Mark5 Knowledge base

m5dir fails with "illegal directory size"

When running m5dir and receiving an error message like this:

Module directory parse error 1 encountered: Illegal directory size
The directory size was 5244512
The best guess about the directory content is printed below:
This module contains a NeoLegacy directory (capable of storing up to 65536 scans):
  Number of scans on the directory = 342
  Directory version = 2 subversion = 7
  jive5ab format designator = Mark5B16DisksSDK9BankB
  DiFX signature = 1773171562
The binary directory was dumped to /tmp/dir.dump
Error: Directory read for module GSFC+026 unsuccessful, error code=-3
FYI: Not setting disk module state to Played for GSFC+026

fuse mount the module

fuseMk5 -f /tmp/dir.dump /mark5fxXX

Check that the scans are properly mounted and can be decoded e.g.

m5findformat /mark5fxXX/scan
or
printVDIFheader /mark5fxXX/scan

if everythin looks OK you can write back the binary directory created by m5dir to the module

writeuserdir /tmp/dir.dump

Reconstructing a Mark5 user directory

When the user directory on a module has been corrupted for whatever reason, there are two possible ways to recover it, using utilities included in "fuseMk5". Place the problematic module as the only module into a Mark5 unit. Then:

If the module was previously imported into DiFX:

mkdir tmp; cd tmp
cp -a /cluster/difx/directories/<modulename>.dir .
/cluster/mark5/fuseMk5/fuseMk5-cvs/difxdirfile2userdir.py  <modulename>.dir  newdir.bin
/cluster/mark5/fuseMk5/fuseMk5-cvs/fuseMk5 --udread newdir.bin /mnt/diskpack
ls /mnt/diskpack
# If files under /mnt/diskpack looked reasonable you can write newdir.bin onto module:
fusermount -u /mnt/diskpack
/cluster/mark5/fuseMk5/fuseMk5-cvs/writeuserdir newdir.bin

mkdir tmp; cd tmp

cp <fieldsystemlog>.log fslog.log
(cat expt_part_2.log >> fslog.log)  # if there are multiple experiments on a module
(cat expt_part_3.log >> fslog.log)  # ...

/cluster/mark5/fuseMk5/fuseMk5-cvs/fslog2userdir.py <fieldsystemlog>.log newdir.dir

/cluster/mark5/fuseMk5/fuseMk5-cvs/fuseMk5 --udread newdir.bin /mnt/diskpack
ls /mnt/diskpack

# If files under /mnt/diskpack looked reasonable you can write newdir.bin onto module:
fusermount -u /mnt/diskpack
/cluster/mark5/fuseMk5/fuseMk5-cvs/writeuserdir newdir.bin

Mark5 Module recovery

Starting from a certain Conduant SDK version (uncertain which), the Conduant card firmware has lost its ability to gracefully play back modules that contain one or more corrupt/dead disks. Such modules will either freeze the Mark 5, or will play back extremely slowly with zero data.

Recovery procedure

cd /usr/local/src/streamstor/linux/util/
./ssflash -u SDK9.3.ssf

./ssinfo
./sstest