[Dsg-hallc_controls] Summary of Hall C HMS EPICS issues Jan 17 to Jan 18, 2019

[Tyler Lemon]

Hello,


Yesterday, DSG received notice from Steven Lassiter that the HMS PLC system was unable to read EPICS variables for cryogenic signals.


In attempt to resolve the issue, we changed the firmware of the HMS Ethernet modules from 11 to 10 to match the firmware provided by Allen-Bradley for redundant PLC systems. The Ethernet firmware change had no effect on the EPICS signals.


After meeting and discussing with Steven, it was determined that the source of the error was the KEPserverEX software running on Skylla7 (a Windows 7 server used for Hall C PLC controls). With Steven, we compared configurations between the working SHMS EPICS interface and the non-working HMS EPICS interface and found one difference in configuration: SHMS was set to use “symbolic protocol mode” while HMS was not. We tried to modify the HMS configuration to match SHMS, but could not get the configuration to be saved into the KEPserverEX application.


To see if Skylla7 would automatically load and run the new configuration for the HMS, Steven and DSG agreed that rebooting Skylla7 would be the next step. Upon reboot, it took Skylla7 ~21 minutes to comeback online, possibly indicating that there is some internal hardware issues with Skylla7 (corrupted disk, memory limitations, or other). After Skylla7 finished rebooting, we saw that the configurations for KEPserverEX had not changed and EPICS variables were still unable to be read by HMS PLC system.


This morning, we changed the HMS PLC controllers’ firmware from 20.058 to 20.055 to match what is recommended in KEPserverEX advise forum (http://support.softwaretoolbox.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3762<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsupport.softwaretoolbox.com%2Fapp%2Fanswers%2Fdetail%2Fa_id%2F3762&data=02%7C01%7C%7Ce944c681632d4e5f473808d67d65db45%7Cb4d7ee1f4fb34f0690372b5b522042ab%7C1%7C0%7C636834273757942562&sdata=yRhkUK1B3sxFaRMFTcetDiEHYNllqUzrRLylF3CqNEo%3D&reserved=0>) . This change was successful and EPICS tags are now able to be read by the HMS PLC and HMS PLC tags are available on EPICS. Since firmware version 20.055 is not the latest able to be used by the HMS PLC system (20.058), the soluton found should only be considered temporary.


Because of the apparent hardware issues with Skylla7, DSG recommends:

  1.  Procuring a new, replacement server for Skylla7.
  2.  Using Windows 10 on any new server procured as Computer Center will stop supporting Windows 7 later this year.


Best regards,

Tyler

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