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A list of all operation manuals (beyond detector sub-systems) is available at You do not have access to view this node.
Please use it a startup page.
This page will list by year action items, run plans and opened questions. It will server as a repository for documents serving as basis for drawing the requirements. To see documents in this tree, you must belong to the Software and Computing OG (the pages are not public).
Active feedback
| Sub-system | Coordinator | Calibration POC | Online monitoring POC |
| MTD | Rongrong Ma | - same - | - same - |
| EMC |
Raghav Kunnawalkam Elayavalli Nick Lukow |
- same - |
Note: L2algo, bemc and bsmdstatus |
| EPD | Prashant Shanmuganathan | N/A | - same - |
| BTOF | Frank Geurts | - same - | Frank Geurts Zaochen Ye |
| ETOF | Florian Seck | - same - | Florian Seck Philipp Weidenkaff |
| HLT | Hongwei Ke | - same - | - same - |
Other software coordinators
| sub-system | Coordinator |
| iTPC (TPC?) | Irakli Chakaberia |
| Trigger | Akio Ogawa |
| DAQ | Jeff Landgraf |
| ... |
In RUN: EEMC, EMC, EPD, ETOF, GMT, TPC, MTD, TOF
Test: FST, FCS, STGC (no tables)
Desired init dates where announced to all software coordinators:
- Geometry tag has a timestamp of 20191120
- Simulation timeline [20191115,20191120[
- DB initialization for real data [20191125,...]
Please initialize your table content appropriate yi.e.
sim flavor initial values are entered at 20191115 up to 20191119
(please exclude the edge), ofl initial values at 20191125
(run starting on the 1st of December, even tomorrow's cosmic
and commissioning would pick the proper values).
EMC = ready
ETOF = ready - initialized at 2019-11-25, no sim (confirming)
TPC = NOT ready [look at year 19 for comparison]
MTD = ready
TOF = Partially ready? INL correction, T0, TDC, status and alignement tables initialized
EPD = gain initialized at 2019-12-15 (!?), status not initialized, no sim
EEMC = ready? (*last init at 2017-12-20)
GMT = ready (*no db tables)
EMC = ready
ETOF = ready? initialized at 2019-11-25, no sim
TPC = NOT ready
MTD = ready
TOF = NOT ready
EPD = gain initialized at 2019-12-15 (!?), status not initialized, no sim
EEMC = ready? (*last init at 2017-12-20)
GMT = ready (*no db tables)
| Sub-system | Coordinator | Calibration POC | Online monitoring POC |
| MTD | Rongrong Ma | - same - | - same - |
| EMC EEMC |
Raghav Kunnawalkam Elayavalli Nick Lukow |
- same - |
Note: L2algo, bemc and bsmdstatus |
| EPD | [ TBC] | - same - | - same - |
| BTOF | Frank Geurts | - same - | Frank Geurts Zaochen Ye |
| ETOF | Florian Seck | - same - | Florian Seck Philipp Weidenkaff |
| HLT | Hongwei Ke | - same - | - same - |
| TPC | Irakli Chakaberia | - same - |
Flemming Videbaek
|
| Trigger detectors | Akio Ogawa | - same - | - same - |
| DAQ | Jeff Landgraf | N/A |
| Sub-system | Coordinator | Calibration POC | Online monitoring POC |
| MTD | Rongrong Ma | - same - | - same - |
| EMC EEMC |
Raghav Kunnawalkam Elayavalli Nick Lukow |
- same - |
Note: L2algo, bemc and bsmdstatus |
| EPD | Prashanth Shanmuganathan (TBC) | Skipper Kagamaster | - same - |
| BTOF | Zaochen | - same - | Frank Geurts Zaochen Ye |
| ETOF | Philipp Weidenkaff | - same - | Philipp Weidenkaff |
| HLT | Hongwei Ke | - same - | - same - |
| TPC | Yuri Fisyak | - same - | Flemming Videbaek |
| Trigger detectors | Akio Ogawa | - same - | - same - |
| DAQ | Jeff Landgraf | N/A | |
| Forward Upgrade | Daniel Brandenburg | - same - | FCS - Akio Ogawa sTGC - Daniel Brandenburg FST - Shenghui Zhang/Zhenyu Ye |
---
Status - 2021/10/13
| Sub-system | Coordinator | Calibration POC | Online monitoring POC |
| MTD | Rongrong Ma | - same - | - same - |
| EMC EEMC |
Raghav Kunnawalkam Elayavalli |
- same - |
Note: L2algo, bemc and bsmdstatus |
| EPD | Prashanth Shanmuganathan (TBC) | Skipper Kagamaster | - same - |
| BTOF | Zaochen | - same - | Frank Geurts Zaochen Ye |
| ETOF | Philipp Weidenkaff | - same - | Philipp Weidenkaff |
| HLT | Hongwei Ke | - same - | - same - |
| TPC | Yuri Fisyak | - same - | Flemming Videbaek |
| Trigger detectors | Akio Ogawa | - same - | - same - |
| DAQ | Jeff Landgraf | N/A | |
| Forward Upgrade | Daniel Brandenburg | - same - | FCS - Akio Ogawa sTGC - Daniel Brandenburg FST - Shenghui Zhang/Zhenyu Ye |
---
TPC Software – Richard Witt NO GMT Software – Richard Witt NO EMC2 Software - Alice Ohlson Yes FGT Software - Anselm Vossen Yes FMS Software - Thomas Burton Yes TOF Software - Frank Geurts Yes Trigger Detectors - Akio Ogawa ?? HFT Software - Spyridon Margetis NO (no DB interface, hard-coded values in preview codes)
Coordinator Possible POC
------------ ---------------
TPC Software – Richard Witt
GMT Software – Richard Witt
EMC2 Software - Alice Ohlson Alice Ohlson
FGT Software - Anselm Vossen
FMS Software - Thomas Burton Thomas Burton
TOF Software - Frank Geurts
Trigger Detectors - Akio Ogawa
HFT Software - Spyridon Margetis Hao Qiu
| Directories we inferred are being used (as reported in the RTS Hypernews) | |||
| scaler | Len Eun and Ernst Sichtermann (LBL) | This directory usage was indirectly reported | |
| SlowControl | James F Ross (Creighton) | ||
| HLT | Qi-Ye Shou | The 2012 directory had a recent timestamp but owned by mnaglis. Aihong Tang contacted 2013/02/12 Answer from Qi-Ye Shou 2013/02/12 - will be POC. |
|
| fmsStatus | Yuxi Pan (UCLA) | This was not requested but the 2011 directory is being overwritten by user=yuxip FMS software coordinator contacted for confirmation 2013/02/12 Yuxi Pan confirmed 2013/02/13 as POC for this directory |
|
| Spin PWG monitoring related directories follows |
|||
| L0trg | Pibero Djawotho (TAMU) | ||
| L2algo | Maxence Vandenbroucke (Temple) | ||
| cdev | Kevin Adkins (UKY) | ||
| zdc | Len Eun and Ernst Sichtermann (LBL) | ||
| bsmdStatus | Keith Landry (UCLA) | ||
| emcStatus | Keith Landry (UCLA) | ||
| fgtStatus | Xuan Li (Temple) | This directory is also being written by user=akio causing protection access and possible clash problems. POC contacted on 2013/02/08, both Akio and POC contacted again 2013/02/12 -> confirmed as OK. |
|
| bbc | Prashanth (KSU) | ||
| Sub-system | Coordinator | Check done |
| DAQ |
Jeff Landgraf | |
| TPC | Richard Witt | |
| GMT | Richard Witt | |
| EMC2 | Mike Skoby Kevin Adkins |
|
| FMS | Thomas Burton | |
| TOF | Daniel Brandenburg | |
| MTD | Rongrong Ma | |
| HFT | Spiros Margetis | (not known) |
| Trigger | Akio Ogawa | |
| FGT | Xuan Li |
| Sub-system | Coordinator | Calibration POC |
| DAQ | Jeff Landgraf | - |
| TPC | Richard Witt | - |
| GMT | Richard Witt | - |
| EMC2 | Mike Skoby Kevn Adkins |
- |
| FMS | Thomas Burton | - |
| TOF | Daniel Brandenburg | - |
| MTD | Rongrong Ma | Bingchu Huan |
| HFT | Spiros Margetis | Jonathan Bouchet |
| Trigger | Akio Ogawa | - |
| FGT | Xuan Li | N/A |
| Not needed 2013/11/25 | ||
| SlowControl | Chanaka DeSilva | OKed on second Run preparation meeting |
| HLT | Zhengquia Zhang | Learn incidently on 2014/01/28 |
| HFT | Shusu Shi | Learn about it on 2014/02/26 |
| Not needed 2013/11/25 | ||
| L0trg | Zilong Chang Mike Skoby |
Informed 2013/11/10 and created 2013/11/15 |
| L2algo | Nihar Sahoo | Informed 2013/11/25 |
| Not needed 2013/11/25 | ||
| zdc | may not be used (TBC) | |
| bsmdStatus | Janusz Oleniacz | Info will be passed from Keith Landry 2014/01/20 Possible backup, Leszek Kosarzewski 2014/03/26 |
| emcStatus | Janusz Oleniacz | Info will be passed from Keith Landry 2014/01/20 Possible backup, Leszek Kosarzewski 2014/03/26 |
| Not needed 2013/11/25 | ||
| bbc |
Akio Ogawa | Informed 2013/11/15, created same day |
Run 15 was preapred essentiallydiscussing with indviduals and a comprehensive page not maintained.
| scaler | ||
| SlowControl | ||
| HLT | Zhengqiao | Feedback 2015/11/24 |
| HFT | Guannan Xie | Spiros: Feedback 2015/11/24 |
| Akio: Possibly not needed (TBC). 2016/01/13 noted this was not used in Run 15 and wil probably never be used again. | ||
| fmsTrg | Confirmed neded 2016/01/13 | |
| fps | Akio: Not neded in Run 16? Perhaps later. | |
| L0trg | Zilong Chang | Zilong: Feedback 2015/11/24 |
| L2algo | Kolja Kauder | Kolja: will be POC - 2015/11/24 |
| cdev | Chanaka DeSilva | |
| zdc | ||
| bsmdStatus | Kolja Kauder | Kolja: will be POC - 2015/11/24 |
| bemcTrgDb | Kolja Kauder | Kolja: will be POC - 2015/11/24 |
| emcStatus | Kolja Kauder | Kolja: will be POC - 2015/11/24 |
| Not needed since Run 14 ... May drop from the list | ||
| bbc |
Akio Ogawa | Feedback 2015/11/24, needed |
| rp |
| Sub-system | Coordinator | Calibration POC |
| DAQ | Jeff Landgraf | - |
| TPC | Richard Witt Yuri Fisyak |
- |
| GMT | Richard Witt | - |
| EMC2 | Kolja Kauder Ting Lin |
- |
| FMS | Oleg Eysser | - |
| TOF | Daniel Brandenburg | - |
| MTD | Rongrong Ma | (same confirmed 2015/11/24) |
| HFT | Spiros Margetis | Xin Dong |
| HLT | Hongwei Ke | (same confirmed 2015/11/24) |
| Trigger | Akio Ogawa | - |
| RP | Kin Yip | - |
This page will now hold the shift accounting pages. They complement the Shift Sign-up process by documenting it.
9 WEEKS PRE-ASSIGNED QA AS FOLLOWS
==================================
Lanny Ray (UT Austin) QA Mar 5
Richard Witt (USNA/Yale) QA Mar 19
Sevil Salur (Rutgers) QA Apr 16
Wei Li (Rice) QA Apr 23
Kevin Adkins (Kentucky) QA May 14
Juan Romero (UC Davis) QA May 21
Jana Bielcikova (NPI, Czech Acad of Sci) QA May 28
Yanfang Liu (TAMU) QA June 25
Yanfang Liu (TAMU) QA July 02
8 WEEKS PRE-ASSIGNED REGULAR SHIFTS AS FOLLOWS
==================================
Bob Tribble (BNL) Feb 05 SL evening
Daniel Kincses (Eotvos) Mar 12 DO Trainee Day
Daniel Kincses (Eotvos) Mar 19 DO Day
Mate Csanad (Eotvos) Mar 12 SC Day
Ronald Pinter (Eotvos) Mar 19 SC Day
Carl Gagliardi (TAMU) May 14 SL day
Carl Gagliardi (TAMU) May 21 SL day
Grazyna Odyniec (LBNL) July 02 SL evening
For the calculation of shift dues, there are two considerations.
1) The length of time of the various shift configurations (2 person, 4 person no trainees, 4 person with trainees, plus period coordinators/QA shifts)
2) The percent occupancy of the training shifts
For many years, 2) has hovered about 45%, which is what we used to calculate the dues. Since STAR gives credit for training shifts (as we should) this needs to be factored in or we would not have enough shifts.
The sum total of shifts needed are then divided by the total number of authors minus authors from Russian institutions who can not come to BNL.
date weeks crew training PC OFFLINE
11/26-12/10 2 2 0 0 0
12/10-12/24 2 4 2 1 0
12/24-6/30 27 4 2 1 1
7/02-7/16 2 4 0 1 1
Adding these together (3x a shift for crew, 3x45% for training, plus pc plus offline) gives a total of 522 shifts.
The total number of shifters is 303 - 30 Russian collaborators = 273 people
Giving a total due of 1.9 per author.
For a given institution, their load is calculated as # of authors - # of expert credits x due -> Set to an integer value as cutting collaborators into pieces is non-collegial behavior.
However, this year, this should have been:
date weeks crew training PC OFFLINE
11/26-12/10 2 2 0 0 0
12/10-12/24 2 4 2 1 0
12/24-6/02 23 4 2 1 1
6/02-6/16 2 4 0 1 1
Adding these together (3x a shift for crew, 3x45% for training, plus pc plus offline) gives a total of 456 shifts for a total due of 1.7 per author.
We allowed some people to pre-sign up, due to a couple different reasons.
Family reasons so offline QA:
James Kevin Adkins
Jana Bielčíková
Sevil Selur
Md. Nasim
Yanfang Liu
Additionally, Lanny Ray is given the first QA shift of the year as our experience QA shifter.
This year, to add an incentive to train for shift leader, we allowed people who were doing shift leader training to sign up for both their training shift and their "real" shift early:
Justin Ewigleben
Hanna Zbroszczyk
Jan Vanek
Maria Zurek
Mathew Kelsey
Kun Jiang
Yue-Hang Leung
Both Bob Tribble and Grazyna Odyniec sign up early for a shift leader position in recognition of their schedules and contributions
This year because of the date of Quark Matter and the STAR pre-QM meeting, several people were traveling on Tuesday during the sign up. These people I signed up early as I did not want to punish some of our most active colleagues for the QM timing:
James Daniel Brandenburg
Sooraj Radhakrishnan
3 other cases that were allowed to pre-sign up:
Panjab University had a single person who had the visa to enter the US, and had to take all of their shifts prior to the end of their contract in March. So that the shifter could have some spaces in his shifts for sanity, I signed up:
Jagbir Singh
Eotvos Lorand University stated that travel is complicated for their group, and so it would be good if they could insure that they were all on shift at the same time. Given that they are coming from Europe I signed up:
Mate Csanad
Daniel Kincses
Roland Pinter
Srikanta Tripathy
Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) wanted to be able to bring Masters students to do shift, but given the training requirements and timing with school and travel for Europe, this leaves little availability for shift. So I signed up:
Iouri Vassiliev
Artemiy Belousov
Grigory Kozlov
This is to serve as a repository of information about various STAR tools used in experimental operations.
Concatenate the following certs into one file in this example I call it: Global_plus_Intermediate.crt/etc/pki/tls/certs/wildcard.star.bnl.gov.Nov.2012.cert – host cert.
/etc/pki/tls/private/wildcard.star.bnl.gov.Nov.2012.key – host key (don’t give this one out)
/etc/pki/tls/certs/GlobalSignIntermediate.crt – intermediate cert.
/etc/pki/tls/certs/GlobalSignRootCA_ExtendedSSL.crt –root cert.
/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt – a big list of many cert.
cat /etc/pki/tls/certs/GlobalSignIntermediate.crt > Global_plus_Intermediate.crt cat /etc/pki/tls/certs/GlobalSignRootCA_ExtendedSSL.crt >> Global_plus_Intermediate.crt cat /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt >> Global_plus_Intermediate.crt
openssl pkcs12 -export -in wildcard.star.bnl.gov.Nov.2012.cert -inkey wildcard.star.bnl.gov.Nov.2012.key -out mycert.p12 -name tomcat -CAfile Global_plus_Intermediate.crt -caname root -chain
keytool -list -v -storetype pkcs12 -keystore mycert.p12
<Connector port="8443" protocol="HTTP/1.1" SSLEnabled="true" maxThreads="150" scheme="https" secure="true" keystoreFile="/home/lbhajdu/certs/mycert.p12" keystorePass="changeit" keystoreType="PKCS12" clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS"/>
One particular detail to be aware of: the name of the pool nodes is now onlNN.starp.bnl.gov, where 01<=NN<=14. The "onllinuxN" names were retired several years ago.
Historical page (circa 2008/9):
GOAL:
Provide a Linux environment for general computing needs in support of the experiemental operations.
HISTORY (as of approximately June 2008):
A pool of 14 nodes, consisting of four different hardware classes (all circa 2001) has been in existence for several years. For the last three (or more?) years, they have had Scientific Linux 3.x with support for the STAR software environment, along with access to various DAQ and Trigger data sources. The number of significant users has probably been less than 20, with the heaviest usage related to L2. User authentication was originally based on an antique NIS server, to which we had imported the RCF accounts and passwords. Though still alive, we have not kept this NIS information maintained over time. Over time, local accounts on each node became the norm, though of course this is rather tedious. Home directories come in three categories: AFS, NFS on onllinux5, and local home directories on individual nodes. Again, this gets rather tedious to maintain over time.
There are several "special" nodes to be aware of:
PLAN:
For the run starting in 2008 (2009?), we are replacing all of these nodes with newer hardware.
The basic hardware specs for the replacement nodes are:
Dual 2.4 GHZ Intel Xeon processors
1GB RAM
2 x 120 GB IDE disks
These nodes should be configured with Scientific Linux 4.5 (or 4.6 if we can ensure compatibility with STAR software) and support the STAR software environment.
They should have access to various DAQ and Trigger NFS shares. Here is a starter list of mounts:
| SERVER | DIRECTORY on SERVER | LOCAL MOUNT PONT | MOUNT OPTIONS |
| evp.starp | /a | /evp/a | ro |
| evb01.starp | /a | /evb01/a | ro |
| evb01 | /b | /evb01/b | ro |
| evb01 | /c | /evb01/c | ro |
| evb01 | /d | /evb01/d | ro |
| evb02.starp | /a | /evb02/a | ro |
| evb02 | /b | /evb02/b | ro |
| evb02 | /c | /evb02/c | ro |
| evb02 | /d | /evb02/d | ro |
| daqman.starp | /RTS | /daq/RTS | ro |
| daqman | /data | /daq/data | rw |
| daqman | /log | /daq/log | ro |
| trgscratch.starp | /data/trgdata | /trg/trgdata | ro |
| trgscratch.starp | /data/scalerdata | /trg/scalerdata | ro |
| startrg2.starp | /home/startrg/trg/monitor/run9/scalers | /trg/scalermonitor | ro |
| online.star | /export | /onlineweb/www | rw |
WISHLIST Items with good progress:
WISHLIST Items still needing significant work:
An SSH public key management system has been developed for STAR (see 2008 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 119 072005), with two primary goals stemming from the heightened cyber-security scrutiny at BNL:
A benefit for users also can be seen in the reduction in the number of passwords to remember and type.
In purpose, this system is similar to the RCF's key management system, but is somewhat more powerful because of its flexibility in the association of hosts (client systems), user accounts on those clients, and self-service key installation requests.
Here is a typical scenario of the system usage:
At this point, John Doe has key-based access to JDOE@FOO. Simple enough? But wait, there's more! Now John Doe realizes that he also needs access to the group account named "operator" on host BAR. Since his key is already in the key management system he has only to request that his key be added to operator@BAR, and voila (subject to administrator approval), he can now login with his key to both JDOE@FOO and operator@BAR. And if Mr. Doe should leave STAR, then an administrator simply removes him from the system and his keys are removed from both hosts.
There are three things to keep track of here -- people (and their SSH keys of course), host (client) systems, and user accounts on those hosts:
People want access to specific user accounts at specific hosts.
So the system maintains a list of user accounts for each host system, and a list of people associated with each user account at each host.
(To be clear -- the system does not have any automatic user account detection mechanism at this time -- each desired "user account@host" association has to be added "by hand" by an administrator.)
This Key Management system, as seen by the users (and admins), consists simply of users' web browsers (with https for encryption) and some PHP code on a web server (which we'll call "starkeyw") which inserts uploaded keys and user requests (and administrator's commands) to a backend database (which could be on a different node from the web server if desired).
Behind the scenes, each host that is participating in the system has a keyservices client installed that runs as a system service. The keyservices_client periodically (at five minute intervals by default) interacts a different web server (serving different PHP code that we'll call starkeyd). The backend database is consulted for the list of approved associations and the appropriate keys are downloaded by the client and added to the authorized_keys files accordingly.
In our case, our primary web server at www.star.bnl.gov hosts all the STAR Key Manager (SKM) services (starkeyw and starkeyd via Apache, and a MySQL database), but they could each be on separate servers if desired.
Perhaps a picture will help. See below for a link to an image labelled "SKMS in pictures".
We have begun using the Key Management system with several nodes and are seeking to add more (currently on a voluntary basis). Only RHEL 3/4/5 and Scientific Linux 3/4/5 with i386 and x86_64 kernels have been tested, but there is no reason to believe that the client couldn't be built on other Linux distributions or even Solaris. We do not anticipate "forcing" this tool onto any detector sub-systems during the 2007 RHIC run, but we do expect it (or something similar) to become mandatory before any future runs. Please contact one of the admins (Wayne Betts, Jerome Lauret or Mike Dephillips) if you'd like to volunteer or have any questions.
User access is currently based on RCF Kerberos authentication, but may be extended to additional authentication methods (eg., BNL LDAP) if the need arises.
Client RPMs (for some configurations) and SRPM's are available, and some installation details are available here:
http://www.star.bnl.gov/~dmitry/skd_setup/
An additional related project is the possible implementation of a STAR ssh gateway system (while disallowing direct login to any of our nodes online) - in effect acting much like the current ssh gateway systems role in the SDCC. Though we have an intended gateway node online (stargw1.starp.bnl.gov, with a spare on hand as well), it's use is not currently required.
Here you go: https://www.star.bnl.gov/starkeyw/
You can use your RCF username and Kerberos password to enter.
When uploading keys, use your SSH public keys - they need to be in OpenSSH format. If not, please consult SSH Keys and login to the SDCC.