Contact Person:
Charles F. Maguire
Creation Date: March 15, 2006 "Beware the Ides of March"
Last update April 13, 2006: Implement gridFTP automation for return transfer to RCF
This site will document the progress for the reconstruction of Level2 filtered PRDFs (PHENIX Raw Data Files) produced in Run6 at RHIC by the PHENIX experiment. This Run6 project is the successor to the similar Run5 project carried out by David Silvermyr and others at Oak Ridge in 2005.
The procedure will be that minimum bias PRDFs stored on the bufferbox disk areas in the PHENIX 1008 counting house will be processed automatically by a Level2 filtering program. The filtering program will select only certain events for output into new, much smaller PRDFs. These Level2 filtered PRDFs will then be automatically copied via gridFTP from the bufferboxes to disk areas on the ACCRE computer facility at Vanderbilt University. Provision has been made to have room for at least 30 TBytes of Level2 PRDFs at ACCRE.
Soon after the filtered PRDFs are at ACCRE, they will be reconstructed into nanoDSTs. It would be efficient then to analyze these nanoDSTs also at ACCRE, for example to produce J/Psi mass spectra, although this phase has not yet been decided. The nanoDSTs will be returned to RCF and stored in the HPSS.
A critical aspect of the project is that the Level2 filtered PRDFs be completely copied to ACCRE before it might become necessary to delete them from the bufferbox disk areas in the counting house. Similarly, we want to have the reconstruction take place as soon as possible after the files are at ACCRE, and view the analysis results in "near real time", as happened in Run5.
Software development for this project began on March 14. The PHENIX CVS area for production scripts was established as online/vanderbilt/run6pp/macros/ . Job control scripts for batch submission to the ACCRE farm are contained in the the parent directory. The main control file for PBS batch submission is called cauto whose operation is described at this link. This script runs in the /home/phenix/prod/run6pp directory using the vmps18 node using a daily cron submission. A second cron job using the check script [not yet in CVS] runs on the vmps16 node. The operation of the check script is described at this link.
The reconstruction of the Level2 PRDFs and the analyses of that output is still considered to be in test mode until there is a "pro" build certified for Run6 Level2 production.