DIRC R&D Software User's Guide

T his page is intended for casual users of the DIRC R&D environment, the PMT scanning setup and the cosmic ray telescope setup and is written strictly from a user's point of view. The goal is to give a relatively brief overview of the procedures involved in starting and ending runs and running simple analysis programs. The software package itself is throughout often referred to as "CRT" software - although the software covers both setups.

For the expert user README files written by Mayank Jain and documentation written by Thomas Hadig explain the gory details of the CRT software:

Thomas maintains a nice web page that explains the CRT software in detail.

Mayank wrote several README files as documentation of program use cases, they're available here.

Getting oriented

The DIRC R&D currently uses the following RedHat linux systems:

kskpi runs the DAQ for the scanning setup;
dircqc is the backup for the scanning setup DAQ;
dircrd-priv runs the DAQ for the prototype in Endstation A; can only be reached from bastion host dircrd;
dircrd bastion host for dircrd in building 420;
kminus runs the e-logbook server;
kzero and klong are used for the offline analysis of the scanning setup amd beam test data;
kifaru is used for monitoring and offline analysis of the prototype data as well as for the file copying and conversion;
kosmic is backup for either system.

All systems are dual-processor linux systems. They have local disks called /u1 (and sometimes /u2) where the data is initially stored before they are automatically moved to one of the group EB NFS disks by cron jobs. The scanning setup data, for instance, is currently stored on /nfs/farm/g/eb/u06/pmtscan/ and backed up to mstore (/nfs/mstore/u/hadig/data*, /nfs/mstore/u/jochen/*) regularly.
The two systems that run the DAQ should only be used for DAQ purposes and not for offline analysis since that would put too much load on the systems. The analysis code (which is kept in a CVS repository) will run on any linux system, probably even on MacOSX, so pick a less busy system for analysis.

Setting your environment

To run CRT analysis and DAQ code you need to set up your UNIX environment.

Guide to setting up your UNIX environment.

Keeping track of changes

Any action on the DAQ systems should be documented by submitting an entry into the appropriate DIRC R&D e-logbook:

http://kminus.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/dircrd/logbookpmtscanelogbook.pl for PMT scan activities,

http://kminus.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/dircrd/logbookcrtelogbook.pl for Cosmic Ray Telescope related activities,

http://kminus.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/dircrd/logbooktestbeamelogbook.pl for ESA test beam related activities.

Starting a PMT scan

To start a new PMT scan you need to log in on kskpi and execute a couple of commands.

Guide to starting a PMT scan.

Analysis of a PMT scan

Analysis of the data from the PMT scanning setup is performed with ROOT either in an interactive environment or with batch jobs. Unfortunately, there is currently no up-to-date documentation for the analysis software. The only documentation is old, available here:

Introduction to PMT scan analysis.

Starting and ending a CRT run

(This setup is currently inactive, all hardware is in ESA, the instructions below are obsolete.)

To start or end a new CRT run you need to log in on kosmic and execute a couple of commands.

Guide to starting and ending a CRT run.

Last significant update: Mar 31, 2008, by Joe