%META:TOPICINFO{author="RamonCreager" date="1210962180" format="1.0" version="1.1"}% %META:TOPICPARENT{name="Main.RamonCreager"}%

Testing the Mustang Manager on spider.physics.upenn.edu

Introduction

The SDD Mustang team has a need for testing the manager while the hardware is at the University of Pennsylvania. In order to do this an M&C system was installed on spider.

Accessing spider

Spider is accessible via ssh, using an account called 'monctrl' (not our 'monctrl', and it has it's own password):

$ ssh monctrl@spider.physics.upenn.edu

M&C Installation

The M&C system on spider is located in the monctrl user home directory. The binaries are located in the directory '8.3', and the M&C directory is 'gbt'. Measurement logs are saved in the 'simlogs' directory and data is saved in 'simdata'.

There is no M&C source tree on spider.

Accessing the Manager

There currently is no CLEO or Sparrow installation on spider at U. Penn. However the manager may be accessed through the Grail on spider. All that is required is to set up an ssh tunnel to spider with Grail's service port number (18000):

ssh -L 18000:spider.physics.upenn.edu:18000 monctrl@spider.physics.upenn.edu

This sets up the tunnel from the localhost to spider. A Grail Client may now be run on the localhost to access the manager on spider.

NOTE: Grail provides a direct control and polling service, and also provides for asynchronous callbacks. Grail implements these callbacks by making SOAP client calls to a URI provided by the Grail Client. Only the direct control and polling functionality is available with the tunnel set up above. Callbacks will not work unless the callback port specified in the callback URI is also tunneled back from spider to the client's host.

The easiest way to start a Grail Client connection is by using the Grail Client in ygor/user/Grail/GrailClient. Follow these steps:

$ source /home/gbt/sparrow/sparrow.bash
$ python

Once in python:

from grailclient import *

cl = GrailClient("goauld", 18000, cb_port=19592) # use the local host's name
par = cl.create_manager('Rcvr_PAR')

To learn more about the Grail Client, see the Grail Client Wiki page.

To start a simple scan on the Mustang Manager, with an immediate start time and a duration of 5 seconds:

# start scan immediately. Reverts to 0 after scan
par.set_value('asap', 1)
# set scan length
par.set_value('scanLength,MJD', 0)
par.set_value('scanLength,seconds', 5)

# start the scan.  'start_at' needs a time stamp, but since 'asap' = 1,
# this can be set to 0
ts = {}
ts["theMJD"] = 0
ts["theSec"] = 0
par.start_at(ts)

-- RamonCreager - 16 May 2008