Release notes for DAQ/HLT-I S/W Release tdaq-04-00-01

General notes from s/w librarian

General info

This is a base DAQ/HLT-I release which is intended to be used for the ATLAS data taking in 2012. It is an update to tdaq-04-00-00 release from Oct 2011, please read first tdaq-04-00-01 RELEASE NOTES. This release is compatible with LCG s/w version 61c and with ATLAS offline s/w 17.1.X branch.

Supported platforms, compilers and compatibility

External s/w

Release distribution

Development environment

NB: ! default /usr/bin/gcc SLC5 compiler version 4.1.2 is not compatible with gcc-4.3.x and must not be used! To check that you're running proper compipler, try
> cmt run gcc -v

> source <inst_root>/sw/lcg/contrib/gcc/4.3.5/x86_64-slc5-gcc43-opt/setup.sh 

> source <inst_root>/sw/lcg/contrib/gcc/4.3.5/slc4_ia32_gcc43/setup.sh

> source <inst_root>/CMT/v1r21/mgr/setup.sh

Changes in development policy:

Important changes requiring user actions:

Packages and tags used in the release

Changes in packages (in ABC order)

coca

RELEASE_NOTES (for tdaq-04-00-01)

General notes

This page lists changes that happened to CoCa since last production release (tdaq-04-00-00). Main change in coca is preparation for migration from CASTOR storage to EOS. Actual migration will consist in renaming of the database archive names, the changes to coca were made to support this future renaming.

Client API changes

• Getting rid of all castor mentioning in the code without breaking interfaces.
• coca/client/RemoteArchive has castorPath() method exposed to clients, add method archivePath() which does the same, castorPath() marked as deprecated. Same applies to Python wrappers

New functionality

• DBClient::fileLocations() - preparing for EOS migration, now will use root://eosatlas/ prefix for archives whose path does not start with /castor or root:
• coca_get_files script extended to handle root: prefix for archive locations

mda

RELEASE_NOTES (for tdaq-04-00-01)

This page lists changes that happened to mda package since last production release (tdaq-04-00-00).

Bug fixes

• changed alias name for MDA3_FILE table from FILE to FT to avoid problem with the new expression parser in CORAL_2_3_18: http://savannah.cern.ch/bugs/?88007
• bug fix in MDAControllable::waitForArchiver(), return value of stat() was used incorrectly

Client API changes

• New script mda_dump_db to dump MDA database contents for specific run.
• New C++ app mda_set_archive to modify archive name of the file registered in MDA, useful if file has been registered in CoCa later.
• New script mda_root_ls based on PyROOT to dump content of MDA ROOT file.
• (Not an API change) Preparing EOS migration, removing all CASTOR words (variables, comments, etc.).

mda_browser

RELEASE_NOTES (for tdaq-04-00-01)

This page lists changes that happened to mda_browser package in preparation for tdaq-04-00-01. Main change is that mda_browser now opens ROOT files remotely using xrootd protocol instead of moving archives to temporary local directory.

Documentation

• Few classes have been doxygenated.

Re-factoring

• Files containg multiple classes were split into multiple files, one class per file.

New functionality

• mda_browser now opens ROOT files remotely using xrootd protocol instead of moving archives to temporary local directory.
• Sorting of numeric columns (run numbers/times) have been improved.

ohp

General changes

OHP has been migrated to Qt4.

Variables support has been added to thge OHP configuration file. The <general> XML tag may contain now arbitrary number of variables definitions in the form of simple XML tags called "variable", for example:

<variable name="SERVER" value="Histogramming"/>

Variables can be used in any XML token of the same or an included XML file. Any token like ${VARIBEL_NAME} or $(VARIABLE_NAM) will be replaced with the value of the "VARIABLE_NAME" variable. For example in the follow2ing plugin configuration all histograms will be taken from the IS server called "Histogramming":

<plugin name="test" library="libohpplugins.so" type="HistoWindowPlugin">
   <ndivx>2</ndivx>
   <ndivy>2</ndivy>
   <histos is-multi-value="yes">"$(SERVER)/Provider/a $(SERVER)/Provider/b $(SERVER)/Provider/c"</histos>
</plugin>

Changes in the public API

The public API for custom plugins has been slightly changed.

The ohp::PluginBase class provides now 3 virtual functions which can be re-implemented by a custom plugin:

• virtual void configure(const PluginInfo& info) - is called once by the OHP core to pass configuration information to the plugin
• virtual void aboutToDisplay() - is called once by the OHP before displaying plugin for the first time
• virtual void updateContent() - is called by the OHP when the visual state of the plugin is being changed and the information, presented by the plugin might need to be updated
• virtual void saveState(QSettings& ) - is called by the OHP core once before exiting the OHP. Plugins can use this function to save their state to the given QSettings object.
• virtual void restoreState(const QSettings& ) - is called by the OHP core once immediately after plugin configuration. A plugin can restore its state from the given QSettings object.

ohpplugins

Changes for the plugins

OHP Plugins have been migrated to Qt4. The new plugins implementations also address all outstanding requests from Savannah. The detailed list of changes is given below. Most of the changes are backward compatible, which means that the existing OHP configuration files are fully supported with only two small caveats related to the LegacyButtonsPlugin and StatusPlugin plugins.

• LegacyButtonsPlugin plugin is not supported anymore. The "Run" and "Pause" buttons are always present in the main menu and toolbar of the MDIPlugin. OHP will give a warning for all configuration files which contain the LegacyButtonsPlugin plugin, but will continue working normally.
• MDIPlugin:
  • It supports now two alternative views for the plugins: MDI and Tab. A user can switch between them using buttons in the plugin's main tool bar.
  • The plugins has the status bar, which is being used by an active plugin for presenting some real-time information.
  • Font size for all plugins can be changed (increase or decreased) dynamically using tool bar buttons.
  • The plugin saves it's state and position on the screen while exiting and restores them at the next incarnation.
  • Status plugins are located now in the QDockWidget widgets, which can be detached from the main window or closed. The actual state of those widgets is saved when the OHP is closed and is restored and the next startup.
• StatusPlugin:
  • The plugins has been split into 2. The one which is still called StatusPlugin displays the status information about the OHP itself (present/absent IS servers, notification counters. etc.)
  • The second plugin is called RunStatusPlugin and displays the state of the TDAQ partition (Run Number, Run State, Starting Time, etc.). In order to have this information in the OHP, one has to add the following line to an existing OHP configuration file:
    • <plugin name="RunStatus" library="libohpplugins.so" type="RunStatusPlugin"/>
• HistoWindowPlugin:
• While mouse pointer is being moved over one of the histograms displayed by the plugin, the corresponding histogram name, bin position and bin value are presented in the MDIPlugin's status bar.
• HistoWindowTabPlugin:
  • Nested tabs support has been added. For a nested tab configuration example see the definition of the "test3" plugin in the ${TDAQ_INST_PATH}/share/data/ohp/example.conf.xml file
  • While mouse pointer is being moved over one of the histograms displayed by the plugin, the corresponding histogram name, bin position and bin value are presented in the MDIPlugin's status bar.
• BrowserPlugin:
  • Expand selected tree branch on a single mouse button click.
  • Double click paints all histograms from the selected tree branch.
  • Additional actions are available via the context menu which appears on right mouse button click.