# MINOS Computing/Offline Software Status Report

**Liz Buckley-Geer**

**May 4, 2005**

**Report #3**

# 

# Project Description

MINOS Computing

<http://wwwserver2.fnal.gov/cfdocs/projectsdb/projdetail.cfm?ProjectID=81>

MINOS Offline Software

<http://wwwserver2.fnal.gov/cfdocs/projectsdb/projdetail.cfm?ProjectID=292>

# Summary

Neither of these projects has made a status report since November 2003.
Much work has happened since then.

### MINOS Computing

This task covers items such as data handling, control room support etc.
The people involved are Liz Buckley-Geer, Art Kreymer and John Urish.

1.  **MINOS Control Room**

> The control room on WH12NW is now fully functional thanks to work by
> John Urish. He has installed all the flat panel monitors on stands
> which group then together according to their function. He has
> installed wireless keyboards and mice to eliminate the tangle of
> cables. He moved all the computers onto a table in the corner. A lot
> of the configuration for the applications was done by a MINOS
> collaborator and John is meeting weekly with him to transfer the
> knowledge so that John will be able to look after all aspects of the
> systems.

2.  **Hardware deployment**

> We purchased and deployed the production Oracle server minosora1. The
> development Oracle server is on order. We deployed a Linux cluster of
> 12 dual CPU nodes. These were eagerly awaited by the collaboration. We
> are decommissioning the SGI minos1. Logins are disabled and it will be
> turned off on June 1. We are deploying a new MySQL server with more
> disk and memory to replace the current one which is running out of
> both. We need to plan how to spend the current year's equipment
> budget.

3.  **Data Handling**

> We are moving full steam ahead with SAM deployment. This was slowed
> for a while due to the departure of Bruce Greenway in August 2004. Art
> Kreymer joined the effort in February 2005 and we are now back on
> track. Currently all the raw data has been declared to the production
> Oracle database and is being updated daily. This will move to a once
> per hour update once we are happy everything is okay. Work is
> proceeding on generating the metadata for all the reconstructed data,
> about 220,000 files. The plan is to generate this metadata by reading
> in the python files containing the raw metadata and writing out files
> with necessary changes for the reco data.
>
> The MINOS offline framework is able to access SAM and run jobs over
> SAM datasets. Thanks to Sinisa for his work on the C++ interface and
> making the necessary changes to allow us to run multiple projects in a
> single offline job.
>
> We will initially have two stations, one which supplies files from
> dcache via URLs and another which can supply files from AFS space. We
> will deploy the dcache station first.
>
> We will continue to allow users direct access to the data via dccp and
> the weak FTP door. A web utility has been provided that gives users
> lists of files in the appropriate format from the SAM catalog.

4.  **Database**

> Migration of our offline database from MySQL to Oracle has been a long
> and painful saga and is not yet complete. Dennis Box has been helping
> with this activity. From the collaboration side the work is done by
> Nick West from Oxford. The MySQL server is administered by EXP
> personnel (system admin from CSS). The assumption that the use of OBDC
> as an interface would insulate us from the differences between Oracle
> and MySQL was naïve. About the only thing that ODBC provides is a
> uniform API. Dennis keeps a log of progress at
> <http://home.fnal.gov/~dbox/minos/status_reports.html>.
>
> In addition we have some VERY LARGE tables being generated by the
> Light Injection Calibration process (21 GB at the last count). This
> has caused operational problems on the current MySQL server, we
> started running out of disk space. The large tables were moved to the
> second disk on the machine but updating them is currently on hold
> until we migrate to the new MySQL server. The hope is that the MySQL
> server would become a read-only replica of the Oracle master but we
> are not there yet.

5.  **User Consulting**

> There is ongoing support of users which has the tendency to slow down
> progress on projects.

### MINOS Offline Software

Most of the offline software is written by university collaborators.
However we are responsible for certain of the infrastructure and
simulation. This work is done primarily by Robert Hatcher. Most of the
work described here has been done in the last six months.

1.  **Geometry**

> Guide the migration to the ROOT geometry being done by Sue Kasahara at
> Minnesota.

2.  **Magnetic Field**

> There has been a lot of work in this area. There have been various
> improvements to the code and performance improvements. There has also
> been an effort to understand the asymmetry between positive and
> negatively charged muons in the Far detector. A task force was
> convened and Robert participated in this.

3.  **Detector Simulation**

> We updated the geometry to reflect the as-built detectors for both
> Near and Far. Various other improvements were made to make the
> detector descriptions more realistic. Work is progressing, albeit more
> slowly that we would like, on the new C++ simulation interface.

4.  **Mock Data Challenge**

> This has taken much longer than originally planned. The original
> schedule was to have results by March 2004. This turned out to be too
> ambitious given the state of the software and the readiness of the
> collaboration to analyze the data. First results were presented at the
> March 2005 collaboration meeting. This has been a distraction from
> other projects like the C++ simulation.

5.  **Database Updater**

> This package reads the raw data files and extracts various metadata
> from them and puts it in the database. This was completely overhauled
> to produce new and improved metadata for the offline database as well
> as generating the metadata for SAM.

6.  **Support**

> There is always the ongoing task of user support, helping them find
> and fix bugs, fixing crummy user code etc. In addition all the above
> items have support associated with them.

### 

### Resources used (budget, effort) 

I summarize the percentage effort for the last six months

MINOS Computing

  ----------------- --------- --------- -------- -------- -------- --------
                    Nov 04    Dec 04    Jan 05   Feb 05   Mar 05   Apr 05

  E. Buckley-Geer   40        40        80       80       60       60

  Art Kreymer                                    20       50       90

  John Urish        4         10        28       35       45       30
  ----------------- --------- --------- -------- -------- -------- --------

MINOS Offline Software

  ---------------- --------- --------- -------- --------- --------- --------
                   Nov 04    Dec 04    Jan 05   Feb 05    Mar 05    Apr 05

  Robert Hatcher   68        57        93       95        85        92
  ---------------- --------- --------- -------- --------- --------- --------

MINOS Database Development

  -------------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
                 Nov 04    Dec 04    Jan 05    Feb 05    Mar 05    Apr 05

  Dennis Box     33        35        40        7         10        10
  -------------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------

Budget for FY05

Amounts in K\$.

  ------------------ ---------------- -------- ----------- ----------------------
  Task               Task Code        Budget   Obligated   Comment

  MINOS-DATABASE     50.01.06.04.03   25.5     16.4        Oracle development
                                                           machine

  MINOS-DISK         50.1.06.04.05    21.4                 Dcache disk and
                                                           analysis disk

  MINOS-CPU          50.01.06.04.06   79.2                 Farm and analysis CPU

  MINOS-COMPUTING    50.01.06.04.01   32.3     16.8        General operating

  MINOS-NETWORK      50.01.06.04.02   2        1.1         Fiber to the desktop
                                                           on WH12W
  ------------------ ---------------- -------- ----------- ----------------------

### Schedule/Milestones 

We plan to start beta testing with SAM in May (as soon as we have the
reconstructed data in the production database). We will move to full
production at FNAL by mid-June. The next step will be helping users set
up SAM stations at universities.

Deployment of the offline database in Oracle is planned for mid-June.