Re: [BLAST_CODA] BlastROC has not reported status in n seconds

From: Tancredi Botto (tancredi@mitlns.mit.edu)
Date: Wed Sep 11 2002 - 16:50:33 EDT


is known to be an internal bug in the coda sources. Please ask
Taylan (w/ me @ conference)

-- t
________________________________________________________________________________
Tancredi Botto, phone: +1-617-253-9204 mobile: +1-978-490-4124
research scientist MIT/Bates, 21 Manning Av Middleton MA, 01949
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On Wed, 11 Sep 2002, Karen Dow wrote:

>
> We need to be careful with terminology, so shift-takers don't get
> confused about how the DAQ system is (mis)behaving, or about how to fix
> problems.
>
> I've talked with Tavi, and CODA was NOT crashing all night. For me,
> CODA crashing means that RunControl is frozen so you can't execute state
> transitions (like Prestart, Go, Download, End), or the EB/ER/ET windows
> disappear, or the FASTBUS readout controllers reboot.
>
> For Tavi, his first problem was that although the physics trigger was
> counting in visual_scal, he saw no events coming through RunControl. I
> had him check the overlap of the physics trigger(PT) with the common
> strobe(CS) input to the trigger supervisor. Indeed, the common strobe
> did NOT come after the start of the physics trigger, so of course there
> were no events being read out. The overlap WAS good earlier on 9/10 for
> real physics events, because Adrian and I looked at it on the scope; we
> had to adjust the relative PT/CS timing in order to get the RunControl
> rate consistent with the visual scalers. Somehow the timing of the
> flasher trigger is different.
>
> Tavi reports that End always fails. I'll look at this today.
>
> Tavi also was concerned because RunControl was reporting that blastROC
> (or maybe blastROCr) had not reported status in n seconds. This status
> report comes through a different mechanism than the CODA data flow, so
> lack of a status report DOES NOT automatically imply there will be no
> data. I haven't yet found out why we get this report so often. You can
> check that the ROC is indeed up in a number of ways:
>
> 1) Use the opitrig1 screen that setup opens, type ROC, and you are
> connected to whatever ROC is attached to opitrig1's serial port.
> blrocf2 is blastROC, blrocf3 is blastROCr. Now you can watch the ROC's
> response to state transitions like Prestart, Go, etc. Just hitting
> carriage return will show you the VxWorks prompt ->. If you see that,
> the ROC is probably ok.
>
> 2) You can telnet to blrocf2 or blrocf3 and watch the state transitions.
>
> 3) You can see the event count increasing on the RunControl screen while
> monitoring blastER, blastEB (but those include the scaler and EPICS
> events), or blastROC, blastROCr. If you DON'T see physics triggers
> here, check the PT and CS inputs to the TS before you decide the ROCs
> are dead.
>
> 4) You can use dpsh to query the ROC:
> cd ~/commis/coda
> source coda_user.setup
> dpsh
> % DP_ask blastROC status (response depends on what state you're in with
> RunControl)
> % DP_ask blastROC part_stats_all (shows all sorts of information on ROC
> data buffers; the interesting one is COMMIS_L_PRI:pool, how many are
> free and busy.)
>
>
> Another problem we have had (but Tavi didn't have last night) is that
> at rates above about 60kB/sec, the differential trigger rate will all of
> a sudden drop to 0 (or whatever the scaler+EPICS rate is). After a
> minute or so, it pops back up again to the physics trigger rate. I have
> been calling this "ROC sleep". When the ROC is sleeping, all its data
> buffers (see 4 above) are busy; the ROC has nowhere to store the data,
> so it won't accept more triggers until the buffers free up. I'm still
> trying to understand why the buffers fill up in the first place. If the
> ROC does not come back awake in a reasonable time, End Run will work,
> and then you can start another run.
>
>
> Karen Dow
>



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