Experience and plans from running the (SCT) DAQ

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Experience and plans from running the (SCT) DAQ
HEP

• Setting things up
• Calibration mode operations
• Physics mode operation
• Transitions
• Recovery
• Modifying configurations

What to dobetter?
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The good news!
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Overview

• Almost all things were possible with enough
  expert hands at the wheel
• Focus is on what could be improved to make life
  easier, and to reduce down-time

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Setting things up

• Various mapping scans now in place streamline
  checking for mapping errors
• TX ? RX (autoconfig)
• TX ? Module (Trim -gt TV50 RMS)
• RX ? DCS (Hard reset scan)
• Perhaps a case for a 1-Pt QCAL scan test at
  physics threshold look at trim?
• Opto tuning improvements to algorithms
• Hard reset between bins for TX current
• Rx Threshold algorithm improved
• Still some worries over marginal TX.

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Timing-in

• Good to few ns gross timing done by looking for
  top/bottom of module co-incidence
• Combining statistics between modules
• Relatively few stats required
• (few hundred cosmics)
• Good agreement with offline monitoring
• Module ? module done by dead reckoning (at SR1)

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Mark/Space Ratio(Clock jitter in TX)

• Test done for several rods in SR1 sector enough
  stats to test algorithm
• Generally seems to work
• Slow
• Some funny channels
• Investigations into BOC plugins proceeding
• Some improvements in algorithm made to attempt to
  flag outlying cases

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Calibration mode

• Can do the job
• New response curve taken and used for SR1 cosmics
  tests
• Less fault tolerant to errors from modules
• Still aborts after single module failure
• To be improved?
• Would benefit from tools to do statistics on
  different modules
• Nasty fudge used to combine data for timing scan
• Need to be able to compare against reference set
  rather than just labelling good/bad modules

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Things to speed up calibration?

• Diagnostics from DSP greatly improved
• Pick out which modules are causing problems
• Improved fault tolerance?
• Decrease wasted down-time.
• Has histogram read-out slowed down?
• If so where? ROD? Network? NFS demon?
• Quick turn-around with updated configuration (see
  later)
• Could pack trims better to reduce configuration
  loading to ROD by factor of 2.
• Simultaneous change needed to DSP code and to
  SctRodDaq

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Physics mode

• Standard operation of SCT HW/SW eventually good
• Couldnt read out histograms during physics mode
  when running
• And slow when paused
• Runs able to continue for several hours.
• What stopped good runs?
• Crash of ROS/FILAR
• Formatter allowing illegal data through?
• LV trips from SCT modules
• Reduce frequency
• Recover
• Occasionally loss of synchronisation with TRT?
• Identify
• Add counter resets

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Non-expert operation?

• Work to be done in
• Detector safety (DCS)
• Module initialisation
• Module recovery
• Information in error messages
• Getting configurations to offline
• Feedback on synchronisation
• Other error states
• Recovery time after power failure was I think 8
  hours?

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Transitions

• Physics ? Calibration transition ok for SCT alone
• Cal. couldnt be done in configuration containing
  TRT
• Taking out subdetector involved lots of different
  resources (EventBuilder, ROS, RODs, )
• I thinkTDAQ has a way to streamline this?

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Configuration tools

• SR1 highlighted the need for tools to compare,
  update and merge configurations.
• Chris and Bruce produced/working on some tools
  for xml.
• Final database configuration solution now has
  same functionality as xml.
• GUI display of configuration parameters?

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Headaches

• ROS machine failure
• Required reboot, remount,
• Possibly linked to invalid data coming from ROD
• Some ideas as to what might be the cause
• Occasional initialisation problems in SctRodDaq
  start-up
• Not really investigated replace delays in
  synch-init?
• Full ROD (inc. s-link) reset seems to require
  crate reboot (slow!)
• What isnt reset on reset?
• Module start up needs Hard Reset, and then send
  configs automated.
• Problem DCS hand-shaking
• Automation of module power cycle required (from
  DAQ)

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Issues for the pit

• Configuration (inc. DCS) still a big area
• First large-scale multi-crate test
• Parallelism needed for analysis
• Much harder to reset off-detector hardware!
• Auto recovery required for
• Modules
• OPTO
• DAQ systems
• Can we still use NFS for data transfer?
• Auto-archival to CASTOR through firewall?
• Set up of trigger chain (resets etc) through
  LTPs.
• ROD monitoring not physics-ready

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If things dont work

• Dont just grumble to yourself
• Grumble to the experts!
• Wiki page
• http//www.hep.phy.cam.ac.uk/daq-bin/wiki.cgi/User
  Stories
• Email address
• atlas-project-sctroddaq_at_cern.ch
• We rarely bite and will endeavour to help!

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The good news!