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1. 1000 WIN1 UIT1 12 INS Ane SEQ gt TEL SOTO1 Imaging in jitter mode ET Template log messages Figure 5 An example OBD loaded into BOB displayed via the En gineering interface to execute is pre selected by clicking one of the small buttons below the menubar and this action will be per HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 23 formed on all currently selected OBs templates which are marked by a shaded reactangle by pressing the middle mouse button on any selected item Alternatively if one wants to affect only one particular OB tem plate or section of parameters there is no need to select it first i e one can immediately press the middle mouse button on this unselected object The selection of operands OBs or templates is done with the left mouse button in conjunction with the lt Shift gt and lt Ctrl gt modifier keys a simple click will select the object under the mouse pointer after de se lecting all other currenlty selected objects if any pressing the left mouse button while the lt Ctrl gt key is pressed will add the object under the mouse pointer to the selected objects if it wasn t selected yet or de se lect it when it was already selected when the lt Shift gt button is pressed clicking the left mouse button will re move or add all objects between the previous selection and the one under the mouse pointer depending on whether they were alr
2. As the messages exchanged between BOB and the OH scheduler do not include the contents of template scripts nor template signature files but rather only a reference to their names these files need to be present on the system where BOB runs BOB will look for these files under specific paths including INS_ROOT SYS TEM COMMON SEQUENCES So it is vital to have the INS ROOT environment variable set before starting BOB The command to start BOB is bob display lt hostName gt configFile lt fileName gt password lt passwd gt ccsProcName lt name gt lt scriptFile gt amp The options before the double dash are the same ones as the options permitted for the standard wish see the manpage of Tcl The ones after the double dash are the name of the configuration file under the home direc tory defaulting to bobrc see also below the password to switch to the engineering interface see section2 10 and the name under which to register BOB with CCS BOB will at start up automatically configure itself reading in the last saved configuration file see below When BOB starts up successfully a main panel will appear on the screen see Figure 4 and BOB will start executing lt scriptFile gt if specified see also section 2 11 The various constituent parts of this GUI are e a window title bar which contains a o the name with which this instance of bob is registered with CCS and the environment under which i
3. statement bob will not be aware that the exposure was aborted at the OS level bob itself does not interpret this expStatus returned by the WAIT command Q12 When I press the ABORT button on the bob panel the current exposure still proceeds and only after it is finished the template and OB get aborted Why Bob s abort command aborts the currently running template and OB it does not abort the currently active ex posure i e bob does not send automatically ABORT commands to OS This is intentional and was decided at design time You can of course decide within a template to send ABORT commands to OS using the send Cmd convenience procedure By the way the template is only aborted when bob checks the abort flag as set by pressing the ABORT but ton this happens only if the checkAbort Flag convenience procedure is called within a template and at the normal termination of the template whichever comes first 3 1 8 Engineering mode Q13 In the template logs I occasionally see some messages in red complaining about keywords that have not been accessed What does that mean This happens if the OB and or template signature file contain some keywords which are not used by the tem plate script i e they are not read nor sent across to OS This probably means there is a bug in the template script the OB or the TSF if a keyword gets defined it probably needs to be accessed during the execution of the template script Otherwise
4. Cure Correct the OB and reload it Message 9 The PAF file with the set of OBs has an illegal format it has no PAF HDR START Category HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause bob has received an OB or read an obd file with an illegal format as indicated by the message Cure Correct the OB and reload it Message 10 The PAF file with the set of OBs has an illegal format there is no OBS ID Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause bob has received an OB or read an obd file which does not contain an OBS ID keyword Cure Correct the OB and reload it Message 11 The PAF file with the set of OBs has an illegal format there is no TPL ID Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause bob has received an OB or read an obd file which does not contain a TPL ID keyword Cure Correct the OB and reload it Correct the tsf and reload the OB Message 12 The parameter lt key gt of the lt tplId gt template has the value lt value gt which is supposed to be a float It is replaced by the default value lt default gt as taken from the signature file lt tsf gt Category error 10 sec timeout bob blocked till confirmed or timeout only shown for beginners Cause As the message says Cure Correct the OB and reload it or edit this lt key gt via bob s engineering interface editor Message 13 The parameter
5. the foreground of fg flag is given valid for the bobStart and 63 64 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 bobContinue commands control will be passed back to the shell after the OB has terminated instead of running it in the background and returning control immediately CAUTIONS Some dialogs are still kept with tk This depends partially on the setting of bobUserLevel Last change 23 05 05 10 02 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 C configuration 7 O observation block 5 loading 12 OBD 5 T template 5 8 breakpoint 14 call back 9 execution 13 libraries 10 log area 7 script 5 9 15 signature files 20 skip 14
6. tion box will appear The file pointed to needs to start with a so called PAF header see 1 followed by the OBD s in the exact same format as sent by OH It can contain more than one OB in that case a next OB is in that file marked by the OBS ID keyword If a set of OBs was loaded via a file it can afterwards also be reloaded via the Reload file menu option under Load OBs This is useful e g if one has edited some parameters via the Engineering interface and wants to discard the changes This button can normally also be activated during execution of an OB Although this may look like a graceful recovery for a hanging script there is presently for technical reasons no complete clean up of internal tables and stacks associated with this action I e if a reply was pending when a file was re loaded this reply will still be pending and can actually disturb BOB if it would still come in at a later time So care has to be taken with the use of this menu option The next OB can also be solicited via the top button of the toolbar This will then lead to a request of a single OB to OH If in the Configuration panel the environment name or process name of the OH partner is left blank BOB will assume you want to retrieve a file from disk instead of retrieving an OB from OH The OBs which are received from OH can also be saved locally either by the Save command under the File menu or via the third button of the toolbar In either case a file select
7. 1 WIN T BINNY 1 WINI ST F WIN I STRX 1 WIN1 STRY 1 WIN T NX 1000 WIN T NY 1000 WIN1 UIT1 12 7 Es Alise Essen Tamnilats lan marrannne Figure 4 An example OBD loaded into BOB It is partially ex panded and some flags have been set 2 6 RUNNING AN OB Press the Start action button or the telescope button in the toolbar fourth from top An icon will appear next to the OB and template showing its state running In general an OB inherits the state of the current ly executing template If this template returns an error or is aborted its OB will get the same status OBs and templates can be paused or aborted while running The pause action button will only pause in be tween 2 templates An abort will pass the proper flags on to the executing template but the template only looks at these flags on particular moments so an abort is usually not immediate Anyway BOB itself does not issue an abort command towards OS it merely sets a flag which can be picked up by the template It is up to the template to decide to issue an abort command BOB will not permit to send specific commands to OS for this particular template see section 2 3 OBs and templates can also get a breakpoint as long as they are idle i e not running nor finished This is achieved by clicking with mouse button 3 on the label of the particular OB template on the canvas This clicking works as a to
8. Reference setup file TPL PRESEQ waTemplate seq Sequencer script TPL GUI I GUI panel TPL TYPE test science calib TPL EXECTIME computed can be computed or a number TPL OVERHEAD 1 09 TPL RESOURCES D Here starts the description of the various arguments of the template script In this particular case we have only one parameter We need to give its type range and default value TPL PARAM SEO VALUE SEQ VALUE TYPE integer SEQ VALUE RANGE 100 1000 SEQ VALUE DEFAULT M555 The above signature file shows there is a unique argument for the script and it is defined with the name V AL UE in the SEQ category On top of that it will make BOB look for a corresponding template script called wa Template sed see value assigned to the keyword TPL PRESEO So to keep things simple the template signature file can be named waTemplate tsf the template script and signature files share the same base name The template script waTemplate seq could look as follows Example Technical Template script proc waTemplate checkAbortFlag Check if bob s ABORT button has been pressed Make it look like we re talking about real OBs so we don t get any complaints from bob in engineering mode about unused variables set TPL REFSUP set TPL EXPNO 1 Timeout value ms for replies on commands to partner process set timeout 10000 send command SETVAL tp
9. done at creation time for templates Do also a first check on the parameters value see incr Tcl destructor delete any saved paramfiles and proceed with base object destruction configure see incr Tcl abort request an abort of the template s execution This will set a variable called abort which can be upvar ed by the template ackabort acknowledge the abort sendStatus unmark extend unmark to also clear the log of this template editRawData lt cats gt lt pars gt pops up the TPL editor The set of parameters to be edited depends on the 2 arguments lt cats gt name of a single keyword category to be edited or the word all to include all categories Default all lt pars gt name of specific keywords to edit assuming lt cats gt is not set to a all Default all execute lt OBSinfo gt lt seqNr gt lt statVarName gt execute the template whereby its sequential number in its parent OB is lt seqNr gt lt OBSinfo gt contains relevant info passed to the template for execution This method returns potentially messages and the exec status ina variable whose name is given in lt statVarName gt Possible values for exec status 3 MustRepeat 2 Paused 1 Aborted returns also the string ACK ABORT 0 OK normal completion return value will be empty gt 0 error the return value of the method itself will contain an error message 1 Could not find the template signature file 2 Could not find th
10. lt pars gt name of specific keywords to edit assuming lt cats gt is not set to a all Default all mark select this Tpl and display its in the corresponding text widget mustRepeat request a MUSTREPEAT of the template s execution this implies an abort see above paste lt object gt lt where gt paste lt object gt lt where gt relative to this pause pause the template populate create all BobVisualTree child associated with this template printLog prints the log showExpNr shows current exposure number in canvas area display updateRawData builds a TPL raw data string starting from the keyword arrays CLASS PROCEDURES checkAbortFlag convenience procedure to check if bob s ABORT button was pressed It will automatically generate an ACK ABORT error message if the abort flag was set otherwise it returns with an empty string finishOB status lt status gt tell the OB that when this template finishes it should skip the remaining templates and return the termination status lt status gt default TERMINATED to OH getResult lt name gt retrieve the value for the previously stored lt name gt variable Remark that all variables are erased when the first TPL of an OB starts it execution In other words result passing from one template to another is only possible within a single OB Bob itself stores the execution status 0 OK 1 error of the last template in the variable tplExitStatus This variable can
11. modify and execute a sequence of such exposures The flexibility and intelli gence offered by relatively complicated templates is many times not required at all in particular if the goal is to execute unconditionally a set of exposures simply one after the other changing a couple of parameters in between In ESO s pre VLT software this feature was offered in the form of so called sequence tables where each row in the table contained the definition of a single exposure and the columns contained the values for specific parameters The usefulness and appreciation of this feature was translated into a requirement towards the VLT software to offer something similarly simple and powerful Templates on the other hand are of course very powerful tools to deal with a certain predefined sequence of commands required to execute one or more exposures But their scope is limited in the sense that they are de signed for very specific modes of observation To overcome this limitation the ICD between VCS and OH see 1 mentions so called generic templates This sort of templates has been inspired by the specification of MOBS it must be possible to specify modify any parameter within a given mode of observation 1 refers to MOBS as the tool to achieve this by means of a table editor as described above Remark however that the use of generic templates imposes certain restrictions on the Data Flow as for a generic template any instrument telescope param
12. s configu ration panel in the entry fields that corresponds to a normal OS see section 2 3 After this has been done we can activate the usual features of BOB e load the OBD into BOB execute the OB thereby sending the proper SETVAL command to the partner process e modify the value assigned to SEQ VALUE within the Engineering Interface see section 2 10 in other words this permits to edit the parameter of the SETVAL command e save the OBD with these modified values giving it a filename of our choice etc 2 14 PARAMFILE KEYWORDS There has been a special keyword type defined called paramfile This allows keywords to absorb the contents of a PAF file Le the value of such keyword will be ASCII text taken from a disk file When bob gets such a 32 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 parameter as part of an OB it will store this text in a file with name as given by the text itself the basename is taken from the included PAF NAME keyword while the path is taken from the mandatory TPL FILE DIRNAME keyword If the latter is an empty string the path INS_ROOT INS_USER MISC will be used For security reasons storage of these PAF files will only happen if the resulting path points to a di rectory under INS_ROOT Remark that after storing this file to disk bob will put the absolute pathname of this stored PAF file into the keyword so it becomes a relatively short string to display This filename rather than
13. then be used by the call back script to decide on proper actions pafReady lt pathName gt lt keep gt send an event to OH signalling that the PAF file lt pathName gt is ready for download This file will be deleted by bob after OH fetched it unless the boolean variable lt keep gt is set to true or 1 Unlike other events this one will be sent to OH even if the template executing this command is part of an OB which was not downloaded from OH If lt pathName gt is a directory there will be an event generated to OH for every single file on that directory seeBobVars localcopy lt listOfCats gt in the absence of the localcopy option issues the proper set of upvar instructions within the context of the calling procedure to make the various category arrays HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 61 created owned by BOB accessible as local arrays with the same name This procedure returns a list with as first element the list of category names which are then locally accessible I the localcopy option is specified lt listOfCats gt must be a list of keyword category arrays for which there will be then a copy created in the context of the calling procedure i e these arrays are not linked to the ones owned and accessed by BOB The category OBS can be included within lt listOfCats gt sendCmd lt timeout gt lt cmd gt lt paraml gt lt param2 gt convenience procedure to send commands
14. 2 11 Added programmatic access 2 6 Added FITS logs SPR 20010098 3 24 03 2003 2 2 Added description of labels SPR 20020527 2 3 Added comboboxes SPR 20020526 2 6 Control flow persistence SPR 20010762 2 7 1 Use of keyword arrays SPR 20020304 2 7 2 Added seeBobVars SPR 20020304 2 15 Added section SPR 20020511 3 1 8 Described additional warnings SPR 20020304 4 19 04 2004 2 3 Added details about OB label SPR 20030145 2 7 2 Extended seeBobVars SPR 20030518 2 11 1 Added bobSave and bobSaveAs SPR 20040011 2 15 Added snapshot details SPR 20030520 4 2 Added manpages for several bob commands 5 27 10 2005 2 3 Cmd skip list syntax revised SPR 20040269 added config param call back SPR 20040363 2 4 Modified preferences panel SPRs 20040205 6 23 01 2007 2 6 2 10 Multiple selection of templates SPR 20050396 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 The information contained in this manual is intended to be used in the ESO VLT project by ESO and authorized external contractors only While every precaution has been taken in the development of the software and in the preparation of this documentation ESO assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions or for damage resulting from the use of the software or of the infor mation contained herein HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 v 1 INTRODUCTION 1 Ll PURPOSE rn ee EE 1 1 2 SCOPE mios ENEE A Reon EE re ee ER RU S ARAS 1 1 3 AP
15. ESO 17220 1332 bobSave n bobSaveAs n NAME bobSave bobSaveAs save the observation block description of a selected OB SYNOPSIS bobSave bobSaveAs lt file gt DESCRIPTION These procs will retrieve the OBD of the selected OB and prepend a proper header to it before writing it to an obd file There are two forms of basically the same function bobSave saves the current OBD into a file If the OBD was originally loaded from a local file it will be saved into that same file otherwise a file selection window will pop up to ask for a filename bobSaveAs lt file gt saves the current OBD into lt file gt Remark that if lt file gt is given but does not contain an absolute path the saving will be done with respect to the current working directory which can be manipulated by any template If lt file gt is not specified bobSaveAs will pop up a file selection window to select a filename Last change 23 05 05 10 02 55 56 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 BobPanedComboBox n NAME BobPanedComboBox special paned combo box style megawidget for bob s specific needs SYNOPSIS BobPanedComboBox lt widgetName gt lt option gt lt value gt lt option gt lt value gt DESCRIPTION BobPanedComboBox creates an iTk style mega widget designed especially for the needs of bob The widget consists of the following elements a listbox top left to show typically the names of variables a
16. HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 There is something wrong with this template s lt tplId gt parameters I will proceed but you may find this template crippled I suggest to check this and eventually to reload this OB Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause something went wrong with the parsing of the keywords of this template Cure Analyse lt message gt correct the mistakes in the OB and or tsf files and reload the OB Message 33 lt tplId gt s signature file contains keywords of category of lt category gt which are illegal Please correct and reload this OB Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause As the message says Cure 4 1 2 OB Template editing Remark that several messages which are listed in 4 1 1 can also appear after OB Template editing as most of the verification steps and corresponding code are identical Message 34 The parameter lt key gt for template lt tplId gt is set in the TSF to the fixed value lt value gt but you have set it to lt edited_value gt The latter value will be used Category warning 15 sec timeout bob blocked till confirmed or timeout Cause Within the engineering mode editor a lt key gt was edited which supposedly should have a fixed value This message is not shown during a first pass i e it will show up only if such a lt key gt is edited via bob s engineering mode editor Cure N
17. OBS keywords within my template script 36 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 The OBS keywords are automatically sent t0 OS when a START command is given so you should not be worried about them not getting to OS Caring about OBS keywords is generally not the task ofthe template a template can deal with all keywords which are its own TPL or at a lower level DCS TCS not with the ones which are at a higher level OBS Remark that giving access to these OBS keywords within the template would expose them to modification and this is forbidden as this risks to invalidate the entire OB If your template really depends on an OBS keyword there may be something wrong either with the design of the template script or with the classification of this keyword However since bob version 1 130 one can use the seeBobVars localcopy OBS command to geta local copy of the OBS into the context of the procedure where this is called from 06 How can I find out within a template script which keywords have a VALUE entry in the tem plate signature file You cannot at least not easily Some keywords have indeed a VALUE entry in their tsf file with the pur pose of flagging to P2PP OT that these keywords should not be edited i e have a fixed value In fact P2PP OT currently do not include VALUE keywords into the OB they produce upon receipt of an OB bob verifies its contents and adds some info contained only in the t sf f
18. bob this includes the User proficiency beginner or advanced which allows bob to decide how verbose and technical some messages need to be This section includes also the first four checkbuttons as available under the Configure menu see above The Communication with OH contains the Status events checkbutton When this button is activated which it is by default all template and OB status messages as defined in 1 will be sent to OH Otherwise none of the automatically generated status events will be transmitted and OH will be told it should not expect any of these events either Remark that the PAFReady event which is not generated by BOB itself but rather by an explicit call within a template script see section 2 7 2 is always transmitted to OH The Communication with OS contains the Simulate Verbose and Internals checkbuttons and two sliders for simulation delays allowing to set how many ms a reply should artificially be delayed when in simulation mode The top one is for specific commands which are listed in the entry field close to this slide bar The bottom one is similar but for all commands which are not listed in the entry field of the specific OS commands The Internals checkbutton is for obtaining additional information about keyword use i e additional info warnings logged in the TPL messages text box see section 2 7 1 Finally this section has an entry field to list all OS commands which should be skipped after t
19. e verify at any later stage the output in the file theFileNameForOutput Remark that by default the bobStart and bobContinue commands will make an OB run in the background In other words control is returned to your terminal or script immediately after this command has been accepted and actually before the OB is running This of course permits full asynchronous control of the OB s execution e g it permits to give the bobAbort command before the OB finishes its execution but on the other hand re quires a mechanism to check and verify the state of execution e g within a script WIthout such synchroniza tion one may give a subsequent command too early particularly when running non interactively via a script One of these mechanisms is the OB termination call back see section 2 3 For non interactive use however this asynchronous behaviour is normally not required For that reason the bobStart and bobContinue have a foreground option If this option is given these commands will only return control as the OB finishes 2 12 MOBS AND GENERIC TEMPLATES 2 12 1 What MOBS and Generic Templates are MOBS Multiple Observations Software has been defined as a common part of the VLT INS software see 4 Its was initially presented as a separate software module interacting with the OS of each instrument While the task of OS is to coordinate and supervise the execution of a single exposure MOBS s task was to offer an easy way to define
20. error log Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause Occurs during an attempt to retrieve an OB from OH The command requesting an OB was successfully sent but OH replied with an error Cure As the message says 52 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 Message 51 OH is not ready to return observation blocks Please prepare the schedule select OBs first in OH before requesting OBs from within Bob Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause Occurs during an attempt to retrieve an OB from OH The command requesting an OB was successfully sent but OH replied with an empty OB Cure As the message says Message 52 You have selected lt file gt It is of type lt fileType gt while it should be of type file Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause Occurs during the selection of an OBD file As the message says this lt file gt is not a plain file Cure Select a proper obd file Message 53 You have selected lt file gt It seems to be a circular link Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause Occurs during the selection of an OBD file As the message says this lt file gt seems to be a link pointing ultimately to itself Cure Select a proper obd file 4 1 5 Various Message 54 Could not locate the plug in lt plugin gt It must be under the bin subdirectory of either SINTROOT or SVLTROOT sea
21. if called in a different namespace the template script will have to ensure that these links do not exist beyond the execution of the template script to avoid the existence of references to variables of deleted objects e g by deleting this namespace this problem does not exist if using local variables within a procedure as these are non persistent The technical details about these ten procedures and how to use them 1 e the number and meaning of their ar gument s are given in the bobTPL manpage see chapter 4 under the heading CLASS PROCEDURES If a parameter value to be sent to OS is a string containing quotes it has to be passed on to sendCmd with the quotes well protected by either surrounding them with braces or escaping them with backslashes Examples sendCmd timeout SETUP expoId id function CAT PAR my value or sendCmd timeout SETUP expold id function CAT PAR Vum value The above list of procedures does not consider basic Sequencer commands or library procedures which are available to any Sequencer script and which may be very useful for logging purposes e g seq logFitsAction n see 2 2 7 3 Aborting a running template script As BOB is not fully aware about the detailed status of the execution of a template and its exposures BOB can not decide when to abort an exposure after the Abort button has been pressed For this purpose a variable is accessible within the template flagging the p
22. is one of the fol lowing ABORTED if the abortion is due to a user intervention via BOB s GUI lt add_params gt is a string containing a description of the motive as entered in the abort dialogue box If the abortion is due to an 22 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 error returned by the template script lt add_params gt will contain template lt errorText gt e STARTED error TERMINATED for acquisition templates this is followed by the coordinates right ascension and declination in that order of the acquired object both in degrees as a float number identical to how the primary FITS keywords RA and DEC are written 2 10 ENGINEERING INTERFACE BOB s menubar contains an item to change the interface from Observation default to Engineering In the latter mode one still has access to the normal buttons but there is more functionality available one can edit the OB and the template parameters partially in a graphical cut and paste way see Figure 5 The function el BOB Broker for Observation Blocks bob_220240w1gsf File Configure Interface Errors Help edit Mm SE SD el OBs file gt bob gt FLAMES amp Next observation blocks Test OB 1 59 A 0745 Chavan SATO1 Target in field center and use guide star SOT02 Imaging in jitter mode DET READ SPEED normal WINT DINN 1 WINT DINN 1 WIN1 ST F WIN1 STRX 1 WINI STRY 1
23. limited to OBS only By using this optional argument the array OBS will become available at the level that this procedure is called Remark that during normal operation with OS there is no need to access the OBS keywords passed in the OB This array lt listOfCats gt option is actually deprecated please use seeBobVars localcopy lt listOfCats gt instead setCallBack lt script gt set the script to be evaluated upon termination of this template to lt script gt thereby overriding for this template only the setting in the configuration panel of the default template call back script lt script gt will be invoked whether or not the template returned an error It can find out the termination status of the template script via a getResult tplExitStatus command 0 OK 1 error It is up to the call back to decide if and to what extent it should continue if the template script returned with an error I the call back script needs to get access to values the template script has set the setResult and getResult mechanism can be used Remark that these call backs should not be seen as an extension of the template s functionality e g to prepare start exposures Instead their typical use is to log the template s termination or to put the instrument in a safe state For that reason this call back s return status does NOT influence the overall return status of the template setResult lt name gt lt value gt set the lt
24. listbox top right to show typically the values of variables There is be a 1 to 1 correspondence between the lines of both listboxes i e the name of a variable and its value are displayed in the same vertical position and any positioning action in one listbox will be followed by the same action in the other an entry field bottom left showing e g the name of the variable currently being edited an entry field bottom right showing the current value of the variable being edited optionally a scrollbar see scrollbar option below moving this scrollbar will move both listboxes These elements are organized in 2 paned windows with a vertical separation bar in the middle and a sash between the two columns allowing to redistribute the available space between the name part left and value part right PUBLIC METHODS fraction lt left gt lt right gt redistribute the space of the panes as indicated by the numbers lt left gt and lt right gt These 2 numbers must add up to 100 getEntries returns a list with 2 sublists namely the list of entries in the left resp right listbox insert lt leftList gt lt rightList gt append items to the end of the left and right listboxes the single argument consists of 2 sublists one for each listbox Both sublists must have the same size WIDGET BINDINGS The normal class bindings for listboxes resp entry fields apply with the following exceptions or modifications lt
25. there is no sense in having this keyword Q14 In the template logs I occasionally see some messages in red complaining about keywords that have been modified or unset by the template script What does that mean This happens if the template script and or its library procedures attempt to modify or unset the keyword array element s listed in this message So this message will appear whenever an existing element s value gets over written or unset This points most likely to a bug in the template script keywords are in principle read only they should either appear explicitly in the OBD or be derived from DEFAULT VALUE entries in the tem plate signature file The few exceptions like TPL NEXP are filtered out before printing this warning mes sage into the template logs See also section 2 7 1 Q15 In the template logs I occasionally see some messages in red complaining about reading or writing into some gvar variables instead of using the public interface What does that mean This happens if the template script and or its library procedures attempt to read write or unset particular ele ments of the global array gvar This array is used internally by bob to pass some information between the var ious panel widgets and bob itself it is not intended for public use To obtain the result you re after please use the public API as documented in section 2 11 1 Q16 In the template logs I occasionally see some messages in red complaining abou
26. upvar commands By means of the mentioned tracing mechanism BOB will report within the Template log window the follow ing infractions against the above rules 1 BOB versions up to 1 108 required 2 arguments namely first the list of category names and second a reserved argument It also required that each template script takes care itself of making these category arrays which are passed by reference locally accessible by means of upvar instructions Newer versions of BOB still honour this scheme for backward compatibility reasons although its use is no longer recommended 2 Only if no arguments are passed to the template script see the previous footnote 16 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 1 Keywords in the OBD TSF which are not used by the template script 2 Infractions to rules 2 and 3 above 3 Keyword arrays that have been made accessible via an own internal upvar scheme i e not using seeBobVars whereby the original category array names were linked to variables of a different name When the tplInternals flag is set see sections 2 3 and 2 11 there will be additionally the following mes sages if applicable 1 Warning that keywords are linked from a different namespace Although not forbidden this requires imperatively that these links are removed before the template finishes otherwise there will be persistent links to variables of deleted objects 2 The list of category array elements cr
27. way and I ve restarted it after setting the al ready executed templates one by one to skip Is there a better faster way to do that Yes there is you can select an entire range of templates by first clicking the left mouse button over the first template and then clicking over the last template while holding down the lt Shift gt key This will select the en tire range of templates Release the lt Shift gt key and press the right mouse button once over any of the select ed templates this will put them all into skip See also section 2 10 A0 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 41 4 REFERENCE 4 1 ERROR MESSAGES During the operation of bob while it analyses or tries to execute an OB and its templates there are of course plenty ofthings which can go wrong illegal syntax values out ofrange referenced files not found etc In the following sections you will find a list of error messages which can pop up in the form of dialogue boxes or logs they are grouped according to the activity that is going on Within each activity the order is alphabetical case insensitive 4 1 1 OB Template creation Remark that some of these messages can also appear after the OB template is edited via bob s engineering mode editor as some of the creation checks are then passed through again Message 1 Could not find the sequencer script for lt tplId gt This templ
28. widget will change the contents of this variable according to the position of the cursor over its constituent widgets leftlabel name leftLabel class Label label to display on top of the left listbox default empty no label leftlisthelp name leftListHelp class Help The short help text for the left listbox default empty no help leftentryhelp name leftEntryHelp class Help The short help text for the left entry field default empty no help leftentrystate name leftEntryState class State Specifies the state for the left entry field Can be normal i e editable disabled or readonly Default readonly listvariable name listVariable class Variable The name of the global Tcl variable which contains the contents of the 2 listboxes if a format as returned by the getEntries method If the value of this variable changes the widget will automatically update itself to reflect the new values Attempts to assign a variable with an invalid list of sublists to listvariable will cause an error Attempts to unset a variable in use as a listvariable will fail but will not generate an error rightlabel name rightLabel class Label label to display on top of the right listbox default empty no label rightlisthelp name rightListHelp class Help The short help text for the right listbox default empty no help rightentryhelp name rightEntryHelp class Help The short help text for the right entry field de
29. 2 51 Message 46 lt message gt Such request is incompatible with the current OB status Category error 10 sec timeout bob blocked till confirmed or timeout Cause Within non interactive use bobWish script there was an attempt to abort the OB while it was not in a state to be aborted Cure Do not attempt to abort an OB while it is not running 4 1 4 Selecting Loading of OBs or obd files Message 47 Could not communicate with OH Check the Environment settings under Configure menu and the CCS error log Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause Occurs during an attempt to retrieve an OB from OH This is a CCS communication problem Cure As the message says Message 48 Could not read file lt file gt Check its access permissions Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause Occurs during the selection of an OBD file As the message says this lt file gt is not readable Cure Set the file permission of this obd file properly and retry Message 49 Could not retrieve observation blocks from OH There was a problem trying to receive replies from OH Check the CCS error log Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause Occurs during an attempt to retrieve an OB from OH The command requesting an OB was successfully sent but the replies did not all come in Cure As the message says Message 50 Got an error returned by OH Check the CCS
30. 20 1332 47 lt tplId gt Please correct and reload this OB Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause during population of the template tree there were some problems with keywords of a particular lt cate gory gt Cure Analyse lt message gt correct the mistakes in the OB tsf and reload the OB Message 29 There is a problem with some lt category gt parameters of lt tplld gt s signature file Please correct and reload this OB Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause As the message says Detected during verification of the OB with the tsf Cure Correct and reload the OB Message 30 There is something wrong with the parameters of this OB I will proceed but you may find this OB crippled I suggest to check this and eventually to reload this OB Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause something went wrong with the parsing of the keywords of this OB Cure Analyse lt message gt correct the mistakes in the OB and reload the OB Message 31 There is something wrong with the parameters of lt tplId gt I will proceed but you may find this template crippled I suggest to check this and eventually to reload this OB Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause software bug a template object was created with arguments which lead to this error Cure Analyse lt message gt correct the mistakes in the code Message 32 48
31. Buttonl gt for listboxes and entry field get focus select item for listbox and entry field lt Buttonl Motion gt for listboxes and scrollbar drag amp select lt Key Prior gt PageUp for listboxes entry fields show previous page in listboxes lt Key Next gt PageDown for listboxes entry fields show next page lt Key Up gt Arrow up for listboxes entry fields select previous element in listboxes lt Key Down gt Arrow down for listbox entry field HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 select next element in listboxes lt Key Home gt for listboxes entry fields show top of listbox resp beginning of line lt Key End gt for listboxes entry fields show end of listbox resp end of line lt Key Enter gt for entry fields accept entry field value lt Key Escape gt for entry fields restore entry as selected in listbox into the entry fields lt Key Delete gt for listboxes entry fields delete selection lt Key Insert gt for listboxes entry fields insert new element into the listboxes resp paste copy buffer into entry field INHERITANCE itk Widget lt bobPanedComboBox STANDARD OPTIONS cursor font height width borderWidth relief selectBackground selectForeground See the options n manual entry for details on the standard options WIDGET SPECIFIC OPTIONS helpvariable name helpVariable class Variable The name of the global Tcl variable which is used to display help text i e this
32. Correct the OB and reload it or edit this lt key gt via bob s engineering interface editor Message 16 The parameter lt key gt the lt tplId gt template has the value lt value gt which is supposed to be an integer Its value is either fixed VALUE entry or the DEFAULT value in the Signature file lt tsf gt is also not an integer Please correct the OB and the signature file Category error 10 sec timeout bob blocked till confirmed or timeout only shown for beginners Cause As the message says Cure Correct the OB and or TSF reload the OB or edit this lt key gt via bob s engineering interface editor Message 17 The parameter lt key gt of the lt tplId gt template has the value lt value gt which is supposed to be an integer There is no default value in the signature file lt tsf gt Category error 10 sec timeout bob blocked till confirmed ror timeout only shown for beginners Cause As the message says Remark that this is for a lt key gt which has a NODEFAULT value for the DE FAULT entry in its template signature file Cure Correct the OB and reload it or edit this lt key gt via bob s engineering interface editor Message 18 The parameter lt key gt of the lt tplId gt template is set to lt value gt which should match any of the pattern s lt patterns gt Warning only no corrective actions yet in this version of bob Category warning 10 sec timeout bob b
33. ESO 17220 1332 15 template script needs to be stored in a file which has a seq extension Although most of the times the basename contained in TPL PRESEO will be the same as the one from TPL ID this is not mandatory The label of the template shown on BOB s canvas will contain both if they are different 3 The script file is located searching a set of directories based on the environment variable INS_ROOT Again the value of TPL MODE has an impact on the paths searched 4 This script file is sourced in before a template starts its execution the basename of that file is assumed to be identical to the procedure name contained in it 5 To execute the template the procedure with name as given in 4 gets executed 2 7 1 Template calling procedure access to variables Templates must be written as Tel procedures There are no arguments passed to them BOB takes care that these procedures have automatically access to the keyword variables as local arrays as explained below The information contained in the Observation Block Description in so called Parameter File Format is parsed by BOB and put into arrays for easy access E g the OBD line DET WIN1 BINX 17 will result in a variable DET WIN1 BINX with value 1 These arrays are automatically made accessible to the template script but not its library procedures it uses see below Remark that only the arrays for which keywords are within this OB defined for the current tem p
34. EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY Organisation Europ enne pour des Recherches Astronomiques dans 1 H misphere Austral Europ ische Organisation f r astronomische Forschung in der s dlichen Hemisph re VERY LARGE TELESCOPE VLT Software a HOS Broker for Observation Blocks User Manual Doc No VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 Issue 7 Date 24 04 2007 DRAFT FOR ESO INTERNAL USE ONLY E Allaert 24 04 2007 Prepared A A iaaa Name Date Signature Wirenstrand APDO E Name Date Signature Peron Released een een Name Date Signature VLT PROGRAMME TELEPHONE 49 89 32006 0 FAX 49 89 320 2362 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 111 Change Record Issue Rev Date Section Page affected Reason Initiation Document Remarks 1 0 29 04 1997 All First version 1 1 20 11 1997 Chapter 2 Adapted to current version NOV97 1 2 12 10 1998 Chapter 2 Inclusion of MOBS OCT98 1 3 18 11 1999 2 3 Added configuration options SPR 980658 2 4 New section BOB s preferences 2 7 2 Added setCallBack SPR 980658 and sendObs Keys SPR 990355 2 7 6 New section Search paths 2 13 New section Technical Templates 1 4 06 12 2000 2 2 Added automatic logging SPR 20000234 2 7 2 Added pafReady new version of 1 3 New chapter Troubleshooting 1 5 06 03 2001 2 3 Added OH communication option to configura tion 2 27 03 2002 2 7 2 Added finishOB SPR 20010506
35. ME E Allaert OBS NAME Test MOBS OB 1 OBS GRP OBS ID 125672 OBS START 2002 10 16107 47 36 OBS PROG ID 21 XX 89898 OBS PI COI NAME JE Allaert 1234 Normal myImage fits l 4 33 Dark 33 Add row Columns Cancel Figure 7 The MOBS OB editor with sample data 28 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 met e The first template of the OB can be either an acquisition template or a generic template e all the other templates of the OB are generic templates By extension of the concept of generic templates we will call further on such an OB a generic OB or a MOBS OB Such an OB is dealt with by BOB in a generic fashion independent of the instrument The MOBS OB editor contains 2 distinct parts and the top one is already familiar it is the tab notebook style widget as used for editing normal templates see section 2 10 The parameter which can be edited in this part are 1 The OB parameters like OBS ID 2 The parameters for the acquisition template if and only if the first template is of this type Below this is a table widget with at as many lines as the MOBS OB contains generic templates complement ed with a few empty available lines The table has a minimum of 6 columns in fixed positions on the left of the table These columns are from left to right e A loop counter It tells the generic template script how many times th
36. Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 25 retrieve or set this parameter e g using bobProcNameOH myScheduler to modify the OH process name will trigger the configuration call back with additional argument bobProcNameOH e action commands bobStart bobPause bobContinue bobAbort bobRepeat bobReset bobNextObsBlocks bobSave bobSaveAs bobSoundOn bobPrint bobSnapshot bobInfo bobSaveConfig bobSaveConfigAs Most of these commands correspond to GUI buttons and do not require any arguments There are three notorious exceptions to the latter rule First the bobNextObsBlocks command which can have as arguments either an integer number for the number of OBs to download from OH or the word file optionally followed by a filename to avoid the file selection box to pop up Second resp third exception are the bobSaveAs and bobSaveConfigAs commands which can have a filename as argument also to avoid that a file selection window pops up e status commands audioFailed boolean indicating whether an attempt to play an existing sound file has failed bobVersion version number of bob Remark that this is not necessarily a decimal number as it is the version number manipulated by the cmm tool i e when dealing with a branched off version it will be of the form 1j k 1 configFile filename of the current configuration file interface enumerator showing the type of selected interface 0 Observation mode 1 Eng
37. PLICABLE DOCUMENTS 0 0 0 ccc een nen eee nes 1 La REFERENCE DOCUMENTS Hei ee 1 1 5 ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS 0 0 0000 c ccc teen eens 1 1 5 GLOSSARY sas ea SO Ee ee 2 1 7 STYLISTIC CONVENTIONS cera u 2 2 USER S GUIDE 5 21 OVERVIEW nee AA AA ARA RA E E AAEE 5 22 STARTING BOB Ub taylor a aa a dia ARA 3 23 CONFIGURING BOB ses are rn 7 24 BOBS PREFERENCES ne Nee Ek EE san ah 11 2 5 LOADING AND SAVING OB DESCRIPTIONS 00 cee eee cent eee eee eee 12 2 6 BUNNING AN DB EE EE Re 13 2 7 RULES TIPS AND TRICKS FOR TEMPLATE SCRIPTS 00 ccc ee cee eee eens 15 2 7 1 Template calling procedure access to variables 0 0 cece eee eee eee 15 2 7 2 Communication and logging 0 cect een ences 17 2 7 3 Aborting a running template Script eee eee ees 19 2 7 4 Retumval es uses as sa ee ae ae 19 2 1 9 Library Scripts vicodin en 19 216 Search EEN 20 28 SIMULATION ea ee aaa en er an ae la ba rita da 21 2 8 1 Internal simulation 0 2 0 0 eee ene e nent ne eeeeae 21 2 8 2 External simulation u ha ead hae hae aa re Rae a a ee ee ates 21 2 9 STATUS RETURNED unsern rete iei AR ae era 22 2 9 1 Observation Block Events 22 2 92 Template Events rear ea ae 22 2 10 ENGINEERING INTERFACE ssa R n Raag RR RRR RR RR RRR RRR RRR R 22 2 11 PROGRAMMATIC ACCCESS a ee ceed Ai EE SE Ee ENEE RSS 24 2 11 2 Commands di ee Be ae ee Dee 25 AA A R A R AE ER A 26 2 12 MOBS AND GENERIC TEMPLATES 42H 208 e
38. The subdirectory lib of MODROOT if defined The subdirectory lib of SINTROOT The subdirectory lib of VLTROOT nA A WN ra 2 8 SIMULATION For the purposes of the implementation of template scripts it is useful to have some simulation resulting on the one hand in BOB being independent from the other hard and software and on the other hand in a predict able prompt reaction when a command is sent There are actually two levels of simulation provided by BOB as described below 2 8 1 Internal simulation This level is set by setting the Simulating TPL communication to true see Configuration section 2 3 In this case the template will no longer communicate with OS Instead BOB will short circuit this communica HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 21 tion in the sendCmd procedure and normally return after a certain delay with a reply equal to Ok SIM This delay is also configurable a first group of commands can have a certain delay and all the other com mands get a different delay Typically the commands that reflect the execution of an exposure would have a somewhat longer delay set in first group and most other commands can get a much shorter one See also section 2 3 If any of these delays is set to a value larger than the time out value the template passes on to sendCmd a time out error will occur In this case the error reply will contain simulated reply timeout 2 8 2 External simu
39. This is likely to be a waste of energy as a normal operation of BOB plus scheduler foresees to use only the first of the OBs received and then after execution to request the next e Verbose TPL communication this will log in the Template Messages text box all commands parameters sent by the template script to OS plus corresponding replies Commands are logged in blue OK replies in green error messages and error replies in red Messages logged explicitly by the template script itself and the starting exposure message remain in black the standard foreground colour and are always underlined 1 Currently this process initializes itself with the name schedule HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 9 e Simulate TPL communication this will short circuit the communication between BOB and OS This means that commands sent by the template script to OS will always return successfully with some configurable delay Remark that this type of simulation is without the intervention of any external simulation process all short cuts are taken by BOB itself All these configuration menu options appear also on the Configuration panel see Figure 4 Configuration items which are in the configuration panel but not under the Configure menu of BOB s main panel are The Environment and Process names of both OH and OS see above These are the names under which they run in the CCS environment The Behaviour of
40. WAIT for the exposure to finish this time with a sufficiently large timeout and return 2 12 4 An example acquisition template script for MOBS The first template of a MOBS OB can be either an acquisition template or a generic template One possibility is to define within such acquisition template a mode of observation i e a reference setup file and not worry about it any further for the rest ofthe OB On top of that we could at that stage already define a default value for the timeout of the SETUP command The contents of a template which does nothing more than that is given below This template called MMS has 2 parameters of category SEQ namely SEQ SETUP FILE and SEQ SETUP TIMEOUT The corresponding template signature file and script are both installed under VLTROOT templates forBOB mobs as part of the installation of the bob software module Example acquisition template script proc MMS setResult refSetupFile SEQ SETUP FILE setResult timeout SEQ SETUP TIMEOUT tplLog MMS finished return 2 13 TECHNICAL TEMPLATES Up to this point we have considered the use of BOB as a tool to execute real OBs imported from the Data Flow world OBs contain templates and each of these templates contain instructions for the OS process of the instrument it is controlling This communication with OS is taken care of by BOB BOB is actually not interested in knowing whether the OS process it is talking to is really an OS or
41. YPE entries in the lt tsf gt are mandatory Cure Correct the tsf and reload the OB Message 24 The template signature file lt tsf gt assigns no value to the lt key gt VALUE nor lt key gt DEFAULT keywords Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause As the message says Either the DEFAULT or VALUE entry should be defined Cure Correct the tsf and reload the OB Message 25 The template signature file lt tsf gt assigns the value lt type gt to the lt key gt TYPE keyword This is not a legal type Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause As the message says Cure Correct the tsf and reload the OB Message 26 The template signature file lt tsf gt has an illegal format there is no TPL PARAM Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause As the message says Cure Correct the tsf and reload the OB Message 27 The TPL ID lt tplId gt is not in the correct format Check the TPL dictionary lt TPL dictionary gt This template is illegal and cannot be coped with Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause the lt tplId gt is passed as part of the OB It should be in the format of lt context gt lt name gt lt version gt or lt name gt see ESO VLT DIC TPL Cure Correct the OB and reload it Message 28 There is a problem with some lt category gt parameters of this template HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 172
42. an be done via either the En abled checkbutton at the top of this section or the BOB toolbar button below Preferences Of course that on its turn requires that the audio server pointed to by default or via the corresponding entry field is properly functioning for details on audio see 5 The filenames of the sound files need to have their extension includ ed in these entry fields Current supported file formats are WAV MP3 AU SND AIFF SMP and RAW bi nary as BOB relies on the audio module for playing sounds this list of formats is actually determined by the audio module The bottom section of this preferences panel allows to configure the messages to log when a reply is received on a WAIT command sent to OS according to the option that is passed along with this WAIT command The options are specified in the left column while the text is entered in the right column The resulting log text for a matching option will be exposure lt exposureNr gt of lt nrOfExposures gt lt text gt lt timeS tamp gt whereby lt text gt is as defined in the right column If a WAIT command is issued for which there is no match as far as its accompanying options are concerned the log text upon receiving areply will be ended exposure lt exposureNr gt of lt nrOfExposures gt lt timeStamp gt Remark that the option matching is done using regular expressions so in order to match any amount of whitespace one should specify s T
43. any other process that responds properly to the commands it receives This means we can have templates designed e g to talk to ICS combine them together and declare their arguments in an OBD and have them executed by BOB Of course the rules imposed by BOB for use of templates and template signature files for dealing with hierarchical keywords return values etc must be respected see also section 2 7 As long as this is the case one can benefit from the features offered by BOB also for tasks which in reality have very little to do with Data Flow and real OBs For that reason this type of templates is qualified as technical templates As an example let s assume we want to send a single SETVAL command to a process The parameter of this command is supposedly a single integer in the range 100 1000 and we want to pass this parameter to the template as an argument We can easily create a template signature file for that purpose PAF HDR START gt Marks start of header 1 see document 1 for more detailed info on the syntax structure and content of template signature files 30 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 PAF HDR END The next set of keywords up to TPL RESOURCES are mandatory The assigned values need to be adjusted for each signature file TPL INSTRUM TEST This is a template for WORKSHOP TPL MODE N Not applicable for WORKSHOP TPL VERSION 0 1 alpha any string TPL REFSUP Ns
44. ate cannot be executed and you will have to reload the OB to which it belongs after making the sequencer script available Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause As the message says Either the file pointed to by TPL PRESEQ was not found or TPL PRESEQ was not defined and lt tplId gt seq could not be found Cure Make the proper seq file available and reload the OB Message 2 Could not find the template signature file for lt tplId gt This template cannot be executed and you will have to reload the OB to which it belongs after making the template signature file available Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause the template signature file is searched for based on the lt tplId gt name i e lt tplId gt tsf eventually tak ing the INS MODE into account as defined in the OB Apparently this file is not found It is searched for under SINS_ROOT lt insMode gt TEMPLATES TSF and INS_ROOT COMMON TEMPLATES TSF Cure Correct either the lt tplId gt or make lt tplId gt tsf available Message 3 Error lt message gt while dealing with parameter lt key gt of the lt tplId gt template type paramfile Please correct and re load this OB Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause As the lt message gt says Cure Let yourself lead by the lt message gt 42 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 Message 4 The keyword TPL lt key gt i
45. ate terminates i e that the remaining templates should be skipped Optionally the OB termination status sent to OH default TERMINATED can be indicated as an argument to this procedure Of course this needs to be consistent with what OH can expect for this instrument i e with what is written in the instrument summary file 9 pafReady To send an event to OH signalling the readiness of some PAF files OH can after receiving this event decide to retrieve these files at a later point in time Remark that this event will always be sent to OH independent from BOB s configuration setting for the sending of the automatically generated OB TPL status events 10 seeBobVars This makes a series of variables created owned by BOB accessible as local variables to the invoking template library procedure Currently the only variables are the category arrays as described in section 2 7 1 Remark that these variables are made automatically accessible at the level of the template script itself so calling seeBobVars at the level of the template script itself will lead to errors complaining about already existing variables 18 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 This procedure can also take the optional argument localcopy lt categories gt in which case the list of lt categories gt will appear as local arrays This procedure can be called from any namespace thereby making these BOB vars available in that namespace however
46. ch path for the template script will be 1 INS_ROOT INS USER lt insMode gt TEMPLATES SEQ 2 INS_ROOT INS USER lt insMode gt SEQUENCES 3 INS_ROOT INS_USER COMMON TEMPLATES SEQ 4 SINS_ROOT SINS USER COMMON SEQUENCES In case the environment variable INS_USER was not set INS_USER will be replaced by SYSTEM Paths 2 and 4 are there for backward compatibility purposes only users are encouraged to put their template script files in either path 1 or 3 2 7 6 3 Sound files The subdirectory sounds of the current working directory i e when BOB was started The subdirectory sounds of the parent of the current working directory The subdirectory sounds of MODROOT if defined The subdirectory sounds of INTROOT nA A U N ra The subdirectory sounds of VLTROOT 2 7 6 4 Template library scripts These are directories named as lib lt name gt tcl which contain a set of Tcl procedures and a corresponding tclIndex file as generated by the VLT Makefile see sections 2 3 and 2 7 5 A list of such libraries can be specified via BOB s configuration panel Remark however that in this entry field only lt name gt must be given excluding the lib prefix and tcl extension In this case the corresponding Tcl library directory lib lt name gt tcl will be searched for in The subdirectory lib of the current working directory i e when BOB was started The subdirectory lib of the parent of the current working directory
47. cumented requirement to get all these OBS keywords sent automatically to OS If you cannot live with this mechanism you should use the convenience procedure sendObsKeys to get them across see section 2 7 2 In the absence of this new OBS info and depending on how your OS is implemented your OS may just insert the OBS START of the previous OB which is not the value you expect b You use the START_NO_OS command to explicitly avoid sending of these keywords to OS No surprises here c You press the Reset Status on the bob panel lower right button after executing the acquisition template and then start the OB again this time skipping the acquisition template Again the result is what has been asked for 3 1 7 Operational states Q11 When I abort a running exposure via the OS panel bob doesn t seem to realize that this hap pens and flags a normal termination of the template How can that be A typical template should after starting an exposure issue a WAIT command to OS This command should only return when the exposure is finished indicating in its reply the exposure status as an integer see the expStatus database attribute as defined in 4 It is then up to the template to interpret this status and eventually to return with an error command instead of return Using this error command 38 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 the OB will be aborted Using the return
48. d the OB If there are more than OBs loaded and when BOB is idle the next OB to execute can be selected by clicking mouse button 1 on its label There can be several FITS ops logs during the running of an OB e g when it starts and stops and also when a new OB gets loaded Remark that this requires the OBS and TPL dictionaries to be loaded into logManager this is not done by bob itself On top of the ops logs generated automatically by bob at particular occasions template scripts themselves may also create ops logs see section 2 7 2 2 7 RULES TIPS AND TRICKS FOR TEMPLATE SCRIPTS As all the other files and formats involved in the execution of OBs template scripts need to comply with a cer tain set of rules which are outlined in documents 1 and 4 Based on these assumptions the search for a template script that gets called for a certain template takes place as follows 1 The keyword TPL ID in the OBD allows to determine the name of the template signature file The latter needs to have a tsf extension This template signature file is then searched for in a number of directories under INS_ROOT Remark that the setting of the keyword TPL MODE in the OBD can influence this search see 4 2 The template signature file must contain the keyword TPL PRESEQ This keyword contains the filename of the template script excluding the pathname and with or without the seq extension Remark that the HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN
49. defined by pressing the Col umns action button and selecting the set of additional keywords to display When the OK button is pressed only the keywords and values of the columns displayed are saved i e not the ones of the columns which were removed 2 12 3 The Generic Template Script The execution of a MOBS OB is based on the generic template script This script is not instrument specific and is therefore picked up form a central place rather than from a directory under SINA ROOT It is supplied and installed together with its template signature file as part of the bob software module Once bob was in stalled the generic template script is accessible The tasks executed by the generic template script are as follows in the order as listed e determine a timeout value see section 2 12 2 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 29 e determine the name of the reference setup file If for this generic template no reference setup file was given use the one defined before within the same OB construct a SETUP command including the name of the reference and partial setup files and the other keyword value pairs which are part of the observation block description for this template e send this SETUP command to OS For this purpose the sendCmd is used see section 2 7 2 with a timeout as calculated before OS will return an exposure Id e Use this expold to START the exposure using the same timeout e Use this expold to
50. ding this START to OS insert a SETUP command to pass on all OBS and TPL keywords that should be written into the FITS header of each exposure One of these keywords is TPL EXPNO i e the sequential number of this exposure within the template with the counter starting from 1 b START NO OS If for particular applications like engineering the above mentioned insertion of an additional SETUP command would be disturbing the START NO OS command should be used instead of START A typical scenario for this is when BOB is used in engineering mode straight with DCS Of course DCS does not have the OBS and TPL keywords in its dictionary and consequently would complain if it receives them Using the START_NO_OS instead there is no such problem One could actually say that BOB together with the proper OBs and templates behave in this case to some extent as a replacement for OS HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 17 c WAIT This command is simply filtered to detect when to display messages in BOB that the current exposure was finished i e after the final reply to WAIT came in 2 tplLog This allows to log some messages in the template text box at the lower part of the BOB GUI Remark that this will also be recorded into the automatic log stored in VLTDATA tmp bob_ lt procNameOoS gt 1og like all other messages that end up in the Template Log area 3 checkAbortFlag A procedure to check if BOB s ABORT button was pre
51. e OT Observing Tool P2PP Phase II Proposal Preparation System SW Software TBD To Be Defined VCS VLT Control Software 2 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 VLT Very Large Telescope WS Workstation 1 6 GLOSSARY Observation Block A high level view of VLT operations An observation block is the smallest schedulable observational unit for the VLT It is a rather complex entity containing all information necessary to execute sequentially and without interruption a set of correlated exposures involving a single target i e a single telescope preset It contains a o one or more template calls i e it describes what templates to call with which parameters Consequently during Phase II Proposal Preparation observers will have to build observation blocks using the tools provided for that purpose by selecting templates defining parameters and giving additional parameters for scheduling and data reduction The contents of an Observation block is reflected in ASCII format by a so called Observation Block Description Phase II Proposal Preparation The P2PP system assists the user in preparing Observation Blocks sequence Sequencer script a set of commands in Sequencer language generally intended to define and execute a series of related observations These sequences are to be interpreted by a sequencer shell Tcl Tk Tool command language Toolkit A general purpose scripting language designed and implemented by Dr Joh
52. e dialog box will pop up indicating this If the user level is set to advanced this message will also contain an error stack trace Foldable items i e items which contain more viewable information are indicated on the canvas with a small triangle which at the same time indicates the status of folding The un folding is simply performed by clicking with the mouse button 1 on this triangle see Figure 4 OBs and templates can be marked with e a STOP sign only possible if not yet executed e areject sign to flag that the OB template needs to be skipped e an arrow in flashy colours the OB template is being executed e a dark blue arrow the OB template has been paused a green diamond all went fine full completion e askull the OB template was aborted Remark that aborting a template leads immediately to the abortion of its OB e ared flag some error was returned by one of the templates This is usually because OS returned an error When this happens an error dialogue box will pop up signalling this problem Once an OB is finished either successfully or with error it cannot be executed again For the time being there is a Reset status action button which will reset the status of all OBs and templates on the canvas so they can be re executed while maintaining the flow control settings breakpoints and skip flags To start an OB fully afresh i e without flow control flags as set before one should instead re loa
53. e exposure defined on this line needs to be repeated and its default value is 1 Remark that the full SETUP command including reference to the various setup files is normally sent only once before the first exposure starts Subsequent exposures will be preceded by a SETUP command without any arguments in order to retrieve an exposure id This standard behaviour can be modified by using a negative value for the loop counter in this case the full SETUP command will be repeated for every exposure e The timeout value in seconds for the setup command to OS which the generic template script will construct from the collection of all parameters on this line If for a line this field is left blank the timeout value taken by the generic template script will be the one previously defined within the same OB possibly also in the acquisition template see section 2 12 4 for an example If no such parameter has been defined a default of 30 seconds is applied e The name of the reference setup file for this observation This will determine the list of parameters which can appear as additional columns see further The partial setup files for INS DET and TEL setup The existence of any other columns beyond these six and their meaning depends on the contents of the Ob servation Block Description The MOBS OB editor will show every keyword it has found in this description as a separate column It is possible to add new columns or remove some already
54. e lee 27 2 12 1 What MOBS and Generic Templates are 27 2 12 2 The MOBS Engineering Interface Editor 28 2 12 3 The Generic Template Script 0 0 0 ccc cette ttn n ees 29 2 12 4 An example acquisition template script for MOBS 0 ee ee 30 2 13 TECHNICALTEMPLATIES 0 0 cent nee nen ene 30 2 14 PARAMPILE KEY WORDS nn Hs eer neds EE Roe PH Ree eS 32 2 123 SNAPSHOTS un ee innate eee ENEE ee RES e E 33 3 TROUBLESHOOTING 35 3 1 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 2 1 0 0 00 0c cece eee ecee cece eeseneeeneeeens 35 vi HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 3 1 1 Installation ee terreri ee ur ee a Ben 35 3 1 2 s E psc v4 2 5 4 Gi erat Ga behead Deckers Soe eis ee ea eines 35 3 1 3 Template Scripts esse ia T ead sak nenne een ee 36 3 1 4 Template signature Dies 36 SLD SONS ns ee ede EEN 37 3 1 6 FITS header information 37 3 1 7 Operational StateS ooooooccoooooorrr 38 3 1 8 Engineening mode u a a a ehe 38 4 REFERENCE 4 4l ERBOR MESSAGES 5d er RER 41 4 1 1 OB Template creation 2 eect teen e ences 4 4 1 2 OB Template editing sist coo ee rimeni ei ene daa as 48 4 1 3 OB Execution anne ERAN Ee AA A a E erc d 48 4 1 4 Selecting Loading of OBs or obd nes 51 AND VAMOS Ate ee an ne ee 52 42 MANPAGES Ee sci ern E 54 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 1 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1 PURPOSE This document is the User Manual for the HOS Broker for Observation Blocks ve
55. e sequencer script 3 TPL ID has illegal format 10 Error returned by the template 11 Template was aborted at OS level Template scripts should return the following way with proper values return lt RA gt lt Dec gt for successfully terminated acquisition templates with lt RA gt and lt Dec gt the coordinates of the acquired object both in degrees as a float number identical to how the primary FITS keywords RA and DEC are written return or return without value if all went OK for all but acquisition templates 59 60 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 error message if there is some error within the template or an error returned from the OS level e g ABORT The setting of the ABORT flag within BOB causes the template to skip SETUP and START commands When the template sees the abort flag see above it should return an ACK ABORT getEditedData returns the edited data in the form of raw template data getExpNr returns a list with the current exposure number and the number of exposures TPL EXPNO resp TPL NEXP getTplId returns TPL ID used to make nice tabs label wile editing an OB getTplType returns TPL TYPE init_editRawData lt pathName gt lt cats gt lt pars gt initializes the TPL editor widget lt pathName gt with the data as indicated by the two optional args lt cats gt name of a single keyword category to be edited or the word all to include all categories Default all
56. e to the error indicated in the message Actually that this template signa ture file was missing should have been signalled already when the OB was loaded Cure Make the template signature file for this lt tplId gt availabel and reload the OB Message 43 This keyword s value is too long to edit directly on the canvas If you re sure you want to modify this value edit the entire category template or OB instead Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause This is when bob has truncated a value on the canvas appending trailing dots to where it truncated be cause this value contained too many characters It is error prone to try to edit such strings directly on the canvas Cure Follow the instructions contained in the message Message 44 You have to load an Observation Block before it can be started Category error 5 sec timeout bob blocked till confirmed or timeout Cause This is when the start button gets pressed before an OB has been loaded i e just after bob was start ed Cure Load an OB before attempting to press start Message 45 You have to select an Observation Block before it can be started Category error 5 sec timeout bob blocked till confirmed or timeout Cause This is when the start button gets pressed before an OB has been selected i e with multiple OBs loaded Cure Select an OB before attempting to press start HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 133
57. eady selected or not Note that all selected objects need to be of the same type i e BOB will not permit to select OBs together with templates If parameter editing is on clicking this middle mouse button on a single parameter will allow to edit the value straight on the canvas via a standard entry widget with the usual key bindings Pressing the lt Enter gt key is required to accept the value while lt Esc gt will cancel this editing If on the other hand the middle mouse but ton is clicked over an OB or template label or on a keyword category such as TEL a new mega widget will pop up allowing to modify the entire set of corresponding values see Figure 6 When the edited values are Bob keyword editor etel6 O OO O O Th TPL PRESEQ SATO1 seq Te TYPE acquisition TPL RESOURCES DE brb D SATOL TPL OVERHEAD 17 0 TPL DID ESO VLT DIC TPL 1 4 TPL NAME Target in field center and use guide star TPL INSTRUM SUSI TPL NEXP BL TPL EXECTIME 180 TPL MODE TPL REFSUP SATO1 ref TPL GUI TPL START TPL DID JESO VLT DIC TPL 1 4j 7 accept values and close panel g anna OK Figure 6 The megawidget for editing template parameters accepted this section of the OBD will again be verified using the same procedures as for a newly read in OBD labels on the canvas will get updated etc The selection of this Engineering interface will be password protected once the Tru
58. eated by the template script Although BOB can in principle ensure that keywords are read only it will not enforce this for backward compatibility reasons apart from logging messages as described above BOB will continue as normal It is mandatory for every template script that contains some hardcoded exposures i e the amount of which is unknown to BOB to set the total number of exposures in the variable TPL NEXP before starting the first one and to adjust it during the execution as this value gets affected by runtime conditions E g for a template which loops SEQ NEXPO times over an exposure setup and execution and has three more hardcoded expo sures we need set TPL NEXP expr SEQ NEXPO 3 This is for BOB the only way to know how many exposures there will be in total BOB uses this value to show it in the message next to the OB identifier exposure X of nnn and in the Template Log when it starts executing an exposure Starting exposure X of nnn By default BOB assumes there is only one ex posure in a template script 2 7 2 Communication and logging There are basically 10 convenience procedures available from BOB 1 sendCmd This has to be used for whatever communication with OS A direct call via seg msgSendCommand is not allowed Remark that BOB tries to filter out three particular command names as they require and receive a special treatment a START When BOB sees this command it will before forwar
59. ed which is not in the OBD The obd files are there for cases where you don t have P2PP e g during development testing Their content however has to be identical to what P2PP would send i e their syntax has to be correct no stories about parameters which in this case can be dropped etc Bob will complain as it should about all parameters defined in the TSF and absent in the OBD also if in the TSF their DEFAULT value has been declared with NODEFAULT Bob will however create the correspond ing variable which will allow editing The recommended clean solution addressing the need for an editable parameter is in any case an obd file which does contain also the keywords whose value you want to change 3 1 5 Sounds 08 Running bob on an audio equipped HP X station bob crashed when I clicked on the enable HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 37 disable sounds icon with a segmentation fault Is this a bug in bob There is a known problem on HP X terminals with some versions of the Audio server software which these terminals normally download at boot time from their server workstation This bug makes any program ac cessing the audio hardware core dump There is a patch from Hewlett Packard for this Audio server soft ware available which gets installed on a workstation when the normal installation procedure is followed Remark however that some X terminals boot from a flash ROM card and consequently do not
60. erpreted as relative to the home directory If this file exists 1t will be read by BOB at start up 1 e BOB will start up with the configuration that was last saved into that file Otherwise BOB will try to give some reasonable default values to these parameters A similar scheme is applied for the Preferences The Preferences panel can be triggered via the Configura tion menu or the palette button on the toolbar The purpose and contents of the Preferences panel is ex plained in section 2 4 2 4 BOB S PREFERENCES There are several settings of BOB which do not require any adjustment in order to have BOB operating and behaving correctly These have been grouped in a Preferences panel which will pop up when the toolbar but ton below Configure is pressed The panel which will then be displayed is shown in Figure 3 There are currently 3 sections in this panel font definitions sound related settings and log texts for the OS WAIT command In the former one can set the fonts for the labels ofthe OB canvas and TPL messages text box the text within the OB canvas the upper part of BOB s main panel the text within the template log area the lower part of BOB s main panel the dialog boxes showing warning or error messages and finally the editor panels used during editing of OBs templates within engineering mode see section 2 10 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 11 ee Fonts ae lM Pane labels helv
61. eter can be specified it is in practice impossible to classify a priori such exposures and to ap HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 27 ply e g a pre defined reduction recipe on the resulting images In the implementation of MOBS within BOB there is of course a clear mapping between the MOBS table and the generic templates a MOBS Observation Block corresponds to a MOBS table and each line of the table corresponds with a generic template Through this mapping the features already implemented in BOB can be exported to the execution of a MOBS table alias a set of generic templates e g e the table can be expanded unfolded or folded as any OB containing templates e a breakpoint can be inserted before a particular line in the table is executed e any line of the table can be skipped during execution Of course the availability of these and other features has been one of the prime driving factors to integrate the MOBS concepts into BOB 2 12 2 The MOBS Engineering Interface Editor The engineering interface editor for a MOBS table differs substantially from the one for normal templates see section 2 10 This is because a MOBS Observation Block can largely be presented by a table and a ta ble widget is much more compact and surveyable than a set of pages in notebook BOB will pop up this MOBS Editor see Figure 7 instead of the standard one if the following conditions are Test MOBS 0B 1 WTE OBS PI COI NA
62. etica 15 This is asam OB canvas fixed 12 This is a sa Tpl logs clean 13 This is a sample Dialog box 1ew century schoolbook 14 This is a sample Editor panel courier 13 This is a sa Sounds I Enabled Server 1 verify at init Volume apply _ at start up 0 100 S for all sounds Error pa Warning JsoundsWarningau Breakpoint breakpointau sts sS End of tpl ESCH End of OB flush au EEEEE Mapping of WAIT command options to text Option i Log text cond s CanBeginNextObs partially done ready for ne cond s CanBeginNextObs partially done ready for ne verify the proper operation of the audio server at start up 2 L OK Apply Save Cancel Figure 3 BOB s preferences panel In the middle part of the preferences panel one can select the audio server indicate whether its proper func tioning should be tested at start up or not set the audio volume and determine at what occasion this volume should be applied Remember though that it is necessary to press the Apply or Save button to enforce these settings e g merely moving the volume slider will have no effect on the volume until either of these latter buttons has been pressed In this part of the panel one can also point to the sound files to be played when particular events occur Remark that this requires the sound to be enabled This c
63. fault empty no help rightentrystate name rightEntryState class State Specifies the state for the right entry field Can be normal i e 57 58 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 editable disabled or readonly Default normal scrollbar name scrollbar class Scrollbar Controls the presence of a vertical scrollbar to the right of the entry listbox It can take the value on off or auto In the latter case the scrollbar will appear only if the listboxes contain more elements than fit in a single view Default auto CAUTIONS when scrollbar is set to auto the need for a scrollbar is evaluated when data are inserted in the listboxed For the listbox sizes returned by Tk to be correct it is needed that this widget is being displayed This may not be the case if it is e g part of a tabnotebook page In this case one should either make sure this page is displayed or opt for the on or off value instead of auto SEE ALSO options n Last change 23 05 05 10 02 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 BobTPL n NAME BobTPL base class for template objects SYNOPSIS BobTPL lt obj_name gt auto lt rawData gt lt obdSource gt lt canvas gt lt scrolledText gt lt initialObsInfo gt lt tplNr gt lt args gt DESCRIPTION defines template objects inherits BobBaseObject METHODS constructor contruct the BobBaseObject and do the store in array always
64. ggle i e the breakpoint is removed by clicking again Putting a breakpoint on an OB means it will enter into pause before any of its templates starts Putting a breakpoint on a template means it will enter into pause before the template script is started Pressing again mouse button 3 on an OB or template with a breakpoint will change this breakpoint into a skip flag Le if during execution such a flag is seen the OB resp template will be skipped A third mouse button 3 press on such an item will put it back into its normal idle state Note that if more than one OB template is currently selected this toggling between normal breakpoint and skip will be applied to all selected OBs templates if the right mouse button is clicked while the mouse 14 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 pointer is over any of these selected objects The instructions on how to select multiple OBs templates can be found in section 2 10 When a template is executing it can write some log messages to the template text box lower part of panel It should at least indicate what the important actions are The start of an exposure is automatically intercepted by BOB and a corresponding log message is displayed Every template keeps record of its own text and this can be displayed by clicking with mouse button 1 on the template label If during the execution of the template script an error occurs within this script a messag
65. he Abort flag has been set by pressing the Abort button This can speed up considerably the response time to the Abort button see 2 7 3 The character can be entered as a wildcard for all commands while commands preceded by a dash indicate an exclusion from this skip list Call backs the scripts to execute at termination of an OB template or when a configuration parameter is modified The definition of the template call back can be overridden programmatically in e g the template script itself via a call to the setCallBack convenience procedure see section 2 7 2 For the OB call back on the other hand there is no similar convenience procedure These OB template call backs will be executed independent from the exit status of their OB resp template i e even when the OB template fails the call back will be evaluated Remark that these call backs should not be seen as an extension of the template s functionality e g to prepare start exposures Instead they should be considered as internal housekeeping functions Their typical use is to log the template s or OB s termination or to put the instrument in a safe state They will be executed after the template s resp OB s termination status has been communicated to the Scheduler OH OT The template call backs will not skip any commands after the ABORT key has been pressed independent of the configuration setting explained in the section above on Communication with OS This allows t
66. he initial implementation of BOB considered its interactive use as a GUI only It became quickly clear how ever that there is a definite interest in programmatic access to BOB s functionality be it by sending it CCS messages or alternatively by starting it up as a shell passing it a script to execute or even running it interac tively in prompt mode Consequently there was first a somewhat limited shell implementation of BOB called bobWish followed by enabling the sending of commands e g to start an OB via CCS to the standard BOB and the addition of the lt script File gt run string parameter see also section 2 2 This means that alternatively to using the standard BOB GUI commands can be given in a typed interactive form or grouped together in a script using a set of specific bob Wish commands This enables the creation of different applications with a BOB like behaviour based on these bob Wish commands or even to execute OBs via modem connections without having to deal with the X traffic generated by BOB s GUI as explained below A useful and typical application of bob Wish is a bob Wish script dealing with the automatic execu tion of one or more OBs as part of a non interactive maintenance procedure In the following section a list of publicly available commands are listed giving access to most of BOB s set tings This is the only supported API for retrieving or modifying these settings 2 11 1 Commands The follow
67. hich produces this log there is neither a call to sendObsKeys nor a sendCmd START This is all based on the assumptions for which BOB was designed i e to deal with templates which start ex posures talking to an OS This turned out to be not always the case in particular not for technical templates and acquisition templates without exposures which will then also produce this log Hence future versions of BOB could be modified to deal with this situation 018 What s the purpose of editing keywords which are supposed to have a fixed value assigned via a VALUE entry in their template signature file This is for the purposes that Bob s OB editor was created i e engineering So typically if you want to tune these values you d edit them via the engineering mode and after determining an optimum value you d put this value back into the VALUE entry of the template signature file Remark however that after the editing of an OB or template the resulting OB will be again checked against the t sf file Now if this modified keyword has a value which is different from what the tsf dictates via the VALUE entry bob will flag this by popping up a warming This warning will appear independent of the user level and will stay up for 15 seconds or until acknowledged OK pressed whichever comes first Just to make sure that this cannot ever be considered a standard procedure 019 A technical OB with many templates failed half
68. iable RTAPENV The fields for the process names can contain a second list element in which case this element will be used as process identifier part of the label for the OB canvas see Figure 1 If for OS there is no such label given bob will try to find out the instrument id by interrogating the OS process first it willsend a STATUS function INS ID command and if this fails a FORWARD subSystem ICS command STATUS arguments 1 INS ID command If and only if both these commands do not return any useful information the OS pro cess name itself will be used in this label for the OB canvas Remark that new entries in all these comboboxes can be saved in their respective listbox showing up when the arrow is pressed by pressing the lt Enter gt key An entry can be removed from a listbox by selecting it so it appears in the entry field preceding it with a mi nus sign and then pressing lt Enter gt It should be noted that the label of the OB canvas reflects the status of the currently displayed OB I e chang ing the OH process name via the configuration panel will not be reflected by this label until a new OB is fetched from OH On the other hand changing the OS process name will be shown immediately as this does affect the currently displayed OB Remark that the short help text for the vertical toolbar top button to fetch an OB contains the information where the OB will be fetched from and the fourth button to start an OB wil
69. iles e g the VALUE keywords After this ver ification combination took place there is for a template script no way to tell the difference between a keyword which was defined in the OB by P2PP OT versus one which had its value fixed in its corresponding t sf file unless you start of course with your own analysis of the t sf file 3 1 4 Template signature files 07 I want to force the user engineer to edit some keyword values after he loads an OBD Can I do this by leaving the keyword out of the OBD and by setting the DEFAULT value of a key word to NODEFAULT in the template signature file This is an invalid approach The value NODEFAULT for the DEFAULT keyword in a template signature file is intended to show that there is no reasonable default value see 1 it is not a flag to anyone that this keyword should be defined after loading the OB It has been introduced for the purposes of P2PP which will in this case force the users to enter a value Which means none of these keywords are left undefined in the re sulting Observation Block by the time it gets to bob Defining a keyword after loading a template is actually explicitly forbidden by the ICD see 1 All key words must be defined in the OBD with the possible exception of the ones with a valid i e matching the cor responding TYPE DEFAULT or VALUE keyword in their resp template signature file NODEFAULT cannot be abused as a flag to have a keyword creat
70. ineering mode interpreter gives the Tcl interpreter name i e bob or bobWish this permits scripts to distinguish between a graphical and non graphical interface obdFile filename absolute path of the loaded technical OB or empty if the OB was retrieved from OH obdSource string indicating the source of the OB can have the values OH or file These commands are all declared in the namespace bob To have them available in the global namespace one should call the procedure bobMakeUi t ProcsGlobal Remark however that this is not recommended to avoid name clashes and avoid pollution of namespaces in particular the global one it is better to use the ful ly qualified commandnames with the bob prefix 2 11 2 bobWish All runstring parameters which can be passed to BOB see section 2 2 are also accepted by bobWish bob Wish retrieves its configuration the same way as BOB does i e the file bobrc or the file specified with the configFile option and these settings can also be modified via commands An overview of the special bobWish commands are given at the start up of an interactive run try bobWish at your terminal to see or have a look at the bobWish manpage in section 4 2 The command bobSetup within bobWish shows the list of modifiable parameters listed with the command name to change them Remark that bobWish does not provide an engineering mode nor any command relat ed to this mode as the purpose is e
71. ing list contains the commands available at script level from bob and bobWish calling these proce dures has the same effect as interactively executing the corresponding GUI function like e g pressing the Start OB button or calling the configuration panel e configuration preferences commands bobProcNameoH bobProcNameOHlist bobEnvNameos bobEnvNameOSlist bobEnvNameOH bobEnvNameOHlist bobProcNameOS bobProcNameOSlist bobUserLevel bobRunAll bobAutoUnfold bobGetNext bobAutoCreateTpl tplEvents tplSim tplVerbose tplInternals tplSimList tplSpeDelay tplDefDelay tplSkipList tplCallBack bobCallBack bobCfgCallback tplLibList bobCfgFile bobPrintCmd bobPlugin bobPluginFlag bobTitleFont bobCanvasFont bobLogFont bobDialogFont bobEditorFont bobSoundon bobSoundVolume bobSoundHeadphones bobSoundSpeaker bobSoundLineOut bobErrorSound bobWarningSound bobBreakpointSound bobTplSound bobObSound bobWaitOptions These commands correspond with the fields in BOB s configuration and preferences panel see 2 3 resp 2 4 When given without arguments they return the current setting They can also be given a single argument in which case this value will be ser into the corresponding configuration variable Remark that modifying a configuration setting can trigger a call back see section 2 3 The name of the configuration variable that will be passed to this call back corresponds to the commandname used to HOS BOB User
72. ion box will appear to get a filename If the filename given does not have a obd extension BOB will append one to the filename When the OBD is loaded BOB will show its contents and allows you to perform several actions on it like e fold unfold the information an arrow pointing to the right indicates there is more information hidden underneath and clicking on it will unfold to the next level flag that a particular OB or template should be skipped or that BOB must pause when it gets to that point e select one or more particular OBs or templates to display their logs logs are empty at the beginning and get filled as execution proceeds An example of this is shown in Figure 4 Remark that the label of an OB and its templates contains information which is taken from the OBD and the template signature files This includes the ID of OBs and templates 1 This is an engineering mode which is not to be used as a standard observation practise as it actually renders the OB useless for further dataflow pipeline processing For that reason this feature may not be globally availa ble in future releases of BOB HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 13 5 OBs file gt bob gt FLAMES amp Next observation blocks Ki Y Test OB 1 59 A 0745 Chavan gt SATO1 Target in field center and use guide star SOT02 Imaging in jitter mode DET READ SPEED normal Ka WIN 1 BINX
73. l say where it sends the template commands to The action corresponding to the top button on the toolbar is influenced by the settings for OH if either the en vironment name or process name is left blank BOB will assume you want to retrieve files from disk instead of retrieving them from OH Part of the configuration can be set directly via the Configuration menu of BOB s main panel i e without pressing Environment and invoking the configuration panel All of the following configuration menu op tions can be selected directly e Run all OBs if more than one OB has been downloaded this option will make sure that they are all executed one after the other unless there is some error or operator intervention Auto request OBs when set this will cause BOB to request automatically for the next OB when the current one is finished Remark that if an OBD is loaded from a file while the OH procname is blank and the auto request option is set then BOB will reset the OBs when the last one has been executed and start all over again in other words BOB will loop infinitely e Auto unfold when set the information shown on the canvas about the OB and its templates will automatically unfold as they are executed and fold back when finished unless the OB templates were explicitly unfolded before the start in which case they remain as they were e Create all TPLs this will create and check to some extent all the templates of all OBs
74. lLog About to send SETVAL command set reply sendCmd timeout SETVAL SSEOQ VALUE return We can put this technical template into an OBD In fact the example below calls this template twice with dif HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 31 ferent arguments Standard parameter file header PAF HDR START A H Marks start of header PAF TYPE OB Description Type of parfile PAF ID K Unused PAF NAME TT Unused PAF DESC Ra Unused PAF CRTE NAME BOB Broker for OBs PAF CRTE DAYTIM 1999 04 20T11 54 34 Date time of creation PAF LCHG NAME 2 Unused PAF LCHG DAYTIM 1999 04 20T11 54 34 Date time of last change PAF CHCK NAME nz Unused PAF CHCK DAYTIM KE Unused PAF CHCK CHECKSUM vn Unused PAF HDR END Marks end of header Observation Block description follows first come the keywords belonging to the OB itself up to OBS PROG ID OBS ID 125672 OBS PI COI NAME Allaert OBS GRP nn OBS NAME workshop OB 1 OBS PROG ID ThisIsMyId Ist TPL TPL ID waTemplate TPL NAME Workshop demo template SEQ VALUE 444 2nd TPL TPL ID waTemplate TPL NAME Workshop demo template GEO VALUE 555 The only remaining task now is to configure BOB properly with its partner data the name under which this partner process registered itself with CCS and its environment name need to be inserted into BOB
75. late are made accessible plus the DPR array The TPL array contains the TPL parameters set by the Obser vation Block Description plus the ones defined in the signature file e g TPL REFSUP for the instrument reference setup file The following rules guidelines should be observed when accessing these arrays 1 While template scripts have automatic access to these arrays library procedures must use the convenience procedure seeBobVars see section 2 7 2 item 10 before dealing with these arrays as local variables 2 Keywords specified in the OBD as received from OH or as read from a disk file and or the template signature file should be considered strictly read only 1 e the template script should not write into the corresponding keyword elements nor should it unset any of these keyword elements 3 Same for a specific list of keywords generated by BOB itself TPL START TPL EXPNO 4 Template scripts are allowed to add elements to these keyword arrays and write into them BOB sets traces on all these category arrays when in engineering mode see 2 10 This permits to check if all keywords declared in the OBD and or TSF are effectively used by the template script and do not get overwrit ten or unset Remark that the category arrays created by BOB are only guaranteed to exist during template ex ecution i e one cannot keep a reference to such an array after the template script finishes in particular indirect references created via
76. lation This involves two external processes simOS and simOH This level of simulation is intended for develop ment purposes of BOB itself and is normally not needed by template developers See 3 for more details 2 9 STATUS RETURNED If in the configuration panel both the process name and environment name of the OH partner are filled in BOB will return information to this partner telling in what state the Observation Block and or Template are The following events are fed back 2 9 1 Observation Block Events All messages have the format lt OBSid gt yyyy mm ddThh mm ss lt status gt lt add_params gt where lt OBSid gt is the observation block identifier lt status gt is one of the following ABORTED if the abortion is due to a user intervention via BOB s GUI lt add_params gt is a string containing a description of the motive as entered in the abort dialogue box If the abortion is due to an error returned by the template script lt add_params gt will contain template error lt errorText gt s STARTED s PAUSED es CONTINUED e TERMINATED in case of successful termination MUSTREPEAT followed by a message why the OB needs to be repeated BOB s Repeat button was pressed 2 9 2 Template Events All messages have the format lt OBSid gt lt TPLid gt yyyy mm ddThh mm ss lt status gt lt add_params gt where lt OBSid gt and lt TPLid gt are the observation block resp template identifier lt status gt
77. locked till confirmed or timeout Cause As the message says This is for a lt key gt of type filename which should match any of the the patterns defined in the RANGE entry of the tsf HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 45 Cure Correct the OB and reload it or edit this lt key gt via bob s engineering interface editor Message 19 The parameter lt key gt for template lt tplId gt is defined in the OBD as lt obd_value gt but it is overridden to lt value gt See lt key gt VALUE in the template signature file lt tsf gt Category error 15 sec timeout bob blocked till confirmed or timeout only shown for beginners Cause There seems to be an inconsistency between what the OBD and lt tsf gt files contain with respect to lt key gt This message is only shown during a first pass i e it will not show up if such a lt key gt is edited via bob s engineering mode editor Cure Correct the tsf or obd file and reload the obd file Message 20 The parameter lt key gt for template lt tplId gt is not defined in the OBD It is set to the default lt default gt as defined in the template signature file lt tsf gt Category error no timeout bob blocked for 15 sec or till confirmed only shown for beginners Cause This is for a keyword which has a default value defined in the lt tsf gt This will warn beginners about this automatic assignment of values Normally OBs should i
78. lt key gt the lt tplId gt template has the value lt value gt which is supposed to be a float Its value is either fixed VALUE entry or the DEFAULT value in the Signature file lt tsf gt is also not a float Please correct the OB and the signature file Category error 10 sec timeout bob blocked till confirmed or timeout Cause As the message says Cure Correct the OB and or TSF reload the OB or edit this lt key gt via bob s engineering interface editor Message 14 The parameter lt key gt of the lt tplId gt template has the value lt value gt which is supposed to be a float 43 44 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 There is no default value in the signature file lt tsf gt Category error 10 sec timeout bob blocked till confirmed or timeout only shown for beginners Cause As the message says Remark that this is for a lt key gt which has a NODEFAULT value for the DE FAULT entry in its template signature file Cure Correct the OB and reload it or edit this lt key gt via bob s engineering interface editor Message 15 The parameter lt key gt of the lt tplId gt template has the value lt value gt which is supposed to be an integer It is replaced by the default value lt default gt as taken from the signature file lt tsf gt Category error 10 sec timeout bob blocked till confirmed or timeout only shown for beginners Cause As the message says Cure
79. mber identical to how the primary FITS keywords RA and DEC are written HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 19 e return ifall went OK for normal templates acquisition templates should return a non empty string containing the coordinates of the acquired object error message if there is some error within the template or an error returned from the OS level e g ABORT The setting of the ABORT flag within BOB should be acknowledged by an error ACK ABORT message at the first opportunity If a template returns an error BOB will try to pop up the CCS error display to allow error stack browsing provided the user level is configured to advanced The error display can under any circumstance be forced to pop up via the Errors menu item 2 7 5 Library scripts Application instrument specific Tcl libraries can be declared via the configuration panel see 2 3 provided they have been built according to the VLT software standards i e using vltMake This means template scripts can be kept relatively simply putting the more complicated and frequently used sections into library procedures by default unknown to BOB Remark however that these library procedures will of course be called from bob s template class namespace i e BobTPL while the template script is executed to avoid namespaces problems in particular when these procedures try to call on their turn public template class procedures like sendC
80. md it is best to declare them within the BobTPL namespace Example namespace eval BobTPL proc myProc arg sendCmd timeout S cmd 2 7 6 Search paths BOB needs to access a series of auxiliary files most notably the template scripts and signature files The loca tions where BOB scans through to find them are listed in this section 2 7 6 1 Template signature files An OBD can include for every template the TPL MODE keyword which is in fact extracted from the tem plate signature file at the time an OBD is constructed If it does i e if the instrument mode is defined the search path will be 1 INS_ROOT INS USER lt insMode gt TEMPLATES TSF 2 INS_ROOT INS USER lt insMode gt SEQUENCES 3 INS_ROOT INS_USER COMMON TEMPLATES TSF 4 SINS_ROOT SINS USER COMMON SEQUENCES In case the environment variable INS_USER was not set INS_USER will be replaced by SYSTEM Paths 2 and 4 are there for backward compatibility purposes only users are encouraged to put their template signa ture files in either path 1 or 3 20 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 2 7 6 2 Template scripts A template signature file can contain the filename of the associated template script in the variable TPL PRE SEQ If this field is blank the name of the sequencer script will be derived from the TPL ID Also the signa ture file should include the TPL MODE keyword describing what the instrument mode for this template is The sear
81. n Ousterhout of the University of Berkeley CA presently working at Sun Microsystems Laboratories Template An entity containing a sequence Sequencer script dealing with the setup and execution of one or more exposures It is literally a template to which a set of parameters belong whose specific values determine the exact behaviour of its execution Technically a template is an object belonging to the Template class and has several components one of the being the Sequencer script defined above Other components are the template signature file and the template parameter GUI Templates should generally have the complexity of setting up and executing one or a few exposures Template call The name of the template to execute with its parameter values Template signature file This is a description of a template and its parameters It contains a o information about the type and allowed ranges of the parameters so that a trivial validity check can already be performed when parameters are entered via the template parameter GUI 1 7 STYLISTIC CONVENTIONS The following styles are used bold in the text for commands filenames pre suffixes as they have to be typed italic in the text for parts that have to be substituted with the real content before typing teletype for examples HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 lt name gt in the examples for parts that have to be substituted with the real content before ty
82. n aborted due to the fact that OS has reported back an error or abort during the execu tion of lt tplId gt Cure Check why OS did not manage to terminate this exposure properly Message 40 Problem during execution of tplld gt lt error stack gt lt Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause The OB has been aborted due an error in the template script This is most likely a bug in the template script as it should normally be designed to trap error conditions itself and either recover from these er rors or pass specific error conditions back to the OB Cure Debug the template script Message 41 The sequencer script for lt tplId gt was not found 50 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 when this template was loaded Hence it cannot be executed and this is how far the OB to which it belongs gets Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause The OB has been aborted due to the error indicated in the message Actually that this sequencer script was missing should have been signalled already when the OB was loaded Cure Make the sequencer script for this lt tplId gt availabel and reload the OB Message 42 The template signature file for lt tplId gt was not found when this template was loaded Hence it cannot be executed and this is how far the OB to which it belongs gets Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause The OB has been aborted du
83. n in green if operating in verbose mode see configuration panel while in this case normal or error replies will be shown in green resp red If lt cmd gt is WAIT there will also be a message logged indicating the termination of the exposure when the final reply comes in Remark that sendCmd will not send any of a list of commands once the abort flag has been set This list can be defined edited via the configuration panel The skipping of such commands is indicated in BOB s template log window sendObsKeys lt timeout gt array lt listOfCats gt convenience procedure to send the OBS and DPR keywords plus some TPL keywords to OS This is normally done automatically by bob when a START command is given within the template however there are cases where data can be produced without starting an exposure i e without a START command The sendObsKeys procedure provides for these Cases a means to still have the proper OBS DPR and TPL keywords recorded into the FITS header The default timeout for OS to reply is 2000 ms Remark that a call to sendObsKeys will automatically increase the exposure number TPL EXPNO so this proc should only be called once per data file and only if there is no START command involved The array lt listOfCats gt optional pair is only legal in case OS is not defined i e BOB is used for particular engineering purposes 62 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 lt listOfCats gt is now
84. nclude this keyword as the DEFAULT entry in the lt tsf gt serves for P2PP to pick up the value and put it in the OB This message is only shown dur ing a first pass i e it will not show up if such a lt key gt is edited via bob s engineering mode editor Cure Correct the obd and reload it Message 21 The parameter lt key gt for template lt tplId gt is not defined in the OBD There is no default value defined in the template signature file lt tsf gt Category error 15 sec timeout bob blocked till confirmed or timeout Cause This is about a key with a NODEFAULT entry in lt tsf gt Such keys should have a proper definition in the OB This is done properly by P2PP So we re dealing here with a local OBD file This message is only shown during a first pass i e it will not show up if such a lt key gt is edited via bob s engineering mode editor Cure Correct the obd and reload it Message 22 The template signature file lt tsf gt assigns no value to the lt key gt RANGE keyword Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause As the message says The RANGE entry is mandatory if the VALUE entry is not given Cure Correct the tsf and reload the OB 46 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 Message 23 The template signature file lt tsf gt assigns no value to the lt key gt TYPE keyword Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause As the message says The T
85. ntinue bobPause bobPrint bobRepeat bobStart bobNextObsBlocks bobReset bobSaveConfig bobSnapshot several procedures used from GUI level to control bob SYNOPSIS bobAbort bobContinue bobPause bobPrint bobRepeat bobStart lt contFlag gt bobNextObsBlocks lt nr gt lt file gt bobReset bobSaveConfig bobSaveConfigAs lt file gt bobSnapshot DESCRIPTION bobAbort abort execution of running OB bobContinue equivalent to bobStart lt 1 gt bobPause pause execution of running OB bobPrint print logs of currently selected OB bobRepeat request a MUSTREPEAT for selected object bobStart lt contFlag gt start execution of selected paused OB if lt contFlag gt is true then continue after pause instead of start Default for lt contFlag gt is false bobNextObsBlocks lt nr gt lt fileName gt request lt nr gt OBs from scheduler process if lt nr gt is set to the word file then either pop up a file selection panel if lt fileName gt is not set or try to load lt fileName gt bobReset reset objects and interface bobSaveConfig save the current config parameters bobSaveConfigAs save the current config parameters into lt file gt If lt file gt is not specified bring up a file selection box first bobSnapshot dump bob related info and logfiles to a timestamped directory The name of this latter directory is the return value Last change 23 05 05 10 02 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN
86. o edit the entries in this widget some key bindings have been defined In short you first click on an entry in the left or right listbox to select which option text you want to edit you validate this editing by pressing the 12 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 lt Enter gt key while the cursor is in the left or right entry field To add an entry first click on the left or right listbox and then click on the lt Insert gt key Now you can edit this new entry in the fields below To remove an entry select the line first in the left or right listbox then press the lt Delete gt key See also the manpage of BobPanedComboBox n in section 4 2 in particular for additional key bindings and the re_syntax n manpage for the syntax of regular expressions The different action buttons for this preferences panel are standard OK will apply the values and remove the panel Apply will force BOB to immediately take the shown values into account while leaving the preferences panel displayed Save will apply the values and save them in the configuration file leaving the panel on the display while Cancel will pull out of this preferences setting keeping the values as they were when applied last 2 5 LOADING AND SAVING OB DESCRIPTIONS OBs can be loaded via the File menu Load OBs A sub menu will allow to either request one or more OBs from the OH scheduler or to load them from a file penultimate menu option In the latter case a file selec
87. o put the instrument into a safe state independent of the termination status of the template OB The call back for the modification of a configuration parameter is executed at global level and gets at invocation automatically four more arguments than what is declared in the corresponding entry field a the name of the modified configuration parameter b a boolean indicating if this call back is executed during the initialization phase value 1 or during normal operation value 0 c the previous value of that configuration parameter 10 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 d the new value of that configuration parameter E g if in the configuration panel the entry field for this call back is set to myC gCB a b the command myCfgCB could be defined in a library as proc myCfgCB fixedl fixed2 configParam initFlag oldValue newValue here we process the input params e Template libraries a space separated list of names of VLT Tel libraries which contain declarations of auxiliary procedures used by some templates Remark that these names do not include the lib prefix nor the tcl suffix of the directory they are stored in so in the example of Figure 4 BOB would look for procedures under directories called lib libmySeqhib tcl and lib libmyTclLib tcl The search path for these directories will be e the current working directory f the parent directory of the current working directory g the directo
88. ome script before you enter into interactive mode you can also pass the name of a lt scriptFile gt BobWish contains dummy objects for all widget related operations The actions accessible via buttons or menus in bob are here activated through the following set of commands bobAbort lt reason gt abort the currently executing OB bobContinue foreground continue the currently paused OB bobDisplayLog display the log of the current OB object bobHelp display a help text bobInfo give info about the loaded OBs and their state bobNextobsBlocks lt nr gt file lt filename gt load lt nr gt OBs from the scheduler process or an OBD from a file In the latter case if lt filename gt is not given a file selection widget will pop up bobPause stop the currently executing OB bobPrint print the log of the current OB bobRepeat lt reason gt tell the scheduler process to repeat this OB at a later stage giving also a textual lt reason gt This implies an abort bobReset mark all currently loaded OBs as freshly loaded bobSaveConfig save the configuration parameters in the configuration file bobSaveConfigAs lt file gt save the configuration parameters into lt file gt or if lt file gt is not specified bring up a file selection box first bobSetup display a help text listing all the configuration commands bobSnapshot dump bob related info and logfiles to a timestamped directory bobStart foreground start the OB I
89. on toolbar ninth button from top or by clicking on the Configure menu then going to Environment a Configuration bobre te 16 Partners Environment Process lt CCS name gt lt label gt OH env RTAPENY ei schedule OS env RTAPENY y simos Behaviour User proficiency beginner w advanced E Run all OBs P Auto unfold Auto requestOBs I Create all TPLs Communication with OH Y Status events Communication with OS _ Simulate I Verbose _J Internals Sim delay ms for 384 CT 0 3000C Simulation delay ms for all other commands 460 CT 0 3000C After ABORT skip WAIT Call backs TPLs OBs Config params muTestCFgCallBack a b e Templatelibs 8 Print command lp Load Tel plug in T at startup ER OK Save Save as Cancel Figure 2 BOB s configuration panel This panel contains a o the environment name and process name of the OH scheduler which are obviously 8 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 essential if communication with OH is needed i e when the OBDs will not be retrieved from a disk file The environment name process name for OS also need to be filled out Remark that Tcl variables can also be ref erenced in these latter entry fields and further down in the Call backs and Print command entry fields as well This is particularly useful for environment variables e g env RTAPENV stands for the value ofthe environment var
90. one This message will not appear if lt edited_value gt is equal to lt value gt 4 1 3 OB execution Message 35 Cannot abort there is no OB active Category error 5 sec timeout bob blocked till confirmed or timeout Cause Apparently the abort button got pressed while no OB was running paused This should in principle not be possible Cure none HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 49 Message 36 Cannot continue there is no OB paused Category error 5 sec timeout bob blocked till confirmed or timeout Cause Apparently the continue button got pressed while no OB was paused This should in principle not be possible Cure none Message 37 Cannot pause there is no OB active Category error 5 sec timeout bob blocked till confirmed or timeout Cause Apparently the pause button got pressed while no OB was running This should in principle not be possible Cure none Message 38 Cannot start this OB Its state is not idle Try the Reset status action button Category error 10 sec timeout bob blocked till confirmed or timeout Cause The start OB button was pressed for an OB which has already partially been executed Cure If you do need to re start this OB press the Reset status action button first Message 39 Exposure not terminated properly during execution of lt tplId gt Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause The OB has bee
91. pick up this X server update from the workstation So make first of all sure that your X terminal is configured to boot from an updated workstation Ask vltmgr for more info how to configure your X terminal etc 09 When I run bob from an HP UX 10 20 box on an X emulator or an HP X station without audio hardware bob crashed when I clicked on the enable disable sounds icon with a segmenta tion fault Is this a bug in bob There is a problem with earlier versions of the snack audio extension used by bob leading to a core dump on all HP UX versions when trying to access non existing audio hardware This should only affect pre MAR2002 versions as the MAR2002 version of snack has been patched to correct this problem 3 1 6 FITS header information O10 Could it be that OBS START does not have the same value for all files produced by one OB In principle this should of course never happen OBS START is calculated when the OB is started after hav ing been initialized when the OB was created and is not modified further on It is completely independent from the type of templates in the OB their sequence of execution etc There are however a few situations which may produce inconsistent values and these are all features rather than bugs a The acquisition template i e the first template of the OB does not send a START command to OS although it does produce one or more FITS files This START command is the do
92. ping bold and italic are also used to highlight words indicates a UNIX shell prompt HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 5 2 USER S GUIDE 2 1 OVERVIEW BOB is the high level interface towards the VLT Control Software It operates on Observation Block De scriptions OBDs which it either reads from a disk file or receives from the Scheduling tool OH OT These OBDs contain or refer to all the information needed by VCS as a whole to execute individual exposures It is BOB s task to break these OBDs down ending up with units of individual exposures sending sequences of commands which are understood by its VCS lower level partner 1 e OS At the same time BOB s GUI keeps the user informed of the contents of Observation Blocks plus Templates and their status of execution as high level units If the OBDs have been received from the Scheduler the status of execution of the individual Templates etc is fed back to the Scheduler as these events occur This allows the Scheduler to take internal decisions and also to inform its fellow processes on the OH side about relevant events 2 2 STARTING BOB UP BOB requires communication with the OH scheduler and with the OS of the instrument it is controlling For this communication it uses the CCS message system Therefore BOB needs to be started from a shell running on a WS equipped with CCS and running environments
93. rched in that order Continuing without loading this plug in Category error 10 sec timeout bob blocked till confirmed or timeout Cause The configuration of bob tells that it should load lt plugin gt but this action failed Cure Make lt plugin gt available in one of the directories given in the message Message 55 Select OB before printing Category error 5 sec timeout bob blocked till confirmed or timeout Cause Apparently the print button got pressed while no OB was selected i e there are several OBs loaded Cure none HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 53 Message 56 You have to select an OB by clicking on it before requesting to repeat it Category error 10 sec timeout bob blocked till confirmed or timeout Cause The repeat action button was pressed while several OBs are loaded and none of them has been se lected first Cure As the message says Message 57 Your terminal either has some problem with the audio hardware or doesn t have any such hardware Hence sounds cannot be enabled Category error 8 sec timeout bob not blocked Cause The enable audio button was pressed but apparently there is some problem Cure none 54 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 4 2 MANPAGES bobAbort n bobContinue n bobPause n bobPrint n bobRepeat n bob Start n bobNextObsBlocks n bobReset n bobSaveConfig n bobSnapshot n NAME bobAbort bobCo
94. ressing of this abort button This variable is accessible only after issuing the following command in the template script upvar abort localAbortFlag The template script should then at appropriate times test this localAbortFlag 0 means no abort 1 is abort pending and take appropriate action if necessary When it has finally take action it should also return an er ror as follows error ACK ABORT Alternatively template script can use the checkAbort Flag convenience procedure to deal with the abort flag see item 3 in section 2 7 2 As this method is for template developers far easier to use and less error prone it is clear that this is the preferred way to test the abort flag The above mentioned direct use of the abort flag is still supported but only for backward compatibility reasons Remark that BOB allows to configure the set of commands that should no longer be sent to OS once the abort flag has been raised This can indeed speed up the abortion of the template script At the same time it allows to still send some critical commands that always should be sent to guarantee a graceful termination leaving the instrument telescope in a safe state 2 7 4 Return values Template scripts should return the following way with proper values e return lt RA gt lt Dec gt for successfully terminated acquisition templates with lt RA gt and lt Dec gt the coordinates of the acquired object both in degrees as a float nu
95. rsion 2 9 and is intended to provide all the necessary information for the installation and use of this module from an end user s point of view 1 2 SCOPE This document describes how to configure and use BOB as a high level tool for executing observation blocks showing primarily the VLT Control Software side It does not consider in any detail the creation modifica tion or scheduling of observation blocks nor the lower level modules DCS ICS TCS which are actually ac quiring the astronomical data belonging to the observation blocks Neither does it deal with the subsequent archiving or pipeline reduction of these data 1 3 APPLICABLE DOCUMENTS 1 VLT ICD ESO 17240 19200 2 31 07 2002 ICD between VCS and OH 1 4 REFERENCE DOCUMENTS The following documents are referenced in this document 2 VLT MAN ESO 17220 0737 3 28 03 2002 VLT SW HOS Sequencer User Manual 3 VLI MAN ESO 17220 1349 1 1 28 08 1997 VLT SW HOS BOB SW Maintenance Manual 4 VLT SPE ESO 17240 0385 4 13 01 2005 VLT SW INS Common Software Specification 5 VLI MAN ESO 17220 3676 2 25 01 2007 VLT SW HOS Audio SW User Manual 1 5 ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS The following abbreviations and acronyms are used in this document CCS Central Control Software GUI Graphical User Interface HOS High Level Operating Software HW Hardware ICS Instrument Control Software OBD Observation Block Description OH Observation Handling OS Observation Softwar
96. ry pointed to by the environment variable INTROOT h the directory pointed to by the environment variable VLTROOT This scheme coincides with what is common practice for the VLT Common Software and is supported by a o vltMakefile Print command command into which logs will be piped when printing is requested As this is actually the trailing part of a Tcl exec command Tel variables can be used e Load Tel Plugin to import a Tel script e g a VLT panel within the same interpreter as BOB This means such a Tel script can have access to e g variables set by the template script If the at start up checkbutton is ticked this script will be executed during start up immediately after bob is initialized Otherwise this script can be activated via the Configure menu The configuration settings can be saved by pressing the Save or Save as action buttons in the Configuration Panel In the former case Save button these settings will be stored in the file as indicated in the Configura tion Panel title bar i e the currently loaded configuration file In the latter case Save as button a file se lection panel will pop up to enter a filename After saving the configuration file the window title showing the name of the configuration file will be updated Remark that the default name for the configuration file is bobrc and this can be overridden at BOB s start up with the configFile option If this is a relative pathname it will be int
97. s missing for the template lt tplId gt It must either be in the OB description or in the template signature file Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause There is a set of mandatory TPL keywords which should be defined for all templates Cure Correct the tsf or the OB and reload the OB Message 5 The keyword TPL MODE is not set in the template signature file nor in the OB Description Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause As the message says Cure Correct the tsf and reload the OB Message 6 The keyword TPL PRESEQ is not set in the template signature file I will look for the template script using naming rules Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause As the message says A search for lt tplId gt seq will be undertaken although in principle TPL PRESEQ should be defined Cure Correct the tsf and reload the OB Message 7 The OBD info for template lt tplId gt contains the keyword lt key gt which is not in the template signature file lt tsf gt Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause As the message says Cure Correct the tsf file and reload the obd file Message 8 The PAF file with the set of OBs has an illegal format it contains more than one PAF HDR START Category error no timeout bob blocked till confirmed Cause bob has received an OB or read an obd file with an illegal format as indicated by the message
98. ssed It will automatically generate an ACK ABORT error message if the abort flag was set otherwise it returns with an empty string 4 setResult A procedure which allows to set a variable to a certain value so that it can be picked up by another template in the same OB using the companion procedure getResult see below Remark that all such variables are erased when the first template of an OB starts it execution In other words with this procedure result passing from one template to another is only possible within a single OB 5 getResult The companion procedure of setResult see above 6 setCallBack To set the script to be evaluated upon termination of the current template thereby overriding for this template only the setting in the configuration panel of the default template call back script 7 sendObsKeys To send the OBS and DPR keywords plus some TPL keywords to OS This is normally done automatically by bob when a START command is given within the template however there are cases where data can be produced without starting an exposure i e without a START command The sendObsKeys procedure provides for these cases a means to still have the proper OBS DPR and TPL keywords recorded into the FITS header This proc should only be called once per data file and only if there is no START command involved 8 finishOB To indicate that the entire OB should be finished immediately after the current templ
99. sted mode option has been disabled This is to provide some basic level of security against accidental modification of OB parameters by people who are not yet very comfortable with this engineering interface such parameter modification in particular for science OBs at the telescope can invalidate the entire data flow process for this OB On the other hand engineers building templates and exercising their software and instrument may find the engineer ing interface a useful tool providing a convenient and direct means to edit an OB The password can also be given on the commandline when BOB is started up see 2 2 This password is re quested every time a switch is made from Observing mode to Engineering mode once the Trusted mode un der the nterface menu has been disabled it is enabled by default A newly installed BOB will have an 24 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 empty password which should after installation be modified to a proper value using the Change pass wd menu item Under this interface the template log can contain error messages about some keywords which have not been touched by the template script although they are defined in the Observation Block Description and or the Template Signature File so they should be sent to OS This is of course to be seen as an error in the template script More explanation about this Engineering interface can be found in 3 2 11 PROGRAMMATIC ACCCESS T
100. t keys of un known category due to misuse of upvar What does that mean This happens if the template script and or its library procedures hijack the names of the categories TPL DET ie if by the use of upvar commands these category names end up being referred to by any other name As BOB has put traces on the original arrays it will get a trace call back referring to this new name when this happens it won t know anything about this mapping so it won t be able to do the usual keyword HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 39 checks see also Q13 The template script should use the seeBobVars convenience procedure instead see section 2 7 2 017 I get in Engineering Mode a message in the template log saying that the template did not use the TPL EXPNO and TPL NEXP keywords Although I effectively do not use either of these ex plicitly in any of my templates most templates do not complain about this Why BOB takes always care of TPL EXPNO the current exposure s sequential number within the template and sets TPL NEXP the number of exposures in this template to a default value of 1 if it is not defined in the TSF nor OBD These 2 keywords are passed automatically by BOB to OS when the template intends to send a START command to OS or gives explicit instructions to forward all OBS and TPL header keywords by means ofthe sendObsKeys convenience procedure So most likely in the template w
101. t is running If the ccs nit failed this part within brackets will simply contain bob lt hostname gt e at the top a menu bar with the File Configure Interface Errors and Help menus 1 The search path also include paths which depend on the setting of the INS USER and the instrument mode combined with INS_ROOT in full compliance with the INS Common Software Specification 6 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 BOB Broker for Observation Blocks bob_22024 wlgsf File Configure Interface Errors Help OBs schedule gt bob gt FLAMES Template log messages Reset status Figure 1 BOB s main panel at start up e a vertical toolbar on the left side with buttons which have icons in them These buttons have balloon help and are typically the only buttons to press for a successful execution of Observation Blocks Inactive buttons appear shady e a short help line white background at the bottom with the heartbeat indicator Depending on where the mouse cursor is this line will show a single line of text showing what the effect will be if a mouse button typically the left button gets pressed e below the short help line an action area with labelled buttons Inactive buttons are shaded out e a canvas area for information about loaded Observation Blocks e a canvas area for information about executing or executed Templates Although the main panel b
102. the complete text can then be edited via the engineering interface When the OBD is saved the file pointed to will be read in and the complete ASCII text will be saved into the obd file Bob will by default remove files stored by this mechanism when the corresponding template gets deleted e g when a new OB is loaded In order to override this behaviour one needs to set the boolean keyword TPL FILE KEEP in the paramfile text Detailed explanation about the paramfile keyword type can be found in 1 2 15 SNAPSHOTS The bottom toolbar button in the main panel of BOB allows to store a snapshot of the information involving BOB When this button is pressed the following sequence of actions takes place e Create the directory vltdata tmp lt bobProcName gt lt timestamp gt e Save the currently running or last executed obd file name active obd in this directory e Make a copy of vltdata tmp logFile and place it in the above directory same for the most recent previous logFile if any e Make a copy of vltdata tmp bob_ lt OS gt log into the above directory e Create a text file name bobSnapshot containing info about the currently executing OB template exposure and the template logs of the current OB e Add to this file the current Tcl error message stack the complete CCS error stack the Tcl errorInfo contents at the last template script problem e Prompt for a motive and add this comment to this text file e Report
103. to OS This is the one and only way template scripts are allowed to use for communication with OS lt timeout gt timeout value in ms for reply 0 means return immediately with the commandId do not wait for replies this argument is not taken into account if the template simulation mode is on lt cmd gt command this is either a commandname alone in which case pararameters can be given in lt paramX gt or it includes some parameters more parameters can be given as lt paramX gt Typical examples of commandnames are SETUP and START of parameters are file lt fileName gt and function lt functionl gt lt valuel gt lt function2 gt lt value2 gt 1 lt paramX gt parameter for lt cmd gt if not already included as part of lt cmd gt This procedure returns reply on command if waiting for last reply lt timeout gt 0 Remark that this reply is the new expold value when the first SETUP command for a new exposure is given with an expold argument equal to 0 Only the last reply on the command is returned cmdId if command was sent OK and lt timeout gt is set to 0 this can then be used by the caller to e g attach an event see geg evtAttach to incoming replies on this command error with message if any error occurs or if ABORT flag is acknowledged There are a number of messages logged automatically logged by this procedure into BOB s template log window the commands sent will be show
104. value gt for the variable lt name gt this value can then be retrieved by another template in the same OB see getResult tplLog lt text gt lt colour gt lt underline gt append lt text gt to the current log text in colour lt colour gt default is standard default for text and underlined if the boolean lt underline gt is set lt text gt is allowed to contain newline characters Remark that when verbose communication is on the messages sent to OS are logged in blue and OK replies are logged in SpringGreen4 Errors come logged in red The messages which are always added automatically by sendCmd e g starting exposure n of m are underlined These colour schemes of bob should be respected in order to avoid confusion SEE ALSO ICD between the VLT Control SW and the Observation Handling Subsystem VLT ICD ESO 17240 19200 Last change 23 05 05 10 02 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 bobWish n NAME bobwish shell version of bob SYNOPSIS bobwish ccsProcName lt name gt configFile lt file gt lt scriptFile gt DESCRIPTION This is a shell implementation of bob The start up parameters are similar as for bob i e you can specify the lt name gt under which this process will register itself with the CCS environment and pick up configuration parameters from a different lt file gt than the default bobrc If you do not wish to run bobWish interactively or need to run s
105. via a popup panel the name of the created directory that contains the above snapshot This function can also be activated via the bob bobSnapshot command see section 2 11 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 33 34 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 35 3 TROUBLESHOOTING 3 1 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 3 1 1 Installation OI I need the latest and greatest features of bob but I do not wish to update the entire VLT soft ware just for that So can I use the current version of bob on top of a previous release of the VLT software It depends New features of bob can be tightly linked to new features of the VLT Sequencer library Tcl Tk the VLT CCS package or other VLT common software components in which case a mere upgrade of bob will not give you the expected features and may even lead to a crashing bob So the recommendation is surely to upgrade everything at the same time to be on the safe side In case of doubt consult the author Q2 Ihave a home directory which is NFS mounted on a HP UX a Solaris and a Linux box When running bob I have some engineering mode password problems on some of these machines How do I fix this This is due to the way passwords are encrypted by bob up to version 1 117 inclusive The encryption is done with the help of the crypt utility available only on HP UX and Solaris and there is no encryption used on Linu
106. x But apart from the fact that this crypt utility is not available on Linux its result are not identical be tween HP UX and Solaris This means that this password can only be validated on the platform it was gener ated For that reason there is since bob 1 118 a Tcl based crypt procedure which of course produces identical re sults cross platform So the solution is to upgrade to at least this version O3 After upgrading to bob 1 118 bob reports that I use a wrong password when attempting to en ter engineering mode Can this be fixed Yes just delete the old and new password files bobpasswd resp bob passwd Although bob will at tempt to convert automatically the old to the new there are some conditions under which it will fail The eas iest way out is to deleted these password files From that point on you should have the default blank password 3 1 2 Start up 04 How do I run several bob processes on one host each with their own settings for OH and OS Start up these bob processes with the configFile option pointing to individual configuration files See also section 2 2 You can of course use this feature as well for the case that you want to use different configu rations still talking to the same OH and OS If you need to distinguish these various bob processes from CCS s point of view you should use additionally the ccsProcName option when starting them up 3 1 3 Template scripts 05 How come I cannot access
107. xactly to avoid the use of GUIs and their associated X traffic this is con sidered beyond the scope of bobWish Using the bob Wish commands listed in section 2 11 1 one can easily write a script to load and execute an OB These scripts should be terminated with an exit command One important caveat although during normal execution you will not see GUIs on any screen the use of bob Wish requires the definition of the environment variable DISPLAY to a sensible value i e to an X server for which you have authorization to connect typically your X terminal is OK if you are already logged into it 26 HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 Remark that for some error messages a dialog window will still pop up and some commands depending on the options given may require input widgets like a file selection box Once the DISPLAY environment variable is set proceed as follows for a programmatic background session from a remote site e dial in to your institution and connect to your workstation e start your script as follows redirecting stdout bobWish theFileNameOfYourScript gt theFileNameForOutput amp where e theFileNameOfYourScript is self explanatory e theFileNameForOutput is the file to send messages to that would normally appear on the screen during an interactive session e amp is needed to make the thing run in the background and not having it abort when logging off before the script is finished e log off
108. y itself is not resizable the relative distribution of the area occupied by the two lat ter panes can be modified by dragging the squared sash at the right side on the horizontal separation line be tween the two panes Also these panes are equipped with vertical and horizontal scrollbars which can be used to see information which is off screen HOS BOB User Manual 7 VLT MAN ESO 17220 1332 7 The messages which appear in the Template Log area are also automatically stored on disk OB activity will be written into SVLTDATA tmp bob_ lt procNameOS gt 1log when an OB terminates or when it is aborted If lt procNameOS gt is changed see 2 3 below the log file is changed correspondingly If the logfile VLTDA TA tmp bob_ lt procNameOS gt 1og already exists bob will move it to VLTDATA tmp bob_ lt procName 0S gt 1og o1d before opening the former one Apart from these template logs bob will also generate FITS ops logs which are archived See also section 2 6 2 3 CONFIGURING BOB To be able to communicate with OS and the OH scheduler BOB needs to have some information which re flects its environment Although BOB at start up configures itself to the configuration which was last saved it is of course necessary to set these configuration parameters when the environment process names etc change or initially when BOB is run for the first time The configuration panel see Figure 2 is invoked by either hitting the tools butt

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