Ⅱ-8. Accelerator

RIKEN Accel. Prog. Rep. 49 (2016)

EPICS PV management and method for RIBF control system†
A. Uchiyama,∗1 M. Komiyama,∗1 and N. Fukunishi∗1
For the RIBF, we constructed a control system basedon the Experimental Physics and Industrial Control
System (EPICS) for magnet power supplies, beam diagnostic instruments, vacuum control systems, andso on.1) Diﬀerent types of devices are connected via
the EPICS Input/Output Controllers (IOCs) as frontend controllers for accelerator operation. For example,VME-based IOCs are adapted for magnet power supplies, and beam diagnostic and vacuum systems (e.g.,Faraday cup and beam proﬁle monitor) are constructedusing Linux-based IOCs connected with N-DIM.2) Additionally, CAMAC, GPIB, Programmable Logic Controller, and others are also utilized as control devices
with EPICS for various applications in the RIBF control system. In October 2015, the EPICS-based RIBF
control system consisted of 51 IOCs that contain approximately 110,000 EPICS records in total. Note that
the EPICS record consists of some ﬁelds, and the behavior of the record is deﬁned by cording the ﬁelds.
On the other hand, since the RIBF control system
has been constructed by extending the control systemof the RIKEN Accelerator Research Facility (RARF),
the relationship among the IOCs, the Process Variables (PVs), and controllers are complicated. The PV
is a named piece of data with a set of attributes in theEPICS-based system. Therefore, we have constructeda system to manage the EPICS PV to solve the complication of the relationship and PV name.

Fig. 1. System chart of the developed program and inserteddata.

In the RIBF control system, common EPICS programs (EPICS-base, application programs, runtime
database, and additional extensions programs) are†∗1Condensed from the article in proceedings of the 15 th International Conference on Accelerator and Large Experimental
Control Systems. Melbourne, Australia, (2015)
RIKEN Nishina Center- 149 -

stored in the network attached storage (NAS), andthey are shared by all EPICS IOCs using the network
ﬁle system or ﬁle transfer protocol. The NAS, manufactured by NetApp, provides a centralized systemwith a high availability. On the other hand, the IOCs
mount common EPICS programs and the management
server is also mounted with the shared storage to readcommon EPICS programs. Therefore, by reading thestartup script ﬁles and accessing the EPICS runtime
database ﬁles, the developed program can parse theruntime database ﬁles, which is coded in startup scriptﬁle. In this developed system, the EPICS PV information is separately stored in the PostgreSQL-based
database by parsing the startup script ﬁles and EPICS
runtime database ﬁles (See Fig. 1). Additionally, theinformation of the network-based devices, which aremanaged by the IOC, is inserted in the database. Thisdeveloped program is coded in PHP and is regularlyinvoked from Crontab services, which run on Linux;
thus, the data are always in the latest state.
Because the EPICS PVs and ﬁelds information are
stored in the PostgreSQL-based database, the information is available for use for various purposes by using
the network communication. Therefore, we developed
command-line-based tools to obtain the information,and it was implemented in the operational log system.3) The operational log system is one of the electric
log systems for recording and viewing the accelerator
operating time and contents of an operated device.
By using this system, the names of the required PVs
are never missed from the list because creating the lists
with a program is easy. By developing Web applications, searching the IOC hostname from the EPICS
record name becomes possible. Furthermore, because
this developed system has an autocomplete feature,
searching by EPICS record name is possible without
requiring the completed EPICS record name.
Using the inserted information, alive monitoring will
be implemented in the near future for the RIBF control
system. By using alive monitoring system, it will become possible to enhance the reliability of the control
system.
References1) M. Komiyama et al.: Proc. ICALEPCS14, SanFrancisco, CA, USA (2014), p.348.
2) M. Fujimaki et al.: RIKEN Accel. Prog. Rep. 37 (2004),p.279.
3) A. Uchiyama et al.: RIKEN Accel. Prog. Rep. 48(2015), p.195.