Weekly Report for Week Ending November 17, 2005

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday November 21, 2005 will be:

(Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)

1.      Announcements

2.      Comments on Weekly Report

3.      LSC Issues (Saulson)

4.      LIGO Lab Operations

  • Administration (Lindquist)
  • Sites (Raab, Zucker, Shoemaker)
  • Commissioning (Fritschel), Detector (Coyne)
  • Campus Research Facilities
    • 40 Meter (Weinstein)
    • TN, ( Libbrecht)
    • LASTI  (Shoemaker)
  • Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

5.      R&D and Advanced LIGO (Shoemaker)

6.      CHANGE CONTROL BOARD/TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD SESSION AS NEEDED

  • No open change requests

Special Items:

Special Announcements:

 

Weekly Report Highlights

LSC Issues (Saulson)

No report

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

  • No report.

Non-LSC MOUs (Lloyd)

  • No report.

SITE TELECONFERENCE (Lindquist)

  • A site teleconference was held Thursday, November 17, 2005.  The following issues were discussed:
  • Outreach Center – LSU review is complete.
  • Property Management – A visit to conduct a property inventory at Hanford is planned November 28 – 30.
  • Entrance Gate at Livingston – A close encounter with a liquid nitrogen truck destroyed the gate.  A new one is being installed along with a detector circuit to prevent inappropriate gate closure.
  • The list of assigned actions updated through September 01, 2005 will be found Here.

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Chargois)

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

  • Assisted the General Computing Group (M. Pedraza) with the disposal of various pieces of Data Processing Equipment, through Caltech's Disposal System.
  • Provided assistance to the Detector Group (C.Torrie) with the preparation of a Commercial Invoice, packing and shipping of hardware being transported to Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (Mr. I., Wilmut), Oxon, UK.  Account number P207754.
  • Provided assistance to the Detector Group (C. Torrie) by arranging Transportation for a Quad Structure 96"x34"34" being delivered to (Dr. B. Lantz) at Stanford University.  Account Number LIGO.PRCIT 5.17 FY02CA.
  • Provided assistance to the Detector Group (G. Billingsley) by arranging transportation for a High Purity Fused Silica Optic SN: COC-A005 being delivered to (G. Harry) at MIT.  Account Number P204296.
  • Provided assistance to the Detector Group (C. Torrie) with packaging and shipping of stainless steel hardware being delivered to (Dr. B. Lantz) at Stanford University.  Account Number P207754.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

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

  • No report (LSC Meeting)

>From: Cleveland Mak <mak_c@ligo.caltech.edu>

  • Updated rosters on mail tray lists in the mailroom.
  • Update on Scanning Project - Progress continues on Larry Jones' boxes of files.  To date, we have 13 of the 16 boxes scanned.  These boxes may be completed by next week.  Preparations are also underway for scanning some old blanket purchase order files.
  • Activity:

Week Ending

11/17/2005

In

Out

Packages

31

7

Faxes

23

20

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Cronin, Brambila, Kaufman)

>From: "Cronin, Holly" <Holly.Cronin@caltech.edu>

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

  • Completed the basic order to Limerick and federal expressed the signed contract to the vendor.  Completed change order #1 which adds funds for fab of the actuator, locator subassembly, and tooling. Sent the completed change to the vendor.
  • The vendor just received the check for Filehold which was delayed in the mail.
  • Completed change order #1 to Arland and submitted it to the vendor.
  • Completed change order #167 to Triad for the renewal of one contracted individual. Routed this package for approval.
  • Completed change order #28 with Support Services for the annual renewal of two individuals and submitted it to the vendor.
  • Working with Calum and Gina on the quote for the actuators.
  • Working on the order for the Lasers for LLO which will be coming from England.  Clearing of customs should take no longer than one week in addition to the 10 week lead time.
  • Working on the change orders to the subcontracts with General Optics and Promec.
  • Received a request to closeout two subcontracts. I'll be sending out the release of claims to S Osder and Parker Hannifin.
  • Attended several training sessions during the week, and also attended the weekly procurement meeting. I was requested to submit a status report on blanket purchase orders. LIGO is current on the blanket purchase orders and there is only one expired blanket order which is the subcontract for S Osder that I will be closing out.
  • Working on the change order to the subcontract with Total Energy.
  • Waiting to hear back from Payables on the payment of small dollar invoices through pcard.

>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>

  • Completed and sent out reports through October for the Visitor, Low Noise, MIT.GRID, and US-INDIA Awards.  Also reports for the Hanford Conference account, and the Hanford and Livingston discretionary accounts.
  • Noted that an incorrect expenditure type was used on a payment to a visitor which resulted in unwarranted charges for benefits and Indirect Cost of $4,318.00.  An expenditure type correction will need to be requested to correct this.
  • Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport. (For passwords contact Florence)

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Jasnow, Salone)

>From: Gina Salone <gsalone@ligo.caltech.edu>

  • Nothing significant to report.

>From: Ed Jasnow <jasnow@ligo.caltech.edu>

  • The change order for the LLO SEC architect, Eskew-Dumez-Ripple, to add visits to the construction site has been prepared.  Issuance is awaiting a receipt from the architect of a revised Exhibit D, which details the types of visits and cost for each.
  • A consensus meeting was held to review the two proposals received on the HAM-SAS system for LASTI.  Although one company was clearly superior to the other, it was agreed to brief the Source Selection Official, Stan Whitcomb, on the competitive aspects and financial aspects of the procurement.  Additionally, it was agreed to firmly establish the LIGO estimate for this system.

SUPPORT (Baldon, Hiroto, Lloyd)

>Irene Baldon

  • Processed the paper work for six (6) new/revised trips.  At this time there are five (5) trips completed or in the works but are awaiting the necessary paper work to enter the P-Card system.
  • Completed five (5) Expense Reports and there are five (5) 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 zero (0) reports more than thirty (30) days old.  I have no reports awaiting signature at this time.

>Julie Hiroto jhiroto@ligo.caltech.edu

  • No report.

>Dorothy Lloyd

  • No report.
  • Jim continued with data entry in the LIGO database and helping out in the DCC.

CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)

  • No open change requests.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

  • No special activities to report.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

>From: Bill Tyler tyler@ligo.caltech.edu

  • Nothing significant to report this week.

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

Summary of S5 Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory

An eventful week to improve the ranges and duty factors of the two Hanford IFOs to bring them into operations appropriate for S5.  Two new SunBlade 1500 computers have been installed and are running the injections.  Fast shutters were installed on both IFOs' AS-port tables.  Timing systems continues to need attention.  A suite of PEM injections were completed.  New filters have been installed and calibrations taken.  Features of various monitors were discovered and noted (e.g., the 4k's range is large enough to overflow senseMons floating point variables; ldas-grid condor problems interrupted the Inspiral Monitor; etc.)

Weather fronts raise the microseismic levels and either make it difficult to lock (with consequent impact on the duty factor) or lower our ranges.  Large seismic events (Honshu earthquake, m6.7-7.2) continue to cause interruptions.

But, do not loose hope: last night we ran for ~10 hours of triple coincidence between H1, H2, and L1.

4K IFO

H1 had difficulty locking during the daytime.  Efforts have been focused on improving its duty factor through updated alignments, new ETM and ITM filters, and WFS-TCS-AS-I tuning.   In the evenings the IFO locked and attained an inspiral range of 10.5Mpc - 12.0Mpc, with a steadily improving duty factor.  At the end of the week H1 ran at 12Mpc for 11 hours with only ~1 hour of interruptions from "Science Mode".

2K IFO

H2 is solid and has a near 100% duty factor, but a poor range of 4.1Mpc - 4.4Mpc.  It locks day and night.  Work on the TCS hints at an improvement.

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

L1 Interferometer (Frolov)

The Livingston interferometer joined the S5 science run on Monday. The duty cycle is a disappointing 15% after two days of running. It was mostly limited by the seismic noise from logging and construction and from an intense storm in the Gulf. The inspiral range was 10+ Mpc on the opening night but slipped to 7 Mpc last night, in part due to reduced interferometer power from 7 W to 5.5 W and in part due to the elevated seismic noise and possible instability in the angular control system. On the bright side, the laser has been stable after the diode pump current increase last week to get more power into the interferometer.

#MZ comment: due to 5+ weeks of laser trouble preceding the run, culminating in last week's forced emergency replacement, we just did not have sufficient experience at high power to guarantee long-term stability at peak range.

For now we'll compromise power (and range) for uptime, while we work on debugging that last power step. It's gonna be a long run...

Commissioning activities this week

  • one of the anti-symmetric port photo-detectors was damaged by the beam and replaced after damage was discovered
  • the new fast shutter was installed on the anti-symmetric port photo-detectors.  The closing time improved from 6 to 4 ms. The bias kill circuit had to be disconnected to accommodate this improvement.
  • the TCS servo was engaged for the first time. It was stable in the configuration with the interferometer input power of 7 W, central heating on ITMY and annulus heating on ITMX.
  • the digital filtering of the optical lever signals around 30 Hz eliminated the corresponding DARM peak which for years thought to be irreducible.
  • the purge system for the dust cover on the AS port was installed - the interferometer calibration was verified. The DC calibration parameters were found to be within 5% from the previous measurements.
  • the beams on the anti-symmetric port photo-detectors were realigned to minimize the low frequency RF signals in the Q phase of each individual photo-detector. This procedure gave a factor of three reduction in the rms of the low frequency ASQ signals.
  • the optical lever compensation filter were re-tuned - the frequency stabilization loops were re-measured and ugf's were set.

Outreach (Thacker/Zucker)

11/8: about 60 senior High School physics students from Broadmoor High in BR

11/9: Southern University, College of Education,  about 8 students + instructor

11/10: Visit from Inga Peterson and Dave Fleming from Exploratorium to discuss customizing 4 exhibits

11/11 Glen Oaks Elementary; about 20 pre-K students + parents + teachers

11/12: Middle School Science Teacher professional development

11/14 & 11/15:  35 sixth grade students from The Runnels School

SEC construction: Intense fill and compaction activity impaired interferometer operation during the day. We granted a Saturday exception to allow some schedule catch-up last weekend. Rainy weather interfered Tuesday and Wednesday but we are told the fill is about done; next phase will be drilling for pilings and concrete forming.

CDS (Bogue)

  • Spent a lot of time working with Valera on our channels.
  • Worked with K.Riles on updating our scripts that put automated entries in the elog and that produce automated plots on london's web site.  75% of this is now working correctly.
  • Installed channels and medm screens to support FAST ADCU - Installed channels and medm screens to support Shutter Timer.
  • Took another look at some problems with the gamma ray burst notifications.
  • Working on a problem with our statevector code.
  • Installed the loaner atomic clock.  It has been rewired so that it does not output a 1pps signal.  I am working with the manufacturer to see if we can get the specs to rewire this thing ourselves.  Concurrently, I have been working through shipping issues to get our clock sent back to the manufacturer for repair.
  • Our injection box had hard disk failure.  Installed a spare hard disk and jumpstarted the configuration.  RMA'd the original disk.  It is still under warranty.

Computing and Network Security (Roddy)

Spent a couple of days working with and IDS/IPS/event correlation software package.

This is an open source package that ties many tools together.  Because of its string of dependencies, it is quite an intense install and is fairly difficult to manage.  I am concerned about this, since it is conceivable that when it comes time to upgrade, it will be very difficult.  It is possible that we could end up with an insecure security monitoring package, which is certainly not ideal or desirable.  The software is quite useful despite the pains in working with it.

Worked some with Dwayne on the new backup library.

Ordered various parts, a computer for the auditorium and a few other items.

General Computing (Giardina)

  • configured Thunderbird email client to point to new mail server on laptop for Allen Sibley -  installed drivers for video capture on PC for John Thacker and Outreach -  configuring a new laptop for Janeen Romie, was initially installing everything from scratch.  after talking with Mike Pedrazza I may swap drives with her old laptop.  this is dependent upon some diagnostics to be run on the old drive.
  • installed perl 5.8.7 and Tk modules on ilog.ligo-la.caltech.edu to fix errors experienced by Bruce Sears -  applied the latest Windows updates to the laser security server -  created a weekly CSV extract of the activity logs on the laser security server.  After discussing with Shannon and Lisa, these extracts will be copied over to the ilog server
  • with Shannon, installed new rack mounted tape library, and barcode labeled the additional tapes

LDAS Admin (Giardina)

  • replaced disks in nodes 130 and 166
  • node126 required reboot with fsck and is now OK
  • replaced failed disks in t3-8 and t3-23, received replacements from Sun
  • reconfigured volume on t3-13 to include u1d8 and u1d9, it has been a couple of months since they were included.
  • shipped tapes  LL0373, LL0526, LL0544, LL0555, LL0567, LL0569, LL0573, LL0577, LL0583, LL0604, LL0613, LL0627, LL0647, LL0656, LL0659, LL0678 to CIT

CDS Code Support (Khan)

Developing a device driver for the New Focus Pico Motor Controller. The advantage of this device driver is that it requires only a database and no state code to control the XY motion. This would enable us to design servo system without the need of a full blown state notation code.

Site Safety and Security (Riesen)

Found no site/laser safety concerns this period.

The main gate repair/replacement is underway. Have not heard as to when the gate will be operational again.

#MZ For those who missed it on the news, an LN2 tanker mistimed his approach Tuesday, thereby causing a "misadjustment" of the access gate. We're asking visitors to please pause and pretend there is still a gate there until a replacement unit arrives ;)

AdL SUS/SE Mechanical Engineering (Spjeld)

Quad SUS Installation Fixtures

  • completed release DCN and drawing package for manufacturing, submitted to DCC
  • meeting with Calum and Ken Mailand on Nov. 16 to discuss design and manufacturing
  • looking into off-the-shelf parts for the linear bearings, shaft and shaft blocks for lift table

LDAS/Condor data analysis (Yakushin):

Storage/Condor/LDAS admin:

1) As the weather got colder, it became apparent that there might be a configuration problem with the air conditioner in the high bay: the colder the weather outside, the more heat is produced by HVAC.  Setting termostats' low threshold temperature to the lowest possible 40F helped a lot but not entirely and the temperature is still a few degrees higher than it should be.

2) Ordered 4 more spare power supplies for the nodes.

3) Fixed several configuration issues with the cluster as users discovered missing software or accounts when trying to start online jobs.

Data analysis:

1) Working on online waveburst scripts.

2) Reran 28 S4 waveburst jobs affected by a recently discovered minor bug in the whitening procedure.

Initial LIGO Detector Science & Engineering (Coyne)

CDS

see also the CDS weekly meeting minutes in the commissioning archives

CDS Software

Rolf Bork

  • Made requested changes to LSC code for triggering shutter on
  • ASI-CORR signals. This code will be transferred to LHO on Tuesday.

CDS Hardware

Nothing significant to report

DMT

no report

Optical Metrology

no report

40-Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

IFO Commissioning

  • Our old laser appears to be serving LLO well. They installed it, got up to 8.9 watts, and recovered 11.5 Mpc inspiral range, in less than a day.
  • Doug Cook is preparing the old H2 laser for us as a replacement. It will have the old (noisy) NPRO. He shipped it on Wednesday and we expect it on Friday. We will begin installation on Monday, but vacations and Thanksgiving will interrupt the remainder of the week.
  • Osamu is working on a paper about the seismic noise and its contribution to the 40m noise budget, with David Blair and Ryan Kinney. He is taking more data, and fixing some problems with the measured noise spectra.
  • Steve has been measuring resonant frequencies of various components on the PSL table, and he and Osamu are correlating these with peaks in the PSL frequency noise spectrum as measured by the mode cleaner. A few shaky mounts have been identified. He will also check the in-vac DLC mounts that we have for the DC readout beamline, as well as Mike's new OMMT.
  • Rob is continuing to rework the front end LSC code to make it more robust, flexible, and functional.
  • Dan and Monica continue to work on developing the noise budget for the 40m.

IFO Modeling

  • Osamu has been discussing the modeling of radiation pressure in e2e, with Hiro. He is trying to understand the approximations made.
  • Monica has validated her e2e package with Hiro's dual recycling summation cavity. She and Hiro found and fixed all the bugs, and she has verified that all the equilibrium fields are correct, as is the DARM transfer function. She will repeat error signal sweeps. She's also using Matt's 5dof control plant, with mods including 40m filters, to simulate full lock. So far, she can hold lock in e2e for 10 msec. Trying to figure out reason for lock loss.
  • Rob is working with Matt on yet another frequency domain IFO model, with full quantum formalism. This one is matlab-based.

DC Detection Development

  • Ben has been working on the DCPD design for the DC readout. He sent out PCB files, and the boards should be here tomorrow.
  • Ben has ordered the parts for the DCPD electronics, including several resistors that will be evaluated for their vacuum compatability.
  • Mike Smith now has all the parts for the DC readout beamline, (including the OMMT mechanical parts and mirrors, the in-vac mirrors, mirror mounts and steering mirror PZTs, etc) except for those being made by CES (the OMC body and a couple of mirror mounts). Mike has pre-assembled the OMMT, and everything seems to fit.

Electronics, Controls                                                                                       

  • Ben replaced the mixer on the Mach Zehnder Servo board with a lower, level 7 mixer which should work better with the signal levels that we actually have.
  • Steve ordered a new RAID array for our DAQ system, to replace our dying one.
  • Dan continues to work on suspension diagonalization.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

With the new, corrected mode matching, we have achieved a visibility of 90 percent in the north arm cavity (NAC). This is a significant improvement over the 70 percent we had before. We are now working on the south arm cavity (SAC).

LASTI (Ottaway)

No report.

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)

(Hiro)

The Optical Spring issue has been studied further using e2e.   e2e showed that the radiation pressure noise excites the optical spring  resonance in the same way as the actual signal. Any noise or control  which include Differential Arm (DARM) mode can excite the optical spring  in the same way as the signal.

The 40m sensitivity curve limited by the radiation pressure and shot noise was calculated using e2e and the result showed qualitative agreement with the A. Buonanno and Y.Chen's calculation. Quantitative comparison will be done after applying a better lock and proper servo correction.

Hiro talked with Nergis and Corbitt about the possibility / necessity of including the two photon formalism in e2e, and it was concluded that all dynamical effects are implemented in e2e using classical mechanism and that it is not necessary to implement the two photon formalism in e2e. The extra effort is to allow accurate prediction of the sensitivity in the locked state, and it can be done easier using a frequency domain model.

Simulation of 40m Advanced Interferometer

(Monica) The optical configuration of the new e2e package for the 40m IFO (i.e. including the dual_sum cavity) has been validated following the same procedure as the previous one. Values of equilibrium-state field values and expected main signals (e.g. DARM at the dark port) reproduce Twiddle results. The package is now used to keep the interferometer at the operating point: Test of the control plant are being performed to verify and correct its behaviour.

Mode-Cleaner

(Sany Yoshida) Uzma and I analyzed pointing fluctuation of the LIGO I input mode cleaner's transmitted beam. We fed ground motions recorded at HAM1 and HAM2 via LLO DAQ channels to our e2e HAM stack model to compute the HAM1 and HAM2 table-top motions. The resultant table motions were fed into our Mode Cleaner(MC) model consisting of three suspended optics (for mirrors MC1 through MC3).

We compared the computed MC transmitted beam's pitch and yaw motions with the corresponding DAQ pitch and yaw signals recorded at the same time as the above ground motions. The power spectra of the computed and recorded MC transmitted beam pitch signal show reasonable agreement with each other.

The power spectrum of the recorded MC transmitted beam yaw motion appears to be much closer to the computed HAM1 yaw motion than computed MC transmitted beam yaw motion. More detailed analysis is undertaken.

Alfi

(Bruce)

  • Continuing work on new data object to track changes in bundler I/O names in inherited bundlers (PR 511.)
  • Full-path include-directive problem has been addressed- the user now has more options and information about why and how to avoid using them.
  • Alfi exit problems have been addressed. An exception at quit time will no longer prevent Alfi from exiting.

(Melody)

  • Fixed the code exceptions which were encountered using the newest release of JGo (5.14).
  • Working on Problem Report 296 - easier access to settings.

Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)

Shawhan:

  • Worked on organizing Burst Group presentations at the LSC Meeting, and the Burst Group face-to-face meeting afterward.
  • Helped organize reviewing of burst analyses.
  • Maintenance on conlog configurations at the sites.

Weinstein

  • Review of LIGO-TAMA S2/DT* BNS re-analysis, and careful read of final draft.
  • Working with Lisa on S4 ringdown analysis
  • Working with Drew on chirps with massive gravitons.

Yakushin:

  • Working on online waveburst scripts.
  • Reran 28 S4 waveburst jobs affected by a recently discovered minor bug in the whitening procedure.

LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Blackburn)

LDAS

With the start of S5 at Livingston, the code freeze on the LDAS CVS repository has been lifted. New code and nightly builds addressing the targeted list of PRs for the next release of LDAS have begun.

At the top of the list are the request for being able to specify the location of the directory for storing md5sums of created RDS frames to allow separating the tranfer mechanism for RDS frames and md5sums into two paths. Also improvements to use of X509 certificates, better performance in the diskcacheAPI and migration towards 64 bit executable are on the list.

A bug in the genericAPI TCL code that used the TclGlobus package was found to lock up the Solaris 10 operating system to the point that the system required rebooting. The bug in the LDAS TCL code was one of scope on an environment variable (local scope when it should have been global). This caused the Globus Toolkit 4.0.1 release to go into a tight loop trying to read the certificate file from the hard coded location in the GT4 XIO source code instead of from the place that should have been specified by the environment variable if it had global scope. Since the certificate is not stored in the default location on the LDAS systems, the read was unsuccessful, but somehow cause the Solaris OS to become non-responsive. Fixing the scope to global resolved the issue, but we are working on a simple sample code to provide to Sun and Globus developers so that this sort of application level bug doesn't bring down a box.

The initial enhancements to the c++ diskcache performance test have been completed. The reults did not show the significant scaling issue for either local file system or Sam-QFS file system as reported in pr2753. The test was modified to do both an assending and descending addition of the mount point entries. In either direction the scaling is linear. The next step is to have it run on the actual /archive file system. This will require additonal modifications.

Worked on having Object Space compile with the pedantic flag for GCC. It has revealed several errors that are being corrected. This effort is to support large files.

Put a new package into the controlMonitorAPI's client to utilize TCL Channels via the TclGlobus package when support is ready. Fixed the reset bug in the submit button in the client. Added scrollable window to the display of the resource variable diffs. These address problem reports 2951, 2950 and 2838.

Changed over to using system "rm" to clean up the results and logs associated with test scripts. The TCL delete was causing the QFS filesystem to leak diskspace and requiring fsck to be performed by system administrators to recover the lost diskspace. This was seen in both the TCL used by LDAS and the TCL shipped by Solaris 10 so it should be a problem reported to Sun.

Reduced the amount of logging noise in the genericAPI associated with globus calls and the number of characters logged in the frameAPI for defunct jobs.

Corrected Frame accessor documentation to correctly reflect the frame file objects that can be accessed by user commands.

LDAS continues to generate RDS frames at the sites without any issues for S5.

TCLGlOBUS

Completed testing of an additional ten Globus FTP Control functions. 25 out of 77 functions have now been SWIG-wrapped and tested.

Still testing and debugging Globus FTP control data functions:

  • globus_ftp_control_data_connect_read
  • globus_ftp_control_data_connect_write
  • globus_ftp_control_data_read
  • globus_ftp_control_data_write
  • globus_ftp_control_send_command
  • globus_ftp_control_send_response
  • globus_ftp_control_read_commands.

The above functions are for sending and retrieving raw FTP commands to and from GSIFTP server, in this case tclproxy.ligo.caltech.edu.  A test client program is able to authenticate to the server and send LIST command, but it fails when trying to read the response from the server. This needs more work to resolve.

OSG/GRIPHYN/IVDGL

During the SC05 conference, the LIGO VO ran with an average job rate of roughly 5 to 10 jobs at a time on the OSG Production Grid with about half this number of jobs in the queue idling at any given time.

The upgrade of the OSG Integration Testbed Cluster here at Caltech was started with the operating system upgrade to Fedora Core 4 being completed late last week. The upgrade to the 0.3.0 ITB release of the OSG software stack has not been completed yet and some rework will be required to get a consistent installation on the head node.

The yum updates still need to be done on the nodes once the yum repository is properly configured and exported from the gateway onto the individual worker nodes.

Hardware Systems (Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

  • Changed archiver.cmd at LLO & CIT to be more like the tweaked one at LHO.
  • Called in (and received) replacement T3 drives under new Sun support contract.
  • Replaced 1 3510 drive.
  • Ejected tapes at LHO for shelf storage (mostly A4 L1 data).
  • Have been importing tapes arriving from sites and working on ingestion/verification scripts.
  • Heard back from Sun vis a vis SAM ACL bug (that caused kernel panic), they think the problem is solved in 4.4.13, but we haven't experienced any problems since going to 4.4.5.  Queried them about that...

(Phil Ehrens)

  • Refactored gpstime.tcl module of the LDAS generic API to make it more robust against new leapsecond additions.
  • Discussed wrapping of Tcl internal file command to change behaviour of 'file delete -force' to delete files and directories from the bottom up. Provided functional recursive example.
  • Supported the LDAS development team's analysis of hard lockup issues associated with the use of globus-xio enabled LDAS.
  • Worked on unified grid resources documentation.

(Erik Espinoza)

  • Debugging NFS FC4-Kernel Issues, posting new bugzilla.
  • Testing fedora kernel patches on vanilla kernel.
  • Working with supermicro on IPMI issues.
  • Configured PXE Server.
  • Tested FC4 with Desktop yum repo.
  • Western Digital SATA Tests.
  • Returned Appro demo units.
  • Further digging into the Areca card, driver update resolved previous issues.

(Stuart Anderson)

  • Placed an order for the next Caltech cluster (2.2HHz 64-bit Opterons totaling ~2.25 THz of CPU power).
  • Placed an order for 5TB of backup framebuilder disk space (fb0) and a new 10TB cluster home directory filesystem for LHO, LLO, and CIT.
  • Dan started the near real-time transfer of level 3 (L3) RDS frames bi-directionaly between LHO and LLO for coincident analysis of S5 data directly at the Observatories.
  • Successfully obtained wire-speed (920MBit/s) NFS reads between 2 test Opteron machines with Erik's help.

MIT

(Keith Bayer)

  • Troubleshooting memory errors on MIT V880 dataserver box with Sun.
  • Requested grid host keys for ldas-pcdev1 and ldas-sundev1.

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

  • As the weather got colder, it became apparent that there might be a configuration problem with the air conditioner in the high bay: the colder the weather outside, the more heat is produced by HVAC.  Setting termostats' low threshold temperature to the lowest possible 40F helped a lot but not entirely and the temperature is still a few degrees higher than it should be.
  • Ordered 4 more spare power supplies for the nodes.
  • Fixed several configuration issues with the cluster as users discovered missing software or accounts when trying to start online jobs.

(Dwayne Giardina)

  • Replaced disks in nodes 130 and 166.
  • node126 required reboot with fsck and is now OK.
  • Replaced failed disks in t3-8 and t3-23, received replacements from Sun.
  • Reconfigured volume on t3-13 to include u1d8 and u1d9, it has been a couple of months since they were included.
  • Shipped tapes LL0373, LL0526, LL0544, LL0555, LL0567, LL0569, LL0573, LL0577, LL0583, LL0604, LL0613, LL0627, LL0647, LL0656, LL0659, LL0678 to CIT

Hanford

(Ben Johnson)

  • Had to power cycle the Foundry switch this Sunday. It has not otherwise had problems since the whole system was powered off list past September.
  • D2D and publishing started at LLO this Monday. Email is still not working there so I am not receiving any gap reports when the framebuilder(s) is(are) rebooted.
  • Due to ~3000 slow channels being added to the frames, the daqd being writing corrupt trend frames (affecting both framebuilders).  Removal of the channels caused the symptom to go away. Raw frames did/do not seem to be affected.
  • Shipped 9 tapes to CIT this Tuesday.
  • Presently setting up a web server so users can see their cluster output more easily.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Keith)

11/10/05

  • Adjusting wireless routers for upcoming LSC conference
  • Accepting CSR test sun box for network troubleshooting
  • Ordered scsi jbod 4bay chassis for CAD workstation

11/17/05

  • Helping w/ visitor issues for LSC conference
  • Building dual boot system for new grad student
  • Ordered spare parts
  • Added new grad student to gc - Pranesh Sundararajan
  • Troubleshooting wireless issues
  • Adjusted wireless hub channel in NW22
  • Helped Alex install cds utilities on FC4 box

Livingston

(Dwayne)

11/10/05

  • helped Rich Riesen with e-mail migration issues
  • been tied up with LDAS,  this is all the GC I have to report this week.

11/17/05

  • configured Thunderbird e-mail client to point to new mail server on laptop for Allen Sibley
  • installed drivers for video capture on PC for John Thacker and Outreach
  • configuring a new laptop for Janeen Romie, was initially installing everything from scratch.  after talking with Mike Pedrazza I may swap drives with her old laptop.  This is dependent upon some diagnostics to be run on the old drive.
  • installed perl 5.8.7 and Tk modules on ilog.ligo-la.caltech.edu to fix errors experienced by Bruce Sears
  • applied the latest Windows updates to the laser security server -  created a weekly CSV extract of the activity logs on the laser security server.  After discussing with Shannon and Lisa, these extracts will be copied over to the ilog server -  with Shannon, installed new rack mounted tape library, and barcode labeled the additional tapes

(Shannon)

  • Spent a couple of days working with and IDS/IPS/event correlation software package.  This is an open source package that ties many tools together.  Because of its string of dependencies, it is quite and intense install and is fairly difficult to manage.  I am concerned about this, since it is conceivable that when it comes time to upgrade, it will be very difficult.  It is possible that we could end up with an insecure security monitoring package, which is certainly not ideal or desirable.  The software is quite useful despite the pains in working with it.
  • Worked some with Dwayne on the new backup library.  Ordered various parts, a computer for the auditorium and a few other items.
  • Going through the alerts on the IDS console I noticed a number of sadmind probes to a DMT machine here.  This is the first I have seen of sadmind probes in years.  This is fairly relevant due to the recent incident at CIT.

Hanford

(Christine)

  • Helped a user with an e-mail problem.  There was an improperly formatted message in their Inbox on the server which prevented the user's e-mail from downloading to their e-mail software.
  • Monday LMSI put in a trouble report to inspect the fibers between LHO and PNNL which will be used for our backup network.  There has been no further status from them.
  • Investigated upgrades to the main switch for the internal network.  The upgrades will be needed so the new phone system can use the switch.
  • Still working on getting the Cisco contract problems resolved.
  • Still working on making the AMD Solaris 10 computer a NIS+ client.
  • Still working on building an updated application server.

CIT

(Bruce Sears)

11/10/05

  • Ilog Maintenance: Added users and fixed a problem I caused when doing so at LLO and LHO.

11/17/05

  • Fixed a bug iLog has in which quote characters were corrupting the title and comment text when the Replace function was being used.

(Veronica)

  • LIGO:  Website updates for the NSF review.  Based on the database of the LSC affiliates, prepared a report for David Shoemaker on the affiliation of the members.  Other misc. user support during the review.  Assisted Larry in the disassembly of the 114 E. Bridge setup.  Burned several DVDs of the film about LIGO, to be shown to the review committee.  Installed latest patches on Win servers.  Updates to the LIGO website.
  • LSC:  Updates to the website of the upcoming meeting.  Updates to the database of LSC documents for review.  Updates of various mailing lists.
  • CaJAGWR:  Video stream of the last seminar.  Website updates.

(Christian)

  • Ghosted workstations for Cindy, Julie, Dot and Florence.
  • Linda Turner - Linda was having problems printing her PowerPoint presentation in a HP network printer this week. Linda was using HP PCL 6 drivers to print and every time she would try to print her presentation, she would get an "Illegal Attribute Value" message. After working on it for some time, the only driver that Larry and I can get to work was the HP PCL 5c.
  • I've started to update users who have X-Terminator V4 to V5.
  • I went through and labeled PCs' with the current CPU and Ram speed in the basement storage.
  • I also moved locations this week to the office right next to Mike -Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Mike)

  • NSF Review: Helped out with setting up a temporary wireless network and printer.
  • David Meyers: Installed Linux on a loaner laptop for him to take on travel.
  • Dennis Coyne: Sent his laptop to IBM for repairs. Dump a GC ghost image to a new laptop for him. I also installed many additional Engineering packages, plus restored his data.
  • Worked on loading a sun box to replace DHCP server for the 125 subnet.
  • Loading a LINUX box for Hiro's group.
  • Continued work on the Spam Filters searching for false positives.
  • DHCP 114 Subnet: Freeing up IP numbers that should be releasing automatically. For now this is being done manually.
  • Other misc. onsite/phone user support.

(Larry)

  • Helped out with the setup and logistical support for the NSF review.  We had a few more technical problems than we have had in the past. Mostly bad cables but the printer also needed to be replaced in order to accommodate the MAC units.  Overall things went well.
  • Placed a number of orders of equipment for other groups as well as GC support.  The Blade1500 for the 40M has arrived and the OS is being installed.  Most of the items for LDAS have been received and picked up.  Renewed the licenses for the CANIT and Matlab.  Reconciled p-card for the month. Still working on getting tax charges put on from different companies.
  • Still cleaning out and replacing old equipment.
  • Added a number of new accounts and cleaned up a couple of alias files.
  • Worked with Linda in getting a number of DCC items resolved. The biggest issue was getting a file to print. It took Christian and me some time to fix the problem by using and older print driver.  Still working on getting the h/w in for the new DCC system.
  • Resolved a couple of backup issues.  Setting up a new system for the monthly backups. Hopefully, it will be up and running for this months monthly backup.
  • Worked with Mike on setting up a new dhcp server.
  • Worked on a number of patch updates on different sandbox units.  Now installing Fedora Core 4 on the quad cpu dual core units. Thanks to Erik the OS is now installing but there are still a few problems to overcome.  Even though the SUSE installation for these boxes is cleaner we are still going to the FC4 installation for compatibility reasons.
  • Typical user assistance and account modifications.
  • Still working the e-mail spamming issues.

Mail Statistics for Nov 03-16, 05

Mail Statistics

November 03 - 16, 2005

Rejected Messages

25,558

Virus Messages

1,861

Accepted Messages

30,712

Total Messages

56,270

 

Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)

Advanced LIGO Systems, Management

from Dennis Coyne

See also:

AL Systems web page

AL Systems email archives

Records of Decision or Agreement (RODA)

See also the RODA status web page

  • Tim Hayler (RAL) has submitted a revised RODA on chain separation, M050418-01, which is under review.

Requirements

  • Cleaning requirements for in-vacuum hardware have been re-formulated in terms of an industry standard specification, IEST-STD-CC1246D, Product Cleanliness Levels and Contamination Control Program [Note: This document supersedes MIL-STD-1246C], for particulates and non-volatile residues (NVR). See for example G050557-00.

Interface Issues

See the "Interfaces" section of the AL Systems web page

  • Nothing significant to report

Vacuum Compatibility

Residual Gas Assay (RGA)

See also the Vacuum Bake Lab

Bob Taylor

  • I have completed two bake jobs for Calum for the SUS quad control prototype.
  • I have have four Bake jobs going at the present time, 3 for calum and one for the RGA test to correlate to FTIR measurements on post air baked parts (two parts from the set of large LASTI parts from Myron).
  • Lee and I have been cleaning more quad parts to bake as soon as there are ovens available.
  • I have ordered all the parts for the SUS quad controls prototype ESD cables and will assemble those as soon as the part arrive.
  • I have all the SUS OSEM diode boards built and will start assembling them On Friday.
  • I have shipped the first of Myron's LASTI solid stack parts. Lee and I will pack the Large Parts to be shipped to Myron this afternoon.

High-Irradiance, Contamination-Exposure Cavities

Lee Cardenas, Liyuan Zhang

Cavity

(Location)

Material/Item

Start

End

Comments

Cavity #1

(OTF Lab, Bridge)

“Coil wire” (material type?)

~11/17

TBD

New sample has been put into the cavity and the system is pumping down. Going through a re-alignment now.

----------------------------------------------------------

The test for 40 pieces of MMG nickel plated Nd-B-Fe magnets (for Helena Armandula, SUS ) has been completed and removed from the cavity.

Cavity #2

(OTF Lab, Lauritsen)

NA

NA

NA

No Change

cavity is close to being ready for samples

Cavity #3

(OTF Lab, Lauritsen)

OSEM Flexi-circuit cable, qty ~ 45

(Helena Armandula, SUS)

supplied by Univ. Birmingham (Stuart Aston)

~6/10

~9/10

No change:

taking daily absorption & ring down measurements

DuPont Flexible Circuits. The whole part to be constructed of 'flexi' i.e. no 'rigid' sections. (Stuart Aston,Univ. of Birmingham, SUS/UK subsystem)
- Start Laminate: Kapton (LF8515)

(document link: http://www.dupont.com/fcm/products/H-73244.pdf

Coverlay (x2): Kapton (LF0110)

(document link: http://www.dupont.com/fcm/products/H-73245.pdf

DuPont Pyralux Series - Kapton / Acrylic Adhesive system.

(document link: http://www.dupont.com/fcm/products/H-73246.pdf

--------------------------------------------------------------

OSEM emitter & photodiode 40 of each, (Dennis Coyne, SUS ) Test has been completed. Results to be posted by Liyuan Zhang soon.

Queue

Priority 1

2 Cleaned 50ppm transmission mirrors, 1 in dia., REO coated --

TBD

TBD

witness samples for the LHO vertex volume (added in 6/29/2005 vent)

Queue

Priority 2

Stepper Motor (Riccardo DeSalvo, possible SUS or ISC use)

TBD

TBD

Stepper Motor sample had been placed into Cavity #1: Power dropped from 175 mW to ~25 mW after introducing the stepper motor sample, and continues to decrease. It is very hard to keep cavity locked. The stepper motor may have contaminated the mirrors. Will re-test when a cvity becomes available again.

To be rebaked soon using the self-heating capability of the stepper motor (not just the oven heater controls)

From: Rolf Bork <rolf@ligo.caltech.edu>

The quad front end, Framebuilder and TP man are now working together over the new network. We still have work to do to get AWG fully functional. The idea is that the front end code, a TP man and AWG will all run together on each front end control computer. As a test, we ran all these, plus Framebuilder on our dual AMD64 computer, and they all worked fine together. The processors barely noticed the load. While the Framebuilder will be separate at Lasti (due to multiple systems needing to access it and to merge the data together), this would be a good configuration for test stands or small lab setups. It would only involve a single computer box at a relatively low cost ($10-15K, depending on number of I/O channels and disk drives for the Framebuilder).

Worked further on the front end code to get Tp/Exc channels working and the drivers to detect and configure multiple I/O cards. The code is being written a bit differently this time around. There are still the basic generic modules for I/O, DAQ and GDS, somewhat as before. However, the code for the front end is developed as a "skeleton", that is it is genernic for all front end applications. It handles all the calls to I/O code, synchronization, network monitoring and error correction, DAQ/GDS calls, etc. The call to the application specific code is then simply placed in the this generic code's control loop. So, the skeleton takes care of all system initialization, then goes into a synchronized infinite loop. In this loop, it reads out the ADC channels at the proper time, checks for overflows and other errors, then calls the application specific code with this ADC information. The application code then does all it's specific control algorithms, filter modules calcs, etc., and returns the DAC output values. The skeleton then packages and sends out the DAC values to I/O, calls the DAQ/GDS functions, moves EPICS variables, does various network and other error checking, then returns to the beginning of the loop. This method should improve things in a couple of ways. One, new applications should be quicker to develop, as the skeleton software takes care of all the "systematics". Plus, once I get back to the graphical editor for front end software, it will only need to generate the application specific code. Secondly, as we add features to the skeleton and/or make it more rebust, it should allow these changes to be easily recompiled into all front ends.

Seismic Isolation

From: Ken Mason <kmason@ligo.mit.edu>

 

From: "Joseph A. Giaime" jgiaime@ligo.phys.lsu.edu

Agenda for the weekly SEI telecom

Friday, Nov 9, 2pm Eastern, 1pm central, 11am Pacific time

Announcements

  • HAM SAS mechanical contract bids are in.  Carol is planning a procurement readiness review after Thanksgiving.

BSC SEI status, Ken/ Dennis

  • We are reminded that solution anneal according to the metal supplier's specs must precede the machining.  Ken is to author a LIGO E document that details the required material processing steps.
  • Ken has been working with ASI on the topic of blade design changes.
  • Ken has built the blade test fixture, and has some dummy test blades.
  • Jay visited Ken at MIT and they have gone over the feedthrough and wiring harness designs.  There is a question about whether the wire quotes from Larry are correct; we should have round cables with twisted pairs, not ribbon cables.

BSC work, adaptive modeling and FIR (Rich M)

  • Results of simulink model of adaptive FIR filter are posted here.  Rich is running the adaptive FIR generator and asking it to fit a fake plant made with a stable zpk filter.  Rich also will try to hand the adaptive filter generator a pre-made more perfect FIR to see whether it can adapt with plant changes.  Rich hopes to have it running on hardware in a week or two.

HAM control with VME (Pradeep)

  • Two vertical geophones and one horizontal signals are not working.  The horizontal was 'fixed' by knocking on it.  We need to evaluate other geophone models.

ETF platform work - Matt DeGree

  • Brian has recovered most but not all critical files and now have a working experiment control computer (set up by William last summer).  Missing the alignment matrix and FIR definitions; these will be regenerated with Hua's help, and Stanford will also send the busted disk out for data recovery. 
  • Now using the newer dSpace hardware, too.  Now using 400 µs sample time.  I/O takes 80 µs.  53 µs used for non-polyphase-FIR filter.  Lots of time left.
  • Quad pendulum frame received from Caltech yesterday.  May be installed the week after Thanksgiving.

Seismometer work, therman monitor project.

  • Rotational seismometer parts received from shop, and assembly is under way by Aaron.
  • William continues assembling in-vac cables for thermal monitor project.   (he is working 6 hr/week.)  First task is to assemble monitors on a very small test block in an insulated box to make sure that calibration, noise and drift are understood.

Other news?

  • Shyang is shipping the broken STS-2 to Jay.

Suspension

From: Janeen Romie romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu

Advanced LIGO

Working with Caroline and Calum on understanding the gazebo's input to the quad suspension mode measurements. Creating gazebo models for Calum to perform fea (as I do not currently have fea software available.) Dwayne is loading software on my new laptop.

Working on ECD alignment parts.

Working with Jay and Dwight on costing issues for Advanced LIGO suspensions production phase.

From: Calum Torrie <ctorrie@ligo.caltech.edu>

 

From: Ken Mailand kmailand@ligo.caltech.edu

I have finished a preliminary SUS installation plate style fixture layout for Calum, and estimating cost and time, this is an an alternate to the air bearing using the same table frame, or the genie lift.

We talked with Oddvar re. the air bearing design, and the alt. style fixture, he inquired about some of the features, and thought it could do what the spec. requires.

I’m working on a vertex BSC layout for Mike Smith that will show stay clear areas inside for the beam path, and gathering P O Telescopes details.

From: Helena Armandula ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu

Adv. LIGO SUS - New air bake oven

 

From: Jay Heefner <jay@ligo.caltech.edu>

AdL SUS

From: Rolf Bork <rolf@ligo.caltech.edu>

 

Core Optics

From: Bill Kells <kells@ligo.caltech.edu>

Last week was spent mostly preparing for and attending the NSF review. Since, I have been using that as a springboard for finishing off a review of yet another verison of the Perth PI paper that I have been "tasked" to since mid summer. It’s getting much more reasonable! I have transmitted some further questions to Ju Li about their analysis, to be able to turn this around.

This week I have been going back over the details of what I had worked out almost a year ago on the concept of a stable PRC/SRC for AdL. Have done a bunch more modeling and put everything together in preparation for the meeting on this at MIT this Friday.  See you there!

Pre-Stabilized Laser

From: Peter King pking@ligo.caltech.edu

I finally finished packaging the hour meter circuit for the NPRO.  Testing of the circuit showed that the variable threshold levels and trigger points were within tolerance levels.  Although there is a nasty two-step behaviour in the falltime response.  Since this occurs in less than 0.6 microseconds I don't expect it to cause too many problems.

Auxiliary Optics

From: Michael Smith <smith@ligo.caltech.edu>

I resolved the problem and have traced rays and have inserted stay clear models of the ITMx and ITMy SUS, a BS SUS, PO mirror BS SUS, PO mirror ITMx SUS, cavity beam dumps and HAM and BSC chambers into the ZEMAX layout of the ADLIGO vertex. Unfortunately, ZEMAX does not support the export of the cylindrical object I used to model the COC mirrors with the current revision, so I can't export the ray trace to the Solid Works CAD program. I will try to find an exportable object for modeling the COC mirrors.

Other Laboratory R&D

From: Riccardo DeSalvo <desalvo@ligo.caltech.edu>

Juri

I worked on my FFT code; I added a routine in order to make a scan of the cavity through a full FSR and another to find the position and the amplitude of the power peaks. In this way it is easier to select the point where we want to lock the FP cavity.

Yumei

I am starting learning how to use the ANSYS and practice simple program by ANSYS.

Chiara

I made the measurements of transfer function for the system with four inverted pendula in the range from 0.2Hz to 100Hz.

I started with a load of 624Kg and I arrived at 2006Kg.

Below 10Hz the measurements are good; I found the expected behavior of the function. Above 10Hz there are several picks that we identified as environmental noise (the same visible on the quadruple pendulum) and resonances from the structure of the shaker.

For additional information about this report, contact Stan Whitcomb or Phil Lindquist