controlMonitor API client

There are two operation modes for cmonClient:

  1. ldas - running cmonClient off an ldas installation
  2. To run in this mode, include /ldas/bin in your path or enter the full path e.g.

    /ldas/bin/cmonClient

    Do not run in the installation directory e.g. /ldas/bin or /ldas/lib/cmonClient, since cmonClient writes temporary files in the work directory; the command will be rejected.

  3. local - running cmonClient on your local machine
  4. See installation instructions below.

Installation of the local client

cmonClient is a standalone software that can be download from http://www.ldas-sw.ligo.caltech.edu/packages

Requirements for running cmonClient are:

  1. A platform running unix type of applications e.g. with an X11 server.
  2. Tcl/Tk version 8.3.5   download

    The tool command language created and developed by John Ousterhout for general processing (Tcl) and creation of GUIs (Tk).

  3. BWidget 1.7.0

    The BWidget Toolkit is a high-level Widgets Set for Tcl/Tk built using native Tcl/Tk 8.x namespaces. It is done in 100% pure Tcl/Tk.

  4. BWidget should be installed as a regular Tcl package (at the same level as Tcl and Tk packages ).

    The nightly cmonClient tarballs from ldas-dev starting from 1.0.50 will use BWidget 1.7.0 exclusively. Download the tarball of BWidget 1.7.0 to your local platform. Unzip and untar the tarball under the lib directory where your tcl/tk package is installed. e.g. If you are using stow to install your packges, you need to do the following for stow to work properly, e.g. if you stow under /ldcg

    
    cd /ldcg/stow_pkgs
    gzip -dc <your BWidget tarball directory>/BWidget-1.7.0.tar.gz | tar xf -
    cd BWidget-1.7.0
    
    mkdir -p /ldcg/stow_pkgs/BWidget-1.7.0/lib/BWidget
    cp -r . /ldcg/stow_pkgs/BWidget-1.7.0/lib/BWidget
    cd /ldcg/stow_pkgs
    stow BWidget-1.7.0
    
    Also see How to build cmonClient for more details.

  5. BLT graphical package for plotting
  6. Use of BLT as an optional graph package results in faster plotting in cmonClient and easy zoom in capabilities. The recommended BLT version is BLT2.4z, Oct 15,2002. Download the source code, follow the installation instructions and install it in the same library path as other Tcl packages, e.g. /ldcg/lib or /usr/lib. To use BLT in cmonClient, make sure the resource variable ::USEBLT in <your home directory>cmonClient.rsc file is set to 1 before starting cmonClient. The default graphical package is used in cmonClient if BLT cannot be used.

  7. The cmonClient tarball ( see Control And Monitor Client, Installation Notes for details ). The development versions of cmonClient tar ball can be downloaded from here.

After downloading the software tar ball into a directory follow the ldas installation instructions to untar the package:

  1. e.g. for release 1.0.57 build version number using gnu tar

    	tar xvzf cmonClient-1.0.57.tar.gz 

    creates a cmonClient-1.0.57 directory in your current directory with the following files in the package for release 1.0.57

    subdirectories are in bold

    
    b64.tcl               cmonCommon2.tcl     cmonNodesStat.tcl   graph.tcl
    bltgraph.tcl          cmonCommon.tcl      cmonNodes.tcl       html2ps.cfg
    cmonAdmin.tcl         cmonCores.tcl       cmonResource.tcl    html.tcl
    cmonAPIHist.tcl       cmonDBview.tcl      cmonStatistics.tcl  INSTALL.html
    cmonAPImem.tcl        cmonJobs.tcl        cmonStatus.tcl      INSTALL.txt
    cmonAPItimes.tcl      cmonJobSummary.tcl  cmonTree.tcl        ldascmds
    cmonBeowulfUsers.tcl  cmonLDAS.tcl        cmonUtils.tcl       ldas_version.tcl
    cmonBlock.tcl         cmonLDASTest.tcl    counter.tcl         leapseconds
    cmonBwatch.tcl        cmonLoad.tcl        dbtables.tcl        pkgIndex.tcl
    cmonClient            cmonLogs.tcl        gifs                plot.tcl
    cmonClient.rsc        cmonMPIjobs.tcl     gpstime.tcl
    
    
  2. Set up login/password for users ldas, control and monitor on the cntlmonAPI server:

    ( See How to configure LDAS for details on configuring cntlmonAPI server )

    1. ldas login and password for node login and other ssh functions; ldas login/password does not have to be known by cmonClient users.
    2. An access user login and password are required for connection to the server to get LDAS site-specific information. This password is good for 30 minutes for reconnection; after 30 minutes if you reconnect again, you will be prompted for a password.
    3. A priviledged user login and password are required for execution of control functions. The login/password is prompted every time a control function is to be executed.

    To obtain a login and password to use with the client, please contact Kent Blackburn

  3. Establish an encryption key between the client and server

    Edit the installation copy of cmonClient.rsc to have the same encryption key between server and client by setting up the challenge variable.

Running cmonClient

You can run cmonClient from any directory by specifying the path ; a local copy of cmonClient.rsc will be placed in the working directory if a cmonClient.rsc file does not exist in the running directory; if you have an outdated copy of the cmonClient.rsc file please remove it first before invoking a current version of cmonClient.

Example of starting cmonClient


./cmonClient or <local installation path>cmonClient

The output is found in a log file cmonClient[pid].log in the run directory:


resource file /home/mlei/cmonClient.rsc updated from ../cmonClient-1.0.54/cmonClie
nt.rsc
Extra tcl libraries=
configure file for html2ps is ../cmonClient-1.0.54/html2ps.cfg
sourcing /home/mlei/cmonClient.rsc
sourcing /home/mlei/.cmonClient.state
Temp directory /home/mlei/boxes/cmonClient-tmp8526
The progress screen is first display as cmonClient sets up the pages.



The full screen is displayed next.


cmonClient writes out temporary files to the temporary directory specified by variable ::TMPDIR in the cmonClient.rsc file; for the local installation it is the tmp subdirectory in the directory where the files were untared. If debug is turned on for cmonClient, the data returned from server is written to file in a temporary directory under the current run directory <temp directory>/dataRecv.<site> e.g. dataRecv.ldas-dev.

Make sure your computer can communicate to the outside network if you desire to reach remote LDAS sites.

You are now ready to peek at LDAS and make changes ( if you are a priviledged user ).

General Operations