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M&C 6.2 Release Notes

Released on Wednesday, March 29, 2006 16:30-21:30

Also, see the GFM v6.2 Release Notes and Turtle v6.2 Release Notes.

• Testing Activities
• New Features and Improvements
  • M&C System
    • Antenna
    • CCB Manager
    • Penn Array Receiver Manager
    • Time Stamps
    • Motor Rack
  • Observing System
    • Observation Management (Turtle)
    • GFM
  • Data Analysis
    • GBTIDL
• Known Issues
  • Power Supply 3 in Motor Rack (remains from last cycle)
  • IFManager connection failure messages from dependent child managers (remains from last cycle)
  • MM Converter Manager
  • Inclinometer Manager

Testing Activities

New Features and Improvements

M&C System

Antenna

We have modified the structure of the Antenna FITS file. The updated Antenna FITS file specification can be found at http://www.gb.nrao.edu/GBT/MC/doc/dataproc/gbtAntFits/gbtAntFits/gbtAntFits.html. The new FITS file revision number is 1.9. The following is a summary of changes:

• The local focus corrections for all six axes were added to the primary header.
• The focus tracking model coefficients for all six axes were added to the primary header.
• The data-field widths were increased in order to show the full accuracy of the values for the focus tracking and local focus correction keywords.

CCB Manager

General behavior for the CCB from the user's viewpoint has not changed, but a couple of subtle bugs were fixed which previously could inhibit updating of the "Monitor" tab, and the ability of programmers to make enhancements and other changes to the system.

Penn Array Receiver Manager

The Penn Array receiver manager was released. The manager should be left "off". Testing of this manager with the IRC softare and test hardware should be coordinated with MelindaMello

Time Stamps

A longstanding bug was fixed in this release which caused the system to generate incorrect time labels for and in FITS files whenever a scan start time happen to fall on a minute boundary (zero seconds offset). FITS file labels and entries should now be accurate in all cases.

Motor Rack

The Motor Rack Manager will be updated soon after the 6.2 release to add refrigerator power supply and vacuum pump control. Maintenance personnel may change the control settings by editing the MotorRack.conf file, and then cycling the motor rack manager state off and back on. This action will cause the configuration file to be re-read.

Observing System

Observation Management (Turtle)

Please see the Observing API Release Notes for detailed information. In summary:

• The default scan duration values for all Scan Types except for non-Auto* procedures, Track, and Tip have been removed. You must now specify these scan durations explicitly. This change enforces a practice that almost all users were already exercising. However, it should be noted that this change will break current Scheduling Blocks which attempt to use the current (default) scan duration.
• The Scan Type, Slew, now accepts an Offset as its second argument. IMPORTANT: This change will break current Scheduling Blocks that pass a beam name to Slew (e.g. Slew(myLocation, myBeam)).
• Scan Type argument checking during validation has been enhanced to catch data-type errors. This should catch the two previous changes.
• A validation output window has been added to the Edit tab of the Observation Management application in Astrid.
• There is a new Observing Directive, SpigotChangeDataDirectory, which allows one to change data directories in the Scheduling Block during Pulsar Spigot observations.
• You may now subtract Offsets from Locations and Offsets from Offsets in scheduling blocks as long as all entities have the same coordinate mode.

GFM

Please see the GFM Release Notes for detailed information. In summary, the CCB has been integrated into the Pointing and Focus plugins. Also, the generic DCR plugin has been renamed "Continuum" and now displays both DCR and CCB data.

There are now new daemons running via Task Master that are part of a staged release for the upgrades to the GFM Spectral Line Plugin. The daemon plotserver runs on host wind, while spectralplotter runs on host earth. These processes should not affect observing in any way, but will be needed when the Spectral Line Plugin is upgraded in the future.

Data Analysis

GBTIDL

GBTIDL will have a separate release mid-April. Release notes for GBTIDL and the release date will be circulated via e-mail to gbtlocal.

Known Issues

Power Supply 3 in Motor Rack (remains from last cycle)

• Power supply 3 in the Motor Rack has a hardware problem. It always shows failed and the logs are not written.

IFManager connection failure messages from dependent child managers (remains from last cycle)

• During version changes, several child managers of managers with IFManager dependencies reported RPC connection errors with the IFManager. In every case, it was just one of the child managers of each manager reporting the problem.

MM Converter Manager

• The Millimeter Converter manager attempts to read the MCB bus even when it is off, causing error messages to be generated when the hardware is not installed.

Inclinometer Manager

• The inclinometer manager fails to start. This item is under investigation.