I had put in a check which limits the range to 7d into the past if you press the "play" button, but now I'm not sure why this was needed. I removed it again and 
things seem to be fine. Change is committed to develop.

Stefan

Another modification has been done to the alarm system. 

We have often cases where an alarm is triggered on some readout noise. Like an analog voltage just over the alarm threshold for a very short period of time, triggered sometimes from environmental 
electromagnetic effects like turning on the light. 

To mitigate this problem, an "alarm trigger count" has been implemented. Every alarm has now a variable "Trigger count required". If this value is zero (the default), the alarm system works as before. If this 
value is nowever set to a non-zero value N, the alarm limit has to be met on N consecutive periods in order to trigger the alarm. Each alarm has a "Check interval" which determines the period of the alarm 
checking. If one has for example:

Check interval = 10
Trigger count required = 3

then the alarm condition has to be met for 3 consecutive periods of 10 seconds each, or for 30 seconds in total. 

The modification has been merged into the develop branch, and people have to be aware that the alarm structures in the ODB changed. The current code tries to fix this automatically, but it is important 
that ALL MIDAS CLIENTS GET RE-COMPILED after the new code is applied. Otherwise we could have "new" clients expecting the new ODB structure, and some "old" clients expecting the old structure, 
then both types of clients would fight against each other and change the ODB structure every few seconds, leading to tons of error messages. So if you pull the current develop branch, make sure to re-
compile ALL midas clients.

/Stefan

Hi Pavel,

have you looked into 

  cm_set_transition_sequence()

which let's you define the sequence number for every midas client. You give any number between 1 and 1000 (default is 500 for frontends I believe).

The default value of 500 is defined in mfe.cxx:2641 where you have 500 for all four transitions, but it can be overwritten in the frontend_init function via 
cm_set_transition_sequence(). Since you have separate values for the start and stop transition, you can get the different sequencing for both transitions as you need. Like set 
all type A to 400, type B to 600 for TR_START, and set type A to 600 and type B to 400 for TR_STOP.

Since this works on the midas client level, it should also work for the tmfe.cxx framework. I'm however not sure if you have a similar default of 500 as in mfe.cxx:2641. But K.O. 
should know.

Best,
Stefan 

After some iterations, we merged the branch with the new build scheme. Now you can compile any midas program as described at

  https://bitbucket.org/tmidas/midas/pull-requests/48?link_source=email

A default CMakeLists.txt file can look like this:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.17)
project(example)
find_package(Midas REQUIRED PATHS $ENV{MIDASSYS})
add_executable(example example.cpp)
target_link_libraries(example midas::midas)


Which is much simpler than what we had before. The trick now is that the find_package() retrieves all include and link files automatically. 
There are different targets:

midas::midas              - normal midas program
midas::midas-shared       - normal midas programs using the shared midas library
midas::mfe                - old style mfe.cxx frontend
midas::mfed               - newer style frontend using mfed.cxx
midas::mscb               - programs using MSCB system
midas::drivers            - slow control program using any of the standard midas drivers

We are not absolutely sure that all midas installations will work that way, so far we have tested it on RH8, MacOSX with cmake version 
3.29.5.

Comments and bug reports are welcome as usual.

Alex and Stefan

Hello!

My name is Soichiro Kuribayashi and I am a Ph.D. student at Kyoto University. 
I'm a T2K collaborator and working for Super FGD which is new detector in ND280.

I'm a beginner of MIDAS and I've just started to develop the DAQ software with 
MIDAS for Super FGD.
For the DAQ of Super FGD, we will run remotely front end part of MIDAS on ZYNQ 
which is system on chip.

For this remote control of front end part with mserver, we have to mount home 
directory of DAQ PC(Cent OS8) on that of Linux on ZYNQ.
So I wonder if we should use NFS(Network file system) + NIS(Network information 
service) + autofs for the mounting. Is it correct?

If you have any information or any suggestion for the remote control on chip, 
please let me know.

Best regards,
Soichiro 

Dear Konstantin,

Thank you very much for your reply and detailed information.
I would appreciate if you could help us.

> I can also suggest that on your frontend SOC/FPGA machine, you boot linux
> using the "nfs-root" method. This way, the local flash memory only
> contains a boot loader (and maybe the linux kernel image, depending on
> bootloader limitations). The rest of the linux rootfs can be on your
> central development machine. This way management of flash cards,
> confusion with different contents of local flash and need to make backups
> of frontend machines is much reduced.

As you said, we can run complete Linux (Ubuntu 16) on ZYNQ and I'm using common NFS 
system now. However, I didn't know "nfs-root" method which you mentioned and this method 
seems to be reasonable way to just share linux rootfs.
First of all, I will try this method for simpler system.

> If you use a fast SSD and ZFS with deduplication, you will also have good
> performance gain (NFS over 1gige network to server with fast SSD works
> so much better compared to the very slow SD/MMC/NAND flash).
>
> I can point you to some of my documentation how we do this.

I'm concerned about such performance and I have checked the performance with common NFS 
over gige network and my DAQ PC roughly(data transfer rate ~ O(10) MByte/sec). However, I 
didn't know the ZFS and also how we can have performance gain with a fast SSD and ZFS.
Please let me know your documentation how to do it if possible.

> I would say you are on a good track. For early development on just one board,
> pretty much any way you do it will work, but once you start scaling up
> beyound 3-4-5 frontends, you will start seeing benefits from common NFS-mounted
> home directories, NFS-root booted linux, etc.

I'm developing with just one board and common NFS-mounted now. I'm looking forward to 
seeing such benefits when I will use multiple frontends.
 
> And of course you may want to study the existing ND280/FGD DAQ. I hope you
> have access to the running system at Jparc. If not, I have a copy of
> pretty much everything (except for running hardware, it is stored in the basement, 
> dead) and I can give you access.

I don't have access to the system at Jparc, but Nick has told us where FGD DAQ code is.
Is bellow URL everything of code of FGD DAQ?
https://git.t2k.org/hastings/fgddaq/-/tree/master

Best regards,
Soichiro

Dear Stefan,

Thank you very much for your help.

I have already contacted someone who has used ZYNQ in that order and It's working fine for now.
But, I'll let you know if something goes wrong.

Best regards,
Soichiro 

Hi,

I've written a python script that reads some data from a file and generates a
.png image. I want to have a button on my MIDAS status page that:

- executes the script and waits for it to finish,
- then displays the image

How can I do that? I tried using the sequencer to just execute the script every
30 seconds, but I can't get it to work, and it would be better to only execute
the script on demand anyway. 

I also am having trouble getting image display to work. I have the ODB keys set:

[local:oven1:S]/Custom>ls
Temperature Map&                /home/deap/ovendaq/online/index.html
Images

[local:oven1:S]/Custom>ls Images/temps.png/           
Background                      /home/deap/ovendaq/online/temps.png

And the HTML file is just this:
<img src="temps.png">

But the image won't display. It shows a "broken" picture, and when I try to view
it directly it says: Invalid custom page: Page not found in ODB.

Any help would be appreciated...

Thanks
Shaun

Hi, I'm having some trouble getting ss_thread_kill() to work properly. It seems 
to kill the entire program instead 
of just the thread. Here is a test program to show the error:

_________________________________
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include "midas.h"
#include "msystem.h"

INT f(void *param)
{
  for (int x = 0; x < 100; x++)
    sleep(1);
  return 0;
}

int main()
{
  printf("creating thread\n");
  midas_thread_t thr = ss_thread_create(f, NULL);
  sleep(2);
  printf("killing thread\n");
  ss_thread_kill(thr);
  printf("success\n");
  return 0;
}
_________________________________

Makefile:
_________________________________
FLAGS=-g -Wall -DLINUX -DOS_LINUX -I/home/deap/packages/midas/include 
LIBS=-L/home/deap/packages/midas/linux-m64/lib -lmidas -lpthread -lrt -lutil

main.exe: main.cpp 
	g++ $(FLAGS) -o $@ $^ $(LIBS)

_________________________________

Output when run:

_________________________________

[deap@deap04 multithread]$ ./main.exe 
creating thread
killing thread
Killed
[deap@deap04 multithread]$ 
_________________________________

The last "Killed" indicated the whole program got killed, when it should 
actually just kill the thread and then 
print "success".

I noticed the function in system.c uses pthread_kill(). Some google searches 
show me that it may be better to use 
pthread_cancel() (ie http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3438536/when-to-use-
pthread-cancel-and-not-pthread-kill ).


Shaun

> > Hi, I'm having some trouble getting ss_thread_kill() to work properly. It seems 
> > to kill the entire program instead of just the thread.
> 
> You cannot kill a thread. It's not a well defined operation. Most OSes do have the 
> technical possibility to kill threads, but if you use them, you will not like the 
> results. For a taste of small trouble, if a thread is holding a lock and you kill 
> it, who's job is it to release the lock?
> 
> The best you can do is to ask the thread to gracefully shutdown itself. (I.e. by 
> using global variable flags).
> 
> P.S. I did not implement the ss_thread stuff, I do not know what ss_thread_kill() 
> does, but I recommend that you do not use it.
> 
> P.P.S. Programming using threads is complicated, I recommend that you read at least 
> some literature on the topic before using threads. At the least you must understand 
> the common pitfalls and mistakes. At the least, you must know about deadlocks, 
> livelocks, race conditions and semaphore priority inversions.
> 
> K.O.

Yes, but unfortunately what I was attempting to do was use a library function that I
can't alter. It sometimes gets stuck and I wanted a way to kill it. Anyway I ended up
not doing this at all in c++; I was able to do what I needed in python.

Shaun

 Hi,
I was trying to update the checkout of Midas, but it looks like something is not
working - maybe a component of the Savannah system:
[sergio@daq-pc midas-SVN]$ svn update
svn@savannah.psi.ch's password: svn
unix dgram connect: Connection refused at /bin/cvssh.pl line 32
no connection to syslog available at /bin/cvssh.pl line 32
svn: Connection closed unexpectedly

my .svn/entries says (amongst the rest)
 url="svn+ssh://svn@savannah.psi.ch/afs/psi.ch/project/meg/svn/midas/trunk"
and yes, it used to work well... 

Cheers,
  Sergio

> I just tried now and it seemed to work fine. Do you still have the problem?
> 
> - Stefan

 The problem was still there this morning, shortly after seeing your mail, but seems
to be fixed now.
 BTW, which is the best way to submit patches ? I have a version of khyt1331 for Linux
kernel 2.6 (we are running Scientific Linux 4.1), and a few smaller things, mostly in
the examples. 

 Thanks, Sergio

I have a possibly simple feature request for the MIDAS sequencer.  It would be
helpful to be able to save an ODB key's value to a variable, for later use, and
would be the analogue of the ODBSET command.  I had in mind an application where
a user wants to temporarily change some settings in the ODB, then restore the
ODB to its original values.  Maybe something like on ODBRead command:

<ODBRead path="/Path/ODBkey">varname</ODBRead>
<ODBSet path="/Path/ODBkey">0</ODBRead> 
<Wait for="events">3000</Wait>
<ODBSet path="/Path/ODBkey">$varname</ODBRead> 

(In which the key's value is saved to variable varname, then later written back
to the ODB.)

I'm open to other suggestions for simple ways to do this through the sequencer.

Thanks! 

Thanks, this seems very helpful, and we'll give it a try.

> > I have a possibly simple feature request for the MIDAS sequencer.  It would be
> > helpful to be able to save an ODB key's value to a variable, for later use, and
> > would be the analogue of the ODBSET command.  I had in mind an application where
> > a user wants to temporarily change some settings in the ODB, then restore the
> > ODB to its original values.  Maybe something like on ODBRead command:
> 
> I implemented your request, committed the changed to GIT and updated the documentation. Now you can run 
> things like:
> 
> ODBSET /System/tmp/test 1234 
> ODBGET /System/tmp/test v 
> MESSAGE $v 
> 
> (first you must create the key in the ODB manually).
> 
> Best regards,
> Stefan