DISCOS startup

Logistics

Note

passwords are provided locally. Be sure to contact the local personnel before your session starts, in order to get the latest information.

Observations with DISCOS involve the use of one machine called discos-manager and located in the 32-m dish control room, the euser workstation is devoted to VLBI:

Observing machine

discos: input terminal and system monitors

Login to discos-manager using the provided credentials. You should find the input terminal and all the monitors already running. If, instead, you need to start them, use the bash command “discosConsole”. This opens 8 panels at once:

  • operatorInput - terminal for command line input

  • antennaBoss

  • observatory

  • mount

  • genericBackend

  • receiversBoss

  • scheduler

  • logging

Rearrange the panels on the desktop.

In case any of them does not automatically start, you can manually open them by means of individual command lines, to be given in a terminal:

> operatorInput
> antennaBossTui
> observatoryTui
> mountTui
> genericBackendTui BACKENDS/TotalPower
> receiversBossTui
> schedulerTui
> loggingDisplay

All the antenna/receiver/backend setup procedures are performed via the operatorInput window, which is also used to start/stop the schedules.

The other panels are monitors used to display a vast amount of information, see Appendix A - Monitor panels full description and Appendix B - Complete command list for a comprehensive description of their content and a list of all the commands available for the operatorInput (they can be inserted in schedules as well).

your user or project account: access to schedules, logs and data

Directly use euser for the data quicklook and retrieval (see dedicated sections), for the generation of schedules using the “basie” tool and for tools as FV. Once logged in, in your home you can find the following folders, whose names are self-explanatory:

~/data
~/schedules
~/logs

Note

users can generate subfolders according to their needs to store their schedules, but, in order to be executed, schedules must be places exactly in their ~/schedules folder.

(Remotely controlled observations): under development

It is possible to remotely perform the observations, exploiting a VNC connection to discos(instruction provided by local staff). Open a VNC session and connect to:

192.167.187.XXX

You will be asked to insert a password (again, passwords are provided by the local staff). If you need to start the clients, open a terminal and command:

> discosConsole

and follow the same instructions provided for observations carried out on site.

To access your data, schedules and logs, simply open a terminal on your computer and use:

> ssh –X [your-account]@192.167.187.xx

Hence you can use basie, retrieve your data, etc…