Quick MIPP DAQ How-to

Last updated: Aug 31, 2005

Power up

If the system is to be brought up from scratch, follow these steps:

Make sure that e907ana1 is on. Wait until it has started NFS server. e907daq mounts /home area from e907ana1.
Turn e907daq machine on and log on as user daq
Turn PowerPC's on or cycle power

beamppc and richppc have to be cycled in the hall whereas tpcppc's can be cycled by typing "RelayOnOff -1" on e907daq.

The desktop should have a button to start DAQ. Attempt to start "Current DAQ" first. If it does not work, try to start "Previous stable DAQ" and contact experts.

Making sure that DAQ runs

Cron jobs are checking that rcd, event builder and DB logger are running on e907daq, and mdd is running on each of the 6 power PC's. In order to hear audible alarm when one of the processes crashes, e907ana3 (the monitoring machine) must be on.

What to do if I hear alarms

The first thing to try is to stop and re-start the DAQ. Make sure to give enough time for all DAQ processes to die before hitting start button again.
Caveat: if e907daq crashes or is rebooted, cron daemons on the Power PC's may die or get into a "funny" state if power PC's are not rebooted. In that case, the cron job will be constantly reporting that mdd's on power PC's are not running. To restart cron daemon(s), issue the following command on e907daq:

ssh root@beamppc "/etc/init.d/crond restart"

Contact experts if you do not know root password on PowerPC's.

Run Control Daemon (rcd)

DAQ requires the daemon running before mdd's, event builder or GUI can function. Rcd passes messages between GUI client(s), mdd's and event builder, i.e. starts/stops runs, monitors the status of mdd's and event builder, delivers error messages to GUI, etc.

MIPP DAQ Daemon (mdd)

MDD's run on each power PC. This process handles messages from rcd, starts up necessary readout processes for a run, receives hardware triggers, collects readout time statistics, and stops runs if one of the readout processes crashes. The processes are started automatically by Start DAQ script.

Event Builder (mippEvtBuilder)

Event builder runs on e907daq, receives parts of events from clients on power PC's, assembles event parts (subevents) into events and writes them to disk.

Run Control GUI (rc-GUI)

Run control is the GUI application that shifters see. One is able to configure, start, and stop runs. If the GUI dies, one can restart it without having to restart the entire DAQ. An icon is provided on the desktop.

The color of the buttons at the top of the main screen indicates the status of mdd's on various PPC's:

Red is error state or no mdd running on PPC.

Blue means idle state, i.e. no run going

Yellow indicates transitional state (starting run, stopping run)

Cyan indicates paused state (should be seen before run is started)

Green indicates a steady running state

By selecting Windows/Run Configuration..., run configuration window similar to this one should appear.

The user can select processes which will become active during the run. Run config files will be taken from /usr/local/mipp/online/config directory (from PPC) if / is not the first character in the line. One has to save run configuration (not necessarily to file) in order for selections to become active. The two windows (main and run configurator) can co-exist, but changing run configuration during a run will not take effect until the next run.

Andre Lebedev