CIRSI LCO 100" Observing Notes - 1999 April/May
Document History
Version
| Author(s)
| Date
| Details
|
1.0
| rgm
| 1999 May 13
| first draft
|
Table of Contents
The basic
CIRSI
observing system consists of two PCs running WIN95. One
of these rides at the DuPont Cass Focus with the camera hardware.
This PC is called
CIRCC [CIRSI Camera Controller].
The second PC running WIN95 resides
in the Telescope control room and can be used by the observer
to control CIRSI. This PC is called Remote or CIROB
[CIRSI OBserver].
This PC uses a WIN95
application pcANYWHERE from
Symantec to control CIRSI remotely from the
telescope control room.
pcANYWHERE exports the Desktop from CIRCC to CIROB to allow
remote control of CIRCC.
pcANYWHERE is similar to XWindows
but in contrast exports the whole and not just a single
window or application.
- If data is not appearing on the UNIX(rigel) end and no errors
are being reported at the WIN95 or NT system. Check that
you have set "Saving on" in the PIXCEL "Infra Red" control
panel: see here
- If there are problems with the NT machine Apollo
talking to Pixcel eg when you start the Control Control program
the error
Cannot connect to 200.28.111.133
- This probable means that you started the NT-Camera Control
before you startup up Pixcel on CIRCC.
- If Pixcel crashes, it does not update the ini file and the run number
may be out of date. Therefore when
you restart you may get a warning message that the run number already
exists. To avoid this, edit the ini file so that the run number is
equal to the last good image.
Mapping Linux Netweok Drive on PC-WIN95
In order to make an external disk on a network visible to
a PC we have to "map" a network drive. In unix
speak is is like mounting a disk.
right click on the computer icon and map
G: to \\CIRDS\\CIRSI
This means that in Pixcel the data path can be defined as: g:
Starting up Pixcel
CIRSI is run by a PC that rides with the instrument. This PC uses WIN95
as it operating system. WIN95 is a single user system and cannot
be run remotely. We currently use PCAnywhere from Symantec to allow
reomote operation of CIRSI. A PCAnywhere server runs on CIRCC the
Camerer Controller PC and A PCAnywhere client runs on CIROB, the
remote PC that the observer uses in the Telescope Control room.
To get things going:
- Login to the observer PC: cirob as user cirsi. You will need the
correct password for this. If you do not know it, contact a member of
the CIRSI Instrument Team.
- Double click on the circc icon on the cirob desktop and psAnywhere
should start. If it fails to connect to circc you should go and reboot
circc via a power cycle.
Checking the pointing
Features to watch for
- CIRSIgo: if you type CIRSIgo when not in remote the socket caches this
and an exposure may start immediateley after you put Pixcel into
remore mode
- CIRSIquit: if if you type CIRSIquit when in Pixcel local mode the socket
caches this and when you go into Remote Pixcel swiches immediateley to local
mode.
The symtoms are:
Permission problems
- rlogin, rsh, rcp problems
This is what it should be:
-rw-r--r-- 1 cirsi 5700 118 Oct 29 14:51 .rhosts
chmod 666
-
Multiple IRAF accounts in the same group on the Data Reduction Machine
Data Archiving and verification procedures
At the INT the philosophy is to write a DDS3 DAT tape using the CIRDS DAT
drive during the day and read this back onto the local SPARC[lpss14] the
following night. The contents were then verified as descibed below and
the a 2nd DDS3 is written on this SPARC. If time permits this data could
then be read back on the CIRDR drive for verification. Therefore, one
has 2 copies of the data writtem and verified on two independent drives.
The above is a pretty time consuming exercise and needs some
automated scripts to do the checking. One should do all the
tape writing using scripts so that one can verify what has been
done.
One problem that arises is that the lpss14 disks are only 9GB so
that a DDS3 tape can overflow over two disks. Maybe one should
write them in chunks orinially ie groups of 100runs. ie 2GB chunks
Example scripts are shown below:
make a directory called read-back
du -k
ls | wc
ls *001.fits
If you get an error under Linux
chmod 666 /dev/nst* as root
Maintained by Richard G. McMahon
<rgm@ast.cam.ac.uk>
Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge
CB3 OHA
Tel: +44-(0)-1223-337519/337548
FAX: +44-(0)-1223-337523
Mobile: