Mark6/Flexbuff Effelsberg installation notes

Hardware and Software status

Middle of May a Mark6 that was pre-installed and tested in the VLBI lab in Bonn was shipped to Effelsberg and installed in the Faradayroom. It is running on Debian Squeeze (6.0) and has the following software version installed:

dplane version 1.17-1
mark6-sc-module 0.13-1
python-cplane 1.0.20-1
python-m6utils 1.0.7-2

The two onboard Ethernet ports have connection to the MPIfR network and the eVLBI network. A VNC-Server is running to provide a remote-accessible platform where programs can run locally on the machine without remote logins.

Both VSI ports of the Effelsberg DBBC are connected to an external Fila10G SA. The Mark5B+ gets a copy of the incoming VSI1 from the Fial10G, which is connected to COM2 of the DBBC for remote control via the DBBC server software (v105). The first 10 GE optical fibre adapter of the Fila10G is connected to eth3 of the Mark6 and the second one to the Harrobox just because it was there.

The Mark6 came with 4 disk modules, 32 TB each, that are supposed to stay in Effelsberg and are not being shipped. In this configuration the recorder is used not much different from a Flexbuff.

First tests

First test were done using the d- and cplane software following the Haystack “Mark6 usage examples” that are given on the Mark6 Documentation page:

http://www.haystack.mit.edu/tech/vlbi/mark6/documentation.html

It starts with initializing the modules in each slot, one after each other, and finally combine them into one group. This was done using the "da-client" software

mod_init=2:8:TEST0001:sg:new
mod_init=2:8:TEST0002:sg:new
mod_init=3:8:TEST0003:sg:new
mod_init=4:8:TEST0004:sg:new
group=new:1234
group=open:1234

>> mstat?
<<  !mstat?0:0:1234:1:TEST0001/32000/4/8:8:8:31989:32000:open:ready:sg:1234:2:TEST0002/32000/4/8:8:8:31989:32000:open:ready:sg:1234:3:TEST0003/32000/4/8:8:8:31989:32000:open:ready:sg:1234:4:TEST0004/32000/4/8:8:8:31989:32000:open:ready:sg;
>>
 

An input stream need to be defined from which the data is coming that should be written on the modules. This needed a bit of time, because the actual package size needs to be correct otherwise the data will be rejected.

The Fila10G was configured in TVG mode, 64 MHz clock, VDIF format, payload size of 8192 bytes. Including the 32 byte header each package has then a size of 8224 bytes. However someting is added and the packages that arrive at the Mark6 have 8274 bytes, as one can check using wireshark, or tcpdump.

So, the final input stream that worked to record data was:

input_stream=add:fila10g:vdif:8224:50:42:eth3:172.16.3.2:46227::
input_stream=commit;
input_stream?

>> input_stream?
<<  !input_stream?0:0:fila10g:vdif:8224:50:42:eth3:172.16.3.2:46227:0;

172.16.3.2 is the address of the Fila10G and 46227 is the port where it is sending. The parameters can be specified, but are not really used by cplane, it is just grabbing everything that has the right package size from eth3.

Eth3 itself has the 172.16.3.1 and the Fila10G is configure to send the data to this address including the correct arp hardware address.

With this configuration recording and checking the data worked fine:

record=on:10::no000007:test:ef
record?
list?
rtime?
scan_check?
scan_info?

Using jive5ab for recording

Once this was done and the systems seemed to behave like a recorder, jive5ab was installed to test recording with from the Field System.

wget http://www.jive.eu/~verkouter/evlbi/jive5ab-2.6.0.tar.gz

tar xzf jive5ab-2.6.0.tar.gz
cd jive5ab-2.6.0
make B2B=64
su
mark B2B=64 install

This will compile a 64 bit jive5ab version for your Mark6/Flexbuff that is immediately ready to run.

/opt/jivemark5a -m 3

Field System version FS-9.11.8 already knows about the Flexbuff and it can be configured in equip.ctl. The IP address goes into the mk5add.ctl, as usual. To configure the Fila10G at the same time as the DBBC the Field System backend option "dbbc/fila10g" was chosen. The recorder is still a Mark5B+, which does not depend on the Fial10G configuration, but just gets a copy of the incoming VSI data.

To allow parallel recordings from a single Field System the snp- and prc-files for each expriment are processed with Simon Caseys script fila5cflex-v005.py. The cmd2fila10g commands are ignored, but the sy=cmd2flexbuff.py allow to start, stop, and test the Flexbuff recordings and the same time as the normal Mark5B+ ones.