2 OVERVIEW

2.1 INTRODUCTION

The Startup Tool provides two utilities to start and stop the instrumentation software, and a standard startup panel as frontend to the start script. The utilities allow to either start/stop the complete instrumentation software, to start/stop individual parts of it (e.g. ICS, DCS) or to start/stop individual panels. The utilities support the standard instrumentation software, but can be adapted to instrument specific applications.

In this chapter a brief description of the internal architecture of the Startup Tool is given. The rest of the manual is organized in the following chapters:

· Chapter 3 introduces the Startup Tool to beginners by mean of a demo session on the Template Instrument.

· Chapter 4 is the user's guide that describes the main features provided by the stoo module.

· Chapter 5 is a tutorial that describes step by step how to implement an instrument specific start and stop utilities from scratch.

· Chapter 7 complements the user's guide providing additional information to software developers who have to adapt the tool to instrument specific features.

· Chapter 6 is the configuration guide that describes in detail how to configure the Startup Tool. The major part of the configuration is shared with BOSS/OS.

· Chapter 8 contains a FAQ and troubleshooting tips.

· Chapter 9 is the installation guide.

Other information about the Startup Tool can be found in related documents, as described in section 1.2.

2.2 NAMING CONVENTIONS

This document describes:

scripts, panels and classes provided directly by stoo. They all start with the prefix stoo.

1. Instrument specific process/script names conform to the following scheme:

<xx>i<Functionality>

whereby:

<xx> is a two characters prefix indicating the instrument (e.g. tc for Test Camera, is for ISAAC, uv for UVES)

<Functionality> is a string indicating what the process/script is supposed to do, in conformity with what specified in [5].

Example:

uviControl

2. <XXXX> is a placeholder for the instrument identifier (e.g. ISAAC, UVES).

2.3 ARCHITECTURE

The startup tool is designed to start/stop standard instrumentation software, i.e. BOSS, Base ICS and known detector types (FIERA, ACE). These software packages use well defined names for their processes and panels (e.g. xxiControl for the main ICS process). If an instrument has different OS or ICS implementations, then the startup tool may be able to start this software, if they use exactly the same number of processes with the same names as the standard software. However, in general, if an instrument does not use the standard implementations (BOSS, Base ICS, FIERA, ACE software), then they also have to supply the code to startup and shutdown their instrument specific software, as described in the programmer's guide (sections 7.2 to 7.5).

2.3.1 Panel and Scripts

The Startup Tool consists of a panel and two utilities:

1. stooStartup

The stooStartup panel is a standard panel for instrumentation software that allows to update a subset of the instrument configuration (availability of the subsystems, simulation, options to start individual panels). This subset is stored in file xxmcfgSTART.cfg¹. Specific instrument options can be added to the panel, replacing the provided panel class with an instrument specific one.

2. stooStart

Utility to start the instrumentation software, a single application or panel.

3. stooStop

Utility to stop the instrumentation software, a single application or panel.

Both utilities configure themselves loading the instrument configuration stored in the INS configuration set (files xxmcfgINS.cfg and xxmcfgSTART.cfg, see [23]). If the configuration is not sufficient to describe instrument specific features, then an optional file containing specific startup code can be supplied.

2.3.2 Applications, Panels and Processes

From the point of view of the Startup Tool a VLT system consists of the following items:

· Applications, e.g. OS, ICS and DCS. Applications consist of processes and panels. Individual applications can be started/stopped passing the -proc option to the stoo utilities.

· Panels, e.g. the ICS Stand-alone panel. Panels are normally assigned to an application (this however is not necessary). E.g. the ICS Stand-alone panel is assigned to the ICS application. Individual panels can be started/stopped passing the -panel option to the stoo utilities. It is possible to configure the tool to start the assigned application when a panel is started.

· Processes, e.g. xxiControl. Each workstation process must be assigned to an application. It is not possible to start/stop individual WS processes. The tool does not provide facilities to start/stop LCU processes (or LCUs).

2.3.3 Standard Instrumentation Software

The Startup Tool assumes that the standard instrumentation software consists of the applications, panels and processes shown below:

· Application OS (see [24])

· xxoControl process²

· OS Control panel (xxopanControl)

Panel placed next to BOB, that displays the states of OS and the individual subsystems, the main status of the instrument and detectors, and allows to control the observations started with BOB.

· OS Status panel (xxopanStatus)

Full screen status of the instrument.

· Application ICS (see [26])

· xxiControl process

· xxiSimControl process

· ICS Stand-alone panel (xxipanControl)

· Application DCS

DCS related processes depend of the detector type. Here FIERA is used as an example.

· fcdconCI_<detname> process

· fcditWs_<detname> process

· DCS Stand-alone panel

· BOB panel

· Alarm panel (xxopanAlarm)

The tool supports multiple instances of DCS and ICS. While it is recommended that instruments have a structure as shown above, a specific instrument can have additional or different processes and panels. These are configured as described in chapters 7.5.1 and 7.4.1.

2.4 SOFTWARE MODULES

The Startup Tool is implemented with module stoo (module ctoo is also required). The dictionaries describing the configuration keywords are located in modules icb and osb. Specific instruments should access the tool via the scripts provided in module osb.

The following instrument specific modules need to be updated to add the Startup Tool to an instrument (replace `xx' with the instrument prefix as explained above in section 2.2):

Module	Platform	Description
xxmcfg	WS	Template Instrument configuration files. This module contains all instrument configuration files and is therefore shared between the ICS, OS and MS software of the instrument (in particular, files xxmcfgINS.cfg and xxmcfgSTART.cfg).
xxins	WS	Template Instrument integration module. It is used to build and install the complete XXXX instrumentation software. It also contains the main startup panel (xxinsStartup), start (xxinsStart) and stop (xxinsStop) scripts, and a file with startup extensions (xxinsStoo, if needed).

¹

This subset is stored in a separate file, to avoid the danger of overwriting the complete instrument configuration stored in file xxmcfgINS.cfg.

²

Other processes may be added later according to the implementation of BOSS.

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