1. Trigger Health Monitor
The name of the program is "trigHealth". It is an X-windows program, so you need to be sitting in from of an X-term and have a valid value of the environmental variable "DISPLAY". This program helps you to monitor several aspects of the trigger "health". For example, cpu usage, token issuance and acceptance, and DSM state. "trigHealth" depends upon a auxiliary program. This auxiliary program should update an ASCII file named "trigHealth.input" 1-5 times per minute. This auxiliary program should be started before "trigHealth". The window is divided into sub-areas. Each sub-area which is not self-expla- natory has a "Help" button. The sub-area in the upper-left corner is for checking the overall status. It has a set of numbered squares. If all is OK, all the squares are green. If sub-area number N has trouble, square N is red. Recipe (as of May 23 2000): 1. Log into startrg.star using an X-terminal. 2. Check $DISPLAY. 3. Check that the auxiliary program is running by typing "ls -l trigHealth.input" and seeing that it is not more than 60 seconds old. 4. Type "trigHealth". ==========================================================================
2. Visualization
Visualization provides a "picture" of the CTB (the central trigger barrel in the shape of a cylinder) and the MWC (multi-wire chamber) (the "ends" of the cylinder). There are two programs for trigger visualization, "trg" and "flat". The two programs are available on scorpio.star.bnl.gov in the STAR control room using a special account. This special account is designed to allow only visulization. The account name is "trigger", and the password is ____________. If you do not use the special account, see below for usage. 2.1 The 3D visualization program "trg" The "trg" program is 3D. That is, it draws using perpective and hidden- surface removal. Thus, the display is very intuitive. You can only use it on SGI machines (although theoretically it can be ported to any platform which has OpenGL capability). You have to be sitting in front of an SGI console. You can't just log into the SGI from an arbitrary X-terminal. The computer scorpio.star.bnl.gov in the STAR control room is an SGI with the trg program installed. You might have to hassle a little to get it into your PATH. The "trg" program reads both native-trigger (*.dat*) files and DAQ files (*.daq). The usage is "trg file.daq" or "trg file.dat". It is designed to be simple to use. 2.2 The 2D visualization program "flat" The "trg" program is nice for beginners or for PR. However, the real work-horse is "flat". "Flat" has many features that "trg" does not have. If you are going to do serious heavy-duty work, the odds are you'll need "flat". It is called "flat" because the detector geometry (shaped like a can) has been flattened for on-screen presentation. So, all the detectors elements (eg, slats) are visible all the time. "Flat" reads both native-trigger (*.dat*) files, DAQ files (*.daq), and also ASCII files in a simple special format. The usage is "flat file.daq" or "flat file.dat". It is designed to be simple to use. Recipe: 1. Login into a Solaris machine (eg startrg.star) from an X-terminal. 2. Check $DISPLAY. 3. Check that flat is in your path: "which flat". 4. Type "flat xxx.dat", "flat xxx.daq", or "flat xxx.ascii". 5. You may have to iterate step 4 a few times to fulfill all of the flat's requirements. ==========================================================================
3. Plotting
The trigger plot package is a program named "trigPlot". It writes PostScript as its output, and then runs ghostview automatically on the PostScript file. After you exit ghostview, the PostScript file remains, available for sending to a printer with a standard "lpr" command. Recipe: 1. Login into a Solaris machine (eg startrg.star) from an X-terminal. 2. Check $DISPLAY. 3. Check that trigPlot is in your path: "which trigPlot". 4. Type "trigPlot -e". The "e" means "example". This will produce a .txt file which you should print for reference, and also a set of three .plot files (1D hist, 2D hist, and scatter plot). 5. Choose one of the .plot files, copy it to myFile.plot, and modify myFile.plot to suit your needs. 6. Run the program: "trigPlot myFile.plot". 7. Type "trigPlot -h" to get a list of options. ==========================================================================