[Halld-offline] Software Meeting Minutes, July 21, 2020

[Mark Ito]

Folks,

Please find the minutes here 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Software_Meeting,_July_21,_2020#Minutes> 
and below.

   -- Mark


    GlueX Software Meeting, July 21, 2020, Minutes

Present: Alex Austregesilo, Thomas Britton, Sean Dobbs, Mark Ito 
(chair), Richard Jones, Naomi Jarvis, David Lawrence, Susan Schadmand, 
Simon Taylor, Nilanga Wickramaarachchi, Beni Zihlmann

There is a recording of his meeting 
<https://bluejeans.com/s/0rIPo9NbCrd/> on the BlueJeans site. Use your 
JLab credentials to authenticate.


      Announcements

New version set, version_4.23.1.xml 
<https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2020-July/008264.html>. 
The latest version set came out last Wednesday.


      Review of Minutes from the Last Software Meeting

We went over the minutes from the meeting on July 7 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Software_Meeting,_July_7,_2020#Minutes>. 



        NERSC Status

David gave us the run-down on the preparations for the next 
reconstruction launch at NERSC.

  * He has gone to a roster of plugins intermediate between the original
    57, but more that the minimum used in REST production.
  * Igal Jaegle has looked at the latest round of monitoring histograms.
    They look good. Any missing plots were due to dropped plugin-ins.
  * Overall, the production system is ready to go.
  * David submitted 1,000 jobs recently. These represent a complete run.
    There were some SWIF2 issues that needed attention from Chris Larrieu.
  * The main outstanding issue is creating a complete set of fiducial
    times in the CCDB.
      o The slope of event time vs. the 250 MHz clock seems fine taking
        the nominal 250 MHz. The offsets need to be filled in.
      o Beam trip information is also missing from the CCDB. About 1 in
        7 runs is missing presently.
      o There is an issue with SWIF2 where only the first of the ten
        jobs associated with a single raw data file succeeds. The
        following nine require re-submission. We could live with this,
        but not happily. Chris is working on this.


        Developer-Friendly Container Build

Mark made small adjustments to the rsync of our container software to 
Oasis that allows building of halld_recon against Oasis. See his recent 
email 
<https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2020-July/008257.html> 
for more details.


        Corrupt CCDB SQLite Files

Mark changed the limit on the output file-size check when SQLite 
versions of the CCDB are produced. It is unlikely that the "Lost 
connection to MySQL server" will corrupt the file on Oasis anytime soon. 
If the file is not big enough, the previous version will not be replaced.


      Report from the Last HDGeant4 Meeting

 1. We went over the minutes from the HDGeant4 Meeting on July 7
    <https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/HDGeant4_Meeting,_July_14,_2020#Minutes>.
    Thomas reported that he has seen the missing normal-error that
    Richard reported at that meeting. It seems to only occur for certain
    runs (simulations of specific real runs), but not always on the same
    event.


      Compiler upgrade discussion

Mark described the issues and possible paths forward for the problem of 
needing to adopt more advanced, non-default compiler in order to bring 
in recent versions of third-party-provided software, such as Geant4 and 
ROOT. See his slides 
<https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1e1UpDpI0zc4pUe-lUsnij_10kZ2ItKv6ILvRrChv7GQ/edit?usp=sharing> 
for the details (three main slides, large font, no plots).

The proximate cause of the discussion is the possibility of upgrading to 
this year's version of Geant4, which requires GCC 4.9.3, more recent 
than the default 4.8.5 shipped with CentOS7. We decided on two concrete 
projects that move us in the right direction:

 1. Richard mentioned a new package, and has already written a HOWTO on
    cvmfsexec
    <https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/HOWTO_use_prebuilt_GlueX_software_from_any_linux_user_account_using_cvmfsexec>,
    that will allow access via CVMFS to the Oasis share of our pre-built
    software stack from user space. This could greatly simplify the
    distribution of container-ready software.
 2. Mark volunteered to build a container for CentOS8, which will use an
    advanced version of GCC natively. By using such a container, we are
    guaranteed that all system-supplied software is compatible with the
    new compiler.

Mark also showed a fourth slide with musings on how we might automate 
and improve tests of our software.


      Review of recent issues and pull requests

We ran down the list of halld_recon issues 
<https://github.com/JeffersonLab/halld_recon/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue> 
without significant comment.


      Review of recent discussion on the GlueX Software Help List

Naomi reminded us that if we see problems posting plots to the logbook, 
we should send a bug report to Mark Dalton with the info he has 
requested <https://groups.google.com/g/gluex-software/c/tDLG5qcStjA>.

Retrieved from 
"https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php?title=GlueX_Software_Meeting,_July_21,_2020&oldid=100532"

  * This page was last modified on 21 July 2020, at 20:36.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/attachments/20200721/81fdaa00/attachment.html>