[Halld-offline] Software Meeting Minutes, March 17, 2020

[Mark Ito]

Folks,

Please find the minutes here 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Software_Meeting,_March_17,_2020#Minutes> 
and below.

   -- Mark


  GlueX Software Meeting, March 17, 2020, Minutes

Present: Alex Austregesilo, Thomas Britton, Sean Dobbs, Mark Ito 
(chair), Naomi Jarvis, David Lawrence, Keigo Mizutani, Zisis Papandreou, 
and others perhaps[?]

There is a recording of his meeting <https://bluejeans.com/s/6R_VR> on 
the BlueJeans site. Use your JLab credentials to access it.


      Announcements

 1. Compute Canada Award
    <https://halldweb.jlab.org/doc-private/DocDB/ShowDocument?docid=4384>
    Zisis announced the award of 265 core-years on Compute Canada. See
    the link for details.
      * Thomas asked if there was a use-it-or-lose-it aspect to the
        award with respect to the amount of awards in subsequent years.
        If so he could arrange it so that Compute Canada would be
        favored for GlueX simulation jobs. Zisis will get back to Thomas
        on this.
 2. New Version Set released: version_4.16.0.xml
    <https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2020-March/003938.html>
    This version set came out last week. It includes the new version of
    CCDB (see the next announcement). Also, this file the does /not/
    appear in the DIST directory.
      * Note that the DIST directory has not disappeared. All files that
        have been served from there in the past remain there with the
        exception of the version set files, which are now in HALLD_VERSIONS.
 3. New sub-minor release: CCDB 1.06.07
    <https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/halld-offline/2020-March/003940.html>.
    This version has substantially improved performance on the MySQL
    servers.


      Review of Minutes from the Last Software Meeting

We went over the minutes from March 3 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/GlueX_Software_Meeting,_March_3,_2020#Minutes>. 



        Recon Launch halld_recon vs. Analysis Launch halld_recon

We had further discussion of the recon-launch/analysis-launch 
halld_recon version issue.

  * Thomas pointed out that the problem is complex. The fact that the
    analysis library is part of halld_recon is the root cause. There is
    no easy way out of the situation.
  * He also mentioned that the pick-an-analysis-launch approach could be
    done, but it does not solve all problems. In particular, there are
    users who want simulated REST files and have no interest or
    knowledge about which analysis launch they should align with. In
    addition, changes to MCwrapper-bot to implement this are not simple.
    He also reminded us that the current system is not missing
    functionality in the sense that you can do nearly everything you
    would reasonably want to do with it as it stands.
  * Sean suggested documentation so that users with well-defined use
    cases can figure out what choices to make on the bot-gui.
  * Alex reminded us that the recon launch versions themselves need get
    rebuilt from time to time with patches necessary to make them
    compatible with new halld_sim versions, another complication.
  * Alex suggested trimming down the number of choices on the bot-gui.
    That could be done but requires an expert.
  * Mark admitted that there are some recon-launch compatible versions
    sets that have yet to be built against version set 4.16.0 (mentioned
    above).


        CCDB Access Control

Mark spoke to Dmitry Romanov about this since the last meeting. The 
access control is available in CCDB 2.0 and can be implemented once that 
becomes the standard. Dmitry said that a full-blown administrative 
interface to configure the access control scheme is not there; that is 
going to take a lot of Python coding. On the other hand the scheme in 
its current state is configurable; configuration is an expert operation 
probably requiring use of the MySQL command line. So we will accept that 
and use the feature.


      Review of Minutes from the Last HDGeant4 Meeting

We went over the minutes from March 10 
<https://halldweb.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/HDGeant4_Meeting,_March_10,_2020#Minutes> 
without significant discussion.


      Corrupt EVIO Files

Beni reported jobs crashing 
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/gluex-software/s-AUOaXpPw0> on 
recently taken raw data files. The problem has been traced to a single 
channel of a Flash-250 in ROC 17. That module has been replaced. Richard 
Jones has observed the problem in the data already taken and is 
instituting a fix so that programs can skip over the problematic blocks 
of data. David expressed interest in reviewing the solution once it 
becomes available.


      Review of recent issues and pull requests

  * Alex will revisit halld_recon Issue #116
    <https://github.com/JeffersonLab/halld_recon/issues/166> "Vertex z
    dependent reconstruction efficiency" to see if it is still with us.
  * Sean asked people to review changes in halld_recon Pull Request #332
    <https://github.com/JeffersonLab/halld_recon/pull/332> "Timing
    monitoring updates" to make sure the guidance is correct and the
    expert email lists are as they should be.


      Review of recent discussion on the GlueX Software Help List

We went over the list 
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gluex-software>.

Mark reported that the CCDB problem Igal Jaegle reported over the 
weekend was due to a full root partition on hallddb.jlab.org, our main 
MySQL server. We were not able to determine the cause of the problem, 
but Marty Wise has added disk space to the VM; the partition was running 
at 36% full when he last checked.


      Action Item Review

 1. Trim choices in MCwrapper-bot. (?)
 2. Write a wiki page to describe how to navigate MCwrapper-bot. (Thomas)
 3. Implement a pick-your-analysis-launch option to MCwrapper-bot
    (Thomas, long-term)
 4. Build recon-launch compatible version sets with the latest versions
    of halld_sim. (Mark)
 5. Review changes to monitoring plot guidance from Sean. (all)

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