Back Midas Rome Roody Rootana
  Midas DAQ System, Page 1 of 136  Not logged in ELOG logo
ID Dateup Author Topic Subject
  1   06 Jun 2003 Pierre-André Amaudruz Welcome
Dear Midas users,

As you certainly aware, ELOG (Electronic Logbook) has been written
by Stefan Ritt and its functionality is part of the Midas package too.
This web site using Elog is replacing the W-Agora Forum previously setup.

You will need to register to this forum in order to gain Write access and 
possible Email notification.

We would like to encourage you to post your questions or comments at
this Midas Elog site instead of using private Email to the authors as your 
remarks are surely of interest to the other users too.

 
 
  145   12 Jun 2003 Pierre-André Amaudruz Tape handling
- remove ss_tape_get_blockn from lazylogger.c
- add ss_tape_get_blockn to system.c
- add ss_tape_get_blockn prototype into midas.h
- fix buffer size for "dir" in mtape.c
- add block# for "dir" in mtape if command successful.
- handle TID_STRUCT bank type by display as 8bit in ybos.c (mdump)
  144   17 Jun 2003 Stefan Ritt example experiment makefile for NT
I have added ROOT support to midas\examples\experiment\makefile.nt. To 
compile the example experiment under Windows, one needs

1) Installed version of ROOT
2) Having ROOTSYS environment variable defined
3) Invoke "nmake -f makefile.nt" in the midas\examples\experiment directory

Please note that in the current release 3.05 of ROOT, sockets are not yet 
working under Windows, so the histogram server built into the analyzer 
cannot be accessed. It is however possible to output the analyzed data into 
a .root file and visualize it with the root browser like

analyzer -i run00001.mid -o run00001.root
  143   26 Jun 2003 David Morris pthreads for Linux
Added ss_create_thread support for Linux in system.c
Added pthread library in main make file
  37   02 Jul 2003 Pierre-André Amaudruz Midas/ROOT Analyser situation
The current and future situation of the Midas analyzer is summarized in the
attachment below.

Box explanation:
================
Front end:
---------
Midas code for accessing/gathering the hardware information into the Midas
format.

Midas SHM:
---------
Midas back end shared memory where the front end data are sent to.

mlogger:
-------
Data logger collecting the midas events and storing them on a physical
logging device (Disk, Tape)

Midas Analyzer:
--------------
Midas client for event-by-event analysis. Incoming data can be either online
or offline.

mserver:
-------
Subprocess interfacing external (remote) midas client to the centralized
data collection and database system.

PAW:
---
Standalone physics data analyzer (CERN).

ROOT:
----
Standalone Physics data analyser (CERN).


This diagram represents the data path from the Frontend to the analyzer in
online and offline mode. Each data path is annoted with a circled number
discussed below. In all cases, the data will flow from the front end
application to the midas back end data buffers which reside in a specific
share memory for a given experiment.

Path:
(1): From the shared memory, the midas analyzer can request events directly
and process them for output to divers destination.

(2): The data logger is a specific application which stores all the data to
 a storage media such as a disk or tape. This path is specific to the
creation of file.mid file format. The actual storage file in this .mid
format can be readout later on by the midas analyzer.

(3): The Midas analyzer has been developed originally for interfacing to the
PAW analyzer which uses its own shared memory segment for online display.
The analyzer can also save the data into a specific data format consistent
with PAW (HBOOK and Ntuples, extension .rz).

(4): Presently the data logger support a creation of the ROOT file format.
This file contains in the form of a Tree the midas event-by-event data. This
file is fully compatible with ROOT and therefore can be read out by the
standard ROOT application.

(5): Equivalent to the data logger, the analyzer receiving from the data
buffer or reading from a .mid file data can apply an event-by-event analysis
and on request produce a compliant ROOT file for further analysis. This
.root file can be composed of Trees as well as histograms.

(6): The possibility of ONLINE ROOT analysis has been implemented in a first
stage through the TMapFile (ROOT shared memory). While this configuration is
still in use an experiment, the intention is to deprecate it and replace it
with the data path (7).

(7): This path uses the network socket channel to transfer data out of the
analyzer to the ROOT environment. The current analyzer has a limited support
for ROOT analysis by only publishing on request the Midas analysis built in
histograms. No mean is yet implemented for Tree passing mechanism.

(8): The pass has not been yet investigated, but ROOT does provide
accessibility to external function calls which makes this option possible.
The ROOT framework will then perform dedicated event call to the main midas
data buffer using the standard midas communication scheme. The data format
translation from Midas banks to ROOT format will have to be taken care at
the user level in the ROOT environment.


Discussion:
==========
Presently the Socket communication between Midas and ROOT (7) is under
revision by Stefan Ritt and René Brun. This revision will simplify the
remote access of an object such as an histogram. For the Tree itself, the
requirement would be to implement a "ring buffer" mechanism for remote tree
request. This is currently under discussion.

The path (8) has been suggested by Triumf to address small experiment setup
where only a single analyzer is required. This path minimize the DAQ
requirements by moving all the data analysis handling to the user.
The same ROOT analysis code would be applicable to a ONLINE as well as
OFFLINE analysis.

Cons:
- Necessity of publishing raw data through the network for every instance of
the remote analyzer.
- Result sharing of the analysis cannot be done yet in real time.

Pros:
- No need of extra task for data translation (midas/root).
- Unique data unpacking code part of the user code.
- Less CPU requirement.

Other issues:
============
- The current necessity of the Midas shared memory for the midas analyzer to
run is a concern in particular for offline analysis where a priori no midas
is available. 

- The handling of the run/analyzer parameters. Possible parameter extraction
from file.odb.
  142   26 Jul 2003 Konstantin Olchanski more ODB checks in src/odb.c
Add more checks to db_validate_key() for pkey->total_size, item_size and
num_values. Automatically correct total_size to be item_size*num_values (we
saw this corruption and tested this fix).

K.O.

For your enjoyment, here is the diff:

RCS file: /usr/local/cvsroot/midas/src/odb.c,v
retrieving revision 1.64
diff -r1.64 odb.c
718a719,744
>   /* check key sizes */
>   if ((pkey->total_size < 0)||(pkey->total_size > pheader->key_size))
>     {
>     cm_msg(MERROR, "db_validate_key", "Warning: invalid key \"%s\"
total_size: %d", path, pkey->total_size);
>     return 0;
>     }
> 
>   if ((pkey->item_size < 0)||(pkey->item_size > pheader->key_size))
>     {
>     cm_msg(MERROR, "db_validate_key", "Warning: invalid key \"%s\"
item_size: %d", path, pkey->item_size);
>     return 0;
>     }
> 
>   if ((pkey->num_values < 0)||(pkey->num_values > pheader->key_size))
>     {
>     cm_msg(MERROR, "db_validate_key", "Warning: invalid key \"%s\"
num_values: %d", path, pkey->num_values);
>     return 0;
>     }
> 
>   /* check and correct key size */
>   if (pkey->total_size != pkey->item_size*pkey->num_values)
>     {
>     cm_msg(MINFO,  "db_validate_key", "Warning: corrected key \"%s\" size:
total_size=%d, should be %d*%d=%d", path, pkey->total_size, pkey->item_size,
pkey->num_values, pkey
->item_size*pkey->num_values);
>     pkey->total_size = pkey->item_size*pkey->num_values;
>     }
> 
  141   26 Jul 2003 Konstantin Olchanski use "odbedit -C" to connect to corrupted ODB
Add switch "-C" to odbedit to allow it to connect to corrupted ODB. Then,
depending on corruption, the user can manually remove or correct the
corrupted entries. Also, some corruption is automatically fixed by "odbedit"
itself. I use this functionality to debug and fix broken ODBs.

K.O.

For your enjoyment, here is the diff:

diff -r1.64 odbedit.c
3058a3059
> BOOL          corrupted;
3063c3064
<   debug = cmd_mode = FALSE;
---
>   debug = corrupted = cmd_mode = FALSE;
3077a3079,3080
>     else if (argv[i][0] == '-' && argv[i][1] == 'C')
>       corrupted = TRUE;
3104c3107,3108
<         printf("               [-c Command] [-c @CommandFile] [-s size]
[-g (debug)]\n\n");
---
>         printf("               [-c Command] [-c @CommandFile] [-s size]\n");
>         printf("               [-g (debug)] [-C (connect to corrupted
ODB)]\n\n");
3123c3127,3133
<   if (status != CM_SUCCESS)
---
>   else if ((status == DB_INVALID_HANDLE)&&corrupted)
>     {
>     cm_get_error(status, str);
>     puts(str);
>     printf("ODB is corrupted, connecting anyway...\n");
>     }
>   else if (status != CM_SUCCESS)
  139   29 Jul 2003 Konstantin Olchanski Have to link with -lpthread?
It appears that all midas applications are now required to link with the
pthreads library even if they do not use threads. This is caused by a
pthread_create() call from ss_thread_create() in system.c.

Is this the intended behaviour?

K.O.
  140   30 Jul 2003 David Morris Have to link with -lpthread?
The change is required to support implementation of pthreads in the Linux
compile of Midas. This was added recently. I believe pthreads is also needed
for ROOT based compiles.

David

> It appears that all midas applications are now required to link with the
> pthreads library even if they do not use threads. This is caused by a
> pthread_create() call from ss_thread_create() in system.c.
> 
> Is this the intended behaviour?
> 
> K.O.
  135   11 Aug 2003 Konstantin Olchanski mhttpd crash on corrupted ODB /RunInfo
Invalid values of ODB /RunInfo/State cause mhttpd crash in
show_status_page() because of an out of bounds access to the array of state
names. Suggest this fix: remove array of state names, use existing ladder of
if/else statements to explicitely set state name. Verified the fix works for
TWIST. Will commit this into MIDAS CVS unless get feedback.

src/mhttpd.c:show_status_page() {
  ...
  rsprintf("<tr align=center><td>Run #%d", runinfo.run_number);

  if (runinfo.state == STATE_STOPPED)
    rsprintf("<td colspan=1 bgcolor=#FF0000>Stopped");
  else if (runinfo.state == STATE_PAUSED)
    rsprintf("<td colspan=1 bgcolor=#FFFF00>Paused");
  else if (runinfo.state == STATE_RUNNING)
    rsprintf("<td colspan=1 bgcolor=#00FF00>Running");
  else
    rsprintf("<td colspan=1 bgcolor=#FFFFFF>Unknown");

  if (runinfo.requested_transition)
  ...

K.O.
  2   11 Aug 2003 Konstantin Olchanski Alarm on no ping?
I want midas alarms to go off when I cannot ping arbitrary remote hosts. Is
there is easy/preferred way to do this? K.O.
  138   19 Aug 2003 Pierre-André Amaudruz minor fixes, new tarball 1.9.3-1
- add pthread lib to examples/... makefile
- fix ybos_simfe.c for max_event_size
- fix camacnul.c for cam_inhibit_test(), cam_interrupt_test()
- update documentation (1.9.3)
- made midas-1.9.3-1.tar.gz on Triumf site
  3   27 Aug 2003 Pierre-André Amaudruz Operation under 1.9.3 with the analyzer
1) Prior upgrading midas to 1.9.3, make sure you've saved your ODB in ASCII
   format using "odbedit> save my_odb.odb", as the internal structure is
   incompatible with previous version. You will be able to restore it once
   the new odb is up using "odbedit> load my_odb.odb".

2) since version 1.9.2, the analyzer supports ROOT and PAW packages.
   The general Midas makefile build the analyzer core system mana.c
   differently depending on presence of the environment variable $ROOTSYS.

   In the case $ROOTSYS is not defined, the Makefile will create:
   ~/os/lib/mana.o, build for NO HBOOK calls.
   ~/os/lib/hmana.o, build with HBOOK calls for PAW analyzer
    (requires /cern/pro/lib to be present).

   In the case $ROOTSYS is defined and pointing to a valid root directory:
   ~/os/lib/mana.o, build for NO HBOOK calls.
   ~/os/lib/rmana.o, build for ROOT analyzer.

3) Since 1.9.2, the ~/examples/experiment contains the ROOT
   analyzer example instead of HBOOK. The local Makefile uses the source
   examples and the ~/os/lib/rmana.o for building the final user
   application.
   
   The previous HBOOK(PAW) analyzer has been moved into ~examples/hbookexpt
   directory. The analyzer is build using the ~/os/lib/hmana.o 

4) A new application "rmidas" is available when the system is build with
   ROOT support. This application is an initial "pure" ROOT GUI implementing
   TSocket for remote ROOT histogram display. 
   Once a ONLINE ROOT analyzer is up and running, by invoking "rmidas"
   you will be prompt for a host name. Enter the node name hosting the
   analyzer. You will be presented with a list of histogram which can
   be display in a ROOT frame environment (see attachment). 

5) The support of ROOT is also available for the logger by changing  
   the data format and the destination file name in the ODB structure.
   This option will save on file the Midas banks converted into ROOT Tree.
   This file can be opened with ROOT (see attachment).

------- ODB structure of /Logger/Channels/0/Settings
   [local:midas:R]Settings>ls
    Active                          y
    Type                            Disk
    Filename                        run%05d.root    <<<<<<<<< new extension
    Format                          ROOT            <<<<<<<<< new format
    Compression                     0
    ODB dump                        y
    Log messages                    0
    Buffer                          SYSTEM
    Event ID                        -1
    Trigger mask                    -1
    Event limit                     0
    Byte limit                      0
    Tape capacity                   0
    Subdir format                   
    Current filename                run00211.root
-------   

.
  137   02 Sep 2003 Pierre-André Amaudruz minor fix, window build
- makefile.nt (/examples/experiment, /hbook)
  adjusted for local hmana.obj build  as for rmana.obj, add cvs tag for
  revision comment entry.
- drivers/class/hv.c
  change comment // to /* */
  136   10 Oct 2003 Konstantin Olchanski mhttpd crash on corrupted ODB /RunInfo
There was no feedback. This code has been commited. K.O.

> Invalid values of ODB /RunInfo/State cause mhttpd crash in
> show_status_page() because of an out of bounds access to the array of state
> names. Suggest this fix: remove array of state names, use existing ladder of
> if/else statements to explicitely set state name. Verified the fix works for
> TWIST. Will commit this into MIDAS CVS unless get feedback.
> 
> src/mhttpd.c:show_status_page() {
>   ...
>   rsprintf("<tr align=center><td>Run #%d", runinfo.run_number);
> 
>   if (runinfo.state == STATE_STOPPED)
>     rsprintf("<td colspan=1 bgcolor=#FF0000>Stopped");
>   else if (runinfo.state == STATE_PAUSED)
>     rsprintf("<td colspan=1 bgcolor=#FFFF00>Paused");
>   else if (runinfo.state == STATE_RUNNING)
>     rsprintf("<td colspan=1 bgcolor=#00FF00>Running");
>   else
>     rsprintf("<td colspan=1 bgcolor=#FFFFFF>Unknown");
> 
>   if (runinfo.requested_transition)
>   ...
> 
> K.O.
  129   12 Oct 2003 Konstantin Olchanski Array overruns in mhttpd.c::submit_elog()
While adding new functionality to submit_elog() (add the message text to the
outgoing email), I noticed that the email text is being stored into an array
of size 256, mail_text[256], without any checks for array overrun. This
cannot be good. How should this be corrected?
K.O.
  130   12 Oct 2003 Konstantin Olchanski Array overruns in mhttpd.c::submit_elog()
> While adding new functionality to submit_elog() (add the message text to the
> outgoing email), I noticed that the email text is being stored into an array
> of size 256, mail_text[256], without any checks for array overrun. This
> cannot be good. How should this be corrected?
> K.O.

Similar problem exists in midas.c::el_submit(). The array "message[10000]" is
easy to overrun by submitting a long elog message.

K.O.
  125   12 Oct 2003 Konstantin Olchanski mhttpd: add Elog text to outgoing email.
This commit adds the elog message text to the outgoing email message. This
functionality has been requested a logn time ago, but I guess nobody got
around to implement it, until now. I also added assert() traps for the most
common array overruns in the Elog code.

Here is the cvs diff:

Index: src/mhttpd.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /usr/local/cvsroot/midas/src/mhttpd.c,v
retrieving revision 1.252
diff -r1.252 mhttpd.c
768a769
> #include <assert.h>
3740c3741
< char   mail_to[256], mail_from[256], mail_text[256], mail_list[256],
---
> char   mail_to[256], mail_from[256], mail_text[10000], mail_list[256],
3921a3923,3925
>         // zero out the array. needed because later strncat() does not
always add the trailing '\0'
>         memset(mail_text,0,sizeof(mail_text));
> 
3931a3936,3945
> 
>         assert(strlen(mail_text) + 100 < sizeof(mail_text)); // bomb out
on array overrun.
> 
>         strcat(mail_text+strlen(mail_text),"\n");
>         // this strncat() depends on the mail_text array being zeroed out:
>         // strncat() does not always add the trailing '\0'
>        
strncat(mail_text+strlen(mail_text),getparam("text"),sizeof(mail_text)-strlen(mail_text)-50);
>         strcat(mail_text+strlen(mail_text),"\n");
> 
>         assert(strlen(mail_text) < sizeof(mail_text)); // bomb out on
array overrun.
Index: src/midas.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /usr/local/cvsroot/midas/src/midas.c,v
retrieving revision 1.192
diff -r1.192 midas.c
604a605
> #include <assert.h>
16267a16269,16270
> 
>   assert(strlen(message) < sizeof(message)); // bomb out on array overrun.

K.O.
  133   12 Oct 2003 Konstantin Olchanski Refuse to set run number zero
I am debugging the frequent problem where the run number is mysteriously
reset to zero. As a first step, I am commiting changes to mhttpd.c and midas.c:
- abort on obviously corrupted "run number < 0"
- abort on cm_transition() to run 0 (the only place where the run number is
explicitely written to ODB)
- in the mhttpd "Start run" form, reject user setting the run number to <= 0.

Here is the CVS diff:

===================================================================
RCS file: /usr/local/cvsroot/midas/src/mhttpd.c,v
retrieving revision 1.253
diff -r1.253 mhttpd.c
2451a2452,2457
>   if (run_number < 0)
>     {
>     cm_msg(MERROR, "show_elog_new", "aborting on attempt to use invalid
run number %d",run_number);
>     abort();
>     }
> 
2506a2513,2519
> 
>     if (run_number < 0)
>       {
>       cm_msg(MERROR, "show_elog_new", "aborting on attempt to use invalid
run number %d",run_number);
>       abort();
>       }
> 
3582a3596,3602
> 
>   if (run_number < 0)
>     {
>     cm_msg(MERROR, "show_form_query", "aborting on attempt to use invalid
run number %d",run_number);
>     abort();
>     }
> 
5730a5751,5756
>   if (rn < 0) // value "zero" is okey
>     {
>     cm_msg(MERROR, "show_start_page", "aborting on attempt to use invalid
run number %d",rn);
>     abort();
>     }
> 
9684a9711,9719
>       if (i <= 0)
>         {
>         cm_msg(MERROR, "interprete", "Start run: invalid run number %d",i);
>         memset(str,0,sizeof(str));
>         snprintf(str,sizeof(str)-1,"Invalid run number %d",i);
>         show_error(str);
>         return;
>         }
> 
Index: src/midas.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /usr/local/cvsroot/midas/src/midas.c,v
retrieving revision 1.193
diff -r1.193 midas.c
3786c3786
<         status = cm_transition(_requested_transition | TR_DEFERRED, 0,
str, 256, SYNC, FALSE);
---
>         status = cm_transition(_requested_transition | TR_DEFERRED, 0,
str, sizeof(str), SYNC, FALSE);
3906a3907,3912
>   if (run_number <= 0)
>     {
>     cm_msg(MERROR, "cm_transition", "aborting on attempt to use invalid
run number %d",run_number);
>     abort();
>     }
> 
16069a16076,16081
>     }
> 
>   if (run_number < 0)
>     {
>     cm_msg(MERROR, "el_submit", "aborting on attempt to use invalid run
number %d", run_number);
>     abort();

K.O.
  134   12 Oct 2003 Konstantin Olchanski Refuse to set run number zero
> I am debugging the frequent problem where the run number is mysteriously
> reset to zero. As a first step, I am commiting changes to mhttpd.c and midas.c:
> - abort on obviously corrupted "run number < 0"
> - abort on cm_transition() to run 0 (the only place where the run number is
> explicitely written to ODB)
> - in the mhttpd "Start run" form, reject user setting the run number to <= 0.

- abort on cm_transition() from run 0 to 1 during auto restart in mlogger.

Cvs diff:

RCS file: /usr/local/cvsroot/midas/src/mlogger.c,v
retrieving revision 1.65
diff -r1.65 mlogger.c
3277a3278,3283
>         if (run_number <= 0)
>           {
>           cm_msg(MERROR, "main", "aborting on attempt to use invalid run
number %d", run_number);
>           abort();
>           }
> 

K.O.
ELOG V3.1.4-2e1708b5