Counting House DAQ

This page serves to provide information on how the Data Acquisition Group has set up the Hall D Counting House DAQ for use in testing the CODA 3.0 software and new pipeline electronics.

PXE booting for Diskless Controllers

To facilitate the booting and diskless environment for the VME Controllers, these packages were installed onto gluon20:

• dhcp
• tftp-server
• syslinux

All supporting configuration files and diskless environment are found here:

/halldfs1/diskless

with subdirectories:

• CentOS5 - Contains the CentOS 5 operating system that is mounted READONLY (root), as well as "snapshot" directories for individual controllers to provide read/write files for the operating system configuration.
• tftpboot - Contains the directory that is served by the tftp-server
• conf - Configuration files for tftp and dhcp. On gluon20 softlinks are made to these files where they are needed:

/etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf -> /halldfs1/diskless/conf/dhcpd.conf
/etc/xinetd.d/tftp -> /halldfs1/diskless/conf/tftp

DHCP

dhcpd.conf

• Restart of dhcp and/or reload of this configuration file is done with the command (as root/with sudo on gluon20):

service dhcpd restart

This configuration file was organized as follows:

All clients setup with these defaults:

ddns-update-style ad-hoc;
option domain-name "jlab.org acc.jlab.org";
option domain-name-servers 129.57.32.100, 129.57.32.101;

subnet 129.57.172.0 netmask 255.255.252.0 {
       option routers 129.57.172.1;
}

Group all PXE booting clients here (with example showing entry for rocgtest0):

# PXE bootable hosts
group
{
      # Common pxelinux.0 file, common tftp-server (gluon20)
      filename "linux-diskless/pxelinux.0";
      next-server 129.57.172.28; 

      host rocgtest0
      { # S1-3-TOP
        hardware ethernet 00:20:ce:f6:03:f6;
        fixed-address 129.57.175.100;
      }
}

tftp

This server is run through xinetd.

• Restart of this server is done with (as root/with sudo on gluon20):

service xinetd restart

The only change to this configuration file

/etc/xinetd.d/tftp

were the lines:

server_args             = -s /halldfs1/diskless/tftpboot

and

disable                 = no

Setup directory structure that is served out by tftp:

/halldfs1/diskless/tftp/

• linux-diskless/CentOS5-HallD/ - Directory containing default boot kernel
• linux-diskless/CentOS5-HallD-ixgbe-3.13.10/ - Directory containing boot kernel with updated module for the ixgbe (used with the 10G XMC cards)
• linux-diskless/pxelinux.0 - File used by PXE to determine which client specific file to use to load the boot kernel with command line options.
• linux-diskless/pxelinux.cfg/ - Directory containing client specific kernel configuration files
  • PXE loads the kernel configuration file determined by the client's IP address (in hexadecimal... e.g. 129.57.175.100 = 8139AF64)

For ease of use, MakeNode.sh (in the same directory) will make a new kernel configuration file (e.g.):

MakeNode.sh rocgtest1

Generates the file 8139AF65 with a softlink to it from rocgtest1.jlab.org:

default CentOS5-HallD 

label CentOS5-HallD
    kernel CentOS5-HallD/vmlinuz
    append initrd=CentOS5-HallD/initrd.img root=/dev/ram0 init=disklessrc NFSROOT=129.57.172.15:/vol/diskless/CentOS5 ramdisk_size=22947 ETHERNET=eth2 SNAPSHOT=rocgtest1.jlab.org \
           NISDOMAIN=CCCHP ksdevice=eth2 vga=0x305 vmalloc=256MB

Most of the XVR14 Controllers use the TOP ethernet port and should be configured to use eth2 for ETHERNET and ksdevice

Exceptions are handled for those Controllers that have 10G XMC cards installed.