Last updated: 6 Apr 03 (Thomas Hadig)
How to start DIRC Calibrations GUI
- login as "babardrc" on one of the following machines:
bbr-farm02, bbr-srv03
ssh bbr-farm02 -l babardrc
cd $drc
DrcCalibrations
How to run calibrations from GUI
- the calibrations are usually taken daily between 8 and 11 am,
one have to ask for calibration time explicitely,
Shift Leaders tend to forget about it in their nobel struggle for more
integrated luminocity.
-double check with DAQ expert on shift that he has released DIRC from
the joint BaBar partition, if you forget to do it there will be a warning
poping up.
-once you at ir-2, please check the status of the DRC HV and FEE
crates using the epics panel. Make sure that FEE and HV crates for
all the sectors are well and alive. (to start controls type "dcontrol").
No HV in some sectors will still allow you to calibrate the rest of the DIRC while
the absence of power even in one crate of FEE will be fatal(configuration transition will
fail).
-click on " Reboot ROMs " button
(Warning! Don't play with it - you are supposedly can crash the run
if you do it during datataking!)
-click on " Online Calibrations " button.
This will enable the online calibrations
and update the database. If you have a specific reason not to update
conditions data, you can use an alternative "Online Monitoring" run.
After pressing one of these buttons, there will be 3 new windows
popping up. Wait for 2-3 minutes till calibrations finish.
In case of normal completion, all three windows disappear automatically.
What to look for in the popped up windows
"first to appear window" - event level.
This window doesn't have a lot of printout.
"next to appear window" - OEP subprocess(data receiver).
It has lots of printout. Most of the activity
corresponds to endMinor transitions. It is when OEP
module looks for the calibration tagged containers
in the shared memory.
"last window" - control level. It drives the Finite State Machine using pulser
located in the electronic house. It clearly shows what transition of the state machine you are in.
-if you think that something is wrong
(you see no new printout in the windows within 3.0 min.
and would like to kill everything just go to each of
the windows and type "Ctrl-C". After that, please press "reset" button
on the GUI panel. Attention! Last minor loop takes
about 1min - please don't rush too much!
-after you have run Online Calibrations and stored data into
Conditions database, you will get one of three status windows:
" Calibration succeeded "
" Validation failed "
" Calibration failed "
-please acknowledge it by pressing "Ok" button. If you have
calibration or validation failed please send me an e-mail:
vasia@online04.lbl.gov.
Checking the results
-once windows disappear, click on
" Check results " - after 2-5 seconds 2 new windows will pop up:
- Ghostview - window with various tables of bad and
non-standard channels in the current and reference calibrations.
To browse through the pages - click with your left mouse button on the page number
shown along the left edge of the widnow, to exit - click on the
" File " button in the left corner of the window and scroll down to
" Quit ".
- Ghostview window with 2 pages of plots.
The plot on the left shows channel
by channel change in T0 values in the current and reference
calibrations in units of sigma(difference divided by error).
The plot on the right shows analogous comparison for the
occupancy measurement. Vertical scale corresponds to 12 DIRC
sectors, each cluster of boxes contains roughly 896 entries
(number of good channels in each sector).
- please make sure that both T0 and occupancy values for all the sectors
(except sector 5) are fully or partially within two red lines
corresponding to +/- 3 sigma deviation.
- in case you would like to make a hardcopy - press " Print Results " button.
It will send a list of bad channels and plots to the zanzibar printer
in ir-2.
What to do in case of problems
- Online calibration is a complicated interplay of DIRC hardware, DIRC software,
dataflow, configuration/conditions databases and ir-2 networking. Each of these
components can fail. Please don't worry if things don't go well. Pressing
of Reset button and then Reboot ROM
should return system to the initial state. At this point you may try to run again
or complain to vasia@online04.lbl.gov.
- Nevertheless, when all the systems, we rely on, work properly, DIRC Online Calibration
is a very robust and simple operation.
- It's like a flying an airplane - most of the problems happen when you take off or land.
The flight itself usually is no problem. Here are the most common problems I have seen so far:
- Control window(last to appear) shows some damage 100 or damage 400
messages - press Reset , Reboot Roms
and try once more
- Database validation fails for some modules - not a big problem. Dave's design of the conditions
database has special accomodations for this case. Still, you have to inform
vasia@online04.lbl.gov
about it.
- Network problems - one or two "pop-up" windows would disappear at start or get stuck -
" Ctrl-C " them, " Reset ", " Reboot Roms ",
check if others are having network problems and try again.
- Database problems - you can't configure(the process gets stuck in the very beginning) or
you can't store new T0s in the DB(almost at the very end). In this case one should inquire
if other subsystems experience the same problems.
This page was created by Vasia Shelkov.
LBNL, vasia@online04.lbl.gov, (510)486-4075
