[Halld-offline] Offline Software Meeting Minutes, September 16, 2015

[Mark Ito]

Folks,

Please find the minutes below and at 
https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_Meeting,_September_16,_2015 
.

   -- Mark
   _______________________________


  GlueX Offline Meeting, September 16, 2015, Minutes

Present:

  * *CMU*: Mike Staib
  * *FIU*: Mahmoud Kamel
  * *JLab*: Amber Boehnlein, Brad Cannon, Mark Dalton, Sean Dobbs, Mark
    Ito (chair), Paul Mattione, Curtis Meyer, Eric Pooser, Nathan
    Sparks, Justin Stevens, Simon Taylor
  * *UConn*: Richard Jones, James McIntyre, ?

There is arecording of this meeting <https://bluejeans.com/s/8Ank/>on 
the BlueJeans site.


      Announcements

 1. *"git_update" simple email list
    <https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2015-September/002144.html>*.
    The list is open for subscriptions. You get a daily digest of
    changes to all of the GitHub repositories owned by the GlueX team.
 2. *gluex_install
    <https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/Scripts_for_Installing_GlueX_Software>moved
    to GitHub*. We discussed this move at a previous meeting. The move
    is now complete. It has been added to the list of those owned by the
    GlueX team.
 3. *ROOT TTree Format Overhaul
    <https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2015-September/002143.html>*.
    Paul went through his email message. The major structural change is
    to go from combos at the top-level to having events at the top level
    and combos below that. This facilitates multi-threaded processing
    with ROOT.
 4. *Offline Monitoring
    <https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/images/1/15/2015-09-16-offline_monitoring.pdf>*.
    Kei brought us up-to-date. See his slides for details. A few
    selected points from Launch 14:
      * 78 jobs of 4314 failed. They have been resubmitted.
      * The tape library seemed to stop for about a day starting Sunday
        morning.
      * Integrated over the span of the launch, we got about 6% of the
        available CPU on the Farm.
      * Next launch will be September 15.
      * If people want, we can launch again on October 2.


      Review of minutes from September 2]]

We went overthe minutes 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_Meeting,_September_2,_2015#Minutes>.

  * SciComp is exploring the use of Lustre-based file server for our
    work disk. A trial rsync is underway.
  * Mailman.jlab.org seems to be accessible from off-site now, after
    last night's maintenance period. This needs confirmation.


      Collaboration Meeting, October 8-10, 2015 at Jefferson Lab

Mark filled inthe agenda 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX-Collaboration-Oct-2015>based 
on the discussion at the last meeting. We need to add a calibration talk 
from Sean to the existing line-up.


      Geant4 Update

Richard gave us an update.

  * He started implementing detector hits with the CDC.
  * Evolution of the code in hit processing has occurred over the years:
      o obsolete code encountered
      o decisions had to be made in going to the new implementation
      o for example, BCAL had three hit implementation
          + consulted with Tegan
          + will forego implementation of waveform generation
          + brings truth hit scheme into alignment with other detectors
      o sources of constants needed a uniform approach:
         1. CCDB stuff will continue to be fetched from CCDB
         2. constants defined in the code: const static public member of
            the class
         3. FFREAD cards in control.in for constants that can be changed
            by the user
          + He will limit himself to these forms. This means changing
            the code, especially for item (2).
  * Run number source:
      o in the simulation context, used to be a decoration
      o for external generators, run number well-defined
      o in control.in, the user-implemented RUNNO card redundant with
        GEANT-implemented RUNG card
      o Simulation (hdgeant) should decide on the detector conditions,
        not the event generator (e. g., bggen)
      o We need to think through how to handle how run number affects
        the calibration and what is written in the files.


      Data Challenge 3

Mark has started convertingDC3 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/Data_Challenge_3>to a 
SWIF-based project.


      Spring 2015 Commissioning Simulations

Mark has started setting up DetCom 2.1 to use the latest release 
(sim-recon 1.5.1) to dothe simulations 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/Spring_2015_Commissioning_Simulations>.


      Fall 2015 Commissioning Simulations

We will not need to produce simulations specifically for "Fall 2015" 
since we will not do any running with the solenoid this year. Sean 
pointed out that we do need to prepare simulations for future data when 
it comes in any case. Curtis thought that a magnet current of 1350 A is 
as good guess as any for what should be simulated.

 1. Auto-Build on Pull Request (Sean)

Sean described his exploration of using GitHub facilities to kick-off 
actions based on events in a repository, i. e., webhooks. In particular 
we are interested in doing a build of sim-recon upon creation of a pull 
request suing the proposed code.

  * to implement this, you give GitHub a URL to use for sending a request.
  * action can be triggered on a number of possible events
  * a JSON-formatted payload is made available for the server to act on
    the request
  * need to write CGI script to process requests
  * he wrote a working prototype in Python, only standard Python
    packages were used
      o input parameter: branch name specified in the build request
  * Mark will write the script to do actual the build based on the
    existing script for the nightly build.
  * Results of the build can be posted back to GitHub as a comment to
    the build request
  * allows changes to be tested before inclusion in the master branch
  * "It's a lot easier than SVN, it turns out" [note from secretary:
    sorry, could not resist]
  * We will meet with the computer Center to work out installation of
    python packages and discuss security issues
  * Nathan suggested adding tests to the automatic action, e. g.,
    hdgeant, profiling, etc.
  * Nathan has explored cloud-based solutions to performing automatic
    test, using Linux containers (light-weight virtual machines). The
    container can be loaded with the code to be tested and shipped to
    the cloud for execution. Can get sim-recon down to 1 GB, compressed,
    with source code and dependencies.
      o He has been using Docker as the enabling technology
      o Sean pointed out that the OSG uses a file-system-over-HTTP
        approach to distributing user code. It would be interesting to
        compare that approach with Linux containers.


      Review of recent pull requests

Did not get tothis 
<https://github.com/JeffersonLab/sim-recon/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr>.

Retrieved from 
"https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php?title=GlueX_Offline_Meeting,_September_16,_2015&oldid=70231"

  * This page was last modified on 21 September 2015, at 09:27.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/attachments/20150921/7b52662c/attachment.html>