XAL Setup HOWTO for Linux-x86 at SLAC

· LCLS AFS Environment Setup

1. place the line: “source /afs/slac/g/lcls/epics/config/epicsReset.<shell> in your shell’s .<shell>rc (.cshrc, .bashrc, ..) or .login file

· System requirements:

1. J2SE 1.5 ($JAVAVER is set in /afs/slac/g/lcls/epics/config/epicsSetup.<shell>, sourced from /afs/slac/g/lcls/epics/config/epicsReset.<shell>)

2. Apache Ant 1.6.1 or later; $ANT_HOME is /afs/slac/package/java/common/contrib/apache-ant-1.6.2, set in

/afs/ slac/g/lcls/epics/config/epicsSetup.<shell>.

3. XAL from either the SNS CVS server (CVS access permission required) or web site. See XAL installation below for detail.
4. JCA 2.1.6 is setup in /afs/slac/g/lcls/epics/extensions/src/jca. Read the README.txt in this dir. This README file also instructs about edits to the JCALibrary.properties file; copy the JCALibrary.properties file appropriate for running xal/virtual accelerator from /afs/slac/g/lcls/epics/config/JCALibrary.properties to ~/.JCALibrary/JCALibrary.properties prior to running xal/virtual accelerator.
5. EPICS base library R3.14.x is setup in /afs/slac/g/lcls/epics/base
6. EPICS library setup: EPICS 3.14.xrequires gcc 3.x to build.

· Installing the SNS_CAS portable channel access server for the Virtual Accelerator application

1. SNS_PCAS is installed in /afs/slac/g/lcls/epics/extensions/src/SNS_PCAS. The binary executable is installed in afs/slac/g/lcls/epics/extensions/bin/$EPICS_HOST_ARCH/sns_cas (from a change to the Makefile)

2. This executable is run programmatically by the XAL virtualaccelerator application using the sns_cas.exe script in its own directory (xaldev/gov/sns/apps/virtualaccelerator). The virtualaccelerator java source uses the following command line: sns_cas.exe start “filename” where the “filename” is the file created by the virtualaccelerator applications after the user has chosen an accelerator sequence. The file is a list of PVs the sns_cas must create .

3. The sns_cas.exe script contains the commands as follows (these change from SNS):

#!/bin/bash

if [ $1 = 'start' ]

then

# $EPICS/extensions/bin/$EPICS_HOST_ARCH is in path, so:

sns_cas -d2 -s0 -f=$2 -fout=pv_name.out

fi

if [ $1 = 'kill' ]

then

pkill -u $USER sns_cas

fi

· XAL installation:

1. XAL is installed in /afs/slac/g/lcls/xal/xaldev. Get the latest tar from SNS (in /afs/slac/g/lcls/xal/xaldev).

2. To build, from xaldev root directory, type ‘ant jar-ext’to re-pack all the external JAR files used by XAL; creates xal.jar.

3. Type ‘ant’ to build XAL frame work.

4. Type ‘ant build-services’ to build all XAL service modules.

5. Type ‘ant build-apps’ to build all applications (alternatively, you can build each application from its own directorywith ant). There are errors in several applications so it is necessary to build each app separately - I have only built the virtual accelerator at this point

6. Ready to run applications.

Note: You can type ‘ant help’ from the xaldev root dir to get a quick on-line help for many other available options.

· Running XAL application:

Refer to the instructions in Running XAL via applauncher

Alternatively,

1. To run an application such as orbit display, type ‘java –jar$XAL_HOME/build/jar/apps/orbitdisplay.jar’.

2. Some applications don’t have $CLASSPATH properly set in their JAR manifest. If this is the case, set $CLASSPATH to include the xal.jar and the application’s JAR file, and launch the application in the regular Java fashion (java gov.sns.apps…).

3. For SNS virtualaccelerator, the machine configuration and on-line model initialization files are located in the xaldev/xal_xmls directory.

4. To set up the default accelerator (for a user account), one can run the optics switcher application ‘java –jar $XAL_HOME/build/jar/apps/opticsswitcher.jar’.

Note: Need to allocate more memory (~100MB) for Java VM of running on-line model with hundreds of devices (e.g. ‘java –Xmx120m –jar …’ for 120MB of VM memory).

 Contact: Diane Fairley or Debbie Rogind