[Halld-offline] Offline Software Meeting Minutes, September 28, 2016

Wed Sep 28 17:57:14 EDT 2016

Folks,

Find the minutes below and at 
https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_Meeting,_September_28,_2016#Minutes 
.

   -- Mark

___________________________

    GlueX Offline Meeting, September 28, 2016, Minutes

Present:

  * *CMU*: Naomi Jarvis, Curtis Meyer, Mike Staib
  * *JLab*: Alexander Austregesilo, Alex Barnes, Thomas Britton, Brad
    Cannon, Paul Eugenio, Mark Ito (chair), David Lawrence, Paul
    Mattione, Nathan Sparks, Simon Taylor, Beni Zihlmann

There is a recording of this meeting <https://bluejeans.com/s/2bucB/> on 
the BlueJeans site.

      Announcements

 1. We are in strange situation where recent *Fedora and Ubuntu
    releases* use GCC compilers that are *too advanced for ROOT6*. ROOT5
    must be used. This situation is not expected last too long; there
    are fixes on the ROOT Git master branch.
 2. Sean Dobbs has a proposal for managing run-period-dependent shifts
    in detector geometry. He will describe it at the next Offline
    Meeting (after the Collaboration Meeting).
 3. Our *group disk has been expanded* from 700 to 800 GB.
 4. To build sim-recon on Mac OS X
    <https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2016-September/002478.html>
    you need the C++ compiler from Xcode 8. You need to be on El Capitan
    or higher.

      Review of minutes from the last meeting

  * We looked at minutes from the meeting on September 14
    <https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_Meeting,_September_14,_2016#Minutes>.
    We mainly discussed the upcoming Software Review (see below).

      Software Review Preparations

  * The first all-Hall meeting on review prep was held last Monday.
  * We took a quick look at GlueX Note 3113
    <http://argus.phys.uregina.ca/cgi-bin/private/DocDB/ShowDocument?docid=3113>,
    being produced to support our presentations (linked from the
    Software Review 4 wiki page
    <https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/Software_Review_4>).
    Curtis has contacted identified contributors and described the
    content we would like them to provide. The document is being version
    controlled at GitHub
    <https://mailman.jlab.org/mailman/private/gluex-collaboration/2016-September/004334.html>.
  * At the last Hall D meeting prep meeting, we made initial assignments
    of topics to talks.

      Collaboration Meeting Agenda

We reviewed the current state of the offline software session on the 
agenda 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX-Collaboration-Oct-2016> 
for Thursday:

  * 16:20 Session IIb (100) --- Offline/Calibration
      o 16:20 (20) --- Overview --- Mark Ito
      o 16:40 (30) --- Calibration --- Sean Dobbs
      o 17:10 (20) --- Offline Data Processing --- Alexander Austregesilo
      o 17:30 (30) --- Data Analysis Studies --- Paul Mattione
      o 17:40 (20) ---

There is room for another talk. Please contact Mark if you have 
something you would like to present. Thanks to Sean for putting this 
together.

      SciComp Meeting Report

Mark went over his notes from the meeting on September 22 
<https://markito3.wordpress.com/2016/09/23/scicomp-meeting-september-22-2016/>. 

  * There is still a plan to institute a formal process for requesting
    time on the batch farm.
  * New farm nodes are to installed soon and will be running CentOS7.
    The native compiler is GCC 4.8.5, good enough for our software.
    Although a CentOS7 ifarm node is available now (ifarm1402), it does
    not have all of the packages we need to build our software yet.
  * The Lustre problems we have been experiencing have been seen on
    similar systems at Fermilab.
  * Machines from 2011 are about to be retired from the farm. Beni asked
    if it was possible for us to acquire some and deploy them in the
    Counting House. Mark will look into it.

      Launches

The ver02 reconstruction launch had problems with less-than-optimal 
calibration constants. Although the analysis launch from that launch 
ran, Paul M. and Alex A. decided to run another analysis on ver01 REST 
files, using updated plug-ins. This Analysis Launch ver04 
<https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2016-September/002477.html>. 
All four batches are complete now.

David asked if the analysis launch was I/O bound. The answer is not 
known at present.

      Review of recent pull requests

We went over the list 
<https://github.com/JeffersonLab/sim-recon/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr>.

There is currently a problem producing compressed HDDM files introduced 
at Pull Request #544. The b1pi test has been failing as a result. 
Richard Jones is working on the fix.

Beni raised the problem of maintaining all of the SConstruct files in 
all of the private plugin directories scattered around the 
Collaboration. Recently several folks could not build there plug-ins due 
to a change in the standard SConstruct. No easy solution occurred to us. 
We will have to discuss this in the future.

      Review of recent discussion on the GlueX Software Help List

We looked at the menu of recent topics 
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#%21forum/gluex-software>.

Due to [1] 
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#%21topic/gluex-software/PYk2b8hCHoM> 
recent security changes at JLab, web-based programs may need access to a 
JLab CA certificate to work properly. In particular, GitHub access using 
HTTPS may be affected. Sean posted a solution 
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#%21topic/gluex-software/EvqrgS8rUhE> 
on the GlueX Offline FAQ 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Offline_FAQ>.

      Action Items

  * Look into getting old batch farm nodes for the Hall D use.
  * Create a solution to the SConstruct in Private Plugins Maintenance
    Problem.
  * Contribute your sections to the Software Review Document.
  * Fix compression in the HDDM libraries.

-- 
marki at jlab.org, (757)269-5295

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