Level 3 Online Status Reports

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Issue 18
Thursday, November 18, 1999

Event Builder

• Ilya and Steve N. ran tests with the SVX system to confirm that readout of multiple VRB's is doable (actually a note from Friday).
• The event builder proxy is ready, but not the periodic monitoring part.
• Also, for now, the proxy will read an sm_config-like file and push that into the scanner manager, instead of the scanner manager reading the file itself.
• The event builder proxy could be started as an inet.d service. Its access can be limited to certain machines or require a password to prevent access by rogue governments.
• New versions of the VRB, SCPU, and scanner manager package are available. They need to made into ups products on the test chain. A tag will be introduced just before Thanksgiving. In these versions, the "slot 16" problem is solved.
• Note on SCPU partition flush: it's clumsy. It deletes events, but copy_loc_builder (which sends the event to the builder) doesn't find out until it looks for the deleted event, at which point it complains. We can get rid of the complaints by having the scanner manager wait for a while until the SCPU event counts stabilize before it issues the flush command. In that case, the only use the flush has is to unstick stuck buffers.
• Frank W. is looking into database issues. He has asked Boris for documentation on his work from last summer, and has also been looking at code. There is also a talk that Boris gave on his work.
• We have a zephyr ups product and now need startup at initialization (previous attempts to start zephyr and zhm thus have been unsuccessful).
• Longer-term outstanding issues: error messages for buffer overflows in SCPU; more intelligent SCPU buffer management; multi-packet fragments; new VPI+VCI scheme.

Level 3

• Ivan has made ROOT objects out of his command stringifiers for l3_converter control, and is working on putting his relay code into ROOT.
• A set of skeleton classes for farm control has been drafted, but not implemented in detail.
• Andreas has updated his monitoring code with the new monitoring objects and used it to monitor an l3_converter. More extensive, and more complicated tests, are needed.
• Jeff presented a list of Level 3 tasks which is intended to complete the Level 3 development project. Comments are desired.
• Other pressing concern: adapting l3_converter to control multiple filter executables.

Infrastructure

• Run control is ready to talk with the event builder.
• Steve will get together with Frank C. on Friday to hammer out fine details of the run control messaging protocol.
• SVX people want to read out all the SVX VRB's in emulation mode to make sure it all works.
• Longer-term outstanding issues: SVX monitoring registers for the SCPU to access and write to the SVX monitoring CPU.

Infrastructure Notes

• The glue from the velcro holding the optical bypass switches is coming undone. This happens even if you use lots of velcro tape to try to support the switch.
• Given the occasional problems booting the SCPU's, it would be nice to get the Cyclades serial port multiplexer working for us. The farms people already use it in their setup, so we should ask them for help in getting this set up.

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