EVO: Title: STAR Management Meeting // Community:  STAR // Password:  star

                                                  Phone Bridge: +1 626 395 2112 (CA) / +1 631 344 6100 (NY) // ID: 82633 // Password: 0952

                                                                                                       Time:  9 - 10 AM EST

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I. Agenda:

             1) Run11 Status - Bill / All

             2) QM2001 abstract - Bedanga

             3) Extra shift credit - Nu

             4) NSAC questionary - Nu

             5) TBD

*--===================================================================--*

II. Brief Summary and/or Action Items:

              0) Attendency:

              1)    
            

III. Note:

► Charges to eSTAR Task Force, co-Chairs: Ernst Sichtermann and Zhangbu XU

► STAR FMS Review: Sept. 1-2, BNL. P. Jacobs (chair). Review Report

*--===================================================================--*

IV. Future Meetings and Reviews:

► DIS2011, Newport News, April 11 - 15, 2011.

► APS Spring Meeting, Anaheim, April 30 - May 3, 2011.

► STAR Collaboration Meeting, Prague, May 15 - 20, 2011. Chair: Jaroslav Bielcik.

► QM2011, Annecy, May 23 - 28, 2011. Deadline for abstract submission: April 18th, 2011.

► RHIC PAC meeting, June 6 - 8, 2011, BNL.

► RHIC S&T Review, June 27 - 30, 2011, BNL.

► PANIC2011, MIT, July 24 - 29, 2011.

agenda:
 

a) Summary of Sunday's DY meeting

b) Kinematic simulation for RP acceptance (JH Lee)

c) R&D projects proposed for R&D calls

d) Discussion about March meetings:

    STAR upgrade (03/09)
    EIC meeting (03/10-03/11)
    STAR Analysis Meeting (talks)

e) increasing communications with EIC task force
    overlap in manpower and effort;
    participate in weekly EIC meeting;
    using physics Generator from EIC;
   

Minutes 

Attendees: Dmitry A., Wayne B., Leve H., Jérôme L., Gene V.B.

Online webserver:

• Went live on Monday
• No user complaints reported
• Jerome: identified and fixed several problems
• Jerome: started tomcat watcher script (he noted that it already caught a number of trips)
• Dmitry: though crontab had been copied, cron file entries had been missed
• Wayne: to-do list:
  • Install SSH key client
  • Install osiris
  • Tomcat log file rotation
  • ITD backups (noted as priority)
  • Synchronization with secondary new webserver

ShiftLog:

• 'thumbnailer' problem, Jerome is helping
• MTD subsystem added by Leve
  
  • Used the opportunity to move the array of subsystems to a single place

Online user support:

• sc.starp crashes (RT 2077)
  • Was repeatedly shutting down
  • Wayne: Box replaced (drive swapped), working fine...
  • ...but suspicion is UPS, battery replaced
  • Leave as is for now
  • Dmitry suggested providing Corba libs on online linux pool nodes to allow users an alternative to sc (Gene spoke with Jan B. about this post-meeting: Brian P. will try migrating his code)
• Two online disks (noted by Wayne in previous meetings): still need replacement
• QtRoot Event Display (RT 2075): Jerome notes it is low priority for now
• HPSS access from online via data carousel: Jerome indicates work in progress for authentication (perhaps try replicating what was done with stargrid04)
• starutilities replacement: extension through Jan. 30th.
  
  • trying to run C-AD software in XP mode on new box (Matt working with ITD today)
  • next possibility is dedicated XP machine
  • otherwise suggest software upgrade to C-AD (would require additional extension for procurement and delivery duration)
• rts01 replacement machine (RT 2070): machine has arrived
• Request for help restoring old FTPC event builders (RT 2066):
  • Wayne attempted to resurrect old builders but didn't succeed
  • Jeff has alternatives to move on
• Conference room PC display configuration improved by Wayne, but may still be not optimal
• FMS/Spin request for replacement machines (RT 2073 and 2074):
  • Laptop provided, and had to learn from experience to prevent power saver settings from shutting it down
  • Other machine not critical
• Renewed request today for a folder on ShiftLeader's terminal for making files web-available (RT 2083)

Databases:

• Migration macros started on onl01 by Dmitry
  • Machine died (from exhausted memory): cause is unknown, but perhaps one of the users
    • Table further investigation until it proves to be systematic
• New DB node allocation for FatOffline(+nightly tests) awaits results of Lidia's tests
• Dmitry noted that detector ID lists needed to be (and were) verified among Lidia, Tonko, and himself
  • Jerome noted that offline should rely on DB lookup by subsystem and not depend on a local list (he will follow up with Lidia)
• Dmitry implemented flexible, graphical selection of timestamps for his online DB plots upon feedback from Alexei L.
  
  • Jerome tested on several OS-browser combinations

FastOffline:

• Jerome notes that the chain needs continued attention (e.g. geometry, CA tracker), and Gene will take this

QA:

• Some minor modifications made to OnlinePlots for VPD by Kefeng and Gene

Minutes 

Attendees: Dmitry A., Wayne B., Leve H., Jérôme L., Gene V.B.

ShiftLog [Leve]:

• Checked that links work both ways with RunLog
• Re-deployed to fix an issue with a function used to tell if we're in a shift-taking period
  • Dmitry suggested to modify this next year to not use dates

Online infrastructure [Wayne]:

• New webserver:
  • Database access now working fine
  • Watcher script needs turned on
  • cron jobs (and associated files) need to be copied
  • Announcement for a Monday swap:
    • 2pm (Wayne, Jerome, Leve, Dmitry should be available to handle whatever may arise - Dmitry already knows one configuration he needs to change during the swap)
    • NFS will be turned off on the old server, sync will be done, IPs swapped, and NFS on.
• Two online disks (noted last week) still need replacement
• Event Display
  • Not currently functional (we lost our maintainer; Jerome is trying to prop it back up for now)
  • Pieces in multiple locations for online display plus offline (images dumped for web display)
  • Not critical (old online event display still functional), but valuable for PR
• Long-standing request (not critical) to be able to read from HPSS online (via data carousel)
  • Jerome looking for any road blocks (e.g. firewall)
• Machine replacements:
  • emcsc done
  • starutilities and ftpcgas not yet done (scheduled for work with relevant parties early next week)
• All Windows nodes rebooted with security patches
• rts01 replacement request merged into a larger purchase request (RT 2070)
• Request for help restoring old FTPC event builders (RT 2066)
  • Possible solution of other hardware if this is too much effort
• FMS/Spin request for replacement machines (RT 2073 and 2074). Not critical, but latter is important for remote access (current machine is inside WAH and not on network)

Databases [Dmitry]:

• After new nodes go into production pool, 2 old nodes will be targeted for FastOffline + nightly tests
  
  • Assessment of new node speed/power still ongoing
• onldb1 and 2 were up for 1+ years, so rebooted on purpose to check state
  • Collector daemons did not automatically start, but otherwise OK
  • Dmitry suggested leaving it this way since reboot need is so rare and automatic can take a while to get caught up (has to look through and skip all runs from the year)
  • Gene suggested making it automatic in case Dmitry's not around to restart daemons (though shift leaders can potentially do it themselves). We'll go with this.
• QA files (OnlinePlots + Jevp) stored for RunLog can now exceed 4 GB without needing manual rollover
• TPC Anode Voltges:
  
  • For now, continue with methods of collection from last year
  • Dmitry tested a supposedly-optimized "bulk reading" methods and found them to be no better than channel-by-channel (actually worse as it appears to be the same + overhead: 13-15 seconds to collect all values versus less than 1 second); dead end.
  • Possible new methods of collection under development (Tonko & the TPC group)
  • Feedback to the TPC group that wider "dead band zones" could reduce traffic and help alleviate problems due to load

FastOffline [Jerome]:

• Same as last week: many files coming into the system, but all are tests, pulsers, etc., so not being processed
• Gene notes some possible tweaks to the chain may be needed for TPC calibration status (awaiting TPC feedback)
• Dmitry need to verify with Lidia some exported info from from onldb1

QA [Gene]:

• Offline QA documentation updated (Lanny & Gene)
• Jerome notes the need to monitor and document and issues with QA Shift
• Pre-combining of FastOffline files still needs tested and configured to be the default