In this section we are going to run the Readout software with a Readout GUI front end that can manage recording the event data. This mode also supports running the Readout program on a remote system. We will also take you on a brief tour of the way the directories for recorded data are organized.
To prepare for this we will need to:
Set our account up for password-less login over ssh within the lab.
Designate a directory tree for event recording and create a symbolic link that points to it.
The Readout GUI runs your readout program over an ssh pipe. This allows it to start Readout in any system that shares the directory in which your Readout is located. For experimental accounts, this is any system within the building, though clearly you need to run Readout on the system that is attached to the hardware it must access.
This is normally used in production experiments where users are located in the data U's but their Readout will run on spdaq systems in a vault.
In order to run the Readout program over an ssh pipe, you need to first set up your account so that you don't need to provide a password when ssh-ing from linux system to linux system within the lab. This involves creating an authentication key for you as a user, without a passphrase and installing the public key as an authorized key:
Example 11-17. Setting up ssh for password-less login
ssh-keygen -t rsa
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/a/.ssh/id_rsa):Enter
Created directory '/home/a/.ssh'.
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):Enter
Enter same passphrase again: Enter
Your identification has been saved in /home/a/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/a/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
3e:4f:05:79:3a:9f:96:7c:3b:ad:e9:58:37:bc:37:e4
In the example above, Enter means to use the Enter key on your keyboard. Note that some of the output may be slightly different than what you see.
Next you must add the public key file (~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub) to the list of keys that are considered known authentication key:
This command appends your public key to the authorized keys list creating it if necessary.
Where you put events depends on the type of account you have and the volume of the data you intend to record:
If you have an account for a specific experiment, prior to the experiment an event area will be allocated and assigned to your account.
If you have a test account and have told the helproom that you will need to record and retain a large amount of event data during your tests, your account will be assigned a test event area.
If you have a test account and don't need to record much data you can record it in a directory in your home diretory tree.
We will assume that you only need to record a small amount of data and that you will create a directory in which to record data data:
Example 11-18. Creating an event area for a small amount of data
mkdir ~/events
ln -s ~/events ~/stagearea
The first command creates the directory in which you will record your data. The second, creates a symbolic link expected by the Readout GUI.
Now that we have prepared the account we can start the Readout GUI:
The Readout GUI can manage several Readout programs that contribute data to an Event Builder. The Readout GUI refers to these programs as Data Sources. The first time you start the Readout GUI you must specify the set of data sources it manages.
ReadoutGUI stores its state in the event area. If you restart ReadoutGUI with the same event area it will remember the data sources you selected.
To set up your data source, click the menu entry. In the resulting popup dialog select SSHPipe from the listbox and click .
Each data source type is parameterized in a manner appropriate to its type. In our case, the parameters we need to fill in in the resulting dialog box are:
The name of the computer in which Readout will run. If Readout will run in the computer on which ReadoutGUI is running, you can leave the default as localhost.
Use the button to locat your Readout program and select it.
Once you have selected the appropriate parameterization for the SSHPipe data source type to run your Readut, Click .
Before acquiring data, you must start the data source(s). Click the button to do this.
When the Readout program starts successfully, you can click the button to start a run and button to end the run ( becomes the button when a run is active).
To record a run to disk, check the checkbutton before starting the run.
Record a few short runs before continuing to the next section
The event area maintains a structure that allows non event data to be associated with event files. The mechanics of doing that are beyond the scope of this (already too long) tutorial. For the sake of this section, it's only important to know that the event area uses symbolic links to provide two views of the data.
The event file view provides a single directory which appears to have all event files (appears because in reality this directory contains only symbolic links to the actual event files).
The directory ~/stagearea/complete contains the event file view. When analyzing data offline this is usually the directory you will need to see. For experiments that don't store metadata with runs, this is usually the only directory you need to look at
The Run view provides a view of the data in which all of the data associated with each run is in its own directory. The ~stagearea/experiment directory provides this view.
Within this view you will find a directory for each run that was recorded to disk. If you have not assocated metadata with runs, these directories will only contain the event files for that run, e.g. ~/stagearea/experiment/run1 will contain run-0001-00.evt.
If you have associated metadata with the runs, the metadata at the time each run ends is also stored in that run's directory.