How to : setting the online DAQ

This page contains the information that basic commissionners have to know to configure and run the DAQ in the calibration farm.

Online software.

The LHCb software applications are installed on the online farm at the /sw/lib/lhcb/ location.
A common user_area is defined for calorimeter at /group/calo/sw/cmtuser where local copy of some applications (Online, Orwell, LHCb, DBase) are installed when needed.
A set of useful scripts are available in /group/calo/sw/scripts/

The static farm node hlte0601 and hlte0602 are allocated to the calorimeter project during the commissioning phase. You can log on one of this machine (ssh hlte060x) via the gateway (ssh lbgw01.cern.ch).

Running the Event Builder, data storage and Orwell monitoring tasks

To run the Event Builder and monitoring tasks, users are supposed to proceed with the dynamic allocation available at the top level of the run control. Just allocate the storage and monitoring systems.
To visualize the monitoring histograms, the presenter can be launched by running the online script :

/group/online/presenter/presenter.sh

Don't forget to set the DIM_DNS_NODE variable to the node where histograms are produced.

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If, for some justified reason, you need to run in a static way, you can follow the instruction below. It allows to perform data taking and run the monitoring algorithm, in a standalone mode.
This procedure has to be considered as a temporarly solution that should works as long as static farm node are available.

In any case, migrate to the dynamic allocation procedure as soon as possible

Setting the environment ( New procedure (january 2008))

The environment is set running the following script :

source /group/calo/sw/scripts/setupUser.sh

This creates a local copy of the Orwell project in the user area at ($HOME/cmtuser/Orwell_$HOST_vXX/). Working in local user area allows several users to run Orwell simultaneously on different farm node with different options. In addition the script defines few aliases useful to run the Event Builder and the calorimeter monitoring tasks :

- setupEB : setup the Event Builder
- launchEB : launch the Event Builder tasks
- cleanall : close the Event Builder tasks and clean the memories
- presenter : launch the online presenter

Running the Event Builder and Orwell tasks

Before launching the application you may have to modify several options located in $ORWELLOPTS according to your prefered setup. All the options files the user can modify are prefixed with the 'user' word.

• $ORWELLOPTS/userSrcIP.opts : set the IP sources addresses (TELL1s) of the incoming banks
• $ORWELLOPTS/userODIN.opts : set the IP address for ODIN.
• $ORWELLOPTS/userWriter.opts : set the output file name (MDF and RAW format). Note that data written in the /data/calo/ area are automatically transferred on Castor storage system.
• $ORWELLOPTS/userPrescaler.opts : define the various output rate scaling (for MDF and RAW writing & for 2D display in normal and TAE mode)
• $ORWELLOPTS/userTAE.opts : set the consecutive trigger window in RAW output (TAE mode). Warning the window MUST be consistent with the MEP factor
• $ORWELLOPTS/userMEPBuffers.opts : define the number of MEP receiver buffers (default is 9)

The Orwell tasks (i.e. histogramming the calorimeter data) are defined in $ORWELLOPTS/OrwellOnline.opts and $ORWELLOPTS/MEPAnalyser.opts for the single BX mode and TAE mode, respectively.
The common sequence is defined in $ORWELLOPTS/OrwellSeq.opts

When you are happy with your setup just type the following commands to launch the Event Builder and Orwell tasks, typing the following aliases :

> setupEB

> launchEB

You can display the various Orwell sequence histograms using the presenter :

> presenter

You can stop the application with :

> cleanall

Before launching again the application (launchEB) don't forget to change the name of the output file in order to not overwrite existing data.

using Orwell in the offline mode

Installing Orwell on lxplus

To install the Orwell project on your private area follow the standard cmt procedure :

setenvOrwell v1r3
getpack Calib/Orwell v1r3
getpack Calib/CaloCalib v1r3
cd Calib/Orwell/v1r3/cmt
source setup.(c)sh
cmt broadcast make

you can then run the application with the usual command line :

cd ../options
../$CMTCONFIG/Orwell.exe [options_file]

The following options files are pre-defined :

Orwell.opts : histograms provider (CaloCalib/CaloCalib)
OrwellNtp.opts : monitoring ntuple provider (CaloCalib/CaloNtpMonitor)

Please read, understand and modify the options file according to your need.
The histogram/ntuple settings are included from $CALOCALIBROOT/options/
Some detail on how to configure CaloCalib can be found here and there

You can run on the commissioning data with either the mdf format or the raw format (select ReadMDFFile.opts or ReadRawFile.opts in Orwell.opts)

Warning : when using commissioning data obtained with TELL1 firmware < v2r1 (which add an extra header word in the data bank body) you need to add some extra lines in the options files, e.g.
HcalCalib.HcalReadoutTool.DetectorSpecificHeader = true;

-- OlivierDeschamps - 29 Oct 2007