Installation notes vlbi_streamer on pv-mark6-4

1) Installation
apt-get install git
git clone https://code.google.com/p/vlbi-streamer/
cd vlbi-streamer
./autogen.sh
./configure
  => Error Could not find library libconfig
  =>apt-get install libconfig8-dev
./configure
make
(as root) make install
  => Error related to man pages, reason unknown ignoring for now

executable created in /usr/local/bin

2) Disk partitioning
as root:
fdisk /dev/sdb (do the same also for /dev/sdc)
option c
option u
option n  (create new primary partition primary
option w  (write partition)

3) create flexbuf volume
as root:
cd vlbi_streamer/scripts
./mount_volumes -a
select the 2 disks
option c (continue)
confirm formatting of partitions

script has written ext4 fs on the two disks (check with parted) 

testing the disk performance 
(test_volumespeeds needed a fix in order to create test data on /dev/...)
___________________________________________________________________
oper@pv-mark6-4:~/vlbi-streamer/scripts$ ./test_volumespeeds 1024
Generating testfile for 1024 MB. This will take a while..
Generation done. Testing each disk individually
Testing Write to /mnt/disk1
Testing read from /mnt/disk1
Testing read+write on /mnt/disk1
Disk /mnt/disk1         - W: 228 MB/s R: 269 MB/s RW: 129 MB/s
Testing Write to /mnt/disk0
Testing read from /mnt/disk0
Testing read+write on /mnt/disk0
Disk /mnt/disk0         - W: 227 MB/s R: 266 MB/s RW: 129 MB/s
Testing parallel writes to all disks
Testing parallel reads on all disks
Testing parallel reads+writes to all disks
All Disks accumulated:  - W: 455 MB/s R: 535 MB/s RW: 258 MB/s
All Disks parallel:     - W: 456 MB/s R: 537 MB/s RW: 259 MB/s
Cleaning up
___________________________________________________________________

4) additional configurations
in /etc/sysctl.conf add
net.core.wmem_max=16777216
net.core.rmem_max=16777216
this will increase the packet cache and should prevent packet loss on 10G networks

5) start vlbi_streamer as daemon process
update-rc.d vbs_daemon defaults

6) mount the disks
as root:
/home/oper/vlbi_streamer/mount_volumes (first edit DISKS variable in the script)
check with mount

7) Configure FILA10G to produce TVG data
test done with latest FILA10G firmware (3.3.2_0).
Prepared batch scripts fila10G_v3_tvg_2Gbps.bat, fila10G_v3_tvg_4Gbps.bat, fila10G_v3_tvg_8Gbps.bat\

load PFB or DDC firmware
execute batch script e.g. fila10G_v3_tvg_2Gbps.bat
make sure that destination adress is correct (192.168.1.2)
make sure that output has started

8) Network connect
connect optical cable to pv-mark6-4 (eth2)
check with tcpdump -i eth2 that data is arriving from 192.168.1.30 (eth0 FILA10G)
make sure that destination adress (eth0) in the FILA10G batch files match the network adress of eth2

9) start recording
vbs_record -i 192.168.1.2 -q vdif -p 8224 SCANNAME 20 (will start 20s scan)

check results with tail -f /usr/local/var/log/vlbistreamer.log

-------------
RESULTS:
-------------
- Recording @ 2GBps

  total packets recorded: 633205
  dropped packets: 19

  => 0.003% packet loss

Recording @ 4Gbps

  total packets recorded: 1312595
  dropped packets: 162618

  => 12% packet loss

Recording @ 8Gbps

  not succesful. For unknown reasons tcpdump does not show any activity for eth2 when 
  data is produced at 8Gbps. Expected packet loss rate would be too high anyhow to record at
  such high speed.