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Workbook for BaBar Offline Users - Installing BaBar Software at a New Site

Contents

Before Starting

Software requirements

Hardware requirements

Licences

SLAC has already obtained an Objectivity license that can be used by all BaBar collaborators. This includes domestic and international use within the experiment. However, collaborators may not use Objectivity for any other purpose but the Babar project. Each collaborator must sign the license agreement before using the software. For details, see the Objectivity Letter to the Collaboration.

Directory structure

Installing Third Party Packages

• Required packages for BaBar.

BaBar requires CERNLIB version CERNLIB 2002, which can be downloaded from cernlib.web.cern.ch.

If you wish to install ROOT it can be picked up from the ROOT distribution site at CERN.

Installing Objectivity

To use the BaBar database you need to run locally both a lock server and an AMS server.

The lock server can run on any machine at your site where objectivity is available. Typically it will run on one of the machines where you perform your analysis. The disk where the databases are stored should either be local or be NFS mounted on the machine running the lock server.

There should be an AMS server running on each machine where there is a local disk used for storing databases. If the databases are stored on a local (and not just NFS mounted) disk of the machine where the analysis is performed, there is no need to run an AMS server.

The lock server and AMS server should be started at boot time of the machine. On a Sun the script ooserver given below can be installed in the directory /etc/init.d.

#!/bin/sh
#
# oolocksrc: script to start Objectivity daemons
#
# It has links:
# ln -s ../init.d/ooserver /sbin/rc0.d/K63oosrv
# ln -s ../init.d/ooserver /sbin/rc3.d/S97oosrv 

# Need the commands ps, awk, kill
PATH=${PATH}${PATH:+:}/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin
OBJECT=/usr/local/objy5/solaris4

case $1 in
'start')

#
# Start the Objectivity lock server process if binary exists
#
if [ -x $OBJECT/bin/oolockserver ]; then
	echo "Starting Objectivity lock server"
	su  bfactory -c $OBJECT/bin/oolockserver 
else
	echo "Objectivity lock server not found, exiting"
	exit 1
fi

#
# Start the Objectivity AMS server process if binary exists
#

if [ -x $OBJECT/bin/oostartams ]; then
	echo "Starting Objectivity AMS server"
	su  bfactory -c $OBJECT/bin/oostartams 
else
	echo "Objectivity AMS server not found, exiting"
	exit 1
fi

echo ;;

'stop')

#
# Stop the Objectivity lock and AMS server processes

$OBJECT/bin/ookillls
$OBJECT/bin/oostopams

echo ;;

*) 	echo "Invalid option supplied to $0"
	exit 1;;
esac

Copying a Release

To copy a release from RAL define the environment variables:

BFDIST	The directory where the releases will be stored as given above.
BFDISTr	/afs/rl.ac.uk/bfactory/dist

Two commands are used to install a release. The first command importrel installs everything in a release which is not architecture-dependent. The second command importarch installs the libraries and binaries for a specific architecture. There are manual pages available for these commands.

For the very first installation these commands will not be available locally so they can be picked up by adding a directory at RAL to the path. An example (in ksh) is given below:

klog -cell rl.ac.uk
export PATH=$PATH:/afs/rl.ac.uk/bfactory/dist/releases/current/bin/Linux24SL3_i386_gcc2953

export BFDIST=...
export BFDISTr=/afs/rl.ac.uk/bfactory/dist

importrel -pa <release name>
importarch -px <release name> <architecture>

Site Customization

Login scripts

The login files used at RAL can be found in the directory /home/csf/bfactory/profiles .

Makefile overrides

At RAL this is done it through version specific arch_spec_XX+ files in the $BFOVERRIDE directory. This is not the ideal way of doing it but allows for changes to be inserted in retrospect. To look in the /afs/rl.ac.uk/bfactory/etc/<release>/SoftRelTools directory at RAL is probably the best way to see how this is done.

Data files

There is no automatic way to force the code to read these files locally instead. At RAL we have copied the configuration files into the directory /afs/rl.ac.uk/bfactory/reco/datafiles and have appended some RAL specific lines to BetaUser/Pathches.tcl. This file can be found as /afs/rl.ac.uk/bfactory/etc/<release>/BetaUser/Patches.tcl for each release at RAL.

CVS Repository

Testing

• The newrel command to check if the interaction with the CVS repository works. You no longer need a token for the RAL afs cell.
• A gmake spec command in the release directory to check all environment variables.
• The interaction with Objectivity. Check the standard output of gmake database.import against the same command issued at RAL or SLAC.
• Try to compile and link a BetaMiniUser job (see Workbook: Quicktour for instructions). Keep an eye on the machine during this to see that it does not run out of memory or some other resources.

System management issues

• More memory was installed to get 384 Mb in total.
• Swap space was expanded to 1 Gb.
• Tweak Kernel parameter. Set priority_paging=1 to attempt to prevent process being paged out by disk I/O.
• Downgrade (sic) AFS to AFS34a.6.
• Switch to larger AFS cache and LARGE cache manager configuration.

Keeping Updated

• Required software.
• BaBar RAL Tier A.

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