 02 Apr 2025, Konstantin Olchanski, Suggestion, Sequencer ODBSET feature requests
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> I once looked at using LUA for this
>
> > but I think basing off an full featured programming language like python
> > is better.
>
> if it came to a vote, my vote would go to Lua: it would allow to do everything needed,
> with much less external dependencies and with much less motivation to over-use the interpreter.
> The CMS experience was very teaching in this respect...
Unfortunately I am only slightly aware of Lua to say how nicve or how bad it is. And we are
not sure how well it supports the single-line-stepping that permits the nice graphical
visualization of Stefan's sequencer.
It looks like python has the single-line-stepping built-in as a standard feature
and python is a more popular and more versatile machine, so to me python looks
like a better choice compared to lua (obscure), perl ("nobody uses it anymore")
or bash (ugly syntax).
K.O. |
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02 Apr 2025, Stefan Ritt, Suggestion, Sequencer ODBSET feature requests
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And there is one more argument:
We have a Python expert in our development team who wrote already the Python-to-C bindings. That means when running a Python
script, we can already start/stop runs, write/read to the ODB etc. We only have to get the single stepping going which seems feasible to
me, since there are some libraries like inspect.currentframe() and traceback.extract_stack(). For single-stepping there are debug APIs
like debugpy. With Lua we really would have to start from scratch.
Stefan |
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07 Apr 2025, Zaher Salman, Suggestion, Sequencer ODBSET feature requests
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| Lukas Gerritzen wrote: |
I also encountered a small annoyance in the current workflow of editing sequencer files in the browser:
- Load a file
- Double-click it to edit it, acknowledge the "To edit the sequence it must be opened in an editor tab" dialog
- A new tab opens
- Edit something, click "Start", acknowledge the "Save and start?" dialog (which pops up even if no changes are made)
- Run the script
- Double-click to make more changes -> another tab opens
After a while, many tabs with the same file are open. I understand this may be considered "user error", but perhaps the sequencer could avoid opening redundant tabs for the same file, or prompt before doing so?
Thanks for considering these suggestions! |
The original reason the restricting edits in the first tab is that it is used to reflect the state of the sequencer, i.e. the file that is currently loaded in the ODB.
Imagine two users are working in parallel on the same file, each preparing their own sequence. One finishes editing and starts the sequencer. How would the second person know that by now the file was changed and is running?
I am open to suggestions to minimize the number of clicks and/or other options to make the first tab editable while making it safe and visible to all other users. Maybe a lock mechanism in the ODB can help here.
Zaher |
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07 Apr 2025, Stefan Ritt, Suggestion, Sequencer ODBSET feature requests
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If people are simultaneously editing scripts this is indeed an issue, which probably never can be resolved by technical means. It need communication between the users.
For the main script some ODB locking might look like:
- First person clicks on "Edit", system checks that file is not locked and sequencer is not running, then goes into edit mode
- When entering edit mode, the editor puts a lock in to the ODB, like "Scrip lock = pc1234".
- When another person clicks on "Edit", the system replies "File current being edited on pc1234"
- When the first person saves the file or closes the web browser, the lock gets removed.
- Since a browser can crash without removing a lock, we need some automatic lock recovery, like if the lock is there, the next users gets a message "file currently locked. Click "override" to "steal" the lock and edit the file".
All that is not 100% perfect, but will probably cover 99% of the cases.
There is still the problem on all other scripts. In principle we would need a lock for each file which is not so simple to implement (would need arrays of files and host names).
Another issue will arise if a user opens a file twice for editing. The second attempt will fail, but I believe this is what we want.
A hostname for the lock is the easiest we can get. Would be better to also have a user name, but since the midas API does not require a log in, we won't have a user name handy. At it would be too tedious to ask "if you want to edit this file, enter your username".
Just some thoughts.
Stefan |
 31 Jan 2014, Stefan Ritt, Info, Separation of MSCB subtree
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Since several projects at PSI need MSCB but not MIDAS, I decided to separate the two repositories. So if you
need MIDAS with MSCB support inside mhttpd, you have to clone MIDAS, MXML and MSCB from bitbucket
(or the local clone at TRIUMF) as described in
https://midas.triumf.ca/MidasWiki/index.php/Main_Page#Download
I tried to fix all Makefiles to link to the new locations, but I'm not sure if I got all. So if something does not
compile please let me know.
-Stefan |
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18 Feb 2014, Konstantin Olchanski, Info, Separation of MSCB subtree
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> Since several projects at PSI need MSCB but not MIDAS, I decided to separate the two repositories. So if you
> need MIDAS with MSCB support inside mhttpd, you have to clone MIDAS, MXML and MSCB from bitbucket
> (or the local clone at TRIUMF) as described in
>
> https://midas.triumf.ca/MidasWiki/index.php/Main_Page#Download
>
> I tried to fix all Makefiles to link to the new locations, but I'm not sure if I got all. So if something does not
> compile please let me know.
>
> -Stefan
After this split, Makefiles used to build experiment frontends need to be modified for the new location of the mscb tree:
replace
$(MIDASSYS)/mscb
with
$(MIDASSYS)/../mscb
K.O. |
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26 Nov 2008, Jimmy Ngai, Info, Send email alert in alarm system
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Dear All,
We have a temperature/humidity sensor in MIDAS now and will add a liquid level
sensor to MIDAS soon. We want the operators to get alerted ASAP when the
laboratory environment or the liquid level reached some critical levels. Can
MIDAS send email alerts or SMS alerts to cell phones when the alarms are
triggered? If yes, how can I config it?
Many thanks!
Best Regards,
Jimmy |
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26 Nov 2008, Stefan Ritt, Info, Send email alert in alarm system
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> We have a temperature/humidity sensor in MIDAS now and will add a liquid level
> sensor to MIDAS soon. We want the operators to get alerted ASAP when the
> laboratory environment or the liquid level reached some critical levels. Can
> MIDAS send email alerts or SMS alerts to cell phones when the alarms are
> triggered? If yes, how can I config it?
Sure that's possible, that's why MIDAS contains an alarm system. To use it, define
an ODB alarm on your liquid level, like
/Alarms/Alarms/Liquid Level
Active y
Triggered 0 (0x0)
Type 3 (0x3)
Check interval 60 (0x3C)
Checked last 1227690148 (0x492D10A4)
Time triggered first (empty)
Time triggered last (empty)
Condition /Equipment/Environment/Variables/Input[0] < 10
Alarm Class Level Alarm
Alarm Message Liquid Level is only %s
The Condition if course might be different in your case, just select the correct
variable from your equipment. In this case, the alarm triggers an alarm of class
"Level Alarm". Now you define this alarm class:
/Alarms/Classes/Level Alarm
Write system message y
Write Elog message n
System message interval 600 (0x258)
System message last 0 (0x0)
Execute command /home/midas/level_alarm '%s'
Execute interval 1800 (0x708)
Execute last 0 (0x0)
Stop run n
Display BGColor red
Display FGColor black
The key here is to call a script "level_alarm", which can send emails. Use
something like:
#/bin/csh
echo $1 | mail -s \"Level Alarm\" your.name@domain.edu
odbedit -c 'msg 2 level_alarm \"Alarm was sent to your.name@domain.edu\"'
The second command just generates a midas system message for confirmation. Most
cell phones (depends on the provider) have an email address. If you send an email
there, it gets translated into a SMS message.
The script file above can of course be more complicated. We use a perl script
which parses an address list, so everyone can register by adding his/her email
address to that list. The script collects also some other slow control variables
(like pressure, temperature) and combines this into the SMS message.
For very sensitive systems, having an alarm via SMS is not everything, since the
alarm system could be down (computer crash or whatever). In this case we use
'negative alarms' or however you might call it. The system sends every 30 minutes
an SMS with the current levels etc. If the SMS is missing for some time, it might
be an indication that something in the midas system is wrong and one can go there
and investigate. |
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24 Sep 2018, Lars Martin, Suggestion, Self-resetting alarm class
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I was planning to use the alarm system to display an information banner when a
certain valve is open, but I would like it to go away again when the valve is
closed.
Is there a way to achieve that? Maybe reset the alarm from an alarm script?
(Seems like a hack...)
Maybe this could be a useful feature, to be able to define an alarm class that
resets itself once the condition is no longer met? |
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24 Sep 2018, Lukas Gerritzen, Suggestion, Self-resetting alarm class
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If you run an external script anyway, you can also call "odbedit -c alarm" to
reset all alarms. Or you could try to set the "Triggered" entry of that certain
alarm to 0 (again, with odbedit), that could also work. |
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25 Sep 2018, Stefan Ritt, Suggestion, Self-resetting alarm class
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> If you run an external script anyway, you can also call "odbedit -c alarm" to
> reset all alarms. Or you could try to set the "Triggered" entry of that certain
> alarm to 0 (again, with odbedit), that could also work.
That would not really help, because you cannot trigger a script AFTER an alarm occurred. Having
"self-resetting" alarms is actually not a bad idea. I could add a flag "Auto reset" which is false by
default and can be set to true for this functionality. Will keep that in mind for the next
development cycle.
Stefan |
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25 Sep 2018, Stefan Ritt, Suggestion, Self-resetting alarm class
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> I was planning to use the alarm system to display an information banner when a
> certain valve is open, but I would like it to go away again when the valve is
> closed.
> Is there a way to achieve that? Maybe reset the alarm from an alarm script?
> (Seems like a hack...)
> Maybe this could be a useful feature, to be able to define an alarm class that
> resets itself once the condition is no longer met?
Actually you can implement such a thing already now pretty quickly using custom javascript on
the status page. Just read the valve state regularly from the ODB and dynamically modify the
status page to show or hide a banner. Look how custom pages work in midas and try to apply
this to the status page status.html which you find in the resources directory.
Stefan |
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26 Dec 2018, Konstantin Olchanski, Suggestion, Self-resetting alarm class
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> > If you run an external script anyway, you can also call "odbedit -c alarm" to
> > reset all alarms. Or you could try to set the "Triggered" entry of that certain
> > alarm to 0 (again, with odbedit), that could also work.
>
> That would not really help, because you cannot trigger a script AFTER an alarm occurred. Having
> "self-resetting" alarms is actually not a bad idea. I could add a flag "Auto reset" which is false by
> default and can be set to true for this functionality. Will keep that in mind for the next
> development cycle.
>
I second, this is a good idea. Sometimes I want "sticky" alarms that stay on to indicate that a bad thing happened in the
past, sometimes I want self-resetting alarms that go away when a bad thing turns back into a good thing.
When I do this in a frontend, I manually trigger the alarm and manually clear the alarm, i.e. you can see this
done in ~addaq/online/src/fectrl.cxx
Use al_trigger_alarm() and al_reset_alarm().
This can also be done through the json-rpc interface - both calls are available as rpc commands - and so easy to use
from javascript. (but there is no simple unix command line tool to issue json-rpc requests. ouch. must write one now.)
K.O. |
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08 May 2023, Alexey Kalinin, Forum, Scrript in sequencer
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Hello,
I tried different ways to pass parameters to bash script, but there are seems to
be empty, what could be the problem?
We have seuqencer like
ODBGET "/Runinfo/runnumber", firstrun
LOOP n,10
#changing HV
TRANSITION start
WAIT seconds,300
TRANSITION stop
ENDLOOP
ODBGET "/Runinfo/runnumber", lastrun
SCRIPT /.../script.sh ,$firstrun ,$lastrun
and script.sh like
firstrun=$1
lastrun=$2
Thanks. Alexey. |
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08 May 2023, Stefan Ritt, Forum, Scrript in sequencer
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> I tried different ways to pass parameters to bash script, but there are seems to
> be empty, what could be the problem?
Indeed there was a bug in the sequencer with parameter passing to scripts. I fixed it
and committed the changes to the develop branch.
Stefan |
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09 May 2023, Alexey Kalinin, Forum, Scrript in sequencer
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Thanks. It works perfect.
Another question is:
Is it possible to run .msl seqscript from bash cmd?
Maybe it's easier then
1 odbedit -c 'set "/sequencer/load filename" filename.msl'
2 odbedit -c 'set "/sequencer/load new file" TRUE'
3 odbedit -c 'set "/sequencer/start script" TRUE'
What is the best way to have a button starting sequencer
from /script (or /alias )?
Alexey.
> > I tried different ways to pass parameters to bash script, but there are seems to
> > be empty, what could be the problem?
>
> Indeed there was a bug in the sequencer with parameter passing to scripts. I fixed it
> and committed the changes to the develop branch.
>
> Stefan |
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10 May 2023, Stefan Ritt, Forum, Scrript in sequencer
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> Thanks. It works perfect.
> Another question is:
> Is it possible to run .msl seqscript from bash cmd?
> Maybe it's easier then
> 1 odbedit -c 'set "/sequencer/load filename" filename.msl'
> 2 odbedit -c 'set "/sequencer/load new file" TRUE'
> 3 odbedit -c 'set "/sequencer/start script" TRUE'
That will work.
> What is the best way to have a button starting sequencer
> from /script (or /alias )?
Have a look at
https://daq00.triumf.ca/MidasWiki/index.php/Sequencer#Controlling_the_sequencer_from_custom_pages
where I put the necessary information.
Stefan |
04 Aug 2009, Exaos Lee, Forum, Scripts to handle MIDAS sessions 
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Hi, all again
I have some scripts in "bash" and "Python" to handle MIDAS sessions. Please see the attached utils4midas.zip. I didn't write instructions in detail of how to use them. But I think they are very simple. You may find how to use them by reading the codes and example files.
Best wishes.
Exaos Lee |
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23 Nov 2009, Exaos Lee, Suggestion, Scripts for "midas-config"
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Supposing you have installed MIDAS to some directory such as "/opt/MIDAS/r4621", you have to write some Makefile as the following while building some applications based on the version installed:
| Quote: |
CFLAGS += -I/opt/MIDAS/r4621/include -DOS_LINUX -g -O2 -Wall -fPIC
LIBS += -lutil -lpthread -lodbc -lz
....
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Why not use a script to record your MIDAS building options? When you want to build something based on it, just type something such as
| Quote: |
M_CFLAGS := `midas-config --cflags`
M_LIBS := `midas-config --libs`
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You needn't to check your installed options each time when you build something against it. Each time you install a new version of MIDAS, you only need to update the script called 'midas-config'. I wrote a sample script named "genconf.sh" in the first zipped attachment. The 2nd "midas-config" is a sampled generated by it. Also a diff of Makefile is included. I hope it may help.  |
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13 Jun 2006, Stefan Ritt, Info, Scheduler changed for slow control equipment
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The schedule in mfe.c is used both for "normal" front-ends and for "slow-control" front-ends. Unfortunately it was only optimized for the first class. This lead to the fact that the slow control equipment was read out at different speed depending if the run is started or not. Furthermore, the maximum readout speed was somehow limited. This has been changed in the current version of mfe.c (SVN revision 3146). There are now two ways to control the readout speed of slow control equipment:
1) The "event limit" in the equipment list can be used as minimum time between readouts. I'm not happy about the "mis-use" of this variable, but it has been there since the beginning. If I would change it now, all front-ends on this world would have to be changed, which I maybe not a good idea. If this event limit is set to let's say 10, then the slow control equipment is read out with a maximum speed of 1/10ms = 100Hz. That means up to 100 variables (not complete equipments) are read out per second. If an equipment has 200 variables, each variable is then read out every two seconds of course. This number can be used to limit the readout speed differently for different equipments. Like one might want to read a sensitive pressure as often as possible, but some beamline magnet values only once every minute.
2) By default, the scheduler runs now at "full speed" when slow control equipment is present, resulting in a 100% CPU usage. To avoid this, following code can be added into the frontend_loop function:
BOOL frontend_call_loop = TRUE;
INT frontend_loop()
{
/* don't eat up all CPU time */
return cm_yield(10);
}
This limits the readout speed of all slow control equipment again to 100Hz, but avoids the 100% CPU usage. On most operating systems, the minimum time is 10ms as shown above, since this is the basic time slice of a process.
The readout scheme of slow control equipment will be re-visited this summer, when multi-threaded slow control front-ends will be implemented. |
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