The Elixir postrun system manages the end-of-run processing of the
calibration and science data. The Elixir postrun system consists of a
series of processing stages:
| imstats | process the unprocessed entries in the imstats database |
| mkdetrend | run the mkdetrend system to generate the detrend data |
| mkfringe | run the mkfringe system to generate the fringe data |
| ptolemy | run the science images through the ptolemy system |
| standards | process the standard stars and generate zero-point information |
| validate | perform the image validation stages |
These stages must be performed in sequence, and the postrun system
automatically enforces the sequencing. At the beginning of a run,
each of these stages are in the state 'init'. At any stage, the
postrun system will attempt to identify the state of each of the
processing stages, and run the first which is in the init state.
While stages are running, elixir.postrun will set their state to
'running', and as the stages finish, they are set to the value
'done'. If any stages fail, they will be set to the 'fail' state, and
the postrun system will not proceed until the error is cleared.
In fact, the description above is an ideal, but in practice, the
elixir.postrun script does not quite follow these rules. For
example, elixir.postrun will not run the mkdetrend or mkfringe
systems; these must be run manually with the mkdetrend and mkfringe
commands. In addition, the mkfringe and ptolemy systems are required
to be run in sequence by elixir.postrun, but these do not really
require this sequencing: ptolemy can be run independently of mkfringe
since ptolemy does not require the fringe frames.
Furthermore, the error checking in the elixir.postrun system is
not very well refined, and manual intervention is occasionally needed.
It is possible, therefore, to set the state to appropriate values as
needed and to run the specific stage manually.
elixir.postrun step-by-step
At the end of a camera run, it is time to run elixir.postrun.
Currently, ert does not try to send any messages to say that
the run is done and elixir.postrun should start. This should be added
to the mkrun update command. In the steps listed below, the
values (CAMERA) and (RUNID) should be set to 'megacam' and the camera
run of interest.
- mkrun sys postrun.camera (CAMERA)
- mkrun sys postrun.runid (RUNID)
- mkdetrend config (CAMERA) (RUNID)
- mkdetrend reset hard
The commands above will set the necessary system variables and reset
the mkdetrend state variables to 'init'. There are two ways to run
the elixir.postrun process. You can specify the stages by hand, or
you can use the 'update' command, and elixir.postrun will attempt to
run through the stages by itself. In general, it is easier to use the
'update' method, and you have to use the command for elixir.postrun to
calculate the update status, needed to move on to the next stages.
- elixir.postrun update this runs the imstat system on
the images which were missed in realtime. This may take an hour or
so, depending on the number missed. You can monitor the progress with
the status command elixir imstats and elixir
imstats -time .
- mkdetrend init
- mkdetrend run When this completes, use the web page tool
to adjust the input image selection, and run mkdetrend run
again.
- mkdetrend reg
- mkfringe init
- mkfringe run (Same process as mkdetrend)
- mkfringe reg
- elixir.postrun update This should run the ptolemy complete
stage (use status : elixir complete to check).
- elixir.postrun update This should run the standards and
validation stages.
For some reason, the validation stage continues to
return a state of fail. The results of the validation stage go into
the directory /data/elixir2/datdir/RUNID/RUNID.val.N (N is sequence
number if there are multiple runs). Check that this file has no (or
only a few) invalid images. The validation processes sends validation
information to the QSO database, so no further action is needed: valid
images are now known by the DADS system.
Remember that at any time you can issue these commands to check the
state of the specific system:
- elixir.postrun state
- mkdetrend state
- mkfringe state
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