The JavaScript function

mjsonrpc_db_save / mjonrpc_db_load

have been dropped from the API because they were not considered safe. Users 
should use now the new function

file_save_ascii()

and

file_load_ascii()

These function have the additional advantage that the file is not loaded 
directly into the ODB but goes into the JavaScript code in the browser, which 
can check or modify it before sending it to the ODB via mjsonrpc_db_paste(). 

Access of these functions is limited to <experiment>/userfiles/* where 
<experiment> is the normal MIDAS experiment directory defined by "exptab" or 
"MIDAS_DIR". This ensures that there is no access to e.g. system-level files. If 
you need to access a directory not under "userfile", us symbolic links.

These files can be combined with file_picker(), which lets you select files on 
the server interactively.

Stefan

Another small user experience request:

When making a link in the odb (web interface) a nice browser window pop's up. There is however not scrolling possible in the window. As a result, you can not reach a odb key if it is nested to deeply. 

Trying to type out the Link target in the field only allows for 32 characters

context: we are setting up a bunch of Links in the History

> When making a link in the odb (web interface) a nice browser window pop's up. There is however not scrolling possible in the window. As a result, you can not reach a odb key if it is nested to deeply. 
> 
> Trying to type out the Link target in the field only allows for 32 characters

Thanks for reporting the bug with the pop-up not being able to scroll, I fixed that and committed the change.

I do however not understand the issue with 32 characters. The link NAME should not be more than 32 chars (which applies to all ODB keys). 
But if I try I can write more than 32 chars in the link target.

Stefan

The epics frontend overwrites the "start command" odb after each start:

  // set start command in ODB
   midas::odb efe("/Programs/EPICS Frontend");
   std::string p(__FILE__);
   std::string s("build/epics_fe");
   auto i = p.find("epics_fe.cxx");
   p.replace(i, s.length(), s);
   p = p.substr(0, i + s.length());
   efe["Start command"].set_string_size(p, 256);

this should be set such that it only writes when the key is not there. It causes the following issue: on a pc with multiple experiments defined, you need to start the fe's with a "-e <name>" flag. 

Thanks for reporting this problem. It has been fixed today, so the start command is only written if it's emtpy.

Stefan

The wiki documents an odb variable to enable the hiding of the Start and Stop buttons on the mhttpd status page
https://daq00.triumf.ca/MidasWiki/index.php//Experiment_ODB_tree#Start-Stop_Buttons

However mhttpd states this option is obsolete. See commit:
https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/commits/2366eefc6a216dc45154bc4594e329420500dcf7

I note that that commit also made mhttpd report that the "Pause-Resume Buttons" variable is also obsolete, however that code seems to have since been removed.

Is there now some other mechanism to hide the start and stop buttons?
Note that this is for a pure slow control system that does not take runs.

> Is there now some other mechanism to hide the start and stop buttons?
> Note that this is for a pure slow control system that does not take runs.

Just wanted to add that I realize that this can be done by copying
status.html and/or midas.css to the experiment directory and then modifying
them/it, but wonder if the is some other preferred way.

Indeed the ODB settings are obsolete. Now that the status page is fully dynamic 
(JavaScript), it's much more powerful to modify the status.html page directly. You 
can not only hide the buttons, but also remove the run numbers, the running time, 
and so on. This is much more flexible than steering things through the ODB.

If there is a general need for that, I can draft a "non-run" based status page, but 
it's a bit hard to make a one-fits-all. Like some might even remove the logging 
channels and the clients, but add certain things like if their slow control front-
end is running etc.

Best,
Stefan

Hi Stefan,

> Indeed the ODB settings are obsolete.

I just applied for an account for the wiki.
I'll try add a note regarding this change.

> Now that the status page is fully dynamic 
> (JavaScript), it's much more powerful to modify the status.html page directly. You 
> can not only hide the buttons, but also remove the run numbers, the running time, 
> and so on. This is much more flexible than steering things through the ODB.

Very true. Currently I copied the resources/midas.css into the experiment directory and appended:

#runNumberCell { display: none;}
#runStatusStartTime { display: none;}
#runStatusStopTime { display: none;}
#runStatusSequencer { display: none;}
#logChannel { display: none;}

See screenshot attached. :-)

But if feels a little clunky to copy the whole file just to add five lines.
It might be more elegant if status.html looked for a user css file in addition
to the default ones.

> If there is a general need for that, I can draft a "non-run" based status page, but 
> it's a bit hard to make a one-fits-all. Like some might even remove the logging 
> channels and the clients, but add certain things like if their slow control front-
> end is running etc.

The logging channels are easily removed with the css (see attachment), but it might be
nice if the string "Run Status" table title was also configurable by css. For this
slow control system I'd probably change it to something like "GSC Status". Again
this is a minor thing, I could trivially do this by copying the resources/status.html
to the experiment directory and editing it.

Lots of fun new stuff migrating from circa 2012 midas to midas-2022-05-c :-)

Cheers,

Nick.

> Hi Stefan,
> 
> > Indeed the ODB settings are obsolete.
> 
> I just applied for an account for the wiki.
> I'll try add a note regarding this change.

Please coordinate with Ben Smith at TRIUMF <bsmith@triumf.ca>, who coordinates the documentation. 


> Very true. Currently I copied the resources/midas.css into the experiment directory and appended:
> 
> #runNumberCell { display: none;}
> #runStatusStartTime { display: none;}
> #runStatusStopTime { display: none;}
> #runStatusSequencer { display: none;}
> #logChannel { display: none;}
> 
> See screenshot attached. :-)
> 
> But if feels a little clunky to copy the whole file just to add five lines.
> It might be more elegant if status.html looked for a user css file in addition
> to the default ones.

I would not go to change the CSS file. You only can hide some tables. But in a while I'm sure you
want to ADD new things, which you only can do by editing the status.html file. You don't have to
change midas/resources/status.html, but can make your own "custom status", name it differently, and
link /Custom/Default in the ODB to it. This way it does not get overwritten if you pull midas.


> The logging channels are easily removed with the css (see attachment), but it might be
> nice if the string "Run Status" table title was also configurable by css. For this
> slow control system I'd probably change it to something like "GSC Status". Again
> this is a minor thing, I could trivially do this by copying the resources/status.html
> to the experiment directory and editing it.

See above. I agree that the status.html file is a bit complicated and not so easy to understand
as the CSS file, but you can do much more by editing it.

> Lots of fun new stuff migrating from circa 2012 midas to midas-2022-05-c :-)

I always advise people to frequently pull, they benefit from the newest features and avoid the
huge amount of work to migrate from a 10 year old version.

Best,
Stefan

I believe the original "hide run start / stop" was added specifically for ND280 GSC MIDAS. I do not know 
why it was removed. "hide pause / resume" is still there. I will restore them. Hiding logger channel 
section should probably be automatic of there is no /logger/channels, I can check if it works and what 
happens if there is more than one logger channel. K.O.

> I believe the original "hide run start / stop" was added specifically for ND280 GSC MIDAS. I do not know 
> why it was removed. "hide pause / resume" is still there. I will restore them. Hiding logger channel 
> section should probably be automatic of there is no /logger/channels, I can check if it works and what 
> happens if there is more than one logger channel. K.O.

Very likely it was "forgotten" when the status page was converted to a dynamic page by Shouyi Ma. Since he is 
not around any more, it's up to us to adapt status.html if needed.

Stefan

> I believe the original "hide run start / stop" was added specifically for ND280 GSC MIDAS. I do not know 
> why it was removed. "hide pause / resume" is still there. I will restore them. Hiding logger channel 
> section should probably be automatic of there is no /logger/channels, I can check if it works and what 
> happens if there is more than one logger channel. K.O.

Actually one thing is the functionality of the /Experiment/Start-Stop button in status.html, but the other is 
the warning we get from mhttpd:

[mhttpd,ERROR] [mhttpd.cxx:1957:init_mhttpd_odb,ERROR] ODB "/Experiment/Start-Stop Buttons" is obsolete, please 
delete it.

This was added by KO on Nov. 29, 2019 (commit 2366eefc). So we have to decide re-enable this feature (and 
remove the warning above), or keep it dropped and work on changes of status.hmtl.

Stefan

Hi

> > > Indeed the ODB settings are obsolete.
> > 
> > I just applied for an account for the wiki.
> > I'll try add a note regarding this change.
> 
> Please coordinate with Ben Smith at TRIUMF <bsmith@triumf.ca>, who coordinates the documentation. 

I will tread lightly. 

> I would not go to change the CSS file. You only can hide some tables. But in a while I'm sure you
> want to ADD new things, which you only can do by editing the status.html file. You don't have to
> change midas/resources/status.html, but can make your own "custom status", name it differently, and
> link /Custom/Default in the ODB to it. This way it does not get overwritten if you pull midas.

We have *many* custom pages. The submenus on the status page:

&#9656; FGD
&#9656; TPC
&#9656; TRIPt

hide custom pages with all sorts of good stuff.

> > The logging channels are easily removed with the css (see attachment), but it might be
> > nice if the string "Run Status" table title was also configurable by css. For this
> > slow control system I'd probably change it to something like "GSC Status". Again
> > this is a minor thing, I could trivially do this by copying the resources/status.html
> > to the experiment directory and editing it.
> 
> See above. I agree that the status.html file is a bit complicated and not so easy to understand
> as the CSS file, but you can do much more by editing it.

I may end up doing this since the events and data columns do not provide particularly
useful information in this instance. But for now, the css route seems like a quick and
fairly clean way to remove irrelevant stuff from a prominent place at the top of the page.
 
> > Lots of fun new stuff migrating from circa 2012 midas to midas-2022-05-c :-)
> 
> I always advise people to frequently pull, they benefit from the newest features and avoid the
> huge amount of work to migrate from a 10 year old version.

The long delay was not my choice. The group responsible for the system departed in 2018, and
and were not replaced by the experiment management. Lack of personnel/expertise resulted in
a "if it's not broken then don't fix it" situation. Eventually, the need to update the PCs/OSs
and the imminent introduction of new sub-detectors resulted people agreeing to the update. 

Cheers,

Nick.

Recently I was trying to read sequencer scripts written by a previous student, and realized it would be easier to 
quickly read/skim sequencer code with some form of syntax highlighting. I've been using Visual Studio Code as my 
editor, so I made myself an extension for VS Code that provides basic syntax highlighting (with help from 
ChatGPT-3.5). It's good enough for my purposes, but is missing some features you'd expect for full language 
support. This got me wondering - does anything like this already exist, perhaps with more complete support?

If it doesn't already exist, and if there is interest, I could to publish mine 
to vscode's "Extension Marketplace" for easy installations (I'd also welcome contributions for 
more features). For now, I've installed it on my computer directly from the .vsix file, which I've put on my own 
github at https://github.com/maia-hw/midas-sequencer-support . There is also a readme with screenshot showing what scripts 
will look like with the highlighting

I like the idea of syntax highlighting, but your solution is just for one editor which not everybody
is using. It would be better if the editor built into mhttpd for MSL files would have the possibility.

I looked at highlighting in an HTML <textarea> tag, and found that we can do it with a 

<div contenteditable="true" style="font-family: monospace"> ... </div>

tag where we can change the color of individual words. If you translate your existing rules of syntax
highlighting into JavaScript, I'm happy to put that into the mhttpd sequencer editor. So I would need
a function which receives a MSL text, then replaces all keywords with some color tagging, like

ODBSET -> <span style="color:red">ODBSET</span>

Best,
Stefan

Dear MIDAS users,

We would like to arrange another MIDAS workshop, following on from previous successful workshops in 2015, 2017 and 2019.  The 
goals of the workshop would include:

- Getting updates from MIDAS developers on new features and other changes.
- Getting reports from MIDAS users on how they are using MIDAS, what is working and what is not
- Making plans for future MIDAS changes and improvements

This would be a one-day virtual workshop, planned for about 4 hours length.  The workshop will probably be after another of 
Stefan's visits to TRIUMF.

If you would be interested in participating in such a workshop, please help us choose the date by filling out this doodle poll:

https://doodle.com/meeting/organize/id/dBPVMQJa

Please fill in the poll by June 9, if you are interested.  We will announce the date soon after that.

Thanks,
Thomas

Hi All,

Thanks to everyone who filled out the doodle poll.  

Based on the results we will plan to have this workshop on September 13, at 9AM-1PM (Vancouver) / 6PM-10PM (Geneva).  Apologies to 
those for whom this is a bad time/day; in particular for MIDAS users in Asia.

If you would like to present a report at the workshop on your experiment's MIDAS experience, then please email me (lindner@triumf.ca).  
It would be great to know this in advance so that we can start preparing an agenda.  Feel free to also email me if there are topics 
that you would like addressed at the workshop.

Thanks,
Thomas


> Dear MIDAS users,
> 
> We would like to arrange another MIDAS workshop, following on from previous successful workshops in 2015, 2017 and 2019.  The 
> goals of the workshop would include:
> 
> - Getting updates from MIDAS developers on new features and other changes.
> - Getting reports from MIDAS users on how they are using MIDAS, what is working and what is not
> - Making plans for future MIDAS changes and improvements
> 
> This would be a one-day virtual workshop, planned for about 4 hours length.  The workshop will probably be after another of 
> Stefan's visits to TRIUMF.
> 
> If you would be interested in participating in such a workshop, please help us choose the date by filling out this doodle poll:
> 
> https://doodle.com/meeting/organize/id/dBPVMQJa
> 
> Please fill in the poll by June 9, if you are interested.  We will announce the date soon after that.
> 
> Thanks,
> Thomas

Dear All,

A quick update on the MIDAS workshop.  Based on the number of planned talks we have made the decision to switch to a two day workshop on Sept 12 and 13 
(rather than just Sept 13).  We decided 4 hours was not enough time to hear all the reports and have fruitful discussions; having a much longer meeting 
on a single day was a bad idea given the time zones involved.

We have a tentative agenda planned for the workshop, which you can see here:

https://indico.psi.ch/event/15025/timetable/

We are still confirming some talks, so the agenda may still change a bit.  But the baseline plan will be that the workshop will be 

8:30AM-12:30PM (PDT) / 5:30PM-9:30PM (CEST)

on Sept 12-13.  We hope that these times still work for everyone planning to attend.

Cheers,
Thomas


> Hi All,
> 
> Thanks to everyone who filled out the doodle poll.  
> 
> Based on the results we will plan to have this workshop on September 13, at 9AM-1PM (Vancouver) / 6PM-10PM (Geneva).  Apologies to 
> those for whom this is a bad time/day; in particular for MIDAS users in Asia.
> 
> If you would like to present a report at the workshop on your experiment's MIDAS experience, then please email me (lindner@triumf.ca).  
> It would be great to know this in advance so that we can start preparing an agenda.  Feel free to also email me if there are topics 
> that you would like addressed at the workshop.
> 
> Thanks,
> Thomas
> 
> 
> > Dear MIDAS users,
> > 
> > We would like to arrange another MIDAS workshop, following on from previous successful workshops in 2015, 2017 and 2019.  The 
> > goals of the workshop would include:
> > 
> > - Getting updates from MIDAS developers on new features and other changes.
> > - Getting reports from MIDAS users on how they are using MIDAS, what is working and what is not
> > - Making plans for future MIDAS changes and improvements
> > 
> > This would be a one-day virtual workshop, planned for about 4 hours length.  The workshop will probably be after another of 
> > Stefan's visits to TRIUMF.
> > 
> > If you would be interested in participating in such a workshop, please help us choose the date by filling out this doodle poll:
> > 
> > https://doodle.com/meeting/organize/id/dBPVMQJa
> > 
> > Please fill in the poll by June 9, if you are interested.  We will announce the date soon after that.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Thomas

Dear All, 

A final reminder about the MIDAS workshop in 6 days.  A (hopefully) finalized agenda is posted here:

https://indico.psi.ch/event/15025/timetable/

In the overview section of the indico page you will find the zoom link for the workshop.

We plan for the workshop to have a lot of time for discussion. This means that the exact schedule of the workshop is a little uncertain; hence the actual start 
time of each talk will also have some uncertainty.  We have scheduled that each day's session will be around 3.5 hours, but it is possible that the sessions will 
be a little longer in reality.  Stefan and Pierre will try to ensure that we stay roughly on schedule.

Looking forward to seeing people there.

Cheers,
Thomas

> Dear All,
> 
> A quick update on the MIDAS workshop.  Based on the number of planned talks we have made the decision to switch to a two day workshop on Sept 12 and 13 
> (rather than just Sept 13).  We decided 4 hours was not enough time to hear all the reports and have fruitful discussions; having a much longer meeting 
> on a single day was a bad idea given the time zones involved.
> 
> We have a tentative agenda planned for the workshop, which you can see here:
> 
> https://indico.psi.ch/event/15025/timetable/
> 
> We are still confirming some talks, so the agenda may still change a bit.  But the baseline plan will be that the workshop will be 
> 
> 8:30AM-12:30PM (PDT) / 5:30PM-9:30PM (CEST)
> 
> on Sept 12-13.  We hope that these times still work for everyone planning to attend.
> 
> Cheers,
> Thomas
> 
> 
> > Hi All,
> > 
> > Thanks to everyone who filled out the doodle poll.  
> > 
> > Based on the results we will plan to have this workshop on September 13, at 9AM-1PM (Vancouver) / 6PM-10PM (Geneva).  Apologies to 
> > those for whom this is a bad time/day; in particular for MIDAS users in Asia.
> > 
> > If you would like to present a report at the workshop on your experiment's MIDAS experience, then please email me (lindner@triumf.ca).  
> > It would be great to know this in advance so that we can start preparing an agenda.  Feel free to also email me if there are topics 
> > that you would like addressed at the workshop.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Thomas
> > 
> > 
> > > Dear MIDAS users,
> > > 
> > > We would like to arrange another MIDAS workshop, following on from previous successful workshops in 2015, 2017 and 2019.  The 
> > > goals of the workshop would include:
> > > 
> > > - Getting updates from MIDAS developers on new features and other changes.
> > > - Getting reports from MIDAS users on how they are using MIDAS, what is working and what is not
> > > - Making plans for future MIDAS changes and improvements
> > > 
> > > This would be a one-day virtual workshop, planned for about 4 hours length.  The workshop will probably be after another of 
> > > Stefan's visits to TRIUMF.
> > > 
> > > If you would be interested in participating in such a workshop, please help us choose the date by filling out this doodle poll:
> > > 
> > > https://doodle.com/meeting/organize/id/dBPVMQJa
> > > 
> > > Please fill in the poll by June 9, if you are interested.  We will announce the date soon after that.
> > > 
> > > Thanks,
> > > Thomas

Our default configuration of apache httpd logs every request. MIDAS custom web pages can easily make a huge number of RPC calls creating a 
huge log file and filling system disk to 100% capacity

this example has around 100 RPC requests per second. reasonable/unreasonable? available hardware can handle it (web browser, network 
httpd, mhttpd, etc), so we should try to get this to work. perhaps filter the apache httpd logs to exclude mjsonrpc requests? of course we 
can ask the affected experiment why they make so many RPC calls, is there a bug?

[14/May/2023:03:49:01 -0700] 142.90.111.176 TLSv1.2 ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 "POST /?mjsonrpc HTTP/1.1" 299
[14/May/2023:03:49:01 -0700] 142.90.111.176 TLSv1.2 ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 "POST /?mjsonrpc HTTP/1.1" 299
[14/May/2023:03:49:01 -0700] 142.90.111.176 TLSv1.2 ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 "POST /?mjsonrpc HTTP/1.1" 299
[14/May/2023:03:49:01 -0700] 142.90.111.176 TLSv1.2 ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 "POST /?mjsonrpc HTTP/1.1" 299
[14/May/2023:03:49:01 -0700] 142.90.111.176 TLSv1.2 ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 "POST /?mjsonrpc HTTP/1.1" 299

K.O.

> Our default configuration of apache httpd logs every request. MIDAS custom web pages can easily make a huge number of RPC calls creating a 
> huge log file and filling system disk to 100% capacity

perhaps use existing logrotate, add limit on file size (size) and limit of 2 old log files (rotate).

/etc/logrotate.d/httpd

/var/log/httpd/*log { 
    size 100M 
    rotate 2 
    missingok 
    notifempty 
    sharedscripts 
    delaycompress 
    postrotate 
        /bin/systemctl reload httpd.service > /dev/null 2>/dev/null || true 
    endscript 
} 

K.O.

Maybe you remember the problems we had with a custom page in Japan loading it from TRIUMF. It took almost one minute since each RPC request took 
about 1s round-trip. This got fixed by the modb* scheme where the framework actually collects all ODB variables in a custom page and puts them 
into ONE rpc request (making the path an actual array of paths). That reduced the requests from 100 to 1 in the above example. Maybe the same 
could be done in your current case. Pulling one ODB variable at a time is not very efficient.

Stefan

> > Our default configuration of apache httpd logs every request. MIDAS custom web pages can easily make a huge number of RPC calls creating a 
> > huge log file and filling system disk to 100% capacity
> perhaps use existing logrotate, add limit on file size (size) and limit of 2 old log files (rotate).

logrotate was ineffective.

following apache httpd config seems to disable logging of mjsonrpc requests. note that we cannot filter on the "mjsonrpc" string because 
Request_URI excludes the query string (ouch!).

#SetEnvIf Request_URI "^POST /?mjsonrpc.*" nolog 
SetEnvIf Request_Method "POST" envpost 
SetEnvIf Request_URI "^\/$" envuri 
SetEnvIfExpr "-T reqenv('envpost') && -T reqenv('envuri')" envnolog 
 
CustomLog logs/ssl_request_log "%t %h %{SSL_PROTOCOL}x %{SSL_CIPHER}x \"%r\" %b" env=!envnolog 

K.O.

> > > Our default configuration of apache httpd logs every request. MIDAS custom web pages can easily make a huge number of RPC calls creating a 
> > > huge log file and filling system disk to 100% capacity
> > perhaps use existing logrotate, add limit on file size (size) and limit of 2 old log files (rotate).
>  
> CustomLog logs/ssl_request_log "%t %h %{SSL_PROTOCOL}x %{SSL_CIPHER}x \"%r\" %b" env=!envnolog 
> 

TransferLog is not conditional and has to be commented out to stop logging every jsonrpc request.

K.O.

> Our default configuration of apache httpd logs every request.
> MIDAS custom web pages can easily make a huge number of RPC calls creating a 
> huge log file and filling system disk to 100% capacity.

close but no cigar. mhttpd is not running and /var/log got filled to 100% capacity by http error messages. I do not see any apache facility to filter 
error messages, hmm...

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1864421376 Aug 14 12:53 ssl_error_log

[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.416247 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 18608] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.416538 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19686] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.416603 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19681] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.416775 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19588] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.417022 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19311] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.421864 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 18620] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.422051 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19693] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.422199 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19673] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.422222 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 18608] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.422230 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19657] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.422259 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 18633] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.427513 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19686] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.427549 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19681] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.427645 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19588] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.427774 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 19693] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)
[Sun Aug 13 23:53:12.427800 2023] [proxy:error] [pid 18620] AH00940: HTTP: disabled connection for (localhost)

K.O.

> > Our default configuration of apache httpd logs every request.
> > MIDAS custom web pages can easily make a huge number of RPC calls creating a 
> > huge log file and filling system disk to 100% capacity.

added "daily" to /etc/logrotate.d/httpd, default was "weekly", not often enough.

K.O.

> > > Our default configuration of apache httpd logs every request.
> > > MIDAS custom web pages can easily make a huge number of RPC calls creating a 
> > > huge log file and filling system disk to 100% capacity.
> added "daily" to /etc/logrotate.d/httpd, default was "weekly", not often enough.

this should fix it good, make /var/log bigger:

[root@mpmt-test ~]# df
Filesystem      1K-blocks       Used  Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdc2        52403200   52296356     106844 100% /
[root@mpmt-test ~]# 
[root@mpmt-test ~]# xfs_growfs /
data blocks changed from 13107200 to 106367750
[root@mpmt-test ~]# 
[root@mpmt-test ~]# df
Filesystem      1K-blocks       Used  Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdc2       425445400   52300264  373145136  13% /

K.O.

I started to get web browser popups about "midas wants to show notifications, 
block/allow/x". is this a glitch or a new unannounced/undocumented feature? 
google chrome on macos. K.O.

> I started to get web browser popups about "midas wants to show notifications, 
> block/allow/x". is this a glitch or a new unannounced/undocumented feature? 
> google chrome on macos. K.O.

https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/commits/e101dea764c647211c560a68db7ecda1834198db

I did not consider this a significant feature to be announced here. Just a few lines 
of code. You can turn it on/off via the "Config" web page.

Stefan

> > I started to get web browser popups about "midas wants to show notifications, 
> > block/allow/x". is this a glitch or a new unannounced/undocumented feature? 
> > google chrome on macos. K.O.
> 
> https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/commits/e101dea764c647211c560a68db7ecda1834198db
> 
> I did not consider this a significant feature to be announced here. Just a few lines 
> of code. You can turn it on/off via the "Config" web page.
> 
> Stefan

Now as I look at it again I realized that the config check boxes had a bug. I fixed that 
and now the disable should work correctly.

This feature was asked by some people who monitor an experiment and have the browser window 
in the background, also have sound off (large office). So desktop notifications are a good 
thing for them.

Stefan

> This feature was asked by some people ...

"show notifications" popups are strongly associated with disreputable web sites (presumably to 
push spam), it was surprising to see it from midas.

K.O.

> > This feature was asked by some people ...
> 
> "show notifications" popups are strongly associated with disreputable web sites (presumably to 
> push spam), it was surprising to see it from midas.
> 
> K.O.

I agree. But unlike emails (where you get lots of spam as well), you can nicely blacklist/whitelist 
desktop notifications. I suppress all of them except the one for MIDAS. This allows me to watch our 
experiment without staring on the web page all the time.

The main question here is maybe if the desktop notification should be on or off by default (for a 
fresh browser). While you always can change that via the mhttpd "Config" page, the default value is 
chosen by the system. I thought I put it to "on" so people can experience it, and then turn it off if 
they don't like. Having them off by default, most people never would notice this possibility. But I'm 
open to a discussion here.

Stefan

A bit of update to the mlogger. In preparation for more cleanup when Stefan is 
here at TRIUMF.

1) fix overwrite of existing files if run number is reset (check for existing 
files was missing in the LZ4, BZ2 & co data path)
2) made output files read-only (midas, json and checksum files)
3) commented out the old code paths

Currently active per-channel ODB settings:

Active - enable or disable mlogger channel
Type - NOT USED
Filename - output filename template, %d are replaced by run number and subrun 
number, also pipe command for PIPE output
Format - NOT USED
Compression - NOT USED
ODB dump - enable/disable writing ODB dump to data file
ODB dump format - "json" is recommended for new experiments
Log messages - write log messages to output file, 0=off, -1=write all messages
Buffer - "SYSTEM" read events from this event buffer
EventID - "-1" for all events
Trigger Mask - "-1" for all events
Event Limit - stop run after so many events
Byte Limit - stop run after so many bytes
Subrun Byte limit - switch to next subrun file after writing so many bytes. 
actual file size is longer than subrun_byte_limit because of ODB dumps.
Tape Capacity - NOT USED
Subdir Format - if not empty, output file name is DIR/SUBDIR/FILENAME, "%" 
format things are expanded by strftime().
Current Filename - updated by mlogger, contains the currently written file name
Data checksum - checksum before compression, use CRC32C for maximum speed, 
SHA512 for maximum security.
File checksum - checksum after compression, CRC32C is good against accidental 
file corruption, SHA512 is cryptographically strong, good against purposeful 
tampering.
Compress - use "lz4" for maximum speed, bzip2 or pbzip2 for maximum compression. 
no compression and gzip are not recommended. (ZFS may apply lz4 compression to 
uncompressed data).
Output - "NULL" do not write anything, "FILE" write to disk, "FTP" write to FTP 
server, "ROOT" write via the mlogger ROOT writer (docs?), "PIPE" pipe data 
through an external command (i.e. for bzip2 compression).
Gzip compression - gzip compression flags (see gzip docs, 1=max speed, 9=max 
compression)
Bzip2 compression - if non-zero, bzip2 compression level (see "bzip2 -h", 1=max 
speed, 9=max compression)
Pbzip2 num cpu - number of CPUs used by parallel bzip2 compression, pbzip2 -p 
flag
Pbzip2 compression - if non-zero, pbzip2 compresison level (see "pbzip2 -h", 
default is 9=max compression)
Pbzip2 options - any additional pbzip2 options, i.e. -l, -m, -p, etc.

Currently active /Logger options:

Data Dir - where to write all output files, if empty, cm_get_path() is used.
Message file date format - not used in mlogger
Message dir - not used in mlogger
Write data - if set to "no", midas file, runlog, etc will not be written.
ODB Dump - at run stop, save odb to disk
ODB Dump File - file name for "ODB Dump" save file. "%d" is replaced by run 
number. "json" format is recommended for new experiments.
ODB Last Dump File - at run start, save ODB to disk. "json" format is 
recommended for new experiments.
Auto restart - run stopped by time limit or event limit is automatically 
restarted
Auto restart delay - wair for some many seconds before restarting the run
Tape message - NOT USED
Run duration - stop the run after so many seconds
Next subrun - change from "no" to "yes" to force mlogger to open a new subrun 
file (should this be per-channel?)
Subrun duration - open new subrun file after so many seconds (should this be 
per-channel?)
History dir - not used in mlogger
Detached transition - "no" use the normal multithreaded transtions 
(recommended), "yes" use mtransition helper to stop and restart runs. sometimes 
files because mtransition is not in the user $PATH or wrong version of 
mtransition is in the user $PATH.

K.O.

This is an important improvement, should have a post of it's own. K.O.

> > > RFE filed:
> > > https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/367/odb-should-be-saved-to-disk-
periodically
> > 
> > Implemented and closed: https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/367/odb-
should-be-saved-to-disk-periodically
> > 
> > Stefan
> 
> Stefan's comments from the closed bug report:
> 
> Ok I implemented some periodic flushing. Here is what I did:
> 
> Created
> 
> /System/Flush/Flush period : TID_UINT32 /System/Flush/Last flush : TID_UINT32
> 
> which control the flushing to disk. The default value for “Flush period” is 60 
seconds or one minute.
> 
> All clients call db_flush_database() through their cm_yield() function
> db_flush_database() checks the “Last flush” and only flushes the ODB when the 
period has expired. This test is 
> done inside the ODB semaphore so that we don’t get a race condigiton
> If the period has expired, db_flush_database() calls ss_shm_flush()
> ss_shm_flush() tries to allocate a buffer of the shared memory. If the 
allocation is not successful (out of 
> memory), ss_shm_flush() writes directly to the binary file as before.
> If the allocation is successful, ss_shm_flush() copies the share memory to a 
buffer and passes this buffer to a 
> dedicated thread which writes the buffer to the binary file. This causes 
ss_shm_flush() to return immediately and 
> not block the calling program during the disk write operation.
> Added back the “if (destroy_flag) ss_shm_flush()” so that the ODB is flushed 
for sure before the shared memory 
> gets deleted.
> This means now that under normal circumstances, exiting programs like odbedit 
do NOT flush the ODB. This allows to 
> call many “odbedit -c” in a row without the flush penalty. Nevertheless, the 
ODB then gets flushed by other 
> clients latest 60 seconds (or whatever the flush period is) after odbedit 
exits.
> 
> Please note that ODB flushing has two purposes:
> 
> When all programs exit, we need a persistent storage for the ODB. In most 
experiments this only happens very 
> seldom. Maybe at the end of a beam time period.
> If the computer crashes, a recent version of the ODB is kept on disk to 
simplify recovery after the crash.
> Since crashes are not so often (during production periods we have maybe one 
hardware failure every few years) the 
> flushing of the ODB too often does not make sense and just consumes resources. 
Flushing does also not help from 
> corrupted ODBs, since the binary image will also get corrupted. So the only 
reason for periodic flushes is to ease 
> recovery after a total crash. I put the default to 60 seconds, but if people 
are really paranoid they can decrease 
> it to 10 seconds or so. Or increase it to 600 seconds if their system does not 
crash every week and disks are 
> slow.
> 
> I made a dedicated branch feature/periodic_odb_flush so people can test the 
new functionality. If there are no 
> complaints within the next few days, I will merge that into develop.
> 
> Stefan

Anybody some idea what the maximum ODB size can be? In the old days, the linux 
kernels had a severe limit on shared memory of usually 8MB, but in the age of 
64GB RAM being a standard, we should be able to grow bigger. Tried

odbinit -s 1024MB --cleanup

which went through without complain, even put that value in to .ODB_SIZE.TXT, but 
when I started odbedit doing "mem", I only see a size of 1MB. Probably somewhere 
deep inside we have a limit which prevents the user to create very large ODBs, 
but this should be mentioned more prominently in odbinit. Like "size too large, 
maximum allowd is xxx MB".

Stefan

> Anybody some idea what the maximum ODB size can be?

It turns out ODB size limit is hardwired on db_open_database() at 100 Mbytes.

I now committed an improved error message for this.

I confirm that "odbinit -s 100MB" works and creates ODB with 50 Mbyte data area and 50 
Mbyte key area.

> in the age of 64GB RAM being a standard, we should be able to grow bigger ...

I agree, I think we can safely bump the limit from 100 Mbytes to 1 Gbyte, maybe 1.5 or 
1.99 Gbytes. Above that we run into 32-bit/31-bit cleanliness problems.

And creating extra large 1 GB ODB but using only a few megabytes will not waste any 
RAM, because the .ODB.SHM file is demand-paged and non-used parts of ODB will not be 
mapped into RAM. (It will waste disk space, file .ODB.SHM will be 1 GByte size).

However, 1 GByte (FPGA based) and 4-8 GByte (Raspberry Pi & co) machines are again
becoming popular and relevant for running MIDAS, and they have very slow "disk" 
subsystems, with NAND, SD and USB flash, so we should not go crazy here.

> odbinit -s 1024MB --cleanup

there is a bug in odbinit, if initial odbinit fails, ODB with default size is creates, 
and original rejected ODB size is written to .ODB_SIZE.TXT (an inconsistency).

bitbucket bug 328

> [ how do I resize ODB ??? ]

we need odbresize. bitbucket bug 329.

K.O.

Hi all,

> I agree, I think we can safely bump the limit from 100 Mbytes to 1 Gbyte, maybe 1.5 or 
> 1.99 Gbytes. Above that we run into 32-bit/31-bit cleanliness problems.
We just went in and changed: int odb_size_limit = INT_MAX;//100*1000*1000; in odb.cxx. And we could create ODBs with 1GB and 1.5 GB.

Since the DecodeSize function in odbinit has also foreseen yottabytes ;) (const char units[] = {'k', 'M', 'G', 'T', 'P', 'E', 'Z', 'Y'};) we think going to GB for the maximum ODB size would be create.

> there is a bug in odbinit, if initial odbinit fails, ODB with default size is creates, 
> and original rejected ODB size is written to .ODB_SIZE.TXT (an inconsistency).
Can#t we go with the maximum size here if the user inputs a larger size? So just below       printf("Checking ODB size...\n"); one could check for the odb_size_limit. In general one could move the odb_size_limit to midas.h so its not only available in odb.cxx.

Best,
Marius

> > I agree, I think we can safely bump the limit from 100 Mbytes to 1 Gbyte, maybe 1.5 or 
> > 1.99 Gbytes. Above that we run into 32-bit/31-bit cleanliness problems.
>
> We just went in and changed: int odb_size_limit = INT_MAX;//100*1000*1000; in odb.cxx.
>

This is change is wrong. As I wrote, ODB is not 64-bit clean and it is not 32-bit clean. We think is is 31-bit clean, so maximum size would be slightly less than 2 Gbytes.

> And we could create ODBs with 1GB and 1.5 GB.

Congratulations. created != "it works". for proper test, you should fill it with 1.5 GB of stuff, save to json file, reload from json file, save to a different json file and compare that they have same contents (minus timestamps).

We could spend a lot of time making odb 32-bit clean and give you 4GB-max ODB, but would it be useful? For large ODB, "save to .json" already takes a long time ("save to .xml" is slower, "save to .odb" ditto, also buggy). We already have complaints that runs take forever to start because mlogger 
takes a long time to write the ODB save file.

P.S. 64-bit clean ODB will be binary incompatible, all internal pointers are 32-bit right now.

K.O.

> This is change is wrong. As I wrote, ODB is not 64-bit clean and it is not 32-bit clean. We think is is 31-bit clean, so maximum size would be slightly less than 2 Gbytes.

I just wanted to show that changing it and creating bigger ODBs is in general possible.

My main intention was to trigger the discussion again. I also think in general 1GB is enough. But for our applications sometimes 100MB is just on the edge. 



> Congratulations. created != "it works". for proper test, you should fill it with 1.5 GB of stuff, save to json file, reload from json file, save to a different json file and compare that they have same contents (minus timestamps).

You’re right we did not properly test it. I will run this test with a 1GB ODB.



> We could spend a lot of time making odb 32-bit clean and give you 4GB-max ODB, but would it be useful? For large ODB, "save to .json" already takes a long time ("save to .xml" is slower, "save to .odb" ditto, also buggy). We already have complaints that runs take forever to start because mlogger 

> takes a long time to write the ODB save file.

I also agree that going in and making it 32-bit or even 64-bit clean is not worth the effort.

Also concerning the writing speed of the logger etc I am fully with you.

However, having the freedom to choose a bit bigger ODB would be great.



You said the writing into .odb is buggy. Do you mean it’s buggy in general or only in this specific case?

We save the ODB most of the time in the .odb format. 



Cheers,

Marius

> You said the writing into .odb is buggy. Do you mean it’s buggy in general or only in this specific case?
> We save the ODB most of the time in the .odb format. 

I recommend JSON. Main advantage is you can read it using JSON decoder available for any language, no need to write custom code.

Other than that, the main issue is encoding of strings. For ODB this is key names and string values.

JSON was the first to standardize escape characters what can encode all valid UTF-8 UNICODE strings,
the system of escape characters is clean, easy to understand and easy to implement. https://www.json.org/json-en.html

XML is not as well defined as JSON, i.e. go and try to find the XML BNF grammar. I am not sure if the MIDAS XML encoder
and decoder is fully UTF-8 clean, and if some unlucky combinations of characters break string encoding or decoding. This
is usually tested using a fuzzer (generates all possible, unlucky and unlikely string values). Most suspicious
would be quotes, and square and angle brackets. If some character combinations break encoding or decoding, likely
this cannot be fixed in MIDAS without breaking backwards self-compatibility (will not read old ODB files correctly).

Same applies for the ODB format, except that it is even more ad-hoc. Again, any problems are hard to fix without
breaking backward self-compatibility.

In addition, in the past, the ODB and XML decoders had trouble with very long strings, this has been
fixed some time ago.

K.O.

my vote is to bump the ODB size limit to 1999*1000*1000 (not quite 2GB). but this needs to be tested. especially save and restore from ODB, XML and JSON files, including how long it takes to save and load a 1.9GB ODB. K.O.

> my vote is to bump the ODB size limit to 1999*1000*1000 (not quite 2GB). but this needs to be tested. especially save and restore from ODB, XML and JSON files, including how long it takes to save and load a 1.9GB ODB. K.O.

I had some fun with python and created a test script which can be executed in the MIDASSYS/online folder (test_odb.py). I did not really normalize the time so it will be different at different systems but I guess the trend is important (see create_time.pdf).
What is surprising to me is that even that I only write one STRING key to the time increases. Is this maybe related to what Stefan said about the run start - so that odbedit needs some time to load the bigger ODB?
Second thing is that also the creation / storing and load time is increasing. Should this be or is there a bug in the code I use or again is this related to the previous point?

The test of comparing the ODB after store / load / store already fails for the json format. I know I only test if the dicts are the same, so for timestamps this already fails.
But what is strange here is that sometimes the test works sometimes not and its different from run to run.

I will try to improve the test a bit more but for a short update this is how it looks so fare.

Best,
Marius

> Is this maybe related to what Stefan said about the run start - so that odbedit needs some time to load the bigger ODB?

At the run start mlogger writes the ODB to the .mid file. This needs conversion (binary ODB -> XML ASCII) which can take time.
This does NOT depend on the ODB size, but on the ODB *content*. Every key in the ODB takes time to convert. So if your ODB as 1.5 GB
but only a few keys, this is still fast. Only if you have 200 million keys int he ODB, then mlogger takes lots of time to convert
200 million values to XML or JSON strings.

Stefan

> At the run start mlogger writes the ODB to the .mid file. This needs conversion (binary ODB -> XML ASCII) which can take time.
> This does NOT depend on the ODB size, but on the ODB *content*. Every key in the ODB takes time to convert. So if your ODB as 1.5 GB
> but only a few keys, this is still fast. Only if you have 200 million keys int he ODB, then mlogger takes lots of time to convert
> 200 million values to XML or JSON strings.
This was also my assumption. Is this the same for odbedit -c save FILE?
Because this is what I tested with the script and there one can see in the plot that the time increases to write the file if the ODB size increases.
The content of the ODB is always the same - one STRING key in the directory Test.

Best,
Marius

> > Is this maybe related to what Stefan said about the run start - so that odbedit needs some time to load the bigger ODB?
> 
> At the run start mlogger writes the ODB to the .mid file. This needs conversion (binary ODB -> XML ASCII) which can take time.
> This does NOT depend on the ODB size, but on the ODB *content*.
>

Yes and no. They must be storing more than 100 Mbytes of stuff in ODB, if they are asking to bump ODB size from 100 Mbyte to 2 GByte ODB.

On the MIDAS, side, though, we have to plan for the worst case, if max ODB size 1.9 GB and it is full of data,
and mlogger (and odbedit save and load) take 10-30 seconds, then at least all timeouts (watchdog timeout, RPC timeout, etc)
must be increased accordingly.

K.O.

> Congratulations. created != "it works".

Two other tings to consider:

1) The ODB shared memory is dumped into a binary file (".ODB.SHM") after the last client finished and read if the first client starts, to get it persistent. 
So this could slow down starting and stopping, but only the first client, so I guess it's not an issue.

2) Traditionally, the ODB gets dumped to the .mid file at the beginning and end of every run, so that one know the exact configuration of the experiment
for offline analysis. This can be turned off of course, but most experiments use it. If the ODB is dumped in any ASCII format, this can take quite long.
Assume it takes 10 seconds at the beginning of each run, and we take a run every five minutes. Then we loose 48 mins of precious beam time every day.

Best,
Stefan

> > Congratulations. created != "it works".
> 
> Two other tings to consider:
> 
> 1) The ODB shared memory is dumped into a binary file (".ODB.SHM") after the last client finished and read if the first client starts, to get it persistent. 
> So this could slow down starting and stopping, but only the first client, so I guess it's not an issue.
>

typical disk writing speed is 100-1000 Mbytes/sec, so writing 1 GB .ODB.SHM will take 1-10 seconds. NFS over 1gige network is 100 Mbytes/sec, so 10 seconds to 
write .ODB.SHM. embedded ARM write speed to SD flash can be as low as 10 Mbytes/sec, so up to 100 seconds.

> 
> 2) Traditionally, the ODB gets dumped to the .mid file at the beginning and end of every run, so that one know the exact configuration of the experiment
> for offline analysis. This can be turned off of course, but most experiments use it. If the ODB is dumped in any ASCII format, this can take quite long.
> Assume it takes 10 seconds at the beginning of each run, and we take a run every five minutes. Then we loose 48 mins of precious beam time every day.
> 

new default is to save as JSON, (as of my last measurement) JSON encoder is faster than the XML (and ODB?) encoder, by default result is compressed by GZIP-1 (66 
Mbytes/sec is my old benchmark, should remeasure on new DDR5 machines), compressed JSON is written .mid.gz file at disk speed (as above). Alternatively, use LZ4 
compression, runs roughly at memcpy() speed, less compression, written to .mid.lz4 at disk speed.

if data storage is ZFS, ZFS built-in LZ4 compression is now enabled by default, so result writing uncompressed .mid file (no compression of ODB dump), should be 
roughly same as when using MIDAS LZ4 compression and writing .mid.lz4.

bottom line, I need to remeasure gzip and lz4 compression speeds on new computers (DDR4 AMD 5000 series and DDR5 AMD 7000 series).

K.O.

> > 1) The ODB shared memory is dumped into a binary file (".ODB.SHM") after the last client finished ...

correction: ODB shared memory is saved to .ODB.SHM each time a client stops, this is db_close_database().

I have just run into a problem with this in the DRAGON experiment. At begin and end of run they run
a script that does a large number of "odbedit" calls to read stuff from ODB and it was taking a very long time.
Each odbedit invocation was taking about 1 second, starting odbedit is quick, stopping odbedit takes about 1 second.

It turns out each invocation of odbedit saves .ODB.SHM, ODB was 100 Mbytes size, home disk is an HDD (~100-200 Mbytes/sec writing speed), so yes, about 1 second to 
stop odbedit.

Solution was to reduce ODB size from 100 Mbytes to 10 Mbytes, odbedit now run quickly, begin and end of run scripts run quickly. problem solved.

K.O.

P.S. no, I am not the dragon experiment, no, I did not write those scripts, no, I will not rewrite them, persons who wrote them are long gone, no, the persons running 
dragon today will not be rewriting them.

> correction: ODB shared memory is saved to .ODB.SHM each time a client stops, this is db_close_database().

The original design of the midas shared memory (back in the 1990's) was that the ODB shared memory file gets
only saved into the .ODB.SHM when the *last* client exits. This ensures to keep the ODB persistent when the
shared memory gets deleted. I vaguely remember I put something in like:

db_close_database()
...
  destroy_flag = (pheader->num_clients == 0);

  if (destroy_flag)
     ss_shm_flush(pheader->name, pdb->shm_adr, pdb->shm_size, pdb->shm_handle);
...

Now I see that the "if (destory_flag)" is missing. Not sure if it was removed once, or if it actually never
was there. But I see no point in flushing the ODB when a client ends. We need the flushing only before the
shared memory gets deleted. We we have to ensure that the share memory and the binary dump file stay in sync
(like if all midas clients die at the same time), we could add some code to flush the ODB like once per minute,
but not attach it to db_close_database(). I know several experiments using "odbedit -c xxx" in vast quantities,
so all these experiments would then benefit.

Note: Mu3e at PSI also uses 100 MB ODB, and they really need it.

Thoughts and opinions?

Best,
Stefan

> > correction: ODB shared memory is saved to .ODB.SHM each time a client stops, this is db_close_database().
> 
> The original design of the midas shared memory (back in the 1990's) was that the ODB shared memory file gets
> only saved into the .ODB.SHM when the *last* client exits. This ensures to keep the ODB persistent when the
> shared memory gets deleted. I vaguely remember I put something in like:
> 
> db_close_database()
> ...
>   destroy_flag = (pheader->num_clients == 0);
> 
>   if (destroy_flag)
>      ss_shm_flush(pheader->name, pdb->shm_adr, pdb->shm_size, pdb->shm_handle);

I remember the same, but I tracked it down in git to the very first commit, and there is no if() there,
odb is saved to .ODB.SHM on every client shutdown, not just the last client. I guess we both misremebered.

What's more, ss_shm_flush() is done while holding the ODB semaphore, so all other midas programs that try to access
odb at the same time (including the mserver) will stall until write() and close() return. at least we do not fsync(),
and there is no waiting until data is committed to physical media.

$ git annotate 3bb04af4d^ src/odb.c
...
ef8320177	(Stefan Ritt	1998-10-08 13:46:02 +0000	875)  destroy_flag = (pheader->num_clients == 0);
ef8320177	(Stefan Ritt	1998-10-08 13:46:02 +0000	876)
ef8320177	(Stefan Ritt	1998-10-08 13:46:02 +0000	877)  /* flush shared memory to disk */
ef8320177	(Stefan Ritt	1998-10-08 13:46:02 +0000	878)  ss_flush_shm(pheader->name, pheader, sizeof(DATABASE_HEADER)+2*pheader->data_size);
ef8320177	(Stefan Ritt	1998-10-08 13:46:02 +0000	879)
ef8320177	(Stefan Ritt	1998-10-08 13:46:02 +0000	880)  /* unmap shared memory, delete it if we are the last */
ef8320177	(Stefan Ritt	1998-10-08 13:46:02 +0000	881)  ss_close_shm(pheader->name, pheader,
ef8320177	(Stefan Ritt	1998-10-08 13:46:02 +0000	882)               _database[hDB-1].shm_handle, destroy_flag);
...

K.O.

> I remember the same, but I tracked it down in git to the very first commit, and there is no if() there,
> odb is saved to .ODB.SHM on every client shutdown, not just the last client. I guess we both misremebered.

I confirm. Really strange how your mind can trick you. I'm absolutely sure I had this planned originally (1995?), but it got never implemented.

Well, never too late. So I added the "if" and committed to develop. I did a quick test and things seem to work fine here. Actually programs stop 
a bit faster now. So please everybody give it a try and report back here.

BTW, how do I resize the ODB. I remember we discussed this some time ago, and concluded that odbedit needs a resize flag. Has this even been 
done? If not, what is the "official" way to resize the ODB. We had some documentation about that some time ago, but I can't find it anymore.

Stefan

> BTW, how do I resize the ODB. I remember we discussed this some time ago, and concluded that odbedit needs a resize flag. Has this even been 
> done? If not, what is the "official" way to resize the ODB. We had some documentation about that some time ago, but I can't find it anymore.

I guess this is still not done and the issue is still open: https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/329/need-odbresize
I guess if we touch this maybe the problem with the wrong size should be also fixed: https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/328/odbinit-s-1024mb-creates-odb-with-wrong

Best,
Marius

> > BTW, how do I resize the ODB.

ODB cannot be resized "online". Everything has to stop, save content to odb.json, get rid of old ODB.SHM, ensure ODB shared memory is destroyed (SysV or POSIX shared memory), 
create new ODB with new size, load odb.json. Feel free to punch this into chatgpt > odbresize.cxx, commit, test, push.

> I remember we discussed this some time ago, and concluded that odbedit needs a resize flag.

ODB cannot be resized online. ODB API has ODB clients holding ODB handles which are pointers (offsets) into ODB shared memory.

> Has this even been done?
> I guess this is still not done and the issue is still open: https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/329/need-odbresize
> I guess if we touch this maybe the problem with the wrong size should be also fixed: https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/328/odbinit-s-1024mb-creates-odb-with-wrong

please contribute 14 distraction-free days to my patreon. thanks in advance!

K.O.

> > I remember the same, but I tracked it down in git to the very first commit, and there is no if() there,
> > odb is saved to .ODB.SHM on every client shutdown, not just the last client. I guess we both misremebered.

small problem. build an experiment, start taking data, observe how ODB is never saved to disk because the "last client" never stops. as bonus, crash 
the computer, observe how all changes to ODB are now lost. if mlogger is configured to save odb.json at the end of run, and to write ODB dumps at 
begin and end of every data file, you can recover some of the lost data.

for better effect, ODB should be dumped to disk at periodic intervals. but. current implementation writes odb to disk while holding the ODB 
semaphore, which means all ODB access stops for the duration, specifically, there will be gaps in the history because mlogger cannot read history 
data from ODB.

a better implementation could take the ODB lock, make a copy of ODB shared memory, release the ODB lock, complete writing to disk without holding the 
lock. protection is needed against 100 midas programs trying to do this all at the same time. computers with 0.5 GB RAM (many ARM FPGA SoCs) will be 
limited to ~100 Mbyte ODB). plus deal with memory allocation failures when taking a copy of a 2GB ODB.

in theory, the mmap() shared memory (already implemented in midas) does this automatically, but we lose control
over disk writes, we see some OSes write odb to disk "too often" and at wrong times, i.e. while we are in the middle
of creating or deleting something. current sequence of open(), atomic write() and close() ensures ODB.SHM always
contains a valid odb. (minus loss of OS and disk caches to crash or power loss).

K.O.

> small problem. build an experiment, start taking data, observe how ODB is never saved to disk because the "last client" never stops. as bonus, crash 
> the computer, observe how all changes to ODB are now lost. if mlogger is configured to save odb.json at the end of run, and to write ODB dumps at 
> begin and end of every data file, you can recover some of the lost 

The new behavior is not much worse than before. Assume 10 programs running happily for days, computer crashes, all ODB changes lost. 
So indeed a periodic flush without holding the lock might be best. Use a semaphore to prevent all programs flushing at the same time, or put
the flush only in the logger after an end of run.

Stefan

> 
> > small problem. build an experiment, start taking data, observe how ODB is never saved to disk because the "last client" never stops. as bonus, crash 
> > the computer, observe how all changes to ODB are now lost. if mlogger is configured to save odb.json at the end of run, and to write ODB dumps at 
> > begin and end of every data file, you can recover some of the lost 
> 
> The new behavior is not much worse than before. Assume 10 programs running happily for days, computer crashes, all ODB changes lost. 
> So indeed a periodic flush without holding the lock might be best. Use a semaphore to prevent all programs flushing at the same time, or put
> the flush only in the logger after an end of run.

are you sure? when/how often does "last midas program finishes" happen? it does not happen on a system crash, not on power loss, not on "shutdown -r now" 
(I am pretty sure). In the experiments you run, how often do you shut down all programs (and check that you did not forget one somehow)?

sanity check. dragon experiment, very active, .ODB.SHM timestamp is 1 second old. not-very-active agmini, today is June 13th, timestamp of .ODB.SHM is June 
2nd. inactive TACTIC, timestamp of .ODB.SHM is May 16th.

so yes, not great, but in the new scheme, ODB.SHM timestamps would probably be from 2021 or 2020.

my vote is to undo this change, it is dangerous because it causes odb to be saved to ODB.SHM never.

K.O.

> are you sure? when/how often does "last midas program finishes" happen? it does not happen on a system crash, not on power loss, not on "shutdown -r now" 
> (I am pretty sure). In the experiments you run, how often do you shut down all programs (and check that you did not forget one somehow)?

Indeed this is almost never the case, maybe once per months. On the other hand, we have a complete crash of the os maybe once a year. Most of the time the programs 
run continuously (we do not need odbedit), so our timestamp is typically one or two days old, so not good either.

> my vote is to undo this change, it is dangerous because it causes odb to be saved to ODB.SHM never.

My vote is to flush the odb either periodically or after each run.

Stefan 

> 
> > are you sure? when/how often does "last midas program finishes" happen? it does not happen on a system crash, not on power loss, not on "shutdown -r now" 
> > (I am pretty sure). In the experiments you run, how often do you shut down all programs (and check that you did not forget one somehow)?
> 
> Indeed this is almost never the case, maybe once per months. On the other hand, we have a complete crash of the os maybe once a year. Most of the time the programs 
> run continuously (we do not need odbedit), so our timestamp is typically one or two days old, so not good either.
> 
> > my vote is to undo this change, it is dangerous because it causes odb to be saved to ODB.SHM never.
> 
> My vote is to flush the odb either periodically or after each run.
> 

So we are in agreement.

RFE filed:
https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/367/odb-should-be-saved-to-disk-periodically

Dangerous change reverted:
60e4c44ad66346b89ba057391acf7a02890049be

K.O.

bash-3.2$ git diff
diff --git a/src/odb.cxx b/src/odb.cxx
index 0d3b88c2..d104ff28 100644
--- a/src/odb.cxx
+++ b/src/odb.cxx
@@ -2199,7 +2199,14 @@ INT db_close_database(HNDLE hDB)
       destroy_flag = (pheader->num_clients == 0);
 
       /* flush shared memory to disk */
-      if (destroy_flag)
+
+      /* if we save ODB to disk only after last client finishes, we will never save ODB to disk
+         in most experiments - none of them ever completely stop MIDAS in normal operation.
+         as result, all changes to ODB contents will be lost on system crash, power loss
+         or normal reboot. see https://daq00.triumf.ca/elog-midas/Midas/2539
+         K.O. June 2023. */
+
+      if (1 || destroy_flag)
          ss_shm_flush(pheader->name, pdb->shm_adr, pdb->shm_size, pdb->shm_handle);
 
       strlcpy(xname, pheader->name, sizeof(xname));

K.O.

> RFE filed:
> https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/367/odb-should-be-saved-to-disk-periodically

Implemented and closed: https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/367/odb-should-be-saved-to-disk-periodically

Stefan

> > RFE filed:
> > https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/367/odb-should-be-saved-to-disk-periodically
> 
> Implemented and closed: https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/367/odb-should-be-saved-to-disk-periodically
> 
> Stefan

Stefan's comments from the closed bug report:

Ok I implemented some periodic flushing. Here is what I did:

Created

/System/Flush/Flush period : TID_UINT32 /System/Flush/Last flush : TID_UINT32

which control the flushing to disk. The default value for “Flush period” is 60 seconds or one minute.

All clients call db_flush_database() through their cm_yield() function
db_flush_database() checks the “Last flush” and only flushes the ODB when the period has expired. This test is 
done inside the ODB semaphore so that we don’t get a race condigiton
If the period has expired, db_flush_database() calls ss_shm_flush()
ss_shm_flush() tries to allocate a buffer of the shared memory. If the allocation is not successful (out of 
memory), ss_shm_flush() writes directly to the binary file as before.
If the allocation is successful, ss_shm_flush() copies the share memory to a buffer and passes this buffer to a 
dedicated thread which writes the buffer to the binary file. This causes ss_shm_flush() to return immediately and 
not block the calling program during the disk write operation.
Added back the “if (destroy_flag) ss_shm_flush()” so that the ODB is flushed for sure before the shared memory 
gets deleted.
This means now that under normal circumstances, exiting programs like odbedit do NOT flush the ODB. This allows to 
call many “odbedit -c” in a row without the flush penalty. Nevertheless, the ODB then gets flushed by other 
clients latest 60 seconds (or whatever the flush period is) after odbedit exits.

Please note that ODB flushing has two purposes:

When all programs exit, we need a persistent storage for the ODB. In most experiments this only happens very 
seldom. Maybe at the end of a beam time period.
If the computer crashes, a recent version of the ODB is kept on disk to simplify recovery after the crash.
Since crashes are not so often (during production periods we have maybe one hardware failure every few years) the 
flushing of the ODB too often does not make sense and just consumes resources. Flushing does also not help from 
corrupted ODBs, since the binary image will also get corrupted. So the only reason for periodic flushes is to ease 
recovery after a total crash. I put the default to 60 seconds, but if people are really paranoid they can decrease 
it to 10 seconds or so. Or increase it to 600 seconds if their system does not crash every week and disks are 
slow.

I made a dedicated branch feature/periodic_odb_flush so people can test the new functionality. If there are no 
complaints within the next few days, I will merge that into develop.

Stefan

Hi,

some minutes ago I published a PR for PostgreSQL support I developed
at INFN-Napoli for Darkside experiment...

I don't know if you receive a notification about this PR and in doubt
I wrote this message...

Thanks in advance,
Gennaro

> some minutes ago I published a PR for PostgreSQL support I developed
> at INFN-Napoli for Darkside experiment...
> 
> I don't know if you receive a notification about this PR and in doubt
> I wrote this message...

Hi, Gennaro, thank you for the very useful contribution. I saw the previous version 
of your pull request and everything looked quite good. But that pull request was 
for an older version of midas and it would not have applied cleanly to the current 
version. I will take a look at your updated pull request. In theory it should only 
add the Postgres class and modify a few other places in history_schema.cxx and have 
no changes to anything else. (if you need those changes, it should be a separate 
pull request).

Also I am curious what benefits and drawbacks of Postgres vs mysql/mariadb you have 
observed for storing and using midas history data.

K.O.

Hi Konstantin,
thanks for this update |

My main interest for PostgreSQL is usage of TimescaleDB
(https://github.com/timescale/timescaledb) a PostgreSQL extension that
makes possible usage of downsampling functions on time-series...

here at INFN-Napoli we have a large history dataset that we manage
with MIDAS history and MySQL tables. We have a lot of issues 
(wait time, browser hangs, crashes) when we use MIDAS history plot 
pages on large time period because the Javascript web page try to 
download million of records in order to display them on a plot of 
(max) 2000 pixel width...

with native downsampling we can reduce a large dataset keeping the
"shape" of the curve using only the points needed by the plot area;

in TimescaleDB there is "lttb" ( Largest Triangle Three Bucket) a very 
nice and impressive downsampling function that preserve very well the
shape of the series.

If you are interested to see a lttb at work on some data you can open this page:
   https://www.base.is/flot

In next days I will work to add TimescaleDB backend to MIDAS history (it will be
similar to PostgreSQL backend) and we can discuss on how to add these 
downsampling features to history plot web pages, I already developed some
solutions and I will be happy to share them with MIDAS community;

Cheers,
Gennaro

> > some minutes ago I published a PR for PostgreSQL support I developed
> > at INFN-Napoli for Darkside experiment...
> > 
> > I don't know if you receive a notification about this PR and in doubt
> > I wrote this message...
> 
> Hi, Gennaro, thank you for the very useful contribution. I saw the previous version 
> of your pull request and everything looked quite good. But that pull request was 
> for an older version of midas and it would not have applied cleanly to the current 
> version. I will take a look at your updated pull request. In theory it should only 
> add the Postgres class and modify a few other places in history_schema.cxx and have 
> no changes to anything else. (if you need those changes, it should be a separate 
> pull request).
> 
> Also I am curious what benefits and drawbacks of Postgres vs mysql/mariadb you have 
> observed for storing and using midas history data.
> 
> K.O.

Hi,
I have updated the PR with a new one that includes TimescaleDB support and some
changes to mhistory.js to support downsampling queries...

Cheers,
Gennaro

> > some minutes ago I published a PR for PostgreSQL support I developed
> > at INFN-Napoli for Darkside experiment...
> > 
> > I don't know if you receive a notification about this PR and in doubt
> > I wrote this message...
> 
> Hi, Gennaro, thank you for the very useful contribution. I saw the previous version 
> of your pull request and everything looked quite good. But that pull request was 
> for an older version of midas and it would not have applied cleanly to the current 
> version. I will take a look at your updated pull request. In theory it should only 
> add the Postgres class and modify a few other places in history_schema.cxx and have 
> no changes to anything else. (if you need those changes, it should be a separate 
> pull request).
> 
> Also I am curious what benefits and drawbacks of Postgres vs mysql/mariadb you have 
> observed for storing and using midas history data.
> 
> K.O.

Hi,
is there any news regarding this pull request ? 
(https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/pull-requests/30)

If you agree to merge I can resolve conflicts that now 
(after two months) are listed...

Regards,
Gennaro

> 
> Hi,
> I have updated the PR with a new one that includes TimescaleDB support and some
> changes to mhistory.js to support downsampling queries...
> 
> Cheers,
> Gennaro
> 
> > > some minutes ago I published a PR for PostgreSQL support I developed
> > > at INFN-Napoli for Darkside experiment...
> > > 
> > > I don't know if you receive a notification about this PR and in doubt
> > > I wrote this message...
> > 
> > Hi, Gennaro, thank you for the very useful contribution. I saw the previous version 
> > of your pull request and everything looked quite good. But that pull request was 
> > for an older version of midas and it would not have applied cleanly to the current 
> > version. I will take a look at your updated pull request. In theory it should only 
> > add the Postgres class and modify a few other places in history_schema.cxx and have 
> > no changes to anything else. (if you need those changes, it should be a separate 
> > pull request).
> > 
> > Also I am curious what benefits and drawbacks of Postgres vs mysql/mariadb you have 
> > observed for storing and using midas history data.
> > 
> > K.O.

> is there any news regarding this pull request ? 
> (https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/pull-requests/30)

apologies for taking a very long time to review the proposed changes.

the main problem with this pull request remains, it tangles together too many changes to the code and I cannot simply 
say "this is okey", merge and commit it.

example of unrelated change is diff of mlogger.cxx, change of function in: "db_get_value(hDB, 0, "/Logger/Multithread 
transitions" ... )". there is also unrelated changes to whitespace sprinkled around.

can you review your diffs again and try to remove as much unrelated and unnecessary changes as you can?

I could do this for you, and merge my version, but next time you merge base midas, you will have a collision.

unrelated change of function is introduction of something called "downsampling", what is the purpose of this? How is it 
different from requesting binned data? Is it just a kludge to reduce the data size? Before we merge it, can you post a 
description/discussion to this forum here? (as a separate topic, separate from discussion of PostgreSQL merge).

the changes to add PostgreSQL so fat look reasonable:
- CMakeLists, is always painful but if you do same a MySQL, should be okey, we always end up rejigging this several 
times before it works everywhere.
- history.h, ok, minus changes for adding the "downsample" feature
- mlogger.cxx, changes are too tangled with "downsample" feature, cannot review
- SetDownsample() API is defective, should have separate Get() and Set() functions
- history_common.cxx, please do not add downsampling code to history providers that do not/will not support it.
- history_odbc.cxx, please do not change it. it does not support downsampling and never will.
- history.cxx, ditto
- mjsonrpc.cxx, history API is changed, we must know: is new JS compatible with old mhttpd? is old JS compatible with 
new mhttpd? (mixed versions are very common in practice). if there is incompatibility, can you recoded it to be 
compatible?
- history_schema.cxx: bitbucket diff is a dog's breakfast, cannot review. I will have to checkout your branch and diff 
by hand.

changes to mhistory.js appear to be extensive and some explanation is needed for what is changed, what bugs/problems 
are fixed, what new features are added.

to move forward, can you generate a pull requests that only adds pgsql to history_schema.cxx, history_common.cxx and 
mlogger.cxx and does not add any other functions, features and does not change any whistespace?

K.O.


> 
> If you agree to merge I can resolve conflicts that now 
> (after two months) are listed...
> 
> Regards,
> Gennaro
> 
> > 
> > Hi,
> > I have updated the PR with a new one that includes TimescaleDB support and some
> > changes to mhistory.js to support downsampling queries...
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Gennaro
> > 
> > > > some minutes ago I published a PR for PostgreSQL support I developed
> > > > at INFN-Napoli for Darkside experiment...
> > > > 
> > > > I don't know if you receive a notification about this PR and in doubt
> > > > I wrote this message...
> > > 
> > > Hi, Gennaro, thank you for the very useful contribution. I saw the previous version 
> > > of your pull request and everything looked quite good. But that pull request was 
> > > for an older version of midas and it would not have applied cleanly to the current 
> > > version. I will take a look at your updated pull request. In theory it should only 
> > > add the Postgres class and modify a few other places in history_schema.cxx and have 
> > > no changes to anything else. (if you need those changes, it should be a separate 
> > > pull request).
> > > 
> > > Also I am curious what benefits and drawbacks of Postgres vs mysql/mariadb you have 
> > > observed for storing and using midas history data.
> > > 
> > > K.O.

> > is there any news regarding this pull request ? 
> > (https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/pull-requests/30)
> 
> apologies for taking a very long time to review the proposed changes.
> 

I merged the PgSql bits by hand - the automatic tools make a dog's breakfast from the history_schema.cxx diffs. Ouch.

history_schema.cxx merged pretty much cleanly, but I have one question about CreateSqlColumn() with sql_strict set to "true". Can you say 
more why this is needed? Should this also be made the default for MySQL? The best I can tell the default values are only needed if we write 
to SQL but forget to provide values that should not be NULL? But our code never does this? Or this is for reading from SQL, where NULL values 
are replaced with the default values? I do not have time to look into this right now, I hope you can clarify it for me?

Also notice the fDownsample is set to zero and cannot be changed. I recommend we set it through the MakeMidasHistoryPgsql() factory method.

Please pull, merge, retest, update the pull request, check that there is no unrelated changes (changes in mlogger.cxx is a direct red flag!) 
and we should be able to merge the rest of your stuff pronto.

K.O.

commit e85bb6d37c85f02fc4895cae340ba71ab36de906 (HEAD -> develop, origin/develop, origin/HEAD)
Author: Konstantin Olchanski <olchansk@triumf.ca>
Date:   Fri Jul 21 09:45:08 2023 -0700

    merge PQSQL history in history_schema.cxx

commit f254ebd60a23c6ee2d4870f3b6b5e8e95a8f1f09
Author: Konstantin Olchanski <olchansk@triumf.ca>
Date:   Fri Jul 21 09:19:07 2023 -0700

    add PGSQL Makefile bits

commit aa5a35ba221c6f87ae7a811236881499e3d8dcf7
Author: Konstantin Olchanski <olchansk@triumf.ca>
Date:   Fri Jul 21 08:51:23 2023 -0700

    merge PGSQL support from https://bitbucket.org/gtortone/midas/branch/feature/timescaledb_support except for history_schema.cxx

Hi Konstantin,

thanks a lot for your work on PostgreSQL and TimescaleDB integration...
and sorry for unrelated changes on source code !

I will return on this task at end of this year (maybe October or November) because
I'm working on different tasks... but I will keep in mind your suggestions in order
to provide good source code.

Thanks,
Gennaro


> 
> I merged the PgSql bits by hand - the automatic tools make a dog's breakfast from the history_schema.cxx diffs. Ouch.
> 
> history_schema.cxx merged pretty much cleanly, but I have one question about CreateSqlColumn() with sql_strict set to "true". Can you say 
> more why this is needed? Should this also be made the default for MySQL? The best I can tell the default values are only needed if we write 
> to SQL but forget to provide values that should not be NULL? But our code never does this? Or this is for reading from SQL, where NULL values 
> are replaced with the default values? I do not have time to look into this right now, I hope you can clarify it for me?
> 
> Also notice the fDownsample is set to zero and cannot be changed. I recommend we set it through the MakeMidasHistoryPgsql() factory method.
> 
> Please pull, merge, retest, update the pull request, check that there is no unrelated changes (changes in mlogger.cxx is a direct red flag!) 
> and we should be able to merge the rest of your stuff pronto.
> 
> K.O.
> 
> commit e85bb6d37c85f02fc4895cae340ba71ab36de906 (HEAD -> develop, origin/develop, origin/HEAD)
> Author: Konstantin Olchanski <olchansk@triumf.ca>
> Date:   Fri Jul 21 09:45:08 2023 -0700
> 
>     merge PQSQL history in history_schema.cxx
> 
> commit f254ebd60a23c6ee2d4870f3b6b5e8e95a8f1f09
> Author: Konstantin Olchanski <olchansk@triumf.ca>
> Date:   Fri Jul 21 09:19:07 2023 -0700
> 
>     add PGSQL Makefile bits
> 
> commit aa5a35ba221c6f87ae7a811236881499e3d8dcf7
> Author: Konstantin Olchanski <olchansk@triumf.ca>
> Date:   Fri Jul 21 08:51:23 2023 -0700
> 
>     merge PGSQL support from https://bitbucket.org/gtortone/midas/branch/feature/timescaledb_support except for history_schema.cxx

The compilation of midas was broken by the last modification. The reason is that 

   Pgsql *fPgsql = NULL;

was not protected by 

#ifdef HAVE_PGSQL

So I put all PGSQL code under a big #ifdef and now it compiles again. You might want to double check my modification at

https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/commits/e3c7e73459265e0d7d7a236669d1d1f2d9292a74

Best,
Stefan

> The compilation of midas was broken by the last modification. The reason is that 
>    Pgsql *fPgsql = NULL;
> was not protected by #ifdef HAVE_PGSQL

confirmed, my mistake, I forgot to test with "make cmake NO_PGSQL". your fix is correct, thanks.

K.O.

Hello,

At our lab we are currently in the process of migrating more of our systems over to Midas. However, all of our working systems are dependent on SBCs with the Tsi-148 chips of which we only have a handful. In order to have some backups and spares for testing, we have been attempting to get Midas working with some borrowed SBCs (Concurrent Technologies VX 40x/04x) with Universe-II chips. The SBC is running CentOS 7. I have tried to follow the instructions posted here. The universe-II kernel module appears to load correctly, dmesg gives:

[   32.384826] VME: Board is system controller
[   32.384875] VME: Driver compiled for SMP system
[   32.384877] VME: Installed VME Universe module version: 3.6.KO6
 

However, running vmescan.exe fails with a segfault. Running with gdb shows:

vmic_mmap: Mapped VME AM 0x0d addr 0x00000000 size 0x00ffffff at address 0x80a01000
mvme_open:
Bus handle              = 0x7
DMA handle              = 0x6045d0
DMA area size           = 1048576 bytes
DMA    physical address = 0x7ffff7eea000
vmic_mmap: Mapped VME AM 0x2d addr 0x00000000 size 0x0000ffff at address 0x86ff0000

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
mvme_read_value (mvme=0x604010, vme_addr=<optimized out>)
    at /home/jam/midas/packages/midas/drivers/vme/vmic/vmicvme.c:352
352        dst  = *((WORD *)addr);
 

With the pointer addr originating from a call to vmic_mapcheck within the  mvme_read_value functions in the vmicvme.c file. Help with where to go from here would be appreciated.

-Caleb 

I maintain the tsi148 and the universe-II drivers. I confirm -KO6 is my latest 
version, last updated for 32-bit Debian-11, and we still use it at TRIUMF.

It is good news that the vme_universe kernel module built, loaded and reported 
correct stuff to dmesg.

It is not clear why mvme_read_value() crashed. We need to know the value of 
vme_addr and addr, can you add printf()s for them using format "%08x" and try 
again?

K.O.

<p>&nbsp;</p>

<table align="center" cellspacing="1" style="border:1px solid #486090; 
width:98%">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td style="background-color:#486090">Caleb Marshall 
wrote:</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td style="background-color:#FFFFB0">
			<p>Hello,</p>

			<p>At our lab we are currently in the process of 
migrating more of our systems over to Midas. However, all of our working systems 
are dependent on SBCs with the Tsi-148 chips of which we only have a handful. In 
order to have some backups and spares for testing, we have been attempting to 
get Midas working with some borrowed SBCs (Concurrent Technologies VX 40x/04x) 
with Universe-II chips. The SBC is running&nbsp;CentOS 7.&nbsp;I have tried to 
follow the instructions posted <a 
href="https://daq00.triumf.ca/DaqWiki/index.php/VME-
CPU#V7648_and_V7750_BIOS_Settings">here</a>. The universe-II kernel module 
appears to load correctly, dmesg gives:</p>

			<p>[ &nbsp; 32.384826] VME: Board is system 
controller<br />
			[ &nbsp; 32.384875] VME: Driver compiled for SMP 
system<br />
			[ &nbsp; 32.384877] VME: Installed VME Universe module 
version: 3.6.KO6<br />
			&nbsp;</p>

			<p>However, running vmescan.exe fails with a segfault. 
Running with gdb shows:</p>

			<p>vmic_mmap: Mapped VME AM 0x0d addr 0x00000000 size 
0x00ffffff at address 0x80a01000<br />
			mvme_open:<br />
			Bus handle &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 
&nbsp;= 0x7<br />
			DMA handle &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 
&nbsp;= 0x6045d0<br />
			DMA area size &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; = 
1048576 bytes<br />
			DMA &nbsp; &nbsp;physical address = 0x7ffff7eea000<br />
			vmic_mmap: Mapped VME AM 0x2d addr 0x00000000 size 
0x0000ffff at address 0x86ff0000</p>

			<p>Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
<br />
			mvme_read_value (mvme=0x604010, vme_addr=&lt;optimized 
out&gt;)<br />
			&nbsp; &nbsp; at 
/home/jam/midas/packages/midas/drivers/vme/vmic/vmicvme.c:352<br />
			352&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;dst &nbsp;= *((WORD 
*)addr);<br />
			&nbsp;</p>

			<p>With the pointer addr originating from a call 
to&nbsp;vmic_mapcheck within the&nbsp;&nbsp;mvme_read_value functions in the 
vmicvme.c file. Help with where to go from here would be appreciated.</p>

			<p>-Caleb&nbsp;</p>

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

<p>&nbsp;</p>

Here is the output:

vmic_mmap: Mapped VME AM 0x0d addr 0x00000000 size 0x00ffffff at address 0x80a01000
mvme_open:
Bus handle              = 0x3
DMA handle              = 0x158f5d0
DMA area size           = 1048576 bytes
DMA    physical address = 0x7f91db553000
vmic_mmap: Mapped VME AM 0x2d addr 0x00000000 size 0x0000ffff at address 0x86ff0000
vme addr: 00000000 
addr: db543000 

> Here is the output:
> 
> vmic_mmap: Mapped VME AM 0x0d addr 0x00000000 size 0x00ffffff at address 0x80a01000
> mvme_open:
> Bus handle              = 0x3
> DMA handle              = 0x158f5d0
> DMA area size           = 1048576 bytes
> DMA    physical address = 0x7f91db553000
> vmic_mmap: Mapped VME AM 0x2d addr 0x00000000 size 0x0000ffff at address 0x86ff0000
> vme addr: 00000000 
> addr: db543000 

I see the problem. A24 is mapped at 0x80xxxxxx, A16 is mapped at 0x86ffxxxx, but 
mvme_read computed address 0xdb543000, out of range of either mapped vme address. ouch.

One more thing to check, AFAIK, this universe-II codes were never used on 64-bit CPU 
before, we only have 32-bit Pentium-3 and Pentium-4 machines with these chips. The 
tsi148 codes used to work both 32-bit and 64-bit, we used to have both flavours of 
CPUs, but now only have 64-bit.

What is your output for "uname -a"? does it report 32-bit or 64-bit kernel?

If you feel adventurous, you can build 32-bit midas (cd .../midas; make linux32), 
compile vmescan.o with "-m32" and link vmescan.exe against .../midas/linux-m32/lib, and 
see if that works. Meanwhile, I can check if vmicvme.c is 64-bit clean. Checking if 
kernel module is 64-bit clean would be more difficult...

K.O.

I am looking into compiling the 32 bit midas.

In the meantime, here is the kernel info:

3.10.0-1160.11.1.el7.x86_64 

Thank you for the help.
-Caleb

I can compile 32 bit midas. Unless I am interpreting the linking error, I don't 
think I can use the driver as built. 

While trying to compile vme_scan, most of the programs fail with:

/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-redhat-
linux/4.8.5/../../../../lib/libvme.so when searching for -lvme
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /lib/../lib/libvme.so when searching for -lvme
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib/../lib/libvme.so when searching for -
lvme
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-redhat-
linux/4.8.5/../../../libvme.so when searching for -lvme
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible //lib/libvme.so when searching for -lvme
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible //usr/lib/libvme.so when searching for -lvme

with libvme.so being built by the universe-II driver. Not sure if I can get around 
this without messing with the driver? Is it possible to build a 32 bit version of 
that shared library without having to touch the actual kernel module? 

-Caleb

> I can compile 32 bit midas. Unless I am interpreting the linking error, I don't 
> think I can use the driver as built.

I think you are right, Makefile from the Universe package does not build a -m32 version 
of libvme.so. I think I can fix that...

K.O.

A new environment variable MIDAS_EXPNAME has been introduced. This must be
used for cases where people use MIDAS_DIR, and is then equivalent for the
experiment name and directory usually used in the exptab file. This fixes
and issue with creating and deleting shared memory in midas as described in

https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/issues/363/deletion-of-shared-memory-fails

The documentation has been updated at

https://daq00.triumf.ca/MidasWiki/index.php/MIDAS_environment_variables#MIDAS_EXPN
AME

/Stefan

> A new environment variable MIDAS_EXPNAME has been introduced [to be used together with 
MIDAS_DIR]

This is fixes an important buglet. If experiment uses MIDAS_DIR instead of exptab, at the time 
of connecting to ODB, we do not know the experiment name and use name "Default" to create ODB 
shared memory, instead of actual experiment name.

This creates an inconsistency, if some MIDAS programs in the same experiment use MIDAS_DIR while 
others use exptab (this would be unusual, but not impossible) they would connect to two 
different ODB shared memories, former using name "Default", latter using actual experiment name.

As an indication that something is not right, when stopping MIDAS programs, there is an error 
message about failure to delete shared ODB shared memory (because it was created using name 
"Default" and delete using the correct experiment name fails).

Also it can cause co-mingling between two different experiments, depending on the type of shared 
memory used by MIDAS (see $MIDAS_DIR/.SHM_TYPE.TXT):
POSIX - (usually not used) not affected (experiment name is not used)
POSIXv2 - (usually not used) affected (shm name is "$EXP_NAME_ODB")
POSIXv3 - used on MacOS - affected (shm name is "$UID_$EXP_NAME_ODB" so "$UID_Default_ODB" will 
collide)
POSIXv4 - used on Linux - not affected (shm name includes $MIDAS_DIR which is different for 
different experiments)

K.O.

I just realized that we had already MIDAS_EXPT_NAME, and now people get confused with

MIDAS_EXPT_NAME
and
MIDAS_EXPNAME

In trying to fix this confusion, I changed the name of the second variable to MIDAS_EXPT_NAME as well, 
so we only have one variable now. If this causes any problems please report here.

Stefan

Concerning naming of shared memories I went one step further due to some requirement of a local experiment. 
The experiment needs to change the experiment name shown on the web status page depending on the exact 
configuration, but we do not want to change the whole midas experiment each time.

So I simple removed the check that the experiment name coming from the environment and used for the shared 
memory gets checked against the experiment name in the ODB. The only connection there is that the ODB name 
gets set to the environment name is it does not exist or is empty, just to have some default value. So for 
most people nothing should change. If one changes however the name in the ODB (under /Experiment/Name), 
nothing will change internally, just the web display via mhttpd changes its title.

I hope this has no bad side-effects, so please have a look if you see any issue in your experiment.

Stefan

Hello,

I have recently set up a midas-2022-05-c instance and have been trying to configure
it to use the mysql odbc interface. Tables are being created for it but
the logger is issuing errors that some of the column types are incorrect. For example
in the log I see:

14:22:12.689 2023/07/25 [Logger,ERROR] [history_odbc.cxx:1531:hs_define_event,ERROR] Error: History event 'Run transitions': Incompatible data type for tag 'State' type 'UINT32', SQL column 'state' type 'INT UNSIGNED'
14:22:12.689 2023/07/25 [Logger,ERROR] [history_odbc.cxx:1531:hs_define_event,ERROR] Error: History event 'Run transitions': Incompatible data type for tag 'Run number' type 'UINT32', SQL column 'run_number' type 'INT UNSIGNED'

Checking the table in the database I see:

MariaDB [t2kgscND280]> describe run_transitions;
+------------+------------------+------+-----+---------------------+-------------------------------+
| Field      | Type             | Null | Key | Default             | Extra                         |
+------------+------------------+------+-----+---------------------+-------------------------------+
| _t_time    | timestamp        | NO   | MUL | current_timestamp() | on update current_timestamp() |
| _i_time    | int(11)          | NO   | MUL | NULL                |                               |
| state      | int(10) unsigned | YES  |     | NULL                |                               |
| run_number | int(10) unsigned | YES  |     | NULL                |                               |
+------------+------------------+------+-----+---------------------+-------------------------------+
4 rows in set (0.000 sec)

Please note that this is not the only history variable that has this problem. There are multiple variables
for which:

Incompatible data type for tag 'Foo Bar' type 'UINT32', SQL column 'foo_bar' type 'INT UNSIGNED'

Checking history_odbc.cxx, I see:

static const char *sql_type_mysql[] = {
   "xxxINVALIDxxxNULL", // TID_NULL
   "tinyint unsigned",  // TID_UINT8
   "tinyint",           // TID_INT8
   "char",              // TID_CHAR
   "smallint unsigned", // TID_UINT16
   "smallint",          // TID_INT16
   "integer unsigned",  // TID_UINT32
   "integer",           // TID_INT32
   "tinyint",           // TID_BOOL
   "float",             // TID_FLOAT
   "double",            // TID_DOUBLE
   "tinyint unsigned",  // TID_BITFIELD
   "VARCHAR",           // TID_STRING
   "xxxINVALIDxxxARRAY",
   "xxxINVALIDxxxSTRUCT",
   "xxxINVALIDxxxKEY",
   "xxxINVALIDxxxLINK"
};

So it seems that unsigned int should map to UINT32.

The database is:
Server version: 10.5.16-MariaDB MariaDB Server

Please let me know if more information is needed.

Note that the choice of using the odbc interface is because we
plan to import an old database that was created using the odbc interface
with a previous version of midas (yes this is your old friend T2K/ND280).

Regards,

Nick.

Hello,

wanted add few things:

1. I see the same problem for INT32
2. For now I've worked around these problems with https://bitbucket.org/nickhastings/midas/commits/e4776f7511de0647077c8c80d43c17bbfe2184fd
3. I'm using mariadb-connector-odbc-3.1.12-3.el9.x86_64 (System is AlmaLinux 9)

Regards,

Nick.

Hi,

after some networks security scans I received some warnings because mhttpd expose
server filesystem through HTTP(S)...

in details a MIDAS user can access to /etc/passwd or download other files from
filesystem using a web browser:

(e.g. http://midas.host:8080/etc/passwd)

I know that /etc/passwd does not contain users password and mhttpd runs as an
unprivileged user but in principle this should be avoided in order to minimize 
security risks: if I authorize a user to use MIDAS interface in order to handle
acquisition tasks this should not authorize the user to access the server filesystem...
but this access should be restricted to MIDAS web pages, custom pages etc.

What do you think about this ?

Cheers,
Gennaro

> (e.g. http://midas.host:8080/etc/passwd)

not again! I complained about this before, and I added a fix, but it must be broken again.

getting a copy of /etc/passwd is reasonably benign, but getting a copy of 
/home/$USER/.ssh/id_rsa, id_rsa.pub, knownhosts and authorized_keys is a disaster.

(running mhttpd behind a web proxy does not solve the problem, number of attackers is 
reduced to only the people who know the proxy password and to local users).

K.O.

Have you actually been able to read /etc/passwd this way? I tested this on a few of our servers and it does not work. As far as I know, there is access to files in resources, custom pages etc.

Other possible ways to access the file system is via mjsonrpc calls, but again these are restricted to certain folders.

Can you please give us more details about this.

Zaher

> > (e.g. http://midas.host:8080/etc/passwd)
> 
> not again! I complained about this before, and I added a fix, but it must be broken again.
> 
> getting a copy of /etc/passwd is reasonably benign, but getting a copy of 
> /home/$USER/.ssh/id_rsa, id_rsa.pub, knownhosts and authorized_keys is a disaster.
> 
> (running mhttpd behind a web proxy does not solve the problem, number of attackers is 
> reduced to only the people who know the proxy password and to local users).
> 
> K.O.

Hi,
I have the following setup:

- MIDAS release: release/midas-2022-05-c
- host with MIDAS frontend (mclient)
- host with MIDAS server (mhttpd / mserver)

On mclient I run a frontend with:

./feodt5751 -h mserver -e develop -i 0

On mserver I see frontend ready and ODB variables in place;

I noticed a strange behavior with "/Programs/Execute on start run" and 
"/Programs/Execute on stop run". In details the script to execute at start of run
is executed on "mserver" host but the script to execute at stop of run is executed on
"mclient" host (!)

Is this a bug or I'm missing some documentation links ?

Thanks in advance,
Gennaro

Indeed that could well be (and is certainly not intended like that). I checked the code
and found that "execute on start run" and "execute on stop run" are called inside
cm_transition(). That means they are executed on the computer which calls cm_transition().
If you use mhttpd and start a run through the web interface, then mhttpd runs on your
server and "execute on start run" gets executed on your server. If you stop the run
by your frontend running on the client machine (like if a certain number of events 
is reached), then "execute on stop run" gets executed on your client.

An easy way around would not to use "/Equipment/Trigger/Common/Event limit" which
gets check by your frontend and therefore on the client computer, but use 
"/Logger/Channels/0/Settings/Event limit" which gets checked by the logger and
therefore executed on the server computer.

Getting a consistent behaviour (like always executing scripts on the server) would
require a major rework of the run transition framework with probably many undesired
side-effects, so lots of debugging work.

Stefan

Hi Stefan,

> Indeed that could well be (and is certainly not intended like that). I checked the code
> and found that "execute on start run" and "execute on stop run" are called inside
> cm_transition(). That means they are executed on the computer which calls cm_transition().
> If you use mhttpd and start a run through the web interface, then mhttpd runs on your
> server and "execute on start run" gets executed on your server. If you stop the run
> by your frontend running on the client machine (like if a certain number of events 
> is reached), then "execute on stop run" gets executed on your client.

ok, this is clear to me...

> An easy way around would not to use "/Equipment/Trigger/Common/Event limit" which
> gets check by your frontend and therefore on the client computer, but use 
> "/Logger/Channels/0/Settings/Event limit" which gets checked by the logger and
> therefore executed on the server computer.

we never used "/Equipment/Trigger/Common/Event limit" but we always used
"/Logger/Channels/0/Settings/Event limit"...

btw I did some tests and I understand that this issue is related to 'deferred transition'
on frontend. Indeed I disabled deferred transition on frontend side and now script
execution is carried out always on MIDAS server;

Cheers,
Gennaro

> btw I did some tests and I understand that this issue is related to 'deferred transition'
> on frontend. Indeed I disabled deferred transition on frontend side and now script
> execution is carried out always on MIDAS server;

Ah, that's clear now. In a deferred transition, the frontend finally stops the run (after the 
condition is given to finish). Since the client calls cm_transition(), the script gets executed on 
the client. Changing that would be a rather large rework of the code. So maybe better call a 
script which executes another script via ssh on the server.

Stefan

Hi,

I'm facing some issues with 'stop' deferred transition and I suspect of
a MIDAS bug regarding this...

to reproduce the issue I use the 'deferredfe' MIDAS example (develop branch), 
changing only the equipment name from 'Deferred' to 'Deferred%02d' in order
to be able to run multiple 'deferredfe' instances;

I run *three* 'deferredfe' frontends using:

./deferredfe -i 0
./deferredfe -i 2
./deferredfe -i 3

Everything goes fine on MIDAS web page and 'deferredfe' frontends are initialized
and ready to run; issues occour after 'start' when I stop the frontends: sometimes
at first shot and sometimes at next 'start'/'stop' the deferred 'stop' transition
seems to be handled in wrong way... and often one frontend goes in 'segmentation fault'

The odd thing is when I run *two* instances: in this case no issues are reported...

Thanks in advance,
Gennaro

Deferred transitions were only implemented with a single instance of a program deferring the 
transition. To have several instances, MIDAS probably needs to be extended. Certainly this 
was never tested, so it's not a surprise that we get a segmentation fault.

Stefan

Hi Stefan,

so if I have two different frontends (feov1725 and feodt5751) connected on the same 'mserver'
I'm in the same situation ?

Cheers,
Gennaro

> Deferred transitions were only implemented with a single instance of a program deferring the 
> transition. To have several instances, MIDAS probably needs to be extended. Certainly this 
> was never tested, so it's not a surprise that we get a segmentation fault.
> 
> Stefan

> I'm in the same situation ?

Yepp.

> Deferred transitions were only implemented with a single instance of a program deferring the 
> transition. To have several instances, MIDAS probably needs to be extended. Certainly this 
> was never tested, so it's not a surprise that we get a segmentation fault.
> 
> Stefan

Hi Stefan,

I copied deferredfe.cxx to mydeferredfe.cxx and I changed mydeferred.cxx to be a different frontend:

const char *frontend_name = "mydeferredfe";

If I start two "different" frontends:

./deferredfe
./mydeferredfe 

and try to start/stop a run... the result is the same: frontend status messing up on next 'start':

---

deferredfe:

Started run 332
Event ID:4 - Event#: 0
Event ID:4 - Event#: 1
Event ID:4 - Event#: 2
Event ID:4 - Event#: 3
Event ID:4 - Event#: 4
Event ID:4 - Event#: 5
Event ID:4 - Event#: 6

mydeferredfe:

Started run 332
Transition ignored, Event ID:2 - Event#: 0
Transition ignored, Event ID:2 - Event#: 1
Transition ignored, Event ID:2 - Event#: 2
Transition ignored, Event ID:2 - Event#: 3
Transition ignored, Event ID:2 - Event#: 4
End of cycle... perform transition
Event ID:2 - Event#: 5
End of cycle... perform transition
Event ID:2 - Event#: 6

---

so, it seems that the issue is not related to different 'instances' of same frontend but
that *at most* one frontend on whole MIDAS server can handle deferred transitions...

is this the case ?

Cheers,
Gennaro 

> so, it seems that the issue is not related to different 'instances' of same frontend but
> that *at most* one frontend on whole MIDAS server can handle deferred transitions...
> 
> is this the case ?


Correct.

- Stefan

Hi, I would like to restructure our sequencer scripts and the paths. Until now many things are not generic at all. I would like to ask if it is possible to include files through a relative path for example something like 
INCLUDE ../chip/global_basic_functions
Maybe I just did not found how to do it.

> Hi, I would like to restructure our sequencer scripts and the paths. Until now many things are not generic at all. I would like to ask if it is possible to include files through a relative path for example something like 
> INCLUDE ../chip/global_basic_functions
> Maybe I just did not found how to do it.

It was not there. I implemented it in the last commit.

Stefan

> > Hi, I would like to restructure our sequencer scripts and the paths. Until now many things are not generic at all. I would like to ask if it is possible to include files through a relative path for example something like 

> > INCLUDE ../chip/global_basic_functions

> > Maybe I just did not found how to do it.

> 

> It was not there. I implemented it in the last commit.

> 

> Stefan



Hi Stefan,

when I did this job for MEG II we decided not to include relative paths and the ".." folder to avoid an exploit called "XML Entity Injection".

In short is to avoid leaking files outside the sequencer folders like  /etc/password or private SSH keys.

I do not remember in this moment why we pushed for absolute paths instead but let's keep this in mind.



Marco

> when I did this job for MEG II we decided not to include relative paths and the ".." folder to avoid an exploit called "XML Entity Injection".
> In short is to avoid leaking files outside the sequencer folders like  /etc/password or private SSH keys.
> I do not remember in this moment why we pushed for absolute paths instead but let's keep this in mind.

I thought about that. But before we had absolute paths in the sequencer INCLUDE statement. So having "../../../etc/passwd" is as bad as the
absolute path "/etc/passwd". So nothing really changed. What we really should prevent is to LOAD files into the sequencer from outside the
sequence subdirectory. And this is prevented by the file loader. Actually we will soon replace the file loaded with a modern JS dialog, and
the code restricts all operations to within the experiment directory and below.

Stefan