid #ccc;padding:5px 10px;">g++ -o feMotor 
> -DOS_LINUX -Dextname -g -O2 -fPIC -Wall -Wuninitialized &nbsp;-fpermissive -
> I/home/pkunz/packages/midas/include -I. -I/home/pkunz/packages/midas/drivers/bus &nbsp; 
> /home/pkunz/packages/midas/lib/libmidas.a feMotor.o 
> /home/pkunz/packages/midas/drivers/bus/tcpip.o cd_Galil.o 
> /home/pkunz/packages/midas/lib/libmidas.a /home/pkunz/packages/midas/lib/mfe.o -lm -lz -lutil -lnsl -
> lpthread -lrt<br />
> 			/usr/bin/ld: /home/pkunz/packages/midas/lib/mfe.o: in function 
> `initialize_equipment()&#39;:<br />
> 			/home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:687: undefined reference to 
> `interrupt_configure(int, int, long)&#39;<br />
> 			/usr/bin/ld: /home/pkunz/packages/midas/lib/mfe.o: in function 
> `readout_enable(unsigned int)&#39;:<br />
> 			/home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:1236: undefined reference to 
> `interrupt_configure(int, int, long)&#39;<br />
> 			/usr/bin/ld: /home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:1238: undefined reference to 
> `interrupt_configure(int, int, long)&#39;<br />
> 			/usr/bin/ld: /home/pkunz/packages/midas/lib/mfe.o: in function `main&#39;:<br />
> 			/home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:2791: undefined reference to 
> `interrupt_configure(int, int, long)&#39;<br />
> 			/usr/bin/ld: /home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:2792: undefined reference to 
> `interrupt_configure(int, int, long)&#39;<br />
> 			collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status<br />
> 			make: *** [Makefile:36: feMotor] Error 1</div>
> 
> 			<p>&nbsp;I guess the the aforementioned DAQ frontend compiles because its equipment 
> definitions don&#39;t call on the function `initialize_equipment()&#39;, but I can&#39;t figure out why 
> it doesn&#39;t work. Help is appreciated. P.K.</p>
> 			</td>
> 		</tr>
> 	</tbody>
> </table>
> 
> <p>&nbsp;</p>

We updated midas/examples/experiment/frontend.cxx to correctly contain

/*-- Interrupt configuration ---------------------------------------*/

INT interrupt_configure(INT cmd, INT source, POINTER_T adr)
{
   switch (cmd) {
   case CMD_INTERRUPT_ENABLE:
      break;
   case CMD_INTERRUPT_DISABLE:
      break;
   case CMD_INTERRUPT_ATTACH:
      break;
   case CMD_INTERRUPT_DETACH:
      break;
   }
   return SUCCESS;
}

but if you upgrade from C to C++ from your own old frontend code you might be hit by that issue. 

Maybe Konstantin can update elog:1526 to contain a hint about "INT source".

Stefan

Actually now I see that 

a4) poll_event() and interrupt_configure() have "source" as "int[]" instead of "int" (why did this work before?)

mention this already, but maybe it's not completely clear that one has to change "int[] source" to "int source"

Stefan


> We updated midas/examples/experiment/frontend.cxx to correctly contain
> 
> /*-- Interrupt configuration ---------------------------------------*/
> 
> INT interrupt_configure(INT cmd, INT source, POINTER_T adr)
> {
>    switch (cmd) {
>    case CMD_INTERRUPT_ENABLE:
>       break;
>    case CMD_INTERRUPT_DISABLE:
>       break;
>    case CMD_INTERRUPT_ATTACH:
>       break;
>    case CMD_INTERRUPT_DETACH:
>       break;
>    }
>    return SUCCESS;
> }
> 
> but if you upgrade from C to C++ from your own old frontend code you might be hit by that issue. 
> 
> Maybe Konstantin can update elog:1526 to contain a hint about "INT source".
> 
> Stefan

(please use the "plain" text, much easier to answer).

Hi, Peter, I think you misread the error message. There is no error about 
initialize_equipment(), the error is about interrupt_configure(). initialize_equipment() is just 
one of the functions that calls it.

The cause of the error most likely is a mismatch between the declaration of 
interrupt_configure() in mfe.h and the definition of this function in your program (in 
feMotor.c, I guess).

Sometimes this mismatch is hard to identify just by looking at the code.

One fool-proof method to debug this is to extract the actual function prototypes from your 
object files, both the declaration ("U") in mfe.o and the definition ("T") in your program 
should be identical:

nm feMotor.o |  grep -i interrupt | c++filt
0000000000000f90 T interrupt_configure(int, int, long) <--- should be this

nm ~/packages/midas/lib/libmfe.a | grep -i interrupt | c++filt
U interrupt_configure(int, int, long)

If they are different, you adjust your program until they match. One way to ensure the 
match is to copy the declaration from mfe.h into your program.

K.O.




<p>&nbsp;</p>

<table align="center" cellspacing="1" style="border:1px solid #486090; width:98%">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td style="background-color:#486090">Peter Kunz wrote:</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td style="background-color:#FFFFB0">
			<p>After upgrading to the lastes MIDAS version I got the DAQ frontend of my 
application running by changing all compiler directives from cc to g++ and using</p>

			<p>#include &quot;mfe.h&quot;</p>

			<p>extern HNDLE hDB</p>

			<p>&nbsp;extern &quot;C&quot; {&nbsp;<br />
			&nbsp;#include &lt;CAENComm.h&gt; &nbsp;<br />
			&nbsp;}</p>

			<p>With these changes everything seems to work fine.</p>

			<p>However, I&#39;m having trouble with a slow control frontend using a 
tcpip driver. It compiled well with the older MIDAS version. Even though all the functions in 
question are defined in the frontend code, the following error comes up:</p>

			<div style="background:#eee;border:1px solid #ccc;padding:5px 10px;">g++ 
-o feMotor -DOS_LINUX -Dextname -g -O2 -fPIC -Wall -Wuninitialized &nbsp;-fpermissive 
-I/home/pkunz/packages/midas/include -I. -I/home/pkunz/packages/midas/drivers/bus 
&nbsp; /home/pkunz/packages/midas/lib/libmidas.a feMotor.o 
/home/pkunz/packages/midas/drivers/bus/tcpip.o cd_Galil.o 
/home/pkunz/packages/midas/lib/libmidas.a /home/pkunz/packages/midas/lib/mfe.o -lm -lz 
-lutil -lnsl -lpthread -lrt<br />
			/usr/bin/ld: /home/pkunz/packages/midas/lib/mfe.o: in function 
`initialize_equipment()&#39;:<br />
			/home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:687: undefined reference to 
`interrupt_configure(int, int, long)&#39;<br />
			/usr/bin/ld: /home/pkunz/packages/midas/lib/mfe.o: in function 
`readout_enable(unsigned int)&#39;:<br />
			/home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:1236: undefined reference to 
`interrupt_configure(int, int, long)&#39;<br />
			/usr/bin/ld: /home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:1238: undefined 
reference to `interrupt_configure(int, int, long)&#39;<br />
			/usr/bin/ld: /home/pkunz/packages/midas/lib/mfe.o: in function `main&#39;:
<br />
			/home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:2791: undefined reference to 
`interrupt_configure(int, int, long)&#39;<br />
			/usr/bin/ld: /home/pkunz/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:2792: undefined 
reference to `interrupt_configure(int, int, long)&#39;<br />
			collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status<br />
			make: *** [Makefile:36: feMotor] Error 1</div>

			<p>&nbsp;I guess the the aforementioned DAQ frontend compiles because 
its equipment definitions don&#39;t call on the function `initialize_equipment()&#39;, but I 
can&#39;t figure out why it doesn&#39;t work. Help is appreciated. P.K.</p>
			</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

<p>&nbsp;</p>

MIDAS version:      2.1
GIT revision:       Tue Dec 31 17:40:14 2019 +0100 - midas-2019-09-i-1-gd93944ce-dirty on branch develop

/Logger/Channels/0/Settings

With the settings above the file last.json generated for a new run is empty and the events 0x8000 and 0x8001 are missing in the .mid file.

When setting "ODB dump format" to "xml", events 0x8000 and 0x8001 are included in the .mid file, however, the file last.xml is not created.

(Please post messages in "plain" mode, they are much easier to answer)

Thank you for reporting this problem. I will try to reproduce it.

In addition, I will say a few words about your version of midas:

> GIT revision: midas-2019-09-i-1-gd93944ce-dirty on branch develop

I recommend that for production systems one used the tagged release versions of midas. 
(i.e. see https://midas.triumf.ca/elog/Midas/1750).

(Your midas is "1 commit after the latest tag" - the "-1" in the git revision).

I apply bug fixes to both the release branch and the develop branch, but for you to get 
these fixes, on the develop branch you will also "get" all the unrelated changes that may 
come with new bugs. On the release branch, you will only get the bug fixes.

In your midas version it says "-dirty" which means that you have local modifications to the 
midas sources. With luck those changes are not related to the bug that you see. (but I 
cannot tell). You can do "git status" and "git diff" to see what the local changes are.

It is much better if bugs are reported against "clean" builds of MIDAS (no "-dirty").


K.O.


<p>&nbsp;</p>

<table align="center" cellspacing="1" style="border:1px solid #486090; width:98%">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td style="background-color:#486090">Peter Kunz wrote:</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td style="background-color:#FFFFB0">
			<p>MIDAS version: &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;2.1<br />
			GIT revision: &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Tue Dec 31 17:40:14 2019 +0100 - 
midas-2019-09-i-1-gd93944ce-dirty on branch develop</p>

			<p>/Logger/Channels/0/Settings</p>

			<table border="3" cellpadding="1" class="dialogTable">
				<tbody>
					<tr>
						<td>ODB dump</td>
						<td>y</td>
					</tr>
					<tr>
						<td>ODB dump format</td>
						<td>json</td>
					</tr>
				</tbody>
			</table>

			<p>With the settings above the file last.json generated for a new run is 
empty and the events 0x8000 and 0x8001 are missing in the .mid file.</p>

			<p>When setting &quot;ODB dump format&quot; to &quot;xml&quot;, events 
0x8000 and 0x8001 are included in the .mid file, however, the file last.xml is not created.
</p>

			<p>&nbsp;</p>

			<p>&nbsp;</p>

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

<p>&nbsp;</p>

Re: MIDAS versions

Thanks for pointing that out. I wasn't actually aware that there is a release branch and a development branch.
I was just following the installation instructions using

git clone https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas --recursive

Apparently that gave me the development branch. How can I get the release version?

(I think my version showed up a "dirty" because I played around with one of the examples. I didn't touch the actual source code.)

> (Please post messages in "plain" mode, they are much easier to answer)
> 
> Thank you for reporting this problem. I will try to reproduce it.
> 
> In addition, I will say a few words about your version of midas:
> 
> > GIT revision: midas-2019-09-i-1-gd93944ce-dirty on branch develop
> 
> I recommend that for production systems one used the tagged release versions of midas. 
> (i.e. see https://midas.triumf.ca/elog/Midas/1750).
> 
> (Your midas is "1 commit after the latest tag" - the "-1" in the git revision).
> 
> I apply bug fixes to both the release branch and the develop branch, but for you to get 
> these fixes, on the develop branch you will also "get" all the unrelated changes that may 
> come with new bugs. On the release branch, you will only get the bug fixes.
> 
> In your midas version it says "-dirty" which means that you have local modifications to the 
> midas sources. With luck those changes are not related to the bug that you see. (but I 
> cannot tell). You can do "git status" and "git diff" to see what the local changes are.
> 
> It is much better if bugs are reported against "clean" builds of MIDAS (no "-dirty").
> 
> 
> K.O.
> 
> 
> <p>&nbsp;</p>
> 
> <table align="center" cellspacing="1" style="border:1px solid #486090; width:98%">
> 	<tbody>
> 		<tr>
> 			<td style="background-color:#486090">Peter Kunz wrote:</td>
> 		</tr>
> 		<tr>
> 			<td style="background-color:#FFFFB0">
> 			<p>MIDAS version: &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;2.1<br />
> 			GIT revision: &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Tue Dec 31 17:40:14 2019 +0100 - 
> midas-2019-09-i-1-gd93944ce-dirty on branch develop</p>
> 
> 			<p>/Logger/Channels/0/Settings</p>
> 
> 			<table border="3" cellpadding="1" class="dialogTable">
> 				<tbody>
> 					<tr>
> 						<td>ODB dump</td>
> 						<td>y</td>
> 					</tr>
> 					<tr>
> 						<td>ODB dump format</td>
> 						<td>json</td>
> 					</tr>
> 				</tbody>
> 			</table>
> 
> 			<p>With the settings above the file last.json generated for a new run is 
> empty and the events 0x8000 and 0x8001 are missing in the .mid file.</p>
> 
> 			<p>When setting &quot;ODB dump format&quot; to &quot;xml&quot;, events 
> 0x8000 and 0x8001 are included in the .mid file, however, the file last.xml is not created.
> </p>
> 
> 			<p>&nbsp;</p>
> 
> 			<p>&nbsp;</p>
> 
> 			<p>&nbsp;</p>
> 			</td>
> 		</tr>
> 	</tbody>
> </table>
> 
> <p>&nbsp;</p>

For using the release branch read the messages in this thread. Most of the time, the develop branch is fine, except when we are developing something 
new, and the only way to tell is to watch the git activity on bitbucket or see the release branch announcements I post on the midas forum.

https://midas.triumf.ca/elog/Midas/1706

K.O.


> Re: MIDAS versions
> 
> Thanks for pointing that out. I wasn't actually aware that there is a release branch and a development branch.
> I was just following the installation instructions using
> 
> git clone https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas --recursive
> 
> Apparently that gave me the development branch. How can I get the release version?
> 
> (I think my version showed up a "dirty" because I played around with one of the examples. I didn't touch the actual source code.)
> 
> > (Please post messages in "plain" mode, they are much easier to answer)
> > 
> > Thank you for reporting this problem. I will try to reproduce it.
> > 
> > In addition, I will say a few words about your version of midas:
> > 
> > > GIT revision: midas-2019-09-i-1-gd93944ce-dirty on branch develop
> > 
> > I recommend that for production systems one used the tagged release versions of midas. 
> > (i.e. see https://midas.triumf.ca/elog/Midas/1750).
> > 
> > (Your midas is "1 commit after the latest tag" - the "-1" in the git revision).
> > 
> > I apply bug fixes to both the release branch and the develop branch, but for you to get 
> > these fixes, on the develop branch you will also "get" all the unrelated changes that may 
> > come with new bugs. On the release branch, you will only get the bug fixes.
> > 
> > In your midas version it says "-dirty" which means that you have local modifications to the 
> > midas sources. With luck those changes are not related to the bug that you see. (but I 
> > cannot tell). You can do "git status" and "git diff" to see what the local changes are.
> > 
> > It is much better if bugs are reported against "clean" builds of MIDAS (no "-dirty").
> > 
> > 
> > K.O.
> > 
> > 
> > <p>&nbsp;</p>
> > 
> > <table align="center" cellspacing="1" style="border:1px solid #486090; width:98%">
> > 	<tbody>
> > 		<tr>
> > 			<td style="background-color:#486090">Peter Kunz wrote:</td>
> > 		</tr>
> > 		<tr>
> > 			<td style="background-color:#FFFFB0">
> > 			<p>MIDAS version: &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;2.1<br />
> > 			GIT revision: &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Tue Dec 31 17:40:14 2019 +0100 - 
> > midas-2019-09-i-1-gd93944ce-dirty on branch develop</p>
> > 
> > 			<p>/Logger/Channels/0/Settings</p>
> > 
> > 			<table border="3" cellpadding="1" class="dialogTable">
> > 				<tbody>
> > 					<tr>
> > 						<td>ODB dump</td>
> > 						<td>y</td>
> > 					</tr>
> > 					<tr>
> > 						<td>ODB dump format</td>
> > 						<td>json</td>
> > 					</tr>
> > 				</tbody>
> > 			</table>
> > 
> > 			<p>With the settings above the file last.json generated for a new run is 
> > empty and the events 0x8000 and 0x8001 are missing in the .mid file.</p>
> > 
> > 			<p>When setting &quot;ODB dump format&quot; to &quot;xml&quot;, events 
> > 0x8000 and 0x8001 are included in the .mid file, however, the file last.xml is not created.
> > </p>
> > 
> > 			<p>&nbsp;</p>
> > 
> > 			<p>&nbsp;</p>
> > 
> > 			<p>&nbsp;</p>
> > 			</td>
> > 		</tr>
> > 	</tbody>
> > </table>
> > 
> > <p>&nbsp;</p>

I just happened to check the current situation with self-signed https certificates as implemented in mhttpd.

(To remember, the powers-that-be are pushing for universal use of https for all web access. The https
implementation in mhttpd at the moment can only generate self-signed certificates, so...)

plain unencrypted http:
- both google chrome and firefox say "connection not secure", but connect without any fuss.
- apple safari does not say anything

https with self-signed certificate:
- google chrome goes through an "are you sure?" page, "red not secure" status in toolbar
- firefox does the same thing, requires adding a security exception, but still shows "not secure" status in toolbar
- apple safari goes through a sequence of "are you sure?" pages, asks for the user password to add the self-signed certificate to 
the macos key store, then marks the connection as "secure" (good)

So clearly powers-that-be do not want us to use self-signed certificates for https. (And frown on use of unencrypted
http even for localhost connections). Properly signed certificates can be obtained from letsencrypt almost
automatically, but of course mhttpd needs to know how to use them and how to do handle their automatic renewals.

I plan to update the mongoose web server library inside mhttpd and with luck I will straighten some of this certificate business at 
the same time.

In the mean time, we continue to recommend that mhttpd should be used behind a password protected https proxy (i.e. apache 
httpd, etc).

K.O.

> In the mean time, we continue to recommend that mhttpd should be used behind a password protected https proxy (i.e. apache 
> httpd, etc).

I guess this is what moste people do anyhow these days. Do I understand correctly that this then rules out the usage of letsencrype certificates, since the 
host needs to be accessed from outside, which is not possible if running behind a password protected firewall.

Stefan

> > In the mean time, we continue to recommend that mhttpd should be used behind a password protected https proxy (i.e. apache 
> > httpd, etc).
> 
> I guess this is what moste people do anyhow these days. Do I understand correctly that this then rules out the usage of letsencrype certificates, since the 
> host needs to be accessed from outside, which is not possible if running behind a password protected firewall.
> 
> Stefan

Careful, firewall != proxy, very different things.

A firewall prevents network communications, period. (Like fences and locked doors, there are good reasons to have them).

An https proxy is a way to have encrypted (protected) web communications with a machine behind a firewall.

Basically, we have 4 main cases, all with trouble.

1) mhttpd running on localhost, "just for testing", is in trouble. there is no simple way to get a "blessed" certificate, and self-signed certificates are now "almost forbidden". http is "okey 
for now", but the writing is on the wall. There is no special exception for "local-only" connections.

2a) mhttpd running on an internet-connected machine, with apache httpd, our best case. To get this working one has to configure both apache httpd and the "blessed certificate" 
certbot tool. With luck, both tools work smoothly on current OSes (they do NOT).

2b) same, but without apache httpd. One still has to run certbot, and the "glue" between mhttpd and certbot is currently missing: need a way to point mhttpd to the certbot certificate 
files and a way to reload mhttpd when the certificate is auto-renewed.

3) mhttpd running on a machine behind a corporate firewall. worst case. if firewall Gods make an opening for ports 80 and 443, it becomes case (2a/b), otherwise, one must use some 
kind of https proxy. (Plus there is no trivial way to setup an encrypted secure communication channel between mhttpd and this proxy, a double bad).

K.O.

P.S. I guess one can use nginx as the https proxy instead of apache httpd. I did not try yet. My impression is that everybody uses nginx, except for people who started with apache httpd 
and are too lazy to try nginx.

K.O.

> > > In the mean time, we continue to recommend that mhttpd should be used behind a password protected https proxy (i.e. apache 
> > > httpd, etc).

There we go. google-chrome 74 refuses to connect to mhttpd configured with a self-signed certificate generated per instructions printed by mhttpd.

Here is the full error text (there is no button to "let me connect to it anyway"):

Your connection is not private
Attackers might be trying to steal your information from musr03.triumf.ca (for example, passwords, messages, or credit cards). Learn more
NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID
 
Help improve Safe Browsing by sending some system information and page content to Google. Privacy policy
musr03.triumf.ca normally uses encryption to protect your information. When Google Chrome tried to connect to musr03.triumf.ca this time, the website sent back unusual and incorrect credentials. This may happen when an 
attacker is trying to pretend to be musr03.triumf.ca, or a Wi-Fi sign-in screen has interrupted the connection. Your information is still secure because Google Chrome stopped the connection before any data was exchanged.

You cannot visit musr03.triumf.ca right now because the website uses HSTS. Network errors and attacks are usually temporary, so this page will probably work later.

Now firefox returns the same error. version 72.0.1.

> daqlabpc.triumf.ca has a security policy called HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), which means that Firefox can only connect to it securely. You can’t add an exception to visit this site.
> Error code: MOZILLA_PKIX_ERROR_SELF_SIGNED_CERT

I think the problem is with HSTS. I enabled HSTS (in mhttpd and in apache httpd) because
SSLlabs encourage it and because my reading of it's description at
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Strict-Transport-Security
makes it sound like a good idea without any downsides.

However, the actual HSTS RFC says something completely different:
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6797

"The aim is to prevent click-through insecurity and address other potential threats".

To me this explains what I see. In contrast to the description at developer.mozilla.org,
firefox (and google chrome) disable "click-through" exceptions for "I do not like this https certificate",
and there is no way to connect to self-signed https.

Bottom line, either use certbot to get blessed https certificate or no https for you.

K.O.


> > > > In the mean time, we continue to recommend that mhttpd should be used behind a password protected https proxy (i.e. apache 
> > > > httpd, etc).
> 
> There we go. google-chrome 74 refuses to connect to mhttpd configured with a self-signed certificate generated per instructions printed by mhttpd.
> 
> Here is the full error text (there is no button to "let me connect to it anyway"):
> 
> Your connection is not private
> Attackers might be trying to steal your information from musr03.triumf.ca (for example, passwords, messages, or credit cards). Learn more
> NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID
>  
> Help improve Safe Browsing by sending some system information and page content to Google. Privacy policy
> musr03.triumf.ca normally uses encryption to protect your information. When Google Chrome tried to connect to musr03.triumf.ca this time, the website sent back unusual and incorrect credentials. This may happen when an 
> attacker is trying to pretend to be musr03.triumf.ca, or a Wi-Fi sign-in screen has interrupted the connection. Your information is still secure because Google Chrome stopped the connection before any data was exchanged.
> 
> You cannot visit musr03.triumf.ca right now because the website uses HSTS. Network errors and attacks are usually temporary, so this page will probably work later.

To convert a MIDAS frontend to C++ follow this checklist:

a) add #include "mfe.h" after include of midas.h and fix all compilation errors.

NOTE: there should be no "extern C"  brackets around MIDAS include files.

NOTE: Expect to see following problems:

a1) duplicate or mismatched declarations of functions defined in mfe.h
a2) frontend_name and frontend_file_name should be "const char*" instead of "char*"
a3) duplicate "HNDLE hDB" collision with hDB from mfe.c - not sure why it worked before, either use HNDLE hDB from mfe.h or use "extern HNDLE hDB".
a4) poll_event() and interrupt_configure() have "source" as "int[]" instead of "int" (why did this work before?)
a5) use of "extern int frontend_index" instead of get_frontend_index() from mfe.h
a6) bk_create() last argument needs to be cast to (void**)
a7) "bool debug" collides with "debug" from mfe.h (why did this work before?)

b) remove no longer needed "extern C" brackets around mfe related code. Ideally there should be no "extern C" brackets anywhere.

c) in the Makefile, change CC=gcc to CC=g++ for compiling and linking everything as C++

c1) fix all compilation problems. most valid C code will compile as valid C++, but there is some known trouble:
- return value of malloc() & co needs to be cast to the correct data type: "char* s = (char*)malloc(...)"
- some C++ compilers complain about mismatch between signed and unsigned values

If you need help with converting your frontend from C to C++, I will be most happy
to assist you - post your compiler error messages to this forum or email them to me privately.

Good luck,
K.O.

> To convert a MIDAS frontend to C++ follow this checklist:

Pierre A.-A. reminded me that include files for CAEN libraries have  to
use "extern C" brackets:

some 3rd party libraries (CAEN, etc) are written in C (or require C linkage),
if their include files are not C++ compatible (do not have "extern C" brackets
for all exported symbols), the experiment frontend code must say something like this:

extern "C" {
#include "3rd-party-c-library.h"
}

Note: "#ifdef cplusplus" is not needed because we already know we are C++, not C.

K.O.

Big thanks to Peter Kunz - specifically when using the CAEN libraries:

>
> After upgrading to the lastes MIDAS version I got the DAQ frontend of my application running by
> changing all compiler directives from cc to g++ and using
>
> #include "mfe.h"
>
> extern HNDLE hDB
> 
>  extern "C" { 
>  #include <CAENComm.h>  
>  }
>
> With these changes everything seems to work fine.
>


K.O.



> > To convert a MIDAS frontend to C++ follow this checklist:
> 
> Pierre A.-A. reminded me that include files for CAEN libraries have  to
> use "extern C" brackets:
> 
> some 3rd party libraries (CAEN, etc) are written in C (or require C linkage),
> if their include files are not C++ compatible (do not have "extern C" brackets
> for all exported symbols), the experiment frontend code must say something like this:
> 
> extern "C" {
> #include "3rd-party-c-library.h"
> }
> 
> Note: "#ifdef cplusplus" is not needed because we already know we are C++, not C.
> 
> K.O.

I am moving our fe code to c++ midas with cmake. I did encounter your a) problems.

How do I solve mismatched declarations in the mfe (or other places in the midas code)? It is having issues with the midas defined BOOL/... types. This 
is what I get for a minimal scfe:

[ 12%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/sc_fe_mini.dir/sc_fe_mini.cpp.o
[ 25%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/sc_fe_mini.dir/home/frederik/packages/midas/drivers/class/hv.cxx.o
[ 37%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/sc_fe_mini.dir/home/frederik/packages/midas/drivers/class/multi.cxx.o
[ 50%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/sc_fe_mini.dir/home/frederik/packages/midas/drivers/device/nulldev.cxx.o
[ 62%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/sc_fe_mini.dir/home/frederik/packages/midas/drivers/bus/null.cxx.o
[ 75%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/sc_fe_mini.dir/home/frederik/packages/midas/drivers/device/mscbdev.cxx.o
[ 87%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/sc_fe_mini.dir/home/frederik/packages/midas/mscb/src/mscb.cxx.o
[100%] Linking CXX executable sc_fe_mini
/home/frederik/packages/midas/build/libmfe.a(mfe.cxx.o): In function `_readout_thread':
/home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:1271: undefined reference to `poll_event(int, int, unsigned int)'
/home/frederik/packages/midas/build/libmfe.a(mfe.cxx.o): In function `check_polled_events':
/home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:1601: undefined reference to `poll_event(int, int, unsigned int)'
/home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:1643: undefined reference to `poll_event(int, int, unsigned int)'
/home/frederik/packages/midas/build/libmfe.a(mfe.cxx.o): In function `readout_enable(unsigned int)':
/home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:1158: undefined reference to `interrupt_configure(int, int, long)'
/home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:1156: undefined reference to `interrupt_configure(int, int, long)'
/home/frederik/packages/midas/build/libmfe.a(mfe.cxx.o): In function `initialize_equipment':
/home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:614: undefined reference to `interrupt_configure(int, int, long)'
/home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:649: undefined reference to `poll_event(int, int, unsigned int)'
/home/frederik/packages/midas/build/libmfe.a(mfe.cxx.o): In function `scheduler':
/home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:1890: undefined reference to `poll_event(int, int, unsigned int)'
/home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:1932: undefined reference to `poll_event(int, int, unsigned int)'
/home/frederik/packages/midas/build/libmfe.a(mfe.cxx.o): In function `main':
/home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:2701: undefined reference to `interrupt_configure(int, int, long)'
/home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:2702: undefined reference to `interrupt_configure(int, int, long)'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
make[2]: *** [sc_fe_mini] Error 1
make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/sc_fe_mini.dir/all] Error 2
make: *** [all] Error 2


This is my cmakelists for my user code:

#
# cmake for the muX software
#
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.3)

project(muX)

#
# find installations
#
set(MIDAS_DIR $ENV{MIDASSYS})
message("MIDAS dir: " ${MIDAS_DIR})

#
# set directories
#
set(MIDASBUILD_DIR ${MIDAS_DIR}/build)
set(MIDASINCLUDE_DIR ${MIDAS_DIR}/include)
set(MXML_DIR ${MIDAS_DIR}/mxml)
set(MSCB_DIR ${MIDAS_DIR}/mscb)
set(DRV_DIR ${MIDAS_DIR}/drivers)


#
# drivers, libs
#
set(DRIVERS
    ${MIDAS_DIR}/drivers/class/hv
    ${MIDAS_DIR}/drivers/class/multi
    ${MIDAS_DIR}/drivers/device/nulldev
    ${MIDAS_DIR}/drivers/bus/null
)
set(MIDASLIB ${MIDASBUILD_DIR}/libmidas.a)
set(FELIB ${MIDASBUILD_DIR}/libmfe.a)

#
# sc_fe
#
add_executable(sc_fe_mini
        sc_fe_mini.cpp
        ${DRIVERS}
        ${MIDAS_DIR}/drivers/device/mscbdev
        ${MIDAS_DIR}/mscb/src/mscb)

target_include_directories(sc_fe_mini PRIVATE ${DRV_DIR} ${MIDAS_DIR}/mscb/include ${MIDAS_DIR}/include)
target_link_libraries(sc_fe_mini ${LIBS} ${MIDASLIB} ${FELIB} rt pthread util)



I seem to be able to compile the current midas distributions, including the scfe frontend



> To convert a MIDAS frontend to C++ follow this checklist:
> 
> a) add #include "mfe.h" after include of midas.h and fix all compilation errors.
> 
> NOTE: there should be no "extern C"  brackets around MIDAS include files.
> 
> NOTE: Expect to see following problems:
> 
> a1) duplicate or mismatched declarations of functions defined in mfe.h
> a2) frontend_name and frontend_file_name should be "const char*" instead of "char*"
> a3) duplicate "HNDLE hDB" collision with hDB from mfe.c - not sure why it worked before, either use HNDLE hDB from mfe.h or use "extern HNDLE hDB".
> a4) poll_event() and interrupt_configure() have "source" as "int[]" instead of "int" (why did this work before?)
> a5) use of "extern int frontend_index" instead of get_frontend_index() from mfe.h
> a6) bk_create() last argument needs to be cast to (void**)
> a7) "bool debug" collides with "debug" from mfe.h (why did this work before?)
> 
> b) remove no longer needed "extern C" brackets around mfe related code. Ideally there should be no "extern C" brackets anywhere.
> 
> c) in the Makefile, change CC=gcc to CC=g++ for compiling and linking everything as C++
> 
> c1) fix all compilation problems. most valid C code will compile as valid C++, but there is some known trouble:
> - return value of malloc() & co needs to be cast to the correct data type: "char* s = (char*)malloc(...)"
> - some C++ compilers complain about mismatch between signed and unsigned values
> 
> If you need help with converting your frontend from C to C++, I will be most happy
> to assist you - post your compiler error messages to this forum or email them to me privately.
> 
> Good luck,
> K.O.

Did you include mfe.h as written in elog:1526 ?

Stefan

> Did you include mfe.h as written in elog:1526 ?
> 
> Stefan


Yes I did

this is my include 

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <assert.h>
#include <math.h>
#include <pthread.h>


#include "midas.h"
#include "mscb.h"
#include "multi.h"
#include "mscbdev.h"
#include "mfe.h"

(I attach my dummy fe)

What confuses me is that I can compile examples/experiment/ if I copy that to a 
fresh dir.

I also copied the CMakeLists from the example:

#
# cmake for the muX software
#
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.3)

project(muX)

#
# find midas installation, from CMakeLists in examples/experiment
#
set(MIDAS_DIR $ENV{MIDASSYS})
message("MIDAS dir: " ${MIDAS_DIR})
if (NOT EXISTS $ENV{MIDASSYS})
  message(FATAL_ERROR "Environment variable $MIDASSYS not defined, aborting.")
endif()

set(INC_PATH ${MIDAS_DIR}/include ${MIDAS_DIR}/mxml ${MIDAS_DIR}/mscb/include 
${MIDAS_DIR}/drivers/class ${MIDAS_DIR}/drivers/device)
link_directories($ENV{MIDASSYS}/lib)

# enable certain compile warnings
add_compile_options(-Wall -Wformat=2 -Wno-format-nonliteral -Wno-strict-
aliasing -Wuninitialized -Wno-unused-function)

set(LIBS -lpthread -lutil -lrt) 


add_executable(sc_fe_mini sc_fe_mini.cpp)
target_include_directories(sc_fe_mini PRIVATE ${INC_PATH})
target_link_libraries(sc_fe_mini mfe midas ${LIBS})

Have you left any "extern C" in your frontend program or in any of the used header file. Seems 
like the linker cannot find the poll_event in your frontend code. If it's there, but it's compiled 
with C calling (instead of C++), the name mangling causes it to be invisible to the linker. That 
usually happens if there is somewhere

extern C {
  INT poll_event();
  ... 
}

while it is NOT defined as "extern C" in mfe.h which is used by mfe.cxx.

Stefan

> > Did you include mfe.h as written in elog:1526 ?
> > 
> > Stefan
> 
> 
> Yes I did
> 
> this is my include 
> 
> #include <stdio.h>
> #include <string.h>
> #include <assert.h>
> #include <math.h>
> #include <pthread.h>
> 
> 
> #include "midas.h"
> #include "mscb.h"
> #include "multi.h"
> #include "mscbdev.h"
> #include "mfe.h"
> 
> (I attach my dummy fe)
> 
> What confuses me is that I can compile examples/experiment/ if I copy that to a 
> fresh dir.
> 
> I also copied the CMakeLists from the example:
> 
> #
> # cmake for the muX software
> #
> cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.3)
> 
> project(muX)
> 
> #
> # find midas installation, from CMakeLists in examples/experiment
> #
> set(MIDAS_DIR $ENV{MIDASSYS})
> message("MIDAS dir: " ${MIDAS_DIR})
> if (NOT EXISTS $ENV{MIDASSYS})
>   message(FATAL_ERROR "Environment variable $MIDASSYS not defined, aborting.")
> endif()
> 
> set(INC_PATH ${MIDAS_DIR}/include ${MIDAS_DIR}/mxml ${MIDAS_DIR}/mscb/include 
> ${MIDAS_DIR}/drivers/class ${MIDAS_DIR}/drivers/device)
> link_directories($ENV{MIDASSYS}/lib)
> 
> # enable certain compile warnings
> add_compile_options(-Wall -Wformat=2 -Wno-format-nonliteral -Wno-strict-
> aliasing -Wuninitialized -Wno-unused-function)
> 
> set(LIBS -lpthread -lutil -lrt) 
> 
> 
> add_executable(sc_fe_mini sc_fe_mini.cpp)
> target_include_directories(sc_fe_mini PRIVATE ${INC_PATH})
> target_link_libraries(sc_fe_mini mfe midas ${LIBS})

Can you post the exact command that cmake executes to link sc_fe_mini (with make VERBOSE=1)?

I have noticed similar linking problems that depended on the order when linking. In my case, it 
compiled when "-lpthread -lutil -lrt" were at the end of the command, but not before mfe.o and 
libmidas.a. Unfortunately I haven't found a way to tell cmake the "correct" order of the link 
libraries.

Maybe this can be fixed by adding midas as a subdirectory in your cmake project and just linking 
against the "mfe" target instead of libmfe.a.

Ok, so the detail that I missed was that the dummy functions

INT poll_event(INT source[], INT count, BOOL test)
{
   return 1;
};

as shown in some of the older examples, work when you set

INT poll_event(INT source, INT count, BOOL test)
{
   return 1;
};


as a side comment, not all drivers are c++ compatible yet (e.g. mscbvr), so changes needed are small 

> as a side comment, not all drivers are c++ compatible yet (e.g. mscbvr), so changes needed are small 

Right. We recently switched the whole midas to c++, but we could not cover all drivers. Most of them just need some type 
casting to compile under c++. I got already patches from several people which I'm happy to merge in. If you got mscbhvr 
or any other driver compile under c++, please send me the diff.

Stefan

> 
> Ok, so the detail that I missed was that the dummy functions
> 
> INT poll_event(INT source[], INT count, BOOL test)
> {
>    return 1;
> };
> 
> as shown in some of the older examples, work when you set
> 
> INT poll_event(INT source, INT count, BOOL test)
> {
>    return 1;
> };

If you would have read elog:1526 more carefully (point a4) you would have saved yourself a lot of time.

Stefan

> How do I solve mismatched declarations in the mfe (or other places in the midas code)?

I run into such problems all the time. My solution? I grep for the function name in my code and in the header file,
then look very carefully at the definition to confirm that all the argument declarations are the same in both
places. Sometimes my eyes do not see the difference and I ask for a "second pair of eyes".

In your case, you have a mismatch between functions in mfe.h and in your frontend. The difference
is "int source" in mfe.h and "int source[]" in your code.

Because C++ permits functions with identical namesm but different arguments, the compiler thinks
you did this on purpose and does not complain. Later, of course, the linker bombs,
but all it can report at this stage, is what you see "function not found"... Then you grep your code
for the missing function, check arguments, rinse, repeat.

Before C++, the C compiler would probably had complained about the mismatch, except that MIDAS
did not have an mfe.h header file definitions for all this stuff until just now, so again, the mismatch would
have gone unnoticed, unfixed.

K.O.



> It is having issues with the midas defined BOOL/... types. This 
> is what I get for a minimal scfe:
> 
> [ 12%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/sc_fe_mini.dir/sc_fe_mini.cpp.o
> [ 25%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/sc_fe_mini.dir/home/frederik/packages/midas/drivers/class/hv.cxx.o
> [ 37%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/sc_fe_mini.dir/home/frederik/packages/midas/drivers/class/multi.cxx.o
> [ 50%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/sc_fe_mini.dir/home/frederik/packages/midas/drivers/device/nulldev.cxx.o
> [ 62%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/sc_fe_mini.dir/home/frederik/packages/midas/drivers/bus/null.cxx.o
> [ 75%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/sc_fe_mini.dir/home/frederik/packages/midas/drivers/device/mscbdev.cxx.o
> [ 87%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/sc_fe_mini.dir/home/frederik/packages/midas/mscb/src/mscb.cxx.o
> [100%] Linking CXX executable sc_fe_mini
> /home/frederik/packages/midas/build/libmfe.a(mfe.cxx.o): In function `_readout_thread':
> /home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:1271: undefined reference to `poll_event(int, int, unsigned int)'
> /home/frederik/packages/midas/build/libmfe.a(mfe.cxx.o): In function `check_polled_events':
> /home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:1601: undefined reference to `poll_event(int, int, unsigned int)'
> /home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:1643: undefined reference to `poll_event(int, int, unsigned int)'
> /home/frederik/packages/midas/build/libmfe.a(mfe.cxx.o): In function `readout_enable(unsigned int)':
> /home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:1158: undefined reference to `interrupt_configure(int, int, long)'
> /home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:1156: undefined reference to `interrupt_configure(int, int, long)'
> /home/frederik/packages/midas/build/libmfe.a(mfe.cxx.o): In function `initialize_equipment':
> /home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:614: undefined reference to `interrupt_configure(int, int, long)'
> /home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:649: undefined reference to `poll_event(int, int, unsigned int)'
> /home/frederik/packages/midas/build/libmfe.a(mfe.cxx.o): In function `scheduler':
> /home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:1890: undefined reference to `poll_event(int, int, unsigned int)'
> /home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:1932: undefined reference to `poll_event(int, int, unsigned int)'
> /home/frederik/packages/midas/build/libmfe.a(mfe.cxx.o): In function `main':
> /home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:2701: undefined reference to `interrupt_configure(int, int, long)'
> /home/frederik/packages/midas/src/mfe.cxx:2702: undefined reference to `interrupt_configure(int, int, long)'
> collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
> make[2]: *** [sc_fe_mini] Error 1
> make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/sc_fe_mini.dir/all] Error 2
> make: *** [all] Error 2
> 
> 
> This is my cmakelists for my user code:
> 
> #
> # cmake for the muX software
> #
> cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.3)
> 
> project(muX)
> 
> #
> # find installations
> #
> set(MIDAS_DIR $ENV{MIDASSYS})
> message("MIDAS dir: " ${MIDAS_DIR})
> 
> #
> # set directories
> #
> set(MIDASBUILD_DIR ${MIDAS_DIR}/build)
> set(MIDASINCLUDE_DIR ${MIDAS_DIR}/include)
> set(MXML_DIR ${MIDAS_DIR}/mxml)
> set(MSCB_DIR ${MIDAS_DIR}/mscb)
> set(DRV_DIR ${MIDAS_DIR}/drivers)
> 
> 
> #
> # drivers, libs
> #
> set(DRIVERS
>     ${MIDAS_DIR}/drivers/class/hv
>     ${MIDAS_DIR}/drivers/class/multi
>     ${MIDAS_DIR}/drivers/device/nulldev
>     ${MIDAS_DIR}/drivers/bus/null
> )
> set(MIDASLIB ${MIDASBUILD_DIR}/libmidas.a)
> set(FELIB ${MIDASBUILD_DIR}/libmfe.a)
> 
> #
> # sc_fe
> #
> add_executable(sc_fe_mini
>         sc_fe_mini.cpp
>         ${DRIVERS}
>         ${MIDAS_DIR}/drivers/device/mscbdev
>         ${MIDAS_DIR}/mscb/src/mscb)
> 
> target_include_directories(sc_fe_mini PRIVATE ${DRV_DIR} ${MIDAS_DIR}/mscb/include ${MIDAS_DIR}/include)
> target_link_libraries(sc_fe_mini ${LIBS} ${MIDASLIB} ${FELIB} rt pthread util)
> 
> 
> 
> I seem to be able to compile the current midas distributions, including the scfe frontend
> 
> 
> 
> > To convert a MIDAS frontend to C++ follow this checklist:
> > 
> > a) add #include "mfe.h" after include of midas.h and fix all compilation errors.
> > 
> > NOTE: there should be no "extern C"  brackets around MIDAS include files.
> > 
> > NOTE: Expect to see following problems:
> > 
> > a1) duplicate or mismatched declarations of functions defined in mfe.h
> > a2) frontend_name and frontend_file_name should be "const char*" instead of "char*"
> > a3) duplicate "HNDLE hDB" collision with hDB from mfe.c - not sure why it worked before, either use HNDLE hDB from mfe.h or use "extern HNDLE hDB".
> > a4) poll_event() and interrupt_configure() have "source" as "int[]" instead of "int" (why did this work before?)
> > a5) use of "extern int frontend_index" instead of get_frontend_index() from mfe.h
> > a6) bk_create() last argument needs to be cast to (void**)
> > a7) "bool debug" collides with "debug" from mfe.h (why did this work before?)
> > 
> > b) remove no longer needed "extern C" brackets around mfe related code. Ideally there should be no "extern C" brackets anywhere.
> > 
> > c) in the Makefile, change CC=gcc to CC=g++ for compiling and linking everything as C++
> > 
> > c1) fix all compilation problems. most valid C code will compile as valid C++, but there is some known trouble:
> > - return value of malloc() & co needs to be cast to the correct data type: "char* s = (char*)malloc(...)"
> > - some C++ compilers complain about mismatch between signed and unsigned values
> > 
> > If you need help with converting your frontend from C to C++, I will be most happy
> > to assist you - post your compiler error messages to this forum or email them to me privately.
> > 
> > Good luck,
> > K.O.

I now have a centos-8 computer and I tried midas on it:

- the develop and midas-2019-09 branches build, mhttpd runs
- there are compiler warnings about use of strncpy() that need to be looked into, but see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50198319/gcc-8-wstringop-truncation-what-is-
the-good-practice
- mhttpd built-in https support does not seem to work (see the other forum thread)
- apache httpd proxy for https can be made to work, but there are problems with certbot.

K.O.

Hello,

I am quite new in both Linux and MIDAS.
I have install MIDAS on my desktop by going through this link: 
https://midas.triumf.ca/MidasWiki/index.php/Quickstart_Linux 

in the last step when I send "mhttpd" command and try to open the link 
https://localhost:8443 (of course, changing the localhost with my host name), it 
failed to connect and shows this error: SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP (please see 
attached file includes a screenshot of the error).

I have tried many ways to solve this problem: In Firefox: going to option/privacy 
and security/ security and uncheck the option "Block dangerous and deceptive 
content". but it does not help.

Looking forward your help
Thanks
Mehran

> I am quite new in both Linux and MIDAS.
> I have install MIDAS on my desktop by going through this link: 
> https://midas.triumf.ca/MidasWiki/index.php/Quickstart_Linux 
> 
> in the last step when I send "mhttpd" command and try to open the link 
> https://localhost:8443 (of course, changing the localhost with my host name), it 
> failed to connect and shows this error: SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP (please see 
> attached file includes a screenshot of the error).

What Linux? (on most linuxes, run "lsb_release -a")
What version of midas? (run odbedit "ver" command)
What version of firefox? (from the "about firefox" menu)

> I have tried many ways to solve this problem: In Firefox: going to option/privacy 
> and security/ security and uncheck the option "Block dangerous and deceptive 
> content". but it does not help.

No you cannot fix it from inside firefox. The issue is that the overlap of encryption methods
supported by your firefox and by your openssl library (used by mhttpd) is an empty set.
No common language, so to say, communication is impossible.

So either you have a very old openssl but very new firefox, or a very new openssl but very old 
firefox. Both very old or both very new can talk to each other, difficulties start with greater  
difference in age, as new (better) encryption methods are added and old (no-longer-secure) 
methods are banished.

BTW, for good security we recommend using apache httpd as the https proxy (instead of built-in 
https support in mhttpd). (I am not sure what it says in the current documentation). (But apache 
httpd will use the same openssl library, so this may not solve your problem. Let's see what 
versions of software you are using, per questions above, first).

K.O.

Hi Konstantin,
Thanks for your reply, 

> What Linux? (on most linuxes, run "lsb_release -a")
> What version of midas? (run odbedit "ver" command)
I am using CentOS 8

> What version of firefox? (from the "about firefox" menu)
Firefox 71.0

Thanks 
Mehran

> No you cannot fix it from inside firefox. The issue is that the overlap of encryption methods
> supported by your firefox and by your openssl library (used by mhttpd) is an empty set.
> No common language, so to say, communication is impossible.
> 
> So either you have a very old openssl but very new firefox, or a very new openssl but very old 
> firefox. Both very old or both very new can talk to each other, difficulties start with greater  
> difference in age, as new (better) encryption methods are added and old (no-longer-secure) 
> methods are banished.
> 
> BTW, for good security we recommend using apache httpd as the https proxy (instead of built-in 
> https support in mhttpd). (I am not sure what it says in the current documentation). (But apache 
> httpd will use the same openssl library, so this may not solve your problem. Let's see what 
> versions of software you are using, per questions above, first).
> 
> K.O.

Hi, I have not run midas on Centos-8 yet. Maybe there is a problem with the openssl library there. The Centos-7 
instructions for setting up apache httpd proxy are here, with luck they work on centos-8:
https://daq.triumf.ca/DaqWiki/index.php/SLinstall#Configure_HTTPS_server_.28CentOS7.29

K.O.


> Hi Konstantin,
> Thanks for your reply, 
> 
> > What Linux? (on most linuxes, run "lsb_release -a")
> > What version of midas? (run odbedit "ver" command)
> I am using CentOS 8
> 
> > What version of firefox? (from the "about firefox" menu)
> Firefox 71.0
> 
> Thanks 
> Mehran
> 
> > No you cannot fix it from inside firefox. The issue is that the overlap of encryption methods
> > supported by your firefox and by your openssl library (used by mhttpd) is an empty set.
> > No common language, so to say, communication is impossible.
> > 
> > So either you have a very old openssl but very new firefox, or a very new openssl but very old 
> > firefox. Both very old or both very new can talk to each other, difficulties start with greater  
> > difference in age, as new (better) encryption methods are added and old (no-longer-secure) 
> > methods are banished.
> > 
> > BTW, for good security we recommend using apache httpd as the https proxy (instead of built-in 
> > https support in mhttpd). (I am not sure what it says in the current documentation). (But apache 
> > httpd will use the same openssl library, so this may not solve your problem. Let's see what 
> > versions of software you are using, per questions above, first).
> > 
> > K.O.

Hi,
As, the link suggests, I perform "yum install -y mod_ssl certwatch crypto-utils" but it complains as:
No match for argument: certwatch
No match for argument: crypto-utils

You may have a look on this link: https://blog.cloudware.bg/en/whats-new-in-centos-linux-8/
What’s gone?
In with the new, out with the old. CentOS 8 also says goodbye to some features. The OS removes several security functionalities. Among them is the Clevis HTTP pin, Coolkey and crypto-utils.
Cent OS 8 comes with securetty disabled by default. The configuration file is no longer included. You can add it back, but you will have to do it yourself. Another change is that shadow-utils no longer allow all-numeric user and group names.

Thanks
Mehran

> Hi, I have not run midas on Centos-8 yet. Maybe there is a problem with the openssl library there. The Centos-7 
> instructions for setting up apache httpd proxy are here, with luck they work on centos-8:
> https://daq.triumf.ca/DaqWiki/index.php/SLinstall#Configure_HTTPS_server_.28CentOS7.29
> 
> K.O.
> 

> > The Centos-7 instructions for setting up apache httpd proxy are here, with luck they work on centos-8:
> > https://daq.triumf.ca/DaqWiki/index.php/SLinstall#Configure_HTTPS_server_.28CentOS7.29

I now have a centos-8 computer, I followed my instructions and they generally worked.

There is a number of problems with the certbot package that prevent me from writing coherent production quality instructions for centos-8.

But at the end I was successful, httpd runs, gets "A+" rating from SSLlabs, forwards the requests to mhttpd, I can access the midas status page etc.

With luck the certbot packages for centos-8 will be sorted out soon (the apache plugin seems to be missing, this causes the automatic
certificate renewal to not work) and I will update my instructions to include centos-8.

Until then, I recommend that people continue to use centos-7 or the current Ubuntu LTS release.

K.O.

> I am using CentOS 8 [and]
> Firefox 71.0

I now have a centos-8 machine, I successfully built midas and I confirm that there is a problem.

But I get different errors from you:

- google chrome - does not connect at all (without any useful error message: "This site can’t be reached. The 
connection was reset.")
- firefox complains about the self-signed certificate, but connects ok, I see the midas status page and it works. "page 
info" reports connection is TLS 1.3, encryption TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256. However, the function "view certificate" 
does not work (without any useful error message).

I tried to run the SSLlabs tool to get some more information from mhttpd, but it does not want to run against mhttpd on 
port 8443... I do have a port redirect program somewhere... need to find it...

K.O.

I created the release branch for midas-2019-09 and tag midas-2019-09-a.

Since the previous release midas-2019-06, some news:

- new history graphics (Stefan)
- c++ frontend framework mvodb.h and tmfe.h merged from ALPHA-g (K.O.)
- we think we have all the fallout from switching to cmake and to c++11 sorted out

There is a number of known problems with the current code, see the bitbucket bug tracker:
https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues?status=new&status=open

Hopefully we can use this release as a baseline for more testing and with luck we will
fix all the pending bugs and add all the pending missing code (the new sequencer web pages,
the "m" analyzer, etc) quickly and our next release midas-2019-10 will be the best midas ever.

To obtain this release, either checkout the top of branch feature/midas-2019-09 (recommended)
or checkout the tag midas-2019-09-a.

If you are using the last pre-cmake/c++ release midas-2019-03, I recommend that you stay with it
until our next release midas-2019-10.

K.O.

> I created the release branch for midas-2019-09 and tag midas-2019-09-a.
> Since the previous release midas-2019-06, some news:
> 
> - new history graphics (Stefan)
> - c++ frontend framework mvodb.h and tmfe.h merged from ALPHA-g (K.O.)
> - we think we have all the fallout from switching to cmake and to c++11 sorted out
> 

midas-2019-09-e is here.

- the new history plots now work both for Stefan *and* for me, please try them out!
- no new problems with cmake and c++11.
- fixes for some reported bugs
- some bugs remain to be fixed, so with luck, there will by a midas-2019-09-f.

> add all the pending missing code (the new sequencer web pages, the "m" analyzer, etc

pending for midas-2019-12:

- new sequencer web pages
- the "m" analyzer merge (from rootana)
- python-client branch merge (thanks to Ben!)
- simplified odb settings for mlogger and mhttpd configuration
- mhttpd update to mongoose 6.16

To obtain this release, either checkout the top of branch feature/midas-2019-09 (recommended)
or checkout the tag midas-2019-09-e.

K.O.

midas-2019-09-g is here.

- the last bug in the new history plots is fixed, please try them out, plus
- "<<" and "<<<" buttons now work for going back to the old data
- "+" and "-" buttons are added for zooming in and out.

- the new sequencer web pages have been activated, the old sequencer page moved to "OldSequencer"

To obtain this release, either checkout the top of branch feature/midas-2019-09 (recommended)
or checkout the tag midas-2019-09-g.

K.O.


> > I created the release branch for midas-2019-09 and tag midas-2019-09-a.
> > Since the previous release midas-2019-06, some news:
> > 
> > - new history graphics (Stefan)
> > - c++ frontend framework mvodb.h and tmfe.h merged from ALPHA-g (K.O.)
> > - we think we have all the fallout from switching to cmake and to c++11 sorted out
> > 
> 
> midas-2019-09-e is here.
> 
> - the new history plots now work both for Stefan *and* for me, please try them out!
> - no new problems with cmake and c++11.
> - fixes for some reported bugs
> - some bugs remain to be fixed, so with luck, there will by a midas-2019-09-f.
> 
> > add all the pending missing code (the new sequencer web pages, the "m" analyzer, etc
> 
> pending for midas-2019-12:
> 
> - new sequencer web pages
> - the "m" analyzer merge (from rootana)
> - python-client branch merge (thanks to Ben!)
> - simplified odb settings for mlogger and mhttpd configuration
> - mhttpd update to mongoose 6.16
> 
> To obtain this release, either checkout the top of branch feature/midas-2019-09 (recommended)
> or checkout the tag midas-2019-09-e.
> 
> K.O.

midas-2019-09-i is here.

- the new sequencer web pages written in html+javascript (NewSequencer), the old c-generated sequencer pages still work (Sequencer)
- python-client from Ben Smith merged in, see documentation at https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/src/develop/python/

To obtain this release, either checkout the top of branch feature/midas-2019-09 (recommended)
or checkout the tag midas-2019-09-i.

K.O.

The default el6 (RHEL/SL/CentOS-6) compiler is gcc-4.4.7, it does not support c++11, not even a little bit.

Do this to install newer c++ compilers and build MIDAS with c++11:

ssh root@sl6machine
# yum install centos-release-scl-rh
# yum install devtoolset-8
# yum install cmake3
# scl -l
devtoolset-8
...

$ ssh user@sl6machine
$ scl enable devtoolset-8 bash
$ gcc -v
COLLECT_LTO_WRAPPER=/opt/rh/devtoolset-8/root/usr/libexec/gcc/x86_64-redhat-linux/8/lto-wrapper
gcc version 8.3.1 20190311 (Red Hat 8.3.1-3) (GCC) 
$ cd git/midas
$ make cclean
$ make cmake3
$ ls -l bin/odbedit

K.O.

> The default el6 (RHEL/SL/CentOS-6) compiler is gcc-4.4.7, it does not support c++11, not even a little bit.

The previously posted instructions are incomplete - one cannot cross-compile 32-bit executables (i.e. for running on 32-bit VME 
processors) because 64-bit packages are missing 4 files for the 32-bit C++ standard library (libstdc++_nonshared.a).

After a bit of searching I found the missing files, i.e. here:
https://copr-be.cloud.fedoraproject.org/results/mayeut/devtoolset-8/epel-6-i386/01045166-devtoolset-8-gcc/

There are 2 options:

a) install the 32-bit development package:
rpm -vh --install https://ladd00.triumf.ca/~olchansk/devtoolset-8/devtoolset-8-libstdc++-devel-8.3.1-3.1.el6.i686.rpm

b) install just the 4 missing files from here:
https://ladd00.triumf.ca/~olchansk/devtoolset-8/i686-redhat-linux/8/
into
/opt/rh/devtoolset-8/root/usr/lib/gcc/i686-redhat-linux/8/

After doing this, "make linux32" builds. (requires latest midas-2019-09 for minor Makefile fixes)

K.O.


> 
> Do this to install newer c++ compilers and build MIDAS with c++11:
> 
> ssh root@sl6machine
> # yum install centos-release-scl-rh
> # yum install devtoolset-8
> # yum install cmake3
> # scl -l
> devtoolset-8
> ...
> 
> $ ssh user@sl6machine
> $ scl enable devtoolset-8 bash
> $ gcc -v
> COLLECT_LTO_WRAPPER=/opt/rh/devtoolset-8/root/usr/libexec/gcc/x86_64-redhat-linux/8/lto-wrapper
> gcc version 8.3.1 20190311 (Red Hat 8.3.1-3) (GCC) 
> $ cd git/midas
> $ make cclean
> $ make cmake3
> $ ls -l bin/odbedit
> 
> K.O.

I have written a system monitor tool for MIDAS, that has been merged in the develop branch today: sysmon

https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/pull-requests/8/system-monitoring-a-new-frontend-to-log/diff

To use it, simply run the new program
sysmon
on any host that you want to monitor, no configuring required.




The program is a frontend for MIDAS, there is no need for configuration, as upon initialisation it builds a history display for you. Simply run one instance per machine you want to monitor. By default, it only logs once per 10 seconds.

The equipment name is derived from the hostname, so multiple instances can be run across multiple machines without conflict. A new history display will be created for each host.

sysmon uses the /proc pseudo-filesystem, so unfortunately only linux is supported. It does however work with multiple architectures, so x86 and ARM processors are supported.

If the build machine has NVIDIA drivers installed, there is an additional version of sysmon that gets built: sysmon-nvidia. This will log the GPU temperature and usage, as well as CPU, memory and swap. A host should only run either sysmon or sysmon-nvidia

elog:1727/1 shows the History Display generated by sysmon-nvidia. sysmon would only generate the first two displays (sysmon/localhost and sysmon/localhost-CPU)

A little advertised feature of the modifications needed support the msysmon program is 
that MIDAS equipment names can support the injecting of the hostname of the system 
running the frontend at runtime (register_equipment(void)).

https://midas.triumf.ca/MidasWiki/index.php/Equipment_List_Parameters#Equipment_Name

A special string ${HOSTNAME} can be put in any position in the equipment name. It will 
be replaced with the hostname of the computer running the frontend at run-time. Note, 
the frontend_name string will be trimmed down to 32 characters.
Example usage: msysmon


EQUIPMENT equipment[] = {

  { "${HOSTNAME}_msysmon",   /* equipment name */    {
      EVID_MONITOR, 0,      /* event ID, trigger mask */
      "SYSTEM",             /* event buffer */
      EQ_PERIODIC,          /* equipment type */
      0,                    /* event source */
      "MIDAS",              /* format */
      TRUE,                 /* enabled */
      RO_ALWAYS,            /* Read when running */
      10000,                /* poll every so milliseconds */
      0,                    /* stop run after this event limit */
      0,                    /* number of sub events */
      1,                    /* history period */
      "", "", ""
    },
    read_system_load,/* readout routine */
  },
  { "" }
};

I noticed that midas web pages consume unexpectedly large amount of resources, as observed by the chrome browser 
"task manager" and by other tools.

For example, size of the "status" page was observe to reach 200, 600 and even 900 Mbytes. The "programs" page (which 
does not have nearly as much stuff as the status page), was observed to reach 200-600 Mbytes. This is comparable to the 
New York Times front page, which has much more stuff, but usually runs at about 200 Mbytes. (they do force a periodic full 
page reload, to deal with exactly this same type of trouble, I suspect).

Also I observed the midas web pages consume an unusual amount of CPU - 5-10-15% - all in inactive tabs in minimized 
windows.

All this was quite noticeable in my oldish mac laptop with only 8 GBytes of RAM.

Using the google-chrome performance analyzer I was able to identify the reason of high memory use - our 1/sec periodic 
updates leak "too many" DOM "nodes" and I suspect that due to throttling of inactive tabs, the garbage collector simply 
does not keep up with us.

(Note that javascript features automatic memory management with garbage collection. In practice in means that where in 
C/C++ we have malloc() and free(), in javascript we only have malloc() and no free(), and cannot explicitly release memory 
we know we no longer need. In the C/C++ sense, all memory allocations are leaked, and one relies on a janitor to "clean it all 
up" eventually, later).

The source of node leakage was unexpected (unexpected to me). It turns out that each assignment to e.innerHTML creates 
a new node, even if the new contents is the same as the old contents. (also the html parser has to run, consuming extra cpu 
cycles).

Obvious solution is to write code like this:
if (v !== e.innerHTML) { e.innerHTML = v };

This helped quite a bit on the "programs" page, but not as much as expected, and hardly at all on the "status" page.

It turns out, that read of innerHTML does not necessarily return the same string as it was written into it.
For example, if "v" is "a&b", e.innerHTML will return "a&b" and the comparison will misfire.
There is more cases like this, see the section "Test set and get e.innerHTML" on the "example" midas page.

To help dealing with this, I suggest that instead of "inline" comparison (as above), one writes this:
mhttpd_set_if_changed(e, v);

Then to check that the comparison is effective, go to mhttpd.js and uncomment the console.log() call in 
mhttpd_set_if_changed(), reload the page and look at the javascript console to see all calls that result
in assignment of innerHTML (and leakage of DOM nodes).

This done, after replacing many "&" with "&" and many "\'" with "\"", node leakage on the "programs" page was reduced 
to 1 node per 1/sec update: the unavoidable change to the timestamp on the top-right of the page.

Luckily, Stefan pointed me to the solution for this: use of e.firstChild.data instead of e.innerHTML. The only quirk is that the 
node should not be empty, which was easy to arrange by setting the initial value of the timestamp to a dummy value.

With these changes, the "programs" page (and most other pages) now leak 0 nodes (from the 1/sec periodic updates). 

There is still some small memory leakage from making the RPC requests and from receiving the RPC replies, but the 
garbage collector seems to have no trouble with them.

Typical memory use for all midas pages is now 50-60 Mbytes (down from 100-200 Mbytes).

The "status" page took a bit more work to fix due to it's curious coding, but it, too now uses 50-60 Mbytes as well. It still 
leaks quite a few nodes (to be fixed!), but the garbage collector seems to keep up with the allocations.

K.O.

> I noticed that midas web pages consume unexpectedly large amount of resources, as observed by the chrome browser 
> "task manager" and by other tools.
> 
> For example, size of the "status" page was observe to reach 200, 600 and even 900 Mbytes.
> [this was fixed by using set_if_changed(e, v);
> 
> Also I observed the midas web pages consume an unusual amount of CPU - 5-10-15% - all in inactive tabs in minimized 
> windows.
> 

The case of high CPU use turned out to be quite nasty.

The symptoms:
- the "programs" page in an inactive tab in a minimized window sits "doing nothing" for a day or two.
- uses about 0 to 0.1 to 1% CPU and 40-50-60 Mbytes of RAM (after the previous improvements)
- suddenly I see it use 10-15-20% CPU, continuously, non stop
- I open this tab
- suddenly, CPU use goes to 100%, memory use quickly grows from 40-50-60 Mbytes to 100-200 Mbytes.
- after a few seconds everything settles down, CPU use is back to 0-0.1-1%, but memory use does not go down.
- WTH?!?

The culprit turned out to be the playing of the alarm sound. (I have all tabs "muted" by default, also speakers usually powered down).

If I comment-out the playing of the alarm sound, this problem goes away completely. Pretty conclusive, I think.

After adding lots of debug console.log() calls, I think I identified the problem: audio objects were being created,
but they were not starting to play their sound files. When I opened the tab, all of them (about 400) at the same time
loaded the mp3 file (resulting in memory use going from 50 Mbytes to 190 Mbytes, typical) and started playing
(as seen on the audio event activity in the cpu profile traces from the google-chrome "performance" tool).

I think I am looking at an unexpected interaction between audio objects and google-chrome throttling of inactive tabs.

To muddy the waters some more, google-chrome periodically fails audio.play() with an exception to the effect of
"we will not play audio because user is not interacting with this page enough". See
https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/191/exception-on-audioplay

Now I think I have this sort of fixed. I have to handle the audio.play() failure (which is not a normal exception,
but a rejected promise, the handler is quite different), and I do not allow creating new audio objects if previous
audio object did not finish playing.

(note the "normal" timing: periodic update every 1 sec, playing of alarm sound event 60 seconds, length of alarm sound file is 3 sec,
two sound files should never overlap. now a console.log message is printed if overlap is detected)

This leaves us with the problem of alarm sound not playing "because the user didn't interact with the document first",
and I think there is nothing I can do about that.

K.O.

P.S. Another quirk is I discovered: go to the "config" page and press the new buttons "play test sound" and "speak test message". In muted
tabs, the test sound will not sound, but the test message will be shouted out loudly. This seems inconsistent to me. Unwanted audio/video ads
are blocked but loud shouting of "shave with burma-shave" is permitted. I also wonder if speaking is subject to this
"user did not interact" business. If not, we could replace the playing of our relaxing alarm beep with the yelling of "alarm! alarm! alarm!".

K.O.

> > I noticed that midas web pages consume unexpectedly large amount of resources, as observed by the chrome browser 
> > "task manager" and by other tools.

The final fix is in. (plus a fix from Stefan).

When the audio.play() promise is rejected, one must clear audio.src, otherwise the browser will continue
with loading the audio file (but will not play it at the end).

Normally, this should not be a problem, but in inactive tabs, all activity is throttled down, and it so happens
that these audio objects accumulate (they are in the state of "we are trying to load the sound file, but
browser slows us down so much!"), consume huge amounts of memory (page memory use goes from ~50 Mbytes
to ~100-200 Mbytes) and consume huge amounts of CPU (not clear how, probably it's the firing of "loading", "canplay", etc
event handlers).

It does not help that mhttpd_fit_message() had a performance bug and consumed large amounts of CPU causing even
more slowing down by the be browser.

After adding audio.src="", all this is gone. I see no special CPU use, and I do not see any strange large memory use.

I still sometimes see inactive tabs grow from ~50 Mbytes to amount ~100 Mbytes. After I open them (activate them),
they quickly shrink back to ~50 Mbytes. I conclude that the browser is slowing down the garbage collector in inactive
tabs so much that it does not keep up with our 1/sec data polling.

So Stefan's fix to reduce polling from 1/sec to 1/10sec should help with this, too. (plus reduction of CPU use by fit_message() should
leave more time for the garbage collector to run).

P.S. General rules for browser slow down of inactive tabs seem to be written here:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Page_Visibility_API

Slowdown of timers is written here:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WindowOrWorkerGlobalScope/setTimeout#Notes

K.O.

> > > I noticed that midas web pages consume unexpectedly large amount of resources, as observed by the chrome browser 
> > > "task manager" and by other tools.

The work on this problem has been blogged in the bitbucket issue tracker:
https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/158/midas-status-page-memory-leak

K.O.

Below is a dump of the issue for posterity ---


Team Midas MIDAS related packages midas Issues
midas status page memory leak
Create issue
Issue #158 RESOLVEDOpen Workflow More Edit
dd1 created an issue 2018-12-25
I have the midas status page (https://daq16.triumf.ca/) open in macos google chrome 71.0.3578.98 and I watch in the "task manager" how the memory use is 
246 Mbytes and growing at around 1 Mbyte every 2-3 seconds. CPU use is around 3-5%, network use is 47 kBytes/sec. The slowly growing memory use 
indicates that we have a memory leak. (Note that javascript uses "automatic garbage collection" memory management, which does not eliminate memory 
leaks. Only capability to explicitly free unused memory is eliminated). K.O.

Comments (35)
dd1 REPORTER
Actual memory use goes up to around 250-something MBytes, then drops down to 240-something, them slowly grows back up, drops down, rinse, repeat. 
This is the javascript garbage collection in action. So there is no memory leak on the status page, but still why do we generate around 1 Mbyte/sec of 
javascript memory allocations? As comparison, the NYTimes front page consumes 270 Mbytes. One would expect the midas front page to be much more light 
weight... K.O.

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2018-12-27
dd1 REPORTER
Then there is a question of memory use by the "message" page. This page does grow infinitely large by design - as new messages are added to midas.log - 
as as the user keeps scrolling the messages back in time. Perhaps we should somehow limit the total memory use there... K.O.

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2018-12-27
Stefan Ritt
changed status to closed
I see the same behaviour. The relatively large memory allocation by Chrome probably comes from some bitmap caching. The browser prints the page 
contents into some temporary bitmap and then flushes it to the screen. That can easily take a few MB. I monitor such behaviour since several years now (for 
other processes) and concluded that I don't need to worry about JavaScript memory consumption.

Concerning the messages page: One line takes about 100 Bytes. If you scroll really fast, you can do maybe 30 lines per second, thus 3kB. If we allow the 
browser to consume another 100 MB (should be easily possible these days), you have to continuously scroll for 100000kb/3kb=30000 seconds or eight 
hours. Good luck!

Closing this topic if no complaints.

Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-01-08
dd1 REPORTER
changed status to open
still see high memory use by midas pages. K.O.

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-09-15
dd1 REPORTER
See high memory use from long running (days-weeks) web pages:

status page of my test experiment - 953 MB - 155 MB after reload
odb editor - 661 MB - 80 MB after reload
programs page - 602 MB - 64 MB after reload
sequencer - 253 MB - 151 MB after reload
sequencer - ??? (very big) - reloaded before I wrote it down
I think we are leaking memory somewhere. Or causing unnecessary allocations that the javascript garbage collector does not keep up with or does not 
cleanup correctly. K.O.

‌

‌

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-09-15
dd1 REPORTER
I am suspicious of memory use trouble from periodic-update code that keeps setting innerHTML to the same value as it was before, unnecessarily. (this also 
causes other problems - cannot cut-and-paste affected parts of the web page, high cpu use to redraw the (unchanged) page). K.O.

‌

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-09-15
Stefan Ritt
For setting innerHTML we should always use

if (text !== control.inner HTML)

control.innerHTML = text;

‌

I thought I caught most of the cases, but I might have missed some. Please add as needed.

‌

Stefan

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dd1 REPORTER
Strange things continue. Just say huge CPU usage from 3 midas web pages (odb editor, programs page and the new sequencer page). All 3 pages are tabs in 
an iconized browser window. Suddenly machine feels slow, and I see all 3 use 25% CPU each (by the chrome-browser task manager window). Opened the 
browser window, sent to the offending tabs, nothing looks amiss, CPU usage went back to 0%. WTH? (all 3 pages have 100 Mbyte memory use, all 3 pages 
update at 1 Hz). K.O.

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-09-16
dd1 REPORTER
looked at the “programs” page. learned how to use the google-chrome “performance” tool. I was definitely leaking html nodes. The leak was in an 
unexpected place - innerHTML with a link was miscomparing because of unexpected string transformation:

xbad: "<a href='?cmd=odb&odb_path=System/Clients/" + key + "'>" + host + "</a>";
good: "<a href=\"?cmd=odb&amp;odb_path=System/Clients/" + key + "\">" + host + "</a>";
Now node leak from my periodic update went from 35 nodes to 2 nodes per update. The performance tool fails to identify where these last 2 nodes are 
coming from.

K.O.

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-09-17
dd1 REPORTER
Forgot to add - the periodic update from mhttpd_init() is also leaking nodes. I will look at it some other time. K.O.

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-09-17
dd1 REPORTER
after improvement to the “programs” page, the tab is staying at 50-60 Mbytes. promising… K.O.

&#8204;

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-09-18
dd1 REPORTER
Fixed node leak in mhttpd_refresh(): the alarm display was setting e.innerHTML even if it did not change.

There only remains an unavoidable node leak with “mheader_last_updated” where we set the current time every 1 second. If I comment this out, there is no 
node leak on the “programs” page.

K.O.

&#8204;

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-09-18
dd1 REPORTER
“programs” page memory use now sits around 40 Mbytes. K.O.

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-09-18
dd1 REPORTER
Stefan points me to the use of e.firstChild.data instead of e.innerHTML, per https://medium.com/@ok.bayat/fixing-memory-leak-problem-in-javascript-
application-ed3a2d9d92df

K.O.

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-09-18
dd1 REPORTER
implemented this for the timestamp update and (i.e.) the “programs” page now leaks 0 nodes. memory use for all pages sits around 40-60 Mbytes. K.O.

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-09-26
dd1 REPORTER
see problem of high cpu usage again, after google-chrome restarted after an update to latest version. for example, “program” page is 65 Mbytes, uses 20% 
CPU. (in an inactive tab). If I open this tab, for maybe 10 seconds, it goes to 100+ Mbytes with big CPU usage (>100%), then drops down to 90 Mbytes, 0% 
CPU usage. I do not see any other web pages or tabs doing this. Only our midas pages. WTH!?! K.O.

&#8204;

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-10-13
dd1 REPORTER
figured out high cpu usage reported as “rendering”. Open “devtools”, goto “performance”, press Command-Shift-P, start typing “rendering”, select “fps 
meter”. A black square will open in top-left, showing graphics activity (frame rate, GPU usage, etc).

Now wait for new message to appear in the top status bar. It will be “yellow” at first, that it will fade to “gray”. During this fading, GPU use is 100% during 
about 1 second, FPS is about 50 frames/sec.

K.O.

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-10-14
dd1 REPORTER
quick google search shows much discussion about css animations using “too much CPU”, i.e. google “css pulsing background”, but no clear way to tell the 
browser to slow down. It looks to me like the background-color animation tries to run at maximum possible frame-rate, as if electricity is free. (Since I am 
debugging high-cpu and high-memory use of inactive tabs, there is nobody looking at these animations). K.O.

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-10-14
Stefan Ritt
New messages are displayed with a yellow background and fade to grey after 5 seconds. This is handeled in mhttpd.js around line 2144. You can try to 
remove the lines

d.style.setProperty("-webkit-transition", "background-color 3s", "");
d.style.setProperty("transition", "background-color 3s", "");
and see if the CPU load goes down.

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dd1 REPORTER
captured another trace of midas page using 20% cpu in an inactive tab, iconized browser window. capturing is difficult, requires very fast mousing to: select 
the right tab, right-click to “inspect”, select “performance” tab, click on “start capture”, and hope that by this time the web page activity does not complete. 
this time I got the last 200 ms or so.

what I see is again is “media activity” (only identified as “task”), GPU activity (only identified as “GPU activity”) and main thread activity (identified as an 
infinitely repeating sequence of “receive response 206 audio/mpeg”, “receive data 39287 bytes”, “finish loading”, then the same sequence again. 39287 is 
the file size of resources/beep.mp3. There is no corresponding network activity, so the loading of beep.mp3 must be coming from cache. On the javascript 
console, there are the usual “not allowed to play audio because user did not interact” messages repeating about every 1-2-3 minutes.

I read this as: for reasons unknown, a huge number of audio requests becomes queued (the tab was inactive/iconized for many days) then they start trying to 
play (load beep.mp3, do not play it because “not allowed”, move on to the next audio object, load … etc). This is consistent with the cpu use, with the 
captured traces and with the quick growth in memory size (beep.mp3 objects are created, consume memory, cannot be free’d until garbage collector runs 
later. much later).

The above scenario is impossible with how the current audio playing code is written (only one audio object can exist at a time, new audio object can only be 
created after the previous one finished playing).

Two possible explanations: (a) the code running in the web page is not the same code as in mhttpd.js (running an old version from cache) or (b) the code 
“one audio object at time” is not working correctly if javascript code is throttled /delayed/stopped in inactive tabs.

Following code will have this problem:

var only_one = null;
function foo() { /* runs from periodic timer */
 if (!only_one) {
   a = new Audio(“beep.mp3”);
   /* throttled/suspended/delayed here */
   /* multiple Audio objects created because "only_one" is still null */
   only_one = a;
 }
}
K.O.

&#8204;

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-10-17
dd1 REPORTER
fading background - yes, I found the code. pretty neat. I moved it around to remove the timer - I am suspicious of how the timers run in inactive tabs. but no 
time to study it.

but the current problem is clearly with audio objects, and the only audio we have is the periodic playing of beep.mp3. who knew there will be so much trouble.

there is still the unexplained use of GPU, but maybe playing/decoding mp3 files uses the GPU.

I am also puzzled why the status page from midas-2019-03 does not show any of these problems. it just sits there using no memory (50 Mbytes) and no 
CPU. perhaps we changed something in the playing of audio files since last March (when midas-2019-03 was tagged).

K.O.

&#8204;

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-10-17
dd1 REPORTER
For the first time I saw my message “mhttpd_alarm_play: Cannot play alarm sound: previous alarm sound did not finish playing yet” reported on the javascript 
console. This confirms my guess that playing of audio is actually delayed and indeed we need to check that the previous audio finished playing before 
creating new audio objects. But the check in the current code has a race condition. If the delay/stall is inside “new Audio()”, we will create multiple audio 
objects as “last_audio” is still in the “finished playing” state, we only change it after the return from “new Audio()”. K.O.

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-10-28
dd1 REPORTER
see big improvement. now inactive tabs grow from 50-ish Mbytes to 170-ish Mbytes, then when I open them, there is some cpu use (GC, I guess) and 
memory use drops back to 50-ish Mbytes. So we are not leaking any memory anymore. Looking at the console messages, I see that my fixes are helping - 
there is messages about attempts to create new Audio() when previous one did not finish yet. K.O.

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-11-04
dd1 REPORTER
I guess, inactive tabs are throttled by google-chrome so much that their GC (memory garbage collection) does not keep up with our 1/sec data updates. I do 
not think we need to keep updating inactive tabs at this high frequency, but I am not sure how to detect if we are active or inactive. Maybe I can detect the 
throttling instead. K.O.

&#8204;

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-11-04
dd1 REPORTER
see consistent behaviour from google-chrome:

have all these midas tabs open, inactive, window iconized, typical tab size is 50-ish Mbytes.
google-chrome update arrives
update is installed, all windows and tabs automatically closed, then reopened.
the midas tabs are still inactive, window is iconized
after a few days, see behaviour as described before:
midas tabs use 20-30% CPU, size is 100-ish Mbytes
if I open one of these tabs, it’s cpu usage goes up to 160%, size grows to 250-ish Mbytes, then within 5-10 seconds drops to 100 Mbytes, CPU usage goes 
from 160% to zero.
when looking at this, if I am quick enough, I can right-click “inspect”, go to the “performance” tab, and press the “start collecting data” button and I capture 
the very tail end of all this strange activity. This is the traces I have been describing so far.
K.O.

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-11-07
dd1 REPORTER
see big blob of activity:

timer activation
mhttpd_message()
first call to mhttpd_fit_message()
a long cycle of (maybe 10-20) “recalculate size”, “layout”, “parse html”
second call to mhttpd_fit_message()
same long cycle of …
The way I understand this, mhttpd_fit_message() changes the size of some html element that causes the whole window to be re-layed-out.

K.O.

&#8204;

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-11-07
dd1 REPORTER
trying to figure out what triggers a long run of the “rasterizer” thread. see a very strange call sequence

timer fires
mhttpd_alarm_play()
mhttpdConfig()
“Layout”
mhttpd_alarm_play() calls mhttpdConfig() (3 times) to find out if alarm sound is enabled, the period, the file name, etc. so far so good. but mhttpdConfig() 
does not touch any DOM objects, so why is it shown as calling “Layout”?!?

other than this trace, I see nothing else that would trigger the rasterizer thread…

(note) this time, mhttpd_alarm_play() does not call mhttpd_alarm_play_now(), so “new Audio” and stuff does not enter this picture.

K.O.

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-11-07
dd1 REPORTER
in the early part of the trace, where I think the meat of “tab is using cpu and memory” is, I see the audio events firing in rapid sequence: loadeddata, canplay, 
canplaythrough, rinse, repeat.

It turns out that promise rejection from audio.play() does not stop the loading of the sound file. This is easy to see by attaching the event handlers to these 
events and by observing these event handlers print something to the javascript console.

If that is what is happening, it explains what I see: all my previous attempts to prevent the piling up of sound files are unsuccessful, and when I open the 
previously inactive tab, all the queued sound files start loading (and not playing per “user did not interact” policy).

google docs suggest using audio.src=”” to cancel loading of sound files and it does seem to work. testing it now.

K.O.

&#8204;

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-11-07
dd1 REPORTER
gotcha. came back home, found one tab using about 10% cpu. audio.src=”” is commented out, javascript console is full of this:

Thu Nov 07 2019 22:17:30 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time): mhttpd_audio_loadeddata: counter 234
mhttpd.js:2763 Thu Nov 07 2019 22:17:30 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time): mhttpd_audio_canplay: counter 234
mhttpd.js:2767 Thu Nov 07 2019 22:17:30 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time): mhttpd_audio_canplaythrough: counter 234
mhttpd.js:2759 Thu Nov 07 2019 22:17:30 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time): mhttpd_audio_loadeddata: counter 235
mhttpd.js:2763 Thu Nov 07 2019 22:17:30 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time): mhttpd_audio_canplay: counter 235
mhttpd.js:2767 Thu Nov 07 2019 22:17:30 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time): mhttpd_audio_canplaythrough: counter 235
mhttpd.js:2759 Thu Nov 07 2019 22:17:30 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time): mhttpd_audio_loadeddata: counter 236
mhttpd.js:2763 Thu Nov 07 2019 22:17:30 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time): mhttpd_audio_canplay: counter 236
mhttpd.js:2767 Thu Nov 07 2019 22:17:30 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time): mhttpd_audio_canplaythrough: counter 236
mhttpd.js:2759 Thu Nov 07 2019 22:17:30 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time): mhttpd_audio_loadeddata: counter 237
mhttpd.js:2763 Thu Nov 07 2019 22:17:30 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time): mhttpd_audio_canplay: counter 237
mhttpd.js:2767 Thu Nov 07 2019 22:17:30 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time): mhttpd_audio_canplaythrough: counter 237
mhttpd.js:2759 Thu Nov 07 2019 22:17:30 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time): mhttpd_audio_loadeddata: counter 238
mhttpd.js:2763 Thu Nov 07 2019 22:17:30 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time): mhttpd_audio_canplay: counter 238
mhttpd.js:2767 Thu Nov 07 2019 22:17:30 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time): mhttpd_audio_canplaythrough: counter 238
mhttpd.js:2759 Thu Nov 07 2019 22:17:30 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time): mhttpd_audio_loadeddata: counter 239
mhttpd.js:2763 Thu Nov 07 2019 22:17:30 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time): mhttpd_audio_canplay: counter 239
mhttpd.js:2767 Thu Nov 07 2019 22:17:30 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time): mhttpd_audio_canplaythrough: counter 239
the timestamp is exactly when I opened this tab. so confirmed, a whole bunch of audio files got queued, when I open the tab they all try to play. (there is no 
actual sound, all tabs are muted).

now I uncomment audio.src=”” and see what happens.

K.O.

&#8204;

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-11-07
dd1 REPORTER
looks good. an update to google-chrome came in and after installing, I no longer see midas tabs show high cpu usage or high memory use. I think the 
audio.src=”” fix is it. I will be committing these fixes to midas. K.O.

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-11-12
Stefan Ritt
The loop in mhttpd_fit_message() is there for a good reason: I want to display the message in a single line. If it’s too long, I want first to cut the time stamp 
and then display it. If it’s still too long, I want to truncate the message and display “…” at the end. The problem is what “too long” is. Nobody can tell you how 
much pixel a message on your browser take, because this depends on the installed fonts, the exact character spacing of your browser and so on. So the only 
way I could make this happen is to add one char at a time, until we get close to the maximum allowed space. If course this requires a re-layout of the page for 
10-20 times, but when your window is in the foreground this is not a problem, since a browser can do this with small CPU load. The “scope” application I use 
does 70 frames per second at 30% CPU load. So one could make the loop a bit smarter, like binary search, which would drop the 10-20 iterations to log2(10-
20) ~ 4-5, but still there would be a loop.

How that the update of the messages in the background is suppressed with the hidden API, do you still have that problem or can we consider it fixed?

Stefan

Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-11-18
dd1 REPORTER
see new behaviour - after many days, inactive page size is ~180 Mbytes. 0% CPU use (an improvement from before where there was large CPU use). activate 
the tab, nothing much happens, 0% CPU use (again an improvement from before). after about 30 seconds, memory use drops down to the normal 50-70-80 
Mbytes. I think what we see is the garbage collector is throttled down and does not keep up with our allocations. Stefan’s new fix reducing polling in inactive 
pages from 1/sec to 1/10sec should help with this. K.O.

&#8204;

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 2019-11-19
dd1 REPORTER
mhttpd_fit_message() - confirmed. I was confused about the function argument.

I thought it is passed an array of messages. no, it is one message string and the loop is over the message string length. The loop is done twice (second time, 
with the time/date stamp removed). google-chrome debugger does show that this uses large amount of CPU, mainly to compute d.offsetWidth.

I think I will refactor these loops - instead of growing the message, I will shrink it.

K.O.

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 4 hours ago
dd1 REPORTER
rewrote mhttpd_fit_message() to reduce CPU use: try to fit complete message, if too long, try to fit message without timestamp, if too long, guess the desired 
length assuming all chars have same width, then grow or shrink the message until the size is right. K.O.

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete 17 minutes ago
dd1 REPORTER
changed status to resolved
The main fix is to set audio.src="" in the promise rejection. K.O.

Edit Pin to top Mark as spam Delete just now

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I accidentally discovered a problem with the alarm sounds played by midas.

The javascript code is very simple: var audio=new Audio("alarm.mp3"); audio.play();

In the past, this reliably played a sound.

More recently, I started seeing javascript log messages about "unhandled exception" from audio.play(). (for me, they often
interrupt my javascript debugger sessions, in a very annoying way).

Adding an exception handler to audio.play() was not effective: it turns out, these days, audio.play() returns a Promise
and one must handle the Promise rejection case. (also it turns out that in the rejection handler
one *must* clear audio.src to avoid problems with excessive memory and cpu use).

But why does audio.play() throw a rejected promise?!?

This is the error message provided: "play() failed because the user didn't interact with the document first. https://goo.gl/xX8pDD"
name: "NotAllowedError".

The link takes us to https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-policy-changes. This web page seems to explain
everything neatly, but most of the information turns out to be wrong and unhelpful:

a) "Muted autoplay is always allowed" - wrong - I see audio.play() rejection from muted tabs
b) "User has interacted with the domain (click, tap, etc.)." - wrong - I see rejection in the javascript debugger even as I debug the web page
c) "user's Media Engagement Index threshold has been crossed" - broken - playback count and MEI is always 0 (zero) for midas - per chrome://media-engagement/
d) "user has added the site to their home screen on mobile or installed the PWA on desktop" - what ?!?
e) chrome://flags/#autoplay-policy does not exist (was removed)

There may be a way to start google-chrome with special flags to globally enable autoplay, but it seems
to be aimed at "kiosk" type applications, not for general use browsers:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57455849/chrome-autoplay-policy-chrome-76

The bottom line:

there is no way to ensure that the alarm sound will always play

K.O.

P.S. I am tracking this problem here:
https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/191/exception-on-audioplay

The document

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_278v_plodvgtXSgnEJ0yjZJLg14Ogf-ekAFNymAJoU/edit

says that the "... playback must be at lest 7 seconds long" to signal significant playback.

I attached a modified alarm sound file with 3 seconds of sound followed by 5 seconds of silence. Try that one and let me know if this changes anything. If successful, I can modify the 
other sound files as well.

Stefan

I am currently testing the new history system on the mhttpd side and stumbled over the following issue: typically our user open a lot of midas web-page tabs and keep them open. With the current version this leads after a night typically to a state where the browser is busy with itself and not reacting anymore.

One important reason seems to be that ALL tabs trying to communicate all the time which is totally unnecessary, since I think a hidden tab should stay in a sleeping mode. 

I was browsing if there is a way to find out if a tab is active or not, and found the following API which exactly does this:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Page_Visibility_API

Furthermore, the simple

document.hidden 

tag, could be used to find out if the page is currently active.

Wouldn't it a good idea to send all midas tabs which are not active into a sleep mode and only reactivate them if they come into focus?

I had a quick look at the JavaScript libs of midas, but I am not quite certain where to best inject this. 

Very good idea. And thanks for finding the document.hidden solution. I put it in, so give it a try.

Best,
Stefan


> I am currently testing the new history system on the mhttpd side and stumbled over the following issue: typically our user open a lot of midas web-page tabs and keep them open. With the current version this leads after a night typically to a state where the browser is busy with itself and not reacting anymore.
> 
> One important reason seems to be that ALL tabs trying to communicate all the time which is totally unnecessary, since I think a hidden tab should stay in a sleeping mode. 
> 
> I was browsing if there is a way to find out if a tab is active or not, and found the following API which exactly does this:
> 
> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Page_Visibility_API
> 
> Furthermore, the simple
> 
> document.hidden 
> 
> tag, could be used to find out if the page is currently active.
> 
> Wouldn't it a good idea to send all midas tabs which are not active into a sleep mode and only reactivate them if they come into focus?
> 
> I had a quick look at the JavaScript libs of midas, but I am not quite certain where to best inject this. 

> Very good idea. And thanks for finding the document.hidden solution. I put it in, so give it a try.

Hi, Stefan - I did not look at your code, if all midas tabs are inactive, will the alarm sound still play?

K.O.


> 
> Best,
> Stefan
> 
> 
> > I am currently testing the new history system on the mhttpd side and stumbled over the following issue: typically our user open a lot of midas web-page tabs and keep them open. With the current version this leads after a night typically to a state where the browser is busy with itself and not reacting anymore.
> > 
> > One important reason seems to be that ALL tabs trying to communicate all the time which is totally unnecessary, since I think a hidden tab should stay in a sleeping mode. 
> > 
> > I was browsing if there is a way to find out if a tab is active or not, and found the following API which exactly does this:
> > 
> > https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Page_Visibility_API
> > 
> > Furthermore, the simple
> > 
> > document.hidden 
> > 
> > tag, could be used to find out if the page is currently active.
> > 
> > Wouldn't it a good idea to send all midas tabs which are not active into a sleep mode and only reactivate them if they come into focus?
> > 
> > I had a quick look at the JavaScript libs of midas, but I am not quite certain where to best inject this. 

> Hi, Stefan - I did not look at your code, if all midas tabs are inactive, will the alarm sound still play?

Nope. All updates are done in mhhtpd_refresh(), and I changed it such that nothing is updated if hidden.

I agree however that this is bad. You want to hear alarms always. So I added some code to do ONLY alarm updates if in the background. 
No GUI changes, only audio playing. Checking is reduced from 1 Hz to 0.1 Hz (once every 10 seconds). I don't have however a solution 
to your problem "not enough interaction with page" which I have never seen so far.

I wonder if we should try push notifications: https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/codelabs/push-notifications
which seems a bit complicated to me. It might also be too subtle if someone is sleeping in front of the computer.

Stefan

> > Hi, Stefan - I did not look at your code, if all midas tabs are inactive, will the alarm sound still play?
> I added some code to do ONLY alarm updates if in the background (once every 10 seconds)

Ok, good.

> I don't have however a solution to your problem "not enough interaction with page" which I have never seen so far.

When it happens, you should see my messages about it in the javascript console. (rejected promise from audio.play()).

How to make it happen so one can see it and be sure it is handled correctly (audio.src has to be set to blank, at the least), I have no idea.

What I have been looking at for the huge memory and cpu use problem, I would call "a bad interaction between two kludges",
the first kludge is the throttling javascript in inactive tabs, the second kludge is the "not interacted" rejection of audio.play() promise.
(audio.play() returning a promise, and the strange sequencing between this promise success/reject and
the audio events loaded/canplay/done/etc smells of a kludge, too).

> I wonder if we should try push notifications: https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/codelabs/push-notifications
> which seems a bit complicated to me. It might also be too subtle if someone is sleeping in front of the computer.

I did not read all the explanation, but if it requires use of 3rd party services, I think we cannot use it, we do not want
to miss "experiment is on fire" alarms just because google is down.

K.O.

> I am currently testing the new history system on the mhttpd side and stumbled over the following issue:
> typically our user open a lot of midas web-page tabs and keep them open. With the current version this leads after a night typically to a state where the browser is busy with itself and not reacting anymore.
> 
> One important reason seems to be that ALL tabs trying to communicate all the time which is totally unnecessary, since I think a hidden tab should stay in a sleeping mode. 

I am looking at two more problems with inactive tabs:

a) google chrome slows down the execution of javascript in inactive tabs, leading to trouble
with memory management - midas pages poll at 1/sec, each poll allocates memory for processing RPC messages,
and (until recently) allocates memory for new DOM objects to update the web page - but the garbage collector
gets slowed down and does not keep up - leading to huge memory use (up to 200 Mbytes) for inactive midas pages
that normally consume 50-ish Mbytes.

b) the playing of the alarm sound is throttled by "user has not interacted with the document" thing, but there is a bug -
instead of canceling the playing of the alarm sound, the sound file is still loaded, (but not played). (this is hard to debug
because I do not know how to manually trigger the "user has not interacted..." condition, I have to wait for many days for it.
Then, for inactive tabs, the loading of the sound files is slowed down, leading to many of them getting queued up,
and eventually they all try to load and play at the same time, again leading to huge memory and cpu use in inactive tabs.
(this sounds incredible because we play the alarm sound at most 1/minute, for sure the previous sound file must have
finished playing by then, but no, it is easy to see it happen - add a few console.log messages and wait for a few days).

>
> I was browsing if there is a way to find out if a tab is active or not, and found the following API which exactly does this:
> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Page_Visibility_API
> 

From looking at the inactive tab business, I see that javascript in inactive tabs runs quite differently from javascript
in active tabs (i.e. timers do not work the same) and I see how the "visibility api" had to be invented to counter that.

> 
> Wouldn't it a good idea to send all midas tabs which are not active into a sleep mode and only reactivate them if they come into focus?
> I had a quick look at the JavaScript libs of midas, but I am not quite certain where to best inject this.
>

most midas web pages poll in two places - mhttpd_refresh() updates the current date timestamp, alarms, currently active midas.log message;
and each page has it's own loop for updating it's own data (i.e. "alarms" page, "programs" page).

we should be careful to not completely disable all polling as some experiments do use and do rely on the midas producing
loud alarm messages ("program logged is not running!!!", "program mhttpd aborted!!!"). Even if all midas tabs are inactive,
some javascript is some tab still has to run frequently enough to poll midas and to sound the alarm sounds (even though
I am not sure how to 100% reliably counteract the google-chrome not playing sound files because
of the "user did not interact with the site..." thing).

K.O.

> a) google chrome slows down the execution of javascript in inactive tabs, leading to trouble
> with memory management - midas pages poll at 1/sec, each poll allocates memory for processing RPC messages,
> and (until recently) allocates memory for new DOM objects to update the web page - but the garbage collector
> gets slowed down and does not keep up - leading to huge memory use (up to 200 Mbytes) for inactive midas pages
> that normally consume 50-ish Mbytes.

Try my latest change, which drops any update if hidden, except the alarm sound. At the moment this only works on the main "status" page.

> most midas web pages poll in two places - mhttpd_refresh() updates the current date timestamp, alarms, currently active midas.log message;
> and each page has it's own loop for updating it's own data (i.e. "alarms" page, "programs" page).

That's correct. I changed mhttpd_refresh() now and the main loop for the "status" page. If that works for everybody, we can do that also for "programs" and other pages. The code is here:

      if (document.hidden) {
         // don't update page if hidden
         setTimeout(update_page, 500);
         return;
      }

where "update_page" has to be replaced with the proper function.

Stefan