Weekly Report for Week Ending October 23, 2003

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  October 27, 2003 will be:

 (Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)
 

1. Announcements
2. LSC Issues (Saulson)
3. Comments on Weekly Report
4. WBS 1 LIGO I Construction (Lindquist)
• Field Change Orders/Contingency Liens/Change Requests
5. WBS 2 LIGO Lab Operations
• Administration (Lindquist)
• Sites (Raab, Zucker, Shoemaker, Sanders)
• Detector (Whitcomb, Coyne)
• Campus Research Facilities (Weinstein (40 Meter), Libbrecht (TNI), Zucker(LASTI))
• Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)
6. WBS 3 and 4  Advanced R&D and LIGO II (Shoemaker)
7. CHANGE CONTROL BOARD/TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD SESSION AS NEEDED

Special Items:   S3 RUN PLAN

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights
 

LSC Issues (Saulson)

no report

Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Lindquist)

A site teleconference was held on Thursday, October 23, 2003.  The following were among the issues discussed:

S3 - We discussed readiness at the sites for the S3 run.

Conveniuence Checks - Ed Jasnow and the P-Card folks will be at Livingston the first week in December to set up Convenience Checking.

Budgets  - FY 2003 costs are coming in at a higher rate than last year.  Therefore, our estimate of $6 million for the carry-forward is looking too optimistic. In addition, Florence has identified several $100Ks in open commitments at least some of which will have to be covered by the carry-forward.  This is going to put pressure on the Advanced R&D tasks currently budgeted using the carry-forward.

Health Care Plan for Livingston - A discussion was held regarding the change in health care plans at Livingston.   Mike Zucker stated that the LLO staff did not receive complete packages, or comparative information until very late, and could not possibly complete their decisions by the end of the open enrollment period.  Ed Jasnow agreed to contact Anna Haddon, HR's benefits specialist, to try to resolve the issues.  Subsequently, Ed contacted Anna, and she forwarded a comparison of the Healthnet's Southern California Plan and their National Plan, which will be used in Louisiana.  She also agreed to extend the open enrollment period for LLO by at least one week.

Property - Ed Chargois is at Livingston selling lots of the excess property..
The list of current actions revised to reflect the status of open actions assigned through October 23, 2003 may be found at ACTION LIST.

From: Ed Chargois <chargois_e@ligo.caltech.edu>

• No report this week (at Livingston selling used surplused equipment).

>From: Linda Turner - turner@ligo.caltech.edu>

ACCOMPLISHMENTS (This report reflects activity for the past month.)

• No report this week (vacation).

ACTIVITY

• Gina and I did a thorough inventory check for all copy and fax machines on the project.  We also made note of what each machine had available in terms of additional toner/ribbon/film cartridges on hand.  Our goal is to make sure that each machine always has at a minimum of one extra toner/ribbon/film cartridge in stock so there is no interruption of service due to lack of supplies.  A chart was created to assist us in keeping track of all the machines and its supplies.
• Organized, sorted and filed documentation..

Press here to access the DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER WEB PAGE.

From: Esther Cunningham <esther@ligo.caltech.edu>

Press here for ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA .

From: "Brambila, Ruth" <Ruth.Brambila@caltech.edu>

• Completed change order #11 to Excel Engineering and extended the contract thru Mar 30, 2004.  Completed change order #1 to the order for George Stokes and extended the performance period through Dec 31, 2003.  Completed the internal mod fund transfer to MIT.  Completed change order #21 to Support Services.  Currently working on change order #25 to Butler Intl, and change order #34 to Northrop Grumman.
• Followed up on overdue deliveries.
• Placed and reconciled pcard orders.

• Taken on the responsibility of locating all of Ligo copiers and fax machines to ensure proper maintenance an supplies for all equipment.
• Prepared change order to the Northrop Grumman contract to add funds to extend the contract until September 2004.
• Made a request to Butler International for an updated proposal and prepared a change order to transfer remainding funds from one poeta to another per Florence K.

• Worked on financial reports for October, which requires allocation of expenditures between fiscal years 2003 and 2004.
• Submitted 2 Cost Transfers to correct contractor charges that had been charged to an incorrect Task #.
• Responded to request from Project Accounting for funding realignments required.
• Prepared updated list of current POETAS (account numbers) for FY02-06 Operations and R&D and had them posted on the LIGO Internal Bulletin Board.
• Requested Donna Tomlinson to follow-up on some Athenaeum charges that may have been posted to a LIGO account in error.
• Followed up on some deposits made for Project Science Workshop that have been posted to a "holding account" instead of the account requested.
• Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport

From: irena@ligo.caltech.edu (Irena Petrac)

• No report this week (vacation).

• Larry Jones and Ed Jasnow held a meeting with Alliance Spacesystems, Inc., the selected contractor for the internal isolation system, to discuss the cost phasing of their contract.  This was imposed by LIGO fiscal constraints which required the BSC to be delivered in FY04 and the HAM in FY05.  The result of this phasing added nearly $500,000 to the total price, while only reducing expenditures in FY04 less than $200,000.  We told ASI that this would be taken under advisement.
• The NSF is expected to approve the ASI contract today.
• The two contracts for the optical coating will be sent to the NSF on Monday.

SUPPORT (Baldon, Lloyd, Tischler)

>Irene Baldon
(This report covers four working days, October 9-14).

• Processed the paper work for five (5) new/revised trips.  There are nineteen (19) trips in various stages of completion before ticketing can be done and/or paper work completed.  And an additional ten (10) to fifteen (15) sketchy starts (LSC Mtg., PAC15 Mtg., and NSF Review).  LIGO/Hanford has now been trained on P-Card and should be doing their own trips in the future.  I'm working closely with Terry Gunter in acquainting her with travel procedures, etc.  I will continued to close out existing trips and/or assisting where necessary.
• Completed thirty-eight (38) Expense Reports and there are twenty-four (24) reports yet to be done.  I continue to contact travelers who have outstanding Expense Reports (more than one (1) month old) to ask for their cooperation in sending me their receipts so that these can be closed in a timely manner.  Presently there are no reports more than 30 days old.  Cheers!
• Reconciled eight (8) P-Card items which required numerous phone calls to hotels, car rentals, etc., in order to track down which traveler incurred which charge; and the pulling of each traveler's file to assure that charges are correct for each fee incurred.  Still dealing with a multitude of problems associated with the compromise of my P-Card last month.
• Worked on the preparation and distribution of the Travel/Vacation Itinerary for October 20, 2003.  Arranged four (4) new teleconference and four (4) new reservations on the LIGO Calendar.

• No report this week (illness).
• Jim continued with data entry in the LIGO database and helping out in the DCC.

• Matriculation of New LIGOites; Photo Project; NSF Review, PAC, Outreach Review preparation.

ADVANCED LIGO (Cost Schedule Control Systems) T. Frey
From: Thomas Frey <tfrey@ligo.caltech.edu>
 

For list of documents that are being used to develop Adv. LIGO Cost and Schedule, see http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/Cost_MTG_082002/
 

Continued development of a proposal for implementing Primavera Project Planner Enterprise.

Continue working on draft / text of implementation.
Clink on links to view the Draft Work-plan and Estimate.
Continue testing of Primavera Enterprise version 3.5.1.  See the links below for information / technology demonstrations: (From Local Primavera Dealer)
Primavision - http://primavision.drmcnatty.com:8080/phoenixwl/login_p3ec  Login using Username:  admin and Password:  admin.

Progress Reporter - http://www.projwebsite.com/GroupServerP3e/en/  Login using Username:  admin and Password:  admin.

Static HTML Example - http://ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/SUS_WebProj/ (AdL Suspensions Only)  NOTE:  This is after importing and before any data corrections.

Static HTML Example - http://ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/DAQ_WebProj/ (AdL DAQ Only)  NOTE:  This is after making adjustments to the WBS so that it displays as expected.

Will attend the Users conference in November at Orlando, Florida.  See http://www.primavera.com/events/conference.html

Finished preparing resource analysis information for meeting with SUS Group on Friday AM.

Executed meeting with SUS group on Friday AM.

Phone conferences with Carol regarding preparation for the SUS meeting, COC update, and PSL update.

The following is a summary of status by sub system:
COC - Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.  Prepared updated schedule for COC with progress through 09.26.02.  Sent out for comments / meeting.

PSL -  No action items pending.  Followed up with Peter and Benno has provided data.  Peter has yet to review.  Prepared updated schedule for PSL with progress through 09.26.02.  Sent out for comments / meeting.

AOS - Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.

IO -  Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.

SUS - No action items pending.  Prepared spread sheet for collecting SUS Preliminary Design Phase schedule changes, progress changes, Estimates to Complete, and Expected Finishes.  Executed meeting with SUS group to discuss goals for data collection.

SEI - No action items pending. Working with Larry to update SEI with progress through 09.26.02.

ISC - Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.

LDAS - No action required at this point in time.

INSTALL - No action items pending.

DAQ - No action required at this point in time.

PM - No action required at this point in time.

FAC - No action required at this point in time.

SUP - No action required at this point in time.

• Updated the plan with progress as of 10.17.03 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 10.31.03.

• Updated the plan with progress as of 10.17.03 and  posted to site.
• Sent out update data requests for progress as of 10.31.03.

ROSTER DATABASE:
Continued input of changes / corrections regarding supervisors and departments.

COST BOOK DATABASE:
Reconciling cost account listing from cost book and schedule loading.

Project Web Site for posting schedule and progress related data continues to be updated with the latest and greatest.

See http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/index.html

Have a draft of a Final Report for Cooperative Agreement NSF PHY-9210038, the cooperative agreement that covered construction, installation and commissioning, and initial operations of the sites, nearly ready for internal review.  I hope to have it out this week.  The target is to have a final draft on the LIGO web page in time for the NSF Review, November 17, 2003.

The following change requests are open.

CR-030015	FY 2003 Livingston Observatory Detector Maintenance Expenses (Increment)	R. Wooley	July 14, 2003
CR-030016	Hanford Facilities 2.2--Divide the Large Equipment Access to Facilitate Movement of Large Items (currently assigned to FY 2004 liens list)	J. Worden	July 31, 2003
CR-030017	Livingston Computing (WBS 3.5) WAN Upgrade	A. Lazzarini	October 17, 2003

CR-030017 proposes to upgrade the LIGO Laboratory Wide Area Network (WAN) at Livingston from 2xT1 (3.088 Mbps) to Gigbit Ethernet (1000  Mbps) at a cost of approximately $217K through 2006.  This is scheduled to be discussed during the Executive Committee Meeting on MOnday, October 27, 2003.

From: Cindy Akutagawa <cindy@ligo.caltech.edu>

• Various personnel/payroll /HR related work.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

• Nothing significant to report this week.

LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) and Interferometer Operations (Raab)

From Terry Gunter: A big congratulations to Otto Matherny who retired on September 26, 2003 and Michael Landry who got married on October 12, 2003, both from LHO. !
 

Summary of Commissioning Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory  (compiled by M. Landry)

The E10 shakedown run began last Friday (17th) evening.  The 4k IFO has been far more
dependable, generally locking readily and posting decent ranges of 1.4-1.8Mpc.  Lock
durations in the current high-power configuration are shorter than those seen during S2,
typically a few hours, up to 6-8h.  The H2 IFO locks rapidly but has not held on for long,
posting duty cycle of ~20% on bad days.  A recent dewhitening modification
(and here too) has resulted in a a much stable 2k over the last 12h.  While DC calibrations must confirmed, preliminary indications point to inspiral ranges of 600-800kpc.

Long term pulsar injections have been performed throughout the run, with downtime
due to bug fixes.  Stochastic, burst and inspiral waveforms were injected Thursday 23rd.
Some interactions with injection scripts (astrophysical, cal lines, alignment dithering)
need to be sorted prior to S3 to ensure reliable application of the waveforms.

4K IFO
Power drifts have been observed in MC2, and in or prior to the pre-modecleaner.
Sensemon range estimates have been noisier than  S2, and we're still trying to understand
this completely.    Restoring the power incident on the mode cleaner to 2.25W (and hence
correct out a power drift from the laser doubled the uncalibrated noise in ASQ and halved
our NS-NS range to 800kpc (saturation effect?  details).  The power was backed down
to ~2W and the range restored.

2K IFO
Lockloss studies were performed.  Bounce modes dominate the RMS noise.  We've been
visited by a beamsplitter internal mode, a sharp peak at 3734Hz.  Investigations are underway
to see if the BS controller or associated filtering is excessively noisy.  The BS is not driven
on the 2k; the FMs are used to lock MICH and PRC loops.
 

LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) and Interferometer Operations (Zucker)

no report
 

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

• An informal review of the 40 Meter experimental plan, scope, staffing and budget was conducted on Tuesday (Shoemaker, Wilkinson, Strain, Fritschel, Weinstein, Miyakawa, Kawamura, Vass). Minutes.
• Commissioning (Miyakawa, Kawamura):
• Michelson locked.

The Length sensing and control (LSC) system wiring & cabling is just about done, and Rolf and Alex installed new software on Wednesday afternoon. Within a couple of hours, Osamu, Seiji, Jay and Ben used the LSC system to lock the Michelson (after blocking the ETMs). They then used DTT to take a transfer function, hastily designed some filters with FOTON, and made the lock robust.
• The Michelson contrast is better than 99.8%. However, the beam is not well mode-matched into the IFO (the MMT was set for the case where the PRM is in place, which it isn't). So, the beam is significantly larger than it should be, making it easier to obtain high contrast.
• They are now working on locking the x arm, using the AP sensing train.
• We still need to commission the optical, photodetector, and electronics chains for the SP, POX, POY, POB, TRX, TRY; but almost all the parts are in.
• We continue to see the alignment of the input beam (after the mode cleaner but before the ifo) changing significantly, from time to time, usually overnight. The QPD monitoring of the beam alignment is still not yet in place, but we're working on it. We continue to suspect that the problem is with the PZT steering mirrors (after the mode cleaner but before the ifo) which were never fully checked out before installation, since they were the last item to arrive. The beam is now nicely aligned, and is centered on the PZT1 mirror, but still off to one side of the PZT2 mirror.
• Anyway, Osamu and Seiji re-aligned the input beam with the PZTs. They had to tweak the beam launch at the PSL table to eliminate some clipping that they saw on both the SP and AP beams; likely, this clipping is at the Faraday isolator.
• Osamu noted that the resonant frequency of the MC, 33.207 MHz, changed by 60 Hz from day to night. He also notes that there's some excess noise in the detection of the 33 MHz signal transmitted from the MC. To be investigated.
• Osamu continues to commission the mode cleaner wavefront sensors. He sees good error signals, but needs to calibrate the control matrix between WFS1/WFS2 and the MC mirrors. In progress.
• The MC transmitted intensity fluctuations are at the 1% level, good enough for Flavio to commission the PSL ISS.
• LSC Electronics (B. Abbott, Heefner, Taylor)
• From Rolf: Modified the LSC software to run the 40m lab system; code installed today.
• From Jay: The LSC software and 90% of the electronics are now installed and operational. As a test of the system we locked the Michelson. In the process of locking the mich. we found several signals and test points that were not available to DAQ or DTT. These will be corrected.
• Osamu and Ben checked the four RF PD heads (for AP1, SP, POX, POY) and all seemed to be functioning fine.
• Ben installed the refurbished PZT mirror driver in its slot, and Osamu and Seiji aligned the beam using all four controls (PZT1X, 1Y, 2X, 2Y).
• Ben mailed off two RAID disks to get replaced. One of these was already sent to us as a replacement. This is the only replacement that has gone bad so far, and it has been in place for over a year.
• Ben is in the process of laying out an LSC PD tester board that will help in debugging LSC PD and wiring problems.
• Ben was was having problems with the enable/disable on the LSC PD screens. He traced the problem to the LSC PD interface, where the logic chips had been damaged due to a bad cable. He fixed the bad chips, and one damaged PD head. This sort of problem can be averted in the future using the tester board that he is laying out.
• Bob and Art continue to wire and cable up the LSC and ASC racks. The cabling for the vertex QPDs are going in now. Cabling for the electro-optic shutters are next.
• Ben got 2 more Kepco power supplies for the ASC rack DC power.
• We have a long list of new signals (ISS, ASC QPDs, etc) that need to go into master.config.
• Digital suspension controllers (Sakata, Goggin, B. Abbott, Heefner)
• Shihori is developing an iterative procedure to better diagonalize the input matrix, to distinguish POS/PIT/YAW. She has improved the ITMX input matrix, reducing the POS motion in the PIT channel by a factor of more than 10.
• As we commission the IFO, we really need to better diagonalize the input and output matrices for all 10 optics. In progress, progressing slowly.
• PSL (Miyakawa, Kawamura, Abbott, Nocera):
• Osamu has final results on the improvement in the PSL frequency noise (as measured by the MC) due to (a) reducing the number of folding mirrors on the PSL table from 6 to 3 (several large peaks between 300 and 800 Hz have disappeared), and (b) moving the FSS pickoff to after the PMC (much improved noise spectrum in 1 kHz to 10 kHz region). These two changes helped a lot, and make it possible to run with low noise even when the HEPA filters in the PSL enclosure are on.
• The intensity fluctuations in the MC transmitted beam have been reduced to ~ 1%. Flavio can resume commissioning of the ISS servo.
• Optical levers (Kawazoe, Heefner, Abbott):
• Ben has changed the resistors on all the oplev QPD preamps from 10K to 100K. They are now all back in place and reading out the oplev beam positions.
• Fumiko still needs to center the beams, zero the response when the beam is blocked, re-measure the response, characterize the pitch/yaw motion of all the monitored optics, and begin to commission the oplev servos.
• Optical sensing (Smith):
• PZT1 STEERING MIRROR: PZT1 pitch amplifier was received from Piezojena and is now re-installed.
• QPD MOUNTS: Mounts were received, and QPDs are mounted on all sensing trains (not yet aligned).
• POX and POY: 40%, 50%, and 67% BS are on back order.
• INITIAL POINTING: The mount for the 10 X telescope initial pointing ANG beam is being fabricated.
• Computing:
• We look forward to Lisa and Larry setting up our two new "cast-off" Sun Ultra E450's, which we desperately need for commissioning. Our Blade 100's are "dogs": a typical dataviewer display lags by 20 seconds; dtt only runs (verrry slowly) one one computer).
• Modeling (Miyakawa, Kawamura):
• Seiji is working on interfacing Finesse with Matlab to facilitate exploring lock acquisition strategies.
• South Annex Bake Ovens (Taylor):
• Bob continues to spend most of his time cabling the LSC/ASC racks.
• Facilities and vacuum envelope (Vass):
• Steve is back from vacation and checked out the vacuum system; all seems fine.

Steve is working on the documentation of the last pump-down.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

The noise at the TNI is coming down again. After being frustrated at not breaking the 1e-18 m/rHz barrier, we went back and looked at the coherence between the two arm cavities. It turns out that all of our recent efforts have indeed reduced the electronic noise as much as we expected, but laser frequency noise was apparently higher than we had thought and was impersonating a flat noise floor. When we looked at the coherence, we found it to be quite high, and that allowed us to perform common-mode rejection to uncover the uncorrelated noise. Our best noise floor, with common-mode rejection implemented, is now 5.1e-19 m/rHz at around 13 kHz. We are now double-checking the mirror transfer functions to perform a traceable, rigorous calibration of the equivalent displacement noise.
 

LASTI (Ottaway)

no report

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
Weekly Physics meeting
-------------------------
Virginio described his recent work on accelerometer signals.
Luca gave an update of  H1 and H2 status. Matt talked about his linear noise model in
matlab. Biplab, Hiro, Matt discussed about modifications necessary in FFT for
utilizing it in more effective way.
 

Accelerometer signals
---------------------------
(Virginio) Got something useful out of the IFOs accelerometers signals. Using
 a FIR band pass filter 0.3 to 800Hz  (a convolution filter) and integrating
 twice I obtained  a time series which estimates the displacement noise of the
 BSCs. The filtering is necessary mainly to remove large drifts (about 1mm in
 3 minutes time scale). Those drifts look quite unphysical. The probable
 reason of such large drift are losses in cables, accelerometers or somewhere
 else in  the electronics. The band pass can be enlarged to include the
  microseismic peak.
 This signal (31 channels on total) will be used to study lock losses of the
  L1.
The PZT accelerometers provide an acceleration signal above about .5Hz
up to 100Hz (acoustic noise limited).
It will be indeed necessary to synthesize the displacement noise
using the seimometer signal below .5Hz and the accelerometers above .5Hz
 

SimLIGO
-------------
Sensitivity and stability:
 Xiao is running SimLIGO under different conditions to see the stability
 and sensitivities. He is looking into the details of the cause of instability
 and sensitivity degradation. Will be summarized in a few weeks.
 

SimLIGO Noise:
(Hiro) The best sensitivity predicted by SimLIGO is worse than the noise
 predicted by a linear model. The cause of this is being pursued. It could be
 real or could be code error or could be numerical accuracy. It is very
 difficult to pin point.
 

FFT
------
(Biplab and Hiro) While pursuing WFS studies in cold state, we realized that
 it is necessary to modify a few things in FFT to get useful information about
 the current or future implementation of Length & Angular Sensing and
 control  (LSC and ASC). We decided to modify the current FFT code to generate
 more field outputs necessary for studying both LIGO1 and advanced LIGO and to
 have a matlab code that will generate LSC and ASC signals from FFT's outputs.
 

Code development and maintenance
------------------------------------
(Melody, Hiro) C++ FUNC:
 The basic implementation of the C++ based FUNC module is done. Each
 FUNC instance generates a C++ code file and compiled and linked to a common
 shared library. This is done because the macro definitions for each instance
 could be different, even if the FUNC code is the same. E.g., FUNC code
 is like out0 = factor*in0, and the macro value for "factor" could be
 different from one instance to another. Now, another possibility is pursued.
 I.e., the database of macro is passed to the C++ code and processed at the
 run time. This way, only one code needs to be generated for one equation.
 The above expression may be like
 out0 = db.getval('factor') * in0.
 FUNC is a very important element from convenience and speed point of
 view, and the best combination is being examined.
 

(Melody)
        - Dynamically compiled and linked FUNC capabilities:  Finished code
        modifications to extend FUNC_X to VxV primitives and to provide
        backward compatibility to previously created box files.  Now working
        on creating less source code by passing in the macro definitions
        (database) into the class object.
        - Removed references to mi.h (previous attempt to create dynamic
        libraries in e2e).
 

Alfi
--------
(Bruce)
        - More cleaning of edit window initialization code.
        - Added Macro indicators in the container tree.
        - Fixing Copy/Paste bug created by change in initialization procedure.
 

LIGO Data Analysis System
 

Software Systems (Blackburn)
 

Several serious bugs in the diskCacheAPI were discovered immediately
after the 0.8.0 release on Friday of last week. These have for the most
part been resolved. There is one remaining issue with learned frame files
being mysteriously forgotten at a later time. A patched version with
most of the diskCacheAPI bugs has been installed at the LLO, LHO, MIT,
CIT sites and the remaining issues will be fixed in the next scheduled
release of LDAS early next week.
 

We now have the ability to run the inspiral DSO search codes for the
version 3.0 release of LAL and LALwrapper under LDAS. There will be a
new release of LAL and LAL wrapper early next week with new versions
of the power and waveburst DSOs which we will need to update in out
system test suite. We have begun running through all the S2 RDS data
as part of a mini-test run using the slope and tfcluster DSOs. There
seems to be issues for the slope DSO under certain input data conditions.
This mini-test run has also identified a couple of new issues for the
eventMonitorAPI, metaDataAPI and lightWeightAPI. They may be centrally
associated with the fact that we had a second client attached to the
database server at the times when these issues were occurring in the
three APIs. Further investigation will be necessary.
 

We have begun investigations of how to best profile the LDAS software.
Most profiling tools are designed to work on a.out processes. LDAS as
a system which combines TCL and C++ shared objects works in a way that
may make profiling a bit challenging.
 

The SINSTALL script used to maintain LDCG packages used by LDAS such
as the compilers, interpreters and other tools has been upgraded to
be consistent with the code base of the current release.
 

A bug which was causing the eventMonitorAPI to crash when data was
directed to both the lightWeightAPI and metaDataAPI at the same time
was tracked down and fixed. This will be fixed in the release of LDAS
next Monday or Tuesday.
 

Began testing LDAS against a newer version of the STLPort package which
provides an alternate standard template library. This is not an official
release, but a release candidate instead. It clearly works better than
the previous beta version we tested LDAS code against.
 

The long standing color settings for the fonts used in the LDAS account
application page has now been fixed. The email message sent out by the
automated application software are more descriptive with regard to the
action taken by the software.
 

Hardware Systems (Anderson)
Caltech
-------
(Dan Kozak)
 

* Did some cleanup from the 9940A to 9940B format transition in SAM-QFS
  (a few files had been left behind).
 

* Continued to copy E7 data from HPSS to SAM-QFS.  LHO full frames are "done".
  I'm now doing a final check and catching files that got truncated when HPSS
  hung at various points.
 

* Did FC switch firmware upgrades at LHO/LLO.  Reset their 3510s to "point
  to point only" FC mode.
 

* Continued to try to figure out the LHO "missing data" problem.  Did many
  tests at CIT and have yet to find the problem on any data written at
  CIT or LLO.  Data that I exported from LHO also came thru fine, so it
  seems likely that a more paranoid procedure for ejecting tapes will work
  around the problem.
 

(Hari Pulapaka)
 

* This week I have been working only on the E10 data publishing from
  the sites LLO and LHO to CIT and further.
 

* For that I had to debug LDR quite a few times, both at the sites and
  at ldas-cit to get the data flowing, this included solving a couple of
  firewall related problems.
 

* MY publishing script had crashed during the publishing because it
  could not connect to the mysql database, so had to modify/debug that. I
  also made some improvements to it in terms of efficiency
 

* Wrote a new program to update the locked segments bit in the database
  for all the files that have already been published.
 

* The LDR installation at LLO had to be tweaked as the gateway box at
  LLO changed.
 

(Al Wilson)
 

* Replace motherboard in datacache machine. It is now running copper gig-e
  and SMP kernel. The new board uses Intel chipset.
 

* Working on printer setup in cfdef for desktop machines.
 

* Completed the dual boot setup for m50.
 

* Added a new hard drive in m71 for /usr1 storage.
 

* Working on a data safe procedure for updating datacache machines to RH9.
 

(Stuart Anderson)
 

* Received the new 8x1.2GHz V880 and installed Solaris 9. If initial
  testing goes well this server will replace the older V880 as the
  central data archive server in time for S3.
 

* Received full set of replacement motherboards to increase the stability
  of the IDE-RAID units holding reduced frame data sets.
 

* Worked with LDAS programmers to debug the new multi-threaded diskcacheAPI.
 

* Helped MIT and LLO do the initial configuration on the new 280R
  LDAS gateway servers.
 

Livingston
----------
(Igor Yakushin)
 

* Exchanged RDS tapes from MDC with LHO.
 

* Asked ASA to replace the motherboard of node31 which cannot
  communicate faster than 100Mb/s.
 

* Ordered 8 spare drives that can be used in IDE RAID, nodes, beowulf,
  datacon, new metaserver.
 

* Ordered and received more fiber patch cables.
 

* Last week the old gateway machine was replaced by the new faster one,
  3510 was upgraded by Dan to the new version of firmware.
 

* Archiving E10 data and running createRDS. That revealed problems in
  diskcacheAPI reliability and performance. The patch that is supposed to
  fix these problems was pushed to sites by Phil yesterday. So far I have
  not seen any problems yet.
 

* Received the new dataserver.
 

* Renewed cybernetics support contract for the old tape library for
  another year.
 

Hanford
-------
(Greg Mendell)
 

* The main sys admin activity this week at LHO is creating E10 rds data,
  and archiving the rds and full frame data.  We are also making final
  preparations for S3.
 

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)
 

Creighton:
Improved the efficiency of LAL signal injection code (needed for
online hardware injection) by:
 

* Removing the interpolation of the detector transfer function when it
  is not required (e.g. monocrhomatic sources for which the response
  is constant)
 

* Incorporating compile-time options to allow the use of faster but
  less-accurate libsunmath trig functions on Solaris
 

Mendell:
1) Attained the Astronomical Data Analysis Software & Systems XIII
meeting Oct 10-16.  The focus of the meeting was Virtual Observatories,
especially on standards for registering, archiving, and cataloging data,
and connecting these to grid services.
 

2) Gave minor assistance to the PULG group's pulsar injection plans for
E10 and S3.
 

Shawhan:
Mostly worked on astrophysical signal injection for the E10 and S3 runs.
We have continuous pulsar injections in place now, though it took much
more effort that I expected to work through various problems.  Szabi and
I did a series of burst and inspiral injections last night.  Still have
to get the stochastic background injection working.
 

Weinstein:
- Studied the LSC DARM and actuation models from Gaby et al
- Used them to make waveforms for injection, with actuation compensation
- Sent a hardware injection plan for S3 to Peter and Szabi.
- Starting to look at the results.
 

Yakushin
 

1) Built simulation infrastructure into the waveburst. Running
sine-gaussian simulations to estimate the efficiency of the algorithm.
2) Tuning selection algorithm on hardware injections.
 

General Computing (Wallace)
MIT:
(Keith)
Nothing to report
 

Hanford:
(Christine)
Will report next week.
 
 

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-The entire span of the last two weeks has been spent fixing multiple
problems with the GC file server, NIS+ server, and mail server.  The
first problem seemed to be a disk failure on the file server which may
have aggravated other problems.  Some files have been swapped around on
the file server since the disk failure.  NIS+ had to be rebuilt due to a
problem that manifested itself during the reboot from the drive
failure. The mail server seems to be having some problems also.
Initial suspicions were that it was on inadequate hardware, but now I
suspect that the RAV antivirus software is having some problems.
 

CIT:
(Mike)
-Worked on loading and configuring the KYOCERA copier/printer/scanner
software for DCC. This is located in Bridge Annex. I have loaded and tested
this software on Linda & Cleveland's workstations. Everything seems to be
working okay.
-Loaded a new laptop for Cindy Akutagawa. This included all GC software and
additional software for a voice recognition device.
-Larry Wallace and I tested many different configurations on the video
conferencing, using VRVS/VNC. We still have not come up with a viable
solution that will transmit readable text. There is the share option that
is offered in VRVS. The problem with going that route is, it always seems
to freeze up or you get run time errors. Therefore this is not a reliable
solution. We still need to run more tests until we come up with a reliable,
text readable solution.
-Setup two visitor workstations that will be working under
Riccardo.DeSalvo. One of the workstations had to be reloaded from scratch.
Angelo Gladdin gave me a hand loading this computer, which helped out a lot.
-Updated the ANSYS FLEXlm license server on PICTOR.
-Worked on all NTSRV's running firewall software updates and checking logs
for hardware/ software errors. NTSRV's seem to be running OK.
-There was a lot of onsite/phone user support that included software,
e-mail, printing and networking issues that I took care of this week.
 

(Lisa)
- Spent most of the week compiling and installing a new anit-spam/virus package.
Getting all of it working was a bear but well worth it.  The spam heuristics are
superior to what we are currently running and the administration of the package
is far easier and has more features.
- Helped Rolf on a couple of things regarding the remote cds workstation.
- Wrote up an FAQ on how to configure eudora to use ssl.
 

(Veronica)
- LIGO website: Updates to various pages. Posted a new
information about SURF'04. Updated Internal Bulletin Board. Addressed an
issue of use of images for science publishers and prepared several
high-resolution images for them. Helped Donna troubleshoot a webpage of
presentations by Barry. Working with Larry and Mike on further
troubleshooting of the VRVS-VNC setup in preparation for its extensive use
in the upcoming months. Started working on the website for the Aspen 2004
Winter Conference.
- User support of GNATS database. A request from Keith Riles was to
facilitate multiple users accessing the progress report submit tool during
science monitoring. I added new users and created a bulk account for a
number of people to use during the scimon; tested the setup by submitting
and editing a couple of reports.
- LSC website: Posting updates to the November meeting webiste as they
arrive almost hourly.
- Project Science website: Installed a presentation and supporting media
files for one of the last workshop's talks.
- CaJAGWR website: user support.
 

(Larry)
-Spent time working on a couple of issues with the Livingston group. The e-mail
and NIS+ server are working but things still need to be optimized on the units.
The paperwork for the WAN connection is being worked on by a number of people.
LSU is also being supportive in getting things going. If all goes well the new
WAN connection may be in place before the end of the year.
-Worked a number of DCC issues. Helped resolve a few items with the new software
as well as resolving some document conversion issues.
-Pcard work took some time this past week but most of that was because of the
large number of items purchased and not having the needed invoices to complete
the paperwork.
-Ordered a couple of new PC's. Still working on getting a few more notebooks in
before the end users start traveling.
-Started connecting up the new systems for Hiro. The LDAS group will need to be
involved in the configuration and s/w installation on the first few units.
-End user support covering patch installs, cleaning off viruses and adware
programs to setting up more calendar accounts using the Calcium package, has
been taking up more time than usual.
-Some minor support for the Remote Control Room computers. Hardware swapouts
for a couple of users.
-We have added another 30+ locations to be blocked because of spam problems.
Hopefully, we will be making a decision on which new e-mail filtering pkg. is
going to replace the RAV pkg., in the near future.
-Preparing for the various meetings/conferences that are coming up next month.
 

(Bruce Sears)
-Systems Work:                                    (0.5 days)
       - Ilog maintenance and user updates.
 

Advanced LIGO Development (Shoemaker)

For additional information about this report, contact sanders@ligo.caltech.edu