New GRB Workstation Setup

If GRB is unavailable, the Palomar workstation rhea or ezra2have been configured to run Spectrocam 10 complete with Sc10 system files, programs, and scuser login account (January 2003).

This section covers workstation setup, cabling, booting, and shutdown for the new Spectrocam 10 computer GRB. The GRB system consists of a CPU (ULTRA 10), monitor, keyboard, mouse, external disk drive, Exabyte tape drive, and Ethernet adapter box.


Installation / Cabling

WARNING: Before connecting any cables, be sure to ground yourself and the cable shields to discharge any static electricity.

  1. Install the GRB cart and the workstation's large monitor in the data room just as with PHARO. The small monitor on top of the cart is not used with SC-10, so it should be left powered off. Turn on the power to the power strip, the external disk, the external tape drive, the monitor and the CPU. Make sure the computer boots normally.

  2. The CentreCom MR420TR Hub/Repeater is also needed:

    1. Plug the hub into the power strip.
    2. Disconnect the blue twisted pair network cable from GRB and plug this into the MR420TR Hub/Repeater next to the yellow twisted pair network cable. Connect the other end of this yellow cable into GRB in the spot vacated by the blue cable. Connect the open end of the blue cable into an open slot of a network connection box in the data room. Yellow = #3; Blue=#4
    3. Connect the ethernet cable from the Cass Cage PC through DRM-9 (BNC 3) to the 10base2 BNC connector on the hub. Note that no terminator is needed if the Terminator switch on the hub is set to "On".

  3. Plug the TCS serial cable into Serial Port A.

  4. Plug the Mirella terminal cable into Serial Port B with a male-male sex changer.

System boot

Once you have turned on the power to the CPU, the system should boot automatically. Once booted, the GRB login pop-up window should appear. If something is wrong, error messages will appear before this prompt.

  1. Log onto GRB as scuser. A Terminal window should automatically open. If one doesn't open, right-click on the Desktop, select "Tools", then select "Terminal".

  2. Check the available disk space with the df -k command. The 31 Gig /scr1 partition is likely where you will want to write your data. But you are free to use the 8 Gig /scr or the 3.5 Gig /sc2 partitions. You may need to clear some space; get help if you're not sure what to do.

  3. In the Terminal Window, type sc10. The SC-10 programs will load.

  4. Enter the Observers' names into the Initialization menu upper line, and the directory name for the data files on the lower line. The default name is "daycrew"; the default directory is "/scr/xyz". Note that the /scr1 disk is a 31 Gigabyte disk. Press Return to enter the text and check the results. We usually name the directory to reflect the UT date of the observations. For example, if the UT date is September 25, 1994, enter sep25 on the line.

  5. Select the Use Guider checkbox if Sam's terminal cable is connected to serial port B and you want to run MIRELLA in an XTerm window.

See Data Room Setup for more information.

System shutdown

The GRB workstation, like any Unix system, should be powered down only with a specific procedure to protect the file systems.

  1. If necessary, log in as user scuser. If already logged in as any user, don't log out.

  2. Press the power key in the very upper right corner of the keyboard.

  3. A popup menu should appear on the screen; select Shutdown. Do not select Suspend.

  4. The system should immediately begin syncing the file systems. After about a minute, the CPU box power will go off automatically.

GRB / Ezra issues and problems

Tom Hayward writes (11 October, 2000):

"The original SC-10 workstation, ezra, is nearly 10 years old and reaching the end of its useful life. Both the hardware and the operationg system are outdated. Therefore, I have made an effort to transfer the SC-10 software to the ezra2 workstation which is normally used with PHARO. During the Ocober 2000 SC-10 run, I successfully ran the instrument from ezra2 with the new code. The new setup is of course much faster, and it runs in the Solaris Common Desktop Environment (CDE) which is standard on today's Sun's (including all the other machines in the Palomar data room).

Therefore, I recommend that the ezra2 workstation be used with SC-10 whenever possible in the future. The only time it should not be used is when there's a conflict with AO operations because there's no other machine that can run PHARO.

Issues and Problems:

  1. The new code is significantly different from the old, and the two versions are not interchangeable between ezra and ezra2 workstations.

  2. Although the revised code runs under the CDE, it is still based on the OpenWindows style widgets. The two styles are close enough so that I don't anticipate any problems.

  3. The CDE utilizes many more colors than the OpenWindows window manager, so the entire color strategy used by the SC-10 programs had to be revamped. Several color-related functions such as the Log window background color change when integrations are in progress, the GSM Fine/Coarse/Velocity lights, and colors of pressed buttons still do not work properly.

  4. The SuperMongo plotting library was incompatible with Solaris, so I replaced it with the plotting routines I developed for PHARO. The line plots work except for some erroneous axis labels, but the radial plotting does not yet work.

  5. It should be possible to run the new code and operate SC-10 from any of the Palomar data room workstations. However, scuser and scman accounts would need to be created, and several special pipes needed by the SC-10 code would have to be installed. This is not especially difficult, but it cannot be done at the last minute if workstation problems or conflicts (with PHARO) arise during a run."