ReadoutShell.tcl

Overview

ReadoutGui.tcl is a tcl/tk script which provides a GUI front end to NSCL Event Readout programs. Major features:

Readout programs can be started on any NSCL spectrodaq node from any other system running Spectrodaq.
GUI supports full run control, as well as reselection and restart of the Readout Program.
GUI supports initiation of event file recording via eventlog/ftp.
GUI maintains standard NSCL experiment structure.
GUI is capable of detecting and performing appropriate data recovery operations should Readout fail and exit.
State of GUI is maintained between invocations
User script callouts on run state changes allow experiment specific actions to be performed.

Invocation

ReadoutShell.tcl is in /usr/opt/daq/Scripts it is invoked as follows:

ReadoutShell.tcl host path ftphost passwd

Where:

Parameter	Meaning
host	Is the host on which the readout program will be run (e.g. a spdaqnn system).
path	Is the path to the readout program on that host.
ftphost	Is the host on which the data is recorded (through eventlog/ftp).
passwd	The password to be sent to the ftp server (the user name is the current user).

Since ReadoutShell will start up the eventlog/ftp client on the local machine, the local system must be running the spectrodaq server.

The figure below is a screen shot of the ReadoutShell Gui. Click on sections of the window to get more information.

When the Readout program exits unexpectedly, the ReadoutGui forces an "emergency" end of run. A file named 000RunAbnormallyEnded is deposited in the ~/experiment run directory associated with that run. This file is empty.
On startup, all orphaned event files are disposed of as follows (for background information, see the NSCL experiment directory structure):
Any valid event files in the current directory of the stage disk are copied to the complete subdirectory. A link is made to the event file in the appropriate run directory of the ~/experiment directory. A file named Files with invalid event file names (not of the form run%d-%d.evt) are copied to the orphans subdirectory.
Links to event files in the ~/experiment/current directory which are traversable are moved to the approprate run directory if necessary. Non-traversable links are removed.