Supported operating systems

We use Ubuntu.

We only support LTS releases. Currently, we support:
- 18.04
- 16.04
- 14.04

Ubuntu 16.04 and later

The removal of the bigphysarea requirement from the kernel module means it's much easier to install MAS now. Because you don't need to rebuild your kernel, it should be possible to simply checkout the MAS trunk. Start by skipping down to the Download (checkout) MAS and mce_script step, and then continue with installing MAS and MCE script.

Ubuntu 14.04

The automated installation package is tested, but as Ubuntu tweaks its packages the install script may fall slightly out of sync. It's worth a shot though.

After installing Ubuntu 14.04, get the install tarball:

wget http://e-mode.phas.ubc.ca/mce/pc_install/install_tools/mce_install_ubuntu_14.04.tar.gz
tar -xzf ubuntu_14.04_install.tar.gz
cd install/

Install additional ubuntu packages

From that install folder, run

bash install.bash

It can't hurt to run this a couple of times to make sure all dependencies are resolved.

Bigphysarea kernel patch

You can either download the compiled kernels or build them from scratch.

From install folder, run EITHER

bash kernel_download.bash

or

bash kernel_build.bash

Compiled kernels currently exist for the x64 architecture.

Then when one or the other of those has succeeded, install them:

bash kernel_install.bash

You can now proceed to the section below titled "Configure the system for MCE users".

Ubuntu 12.04 and earlier

See MAS OS setup on obsolete systems

Configure the system for MCE users

Setup environment for MCE user

We tend to assume that a single user and group will have dominion over the MCE software, scripts, and data. We often assume that this user will be called "mce". But it doesn't need to be. Even if multiple users are running things through their own accounts it is likely useful to have a single group that can be used to manage access to the data.

Anyway, to set up a reasonable MCE user, see MAS user setup.

All users using the MCE will need to define some environment variables to use the scripts. See the above link for lines to add to your .bashrc.

System umask

You may want to set the system umask to make for a system where it's easier to share Set the umask for all users to give write access for their group by default.

Edit /etc/profile and change the "umask 022" line to

umask 002

Edit /etc/login.defs and find the line that start "# UMASK" and change it to

UMASK           002

Folders

mce_script assumes that /data/cryo/ exists and can be manipulated. To create something reasonable:

MCE_USER=mce
MCE_GROUP=mce
sudo mkdir /data
sudo chown $MCE_USER:$MCE_GROUP /data
sudo chmod g+ws /data
mkdir /data/cryo/

Download (checkout) MAS and mce_script

See MAS svn repository.

Compile and install MAS

The following procedure outlines the default situation, where MAS is being installed on a computer containing only one fibre card. For information on running MAS with multiple fibre cards in one computer, see Multicard MAS.

Makefile.svn

MAS uses autoconf for some basic configuration stuff. After checking out MAS from the SVN repository the first time, you need to bootstrap the autoconf process. To simplify this, the Makefile.svn file will automate the process. From the MAS source folder run

 make -f Makefile.svn

If successful, this will create the "./configure" script. This step is only required on fresh check-outs of the repository. If you already have a ./configure script, even if it's out of date, you can skip this step. (After having been bootstrapped the first time, the build system is smart enough to know when it needs to regenerate itself.)

Note: this procedure requires autoconf. If it's not installed, install it with:

 sudo apt-get install autoconf

./configure

Once the configure script exists, run it to generate the build system (ie. the Makefiles). The biggest thing you usually need to tell it is what the basic username and group should be for mce data. Also, there are a few options for the driver and some stupid python stuff.

From the MAS source folder, run

./configure

Some useful options:

 --disable-driver        suppress driver compilation/installation
 --disable-bigphysarea   compile driver without bigphysarea support
 --disable-config2       suppress mas.cfg and mce.cfg generation/installation
 --enable-multicard      build a version of MAS which can drive multiple fibre cards.  (See Multicard MAS for specifics.)
 --with-user=USER        set default MCE user
 --with-group=GROUP      set default MCE group
 --with-kernel-dir=DIR   set kernel build directory (typically automatically determined)

Run

./configure --help

for a full list. When running, configure will complain if it cannot find something, and even suggest what package you need to install.

mce.cfg

After running configure, but before running make, you must specify a template file (mce.cin) which will be used to generate the hardware configuration file (mce.cfg). Full details of this procedure are given in the mce.cfg page, but briefly:

copy an appropriate template from config2/templates to config2/mce.cin
edit the config2/mce.cin file to describe your MCE.

The configuration file will be installed automatically when make install is run below. This entire step can be skipped if you passed --disable-config2 to configure above, but note that MAS will not function without mce.cfg and mas.cfg installed.

make

This often works.

make clean; make

Troubleshooting

Sometimes after doing an SVN update make doesn't work but instead returns the cryptic message:

*** No rule to make target `defaults/masdefault.m4', needed by `aclocal.m4'.

In this case, it's necessary to force a rebuild of the build system manually by running

make -f Makefile.svn
./configure

See the Makefile.svn section above for further details.

Test the driver

It is wise to test that the driver does not kill your machine before installing it to load on boot. After compiling do:

cd driver
sudo ./reload

This will load the driver, which should then try to talk to the SDSU PCI card if it is installed. Note that since "reload" first unloads the driver if it is present, and then loads the driver from the current folder, it may report an "ERROR" message if the first step fails, even though the driver is successfully loaded. The definitive way to check that the driver is loaded is

 cat /proc/mce_dsp

If this file does not exist, the driver isn't loaded. If the cat prints out a bunch of low-level driver information, you're in good shape.

sudo make install

If you're satisfied that the driver works, install the whole thing. Go back up to the MAS base folder and run

sudo make install

This will do the following:

install the kernel driver, driver/mce_dsp.ko, into /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/misc/, and re-scan the module dependencies.
install the MAS binaries from applications/ and the scripts from script/ into /usr/mce/bin
install the MAS udev ruleset scripts/91-mas.rules into /etc/udev/rules.d/. These udev rules will ensure that the mce_dsp module is loaded and the MAS device nodes are created at boot time. You can get udev to run these rules immediately, which will result in /dev being populated with the mce devices, by running:

 sudo udevadm trigger

or, else, you can make the nodes yourself by running mas_mknodes.

install the mas logging daemon script /etc/init.d/mas init script. The driver can then be started/restarted as desired through this script:

/etc/init.d/mas restart

The driver will automatically be set to load on boot. To disable this, remove the symbolic link "/etc/rc2.d/S99mas".

install the hardware configuration file, config2/mce.cfg, and the MAS configuration file, config2/mas.cfg to /etc/mce/, assuming there aren't versions already there.

Install mce_script

Users have the option of running the MCE scripts from an svn working copy, or of running the MCE scripts from an "installed" copy. Talk to your MAS technician about which option is best for you.

Running from an svn working copy

Checkout the tree directly into /usr/mce:

cd /usr/mce
svn checkout svn://e-mode.phas.ubc.ca/mce_script/trunk mce_script

Running from an installed copy

Checkout the tree into your code folder; then make and install:

cd code
svn checkout svn://e-mode.phas.ubc.ca/mce_script/trunk mce_script
make
sudo make install

.bashrc

Add a few lines to .bashrc to update your PATH, PYTHONPATH, and to define the MAS_* variables. The new way, using mas_var, is:

eval `/usr/mce/bin/mas_var -e -s`

The old way, which will probably still work for a while:

export MAS_ROOT=/usr/mce/mce_script/
source $MAS_ROOT/template/mas_env.bash
export IDL_PATH="<IDL_DEFAULT>:$MAS_IDL/mas"

Configuration data

Example configuration files (especially experiment.cfg) are kept in mce_script/template. MAS, by default, expects user configuration data to be in /usr/mce/config. Users should copy the template/ files to /usr/mce/config/, and then make configuration adjustments. After install mce_script, you can copy the template config from it with:

sudo cp -r /usr/mce/mce_script/template /usr/mce/config
sudo chown -R mce /usr/mce/config

MAS OS setup

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