Week Five

23 June:
Attempting to combine data from the runs I've taken to provide an idea of uniformity. Need to make sure Root files match histograms produced during subscription to a live agent. StarTech PCI express network card (# ST1000SPEX2) appears to be working normally. Raw data looks fine and no error during data recording. Only difference is the error (SIOCSIFMTU: Invalid argument) whenever the ethernet port is activated. Googling reveals this is an issue with the MTU setting. Some cards apparently do not support jumbo frames above an MTU of a certain size. Online specs for this card say it supports jumbo frames up to 9k, but after testing this error starts at an MTU size of 7300. Possible it is a bad card?
24 June:
Drivers for StarTech network cards are proving quite difficult to get working. Not sure if this will fix the issue with jumbo frames, but it is worth a shot. The cards (at least the PCI express styles) will alternate between not being properly recognized, and then displaying the wrong address info. When I was able to successfully get the card recognized and the drivers working the card shows up as rtk(then a long list of numbers). PCI style cards have not succeeded in getting recognized. Their drivers should work for this version of the Linux kernel, but they appear to fail or have no effect after running the install script.
25 June:
Possible to get Sr90 signal on the scintillators. At an HV of 700 the Sr shows up as a 10mV, extremely high rate signal. This is when source is placed atop the scintillator. Unable to get signal when going through the bottom of the GEM to the scintillator above, or vice versa. Spoke with Mark, who remarked he would see if it was possible to get the Ru-106 source returned so we could check it out. Not sure if this is possible however.
PCI cards finally working (just had to install the drivers from the website instead of those that came on the disk) but getting the SIOC message again. When MTU is set to 9k, cards throw errors in DATE (event too small again), when MTU is set lower then or equal to 7100 SIOC error disappears. Repeated experiments under self-triggering to see if MTU settings had any bearing on rate capabilities. Tests showed a rate of ~225 Hz at 15 time frames and a 2500 time window. Almost exactly the same as seen with the srsdaq network card. Highest stable rate with alterations to FEC settings ~500 Hz.
26 June:
SLC5 and DATE/Amore framework is back on the srsdaq computer. Experiencing a compiler issue when trying to initialize the DATE RPMs for proper configuration of the system. Compiler will simply throw a bad exit status without proper description of problem. More detail can be found in /tmp/rpm-build(random #). Issue appears to be a faulty line in the Makefile which throws a fatal error whenever run. Since we make it the majority of the way through compilation I'm hopeful the issue is simply a poorly formatted file location or non-existent library issue. Will update when this issue is fixed.
CODA is now in place on the CNU PC. Installed it within the SLC5 operating system but created a new user (coda) to house the work. Also did this because most of the help online assumes you are using the tcsh shell script, which the SRSUser is not. The act of creating a new user gives me the freedom to adopt a different shell without having to worry about interfering with SRSUser. CODA can be found on two places within the machine (/usr/local/coda/2.6.2) and (/home/coda/coda). The former is where most of the operating code and the original download were placed. The latter is a folder created to store the databases that CODA needs to operate properly.
27 June:
The configuration of CODA is proving a bit difficult. Not sure what most of the variables in the .tcshrc script from the Hall A wiki (under the DAQ section as Installing CODA2.6) actually mean or do in practice. A large amount of confusion concerns the variable CODA_DB_URL. Not sure where this points to or what it actually means. Why would the CODA database be stored at a url location? Is this even necessary if I'm storing my database locally? Also confused by the existence of a MSQL_HOME variable, that seems to designate where the MSQL DB is going to be placed, and the CODA DB variables. Why are these not one in the same? In what circumstance would they actually be different? The amount of scripts is also a bit confusing. There is the script changes that get executed in .tcshrc, then there is the /usr/local/coda/2.6.2/.setup script, and the user setup scripts under the examples directory. I'm guessing the env variables being set in the .tcshrc are a combination of both of the latter files, but there are some variables that are only found in one of these three files. So do I run all three, and if so, when or how often?