Computing Services Team Activity for the Period 10/02 to 1/03 - MEC - 1/22/03

HET

Elwood Downey joined the Computing Services Team, replacing Bill Spiesman.
Downey began work on replacement software for the HET primary mirror
control system, with the goal of reducing cycle time from 40+ seconds to
less than 10 seconds.  He and Cornell had a pretty successful engineering
run at the telescope on this topic.  Wilkinson installed the MARS2 control
computer and Odoms continued work on the MARS2 motion control software.
Odoms and Zhang worked on the remaining moving baffle issues, and Odoms
improved support for the Hartmann Test Fixture.  Zhang spent some time at
HET watching SAMS work, and studied the code to learn how to modify the
temperature calibration coefficients.  He is now ready to assist Palunas in
his efforts to debug/fix SAMS.  Odoms worked on an HET version of the
Apogee autoguider software.  This software will be first used by Ramsey's
MRS guide camera.  Zhang began work on the port of the HET TCS software to
linux.  Wilkinson purchased hardware for his DIMM remote control system
based on USB over fiber, and began testing it.  The required
hardware-software interface is in the early stage of development.
Wilkinson is also working to modify Armin Rest's DIMM software for
USB-based camera operation in addition to compilation under Delphi 7.
Wilkinson and Cornell worked with Laws to specify and purchase new HET
computers for TCS, SPS, and MARS2.

Mt. Locke Operations

Odoms took over PMAC support of 107TCS from Spiesman, working on cold
weather tuning issues, and adding PMAC code to detect amp faults and issue
an emergency stop.  Odoms and Zhang made two trips to the mountain to
address cold weather oscillations.  Zhang and Wilkinson continued work on
software and hardware respectively for the linux port of 107TCS, and Zhang
tested basic operation successfully at the telescope.  A new,
linux-compatible, serial port card and spare were purchased for this
purpose.  Odoms added support for SPOL to the new ATOG control system.
Wilkinson developed a standard Redhat 7.3 installation for use in hardware
control applications at the mountain.  Wilkinson made several improvements
to the Apogee control computer, including better cooling and a beefier
external power supply.  The spare 107-inch apogee camera and control
computer were purchased and are currently undergoing checkout in Austin.
Wilkinson continues to work intermittently on the MOVC Heliostat, recently
concentrating on the elimination of time-sync problems and noise from the
system to improve pointing and tracking.  Cornell and Zhang worked with
Green et al. to clarify backup status of colossus and to prepare documented
recovery procedures.  Doss, Cornell, and Odoms updated the 2dcoude
calibration coefficients for CS21, and Odoms may have tracked down the
problem with timeouts reading the 2dcoude encoders.  Cornell talked with
McGraw about future network improvements required by CTI.

Austin Operations

The department's main network closet in RLM was upgraded to provide 100Mbit
connections to every desktop, gigabit connections to a few servers, and the
patch pannel wiring was redone to make future changes easier.  Cornell and
Collins upgraded astro to 4 400Mhz CPUs, 4 GB of memory, and a gigabit
network link.  Wilkinson and Cornell worked with the University's Network
Services group and the Dean's office to fund and install a new network
trunk to our server closet in 15.320.  Alana Cable joined the Computing
Services Team, replacing Martha Schaefer.  She began work evaluating spam
filters, installed a new version of perl, and compiled an updated web
browser for the Suns.  Umbarger made several improvements to the program's
web site, including simpler navigation with title bars across the top of
each page, and context specific indices on the left, directory updates, a
new front page with timely news items, weekly events, and announcements, a
new HET section with better links, news notes, publication lists, and a
protected section for the HET Board, and a new top page for the Department
of Astronomy.  Cornell and Landazuri cleaned and restored the lab computers
for Jaffe's instrumentation course.  Landazuri and Cable did an inventory
of department network connections in anticipation of the network upgrade
performed in early January.  Wilkinson implemented an authenticated DHCP
system on the Austin network, designed to provide laptop IP addresses and
to reduce transient use of static IP addresses. Wilkinson also aided in the
January network upgrade by communicating with network services, planning
network topologies, and prepping Linux services for gigabit support.
Wilkinson continued development of the grad student terabyte RAID storage
array system, including debugging critical communications problems and
installing the required electrical connections for a 2200VA UPS
system. Integration of UPS monitoring into the server is the next step. It
is expected that two more >1 terabyte arrays will be brought online in the
next four months. Wilkinson researched, confirmed compatibility, and has
begun to purchase high-speed Dell workstation-class machines, targeted at
users who require high speed memory and data-processing bandwidth.
Landazuri began work on a standard OSX installation, to ease setup of new
Macs.  He also built a lot of OSX software for Kumar as a test case.
Umbarger maintained existing course web sites for Fall 2002 courses, added
support for Spring 2003 courses, posted 10 syllabi, and created new web
sites for 4 courses.  Umbarger and Wilkinson created animations for Kumar's
proposal to the BOV for support of a theory postdoc.  Landazuri moved
several computers around as people were displaced by work on the RLM air
handling systems.  Collins completed renewals on our printer maintenance
contracts.  Landazuri and Collins purchased software to upgrade our
Retrospect backup system for the Macs to support OSX.  Collins purchased 3
Sun workstations, 4 PCs, 1 Mac, 1 laptop, astro upgrades, several UPS
batteries, several disk drives, several monitors, plus lots of memory,
computer cards, cables, software, and supplies, and coordinated numerous
repairs during the period.  Landazuri and Cornell dealt with a couple of
minor hacker incidents.