Secondary Beam Line Control System: Spare area servers and clients experimental hall

PC397 has been foreseen as a replacement PC and therefore has a multi-boot feature installed (realized with System Commander), which allows it to boot the PC with different Windows OS. It is normally used in my office as a development machine.

• Windows XP-SP2 is necessary for the operation as an area server PC. The names of the server PCs to be replaced are PC98, PC130, PC144, PC202, PC231, PC 235 and PC451. The screen resolution is 1024x768. Several programs (servers etc.) are started automatically at boot time.
• Windows XP-SP2 is used for the operation as a user client PC. The names of the user PCs to be replaced are PC125, PC239, PC278, PC284, PC299, PC484 and PC565. The screen resolution is set to 1280x1024. The most important user programs have desktop icons.

While booting the PC, you have to choose between server PC or client PC option. This selection will be remembered the next time the PC reboots or will be rebooted. Besides the already pre-installed features the following things have to be done if one of the above mentioned PCs has to be replaced. The necessary steps depend on whether the PC to replace is a server or client PC:

1. User Client replacement:



• The 3 Desktop icons for “Set-Point”, “Combi-Control” and “Optima” programs have to get the proper link to your corresponding area server PC. This is done by right-clicking with the mouse the desktop icons -> Properties -> Target: Replace pc397 by the corresponding server PC name, which can be taken from table 1.
• The saved files (status: ?) with the stored settings (*.set) may be copied from the directory C:\beamline\xyz to the directory C:\optima, where xyz means MuE1, MuE4, PiE1, PiE3, PiE5, PiM1 or PiM3.
• The name of the PC does not have to be changed for this case. For accessing your server PC you may use the pcAnywhere program (pre-configured for all 7 server PCs, no password required).


2. Server replacement:



• A server PC is usually run without screen and keyboard but must be run with a connected serial mouse in order to allow remote access via pcAnywhere or VNC. All 7 area servers are mounted inside a closed cabinet together with the needed CAMAC hardware. For a short period of 1 week or so there is no need to have a replacement PC, which fits into this cabinet. So the spare PC may be placed on the floor behind or besides the cabinet with the door open for the needed cable connections. The cables to re-connect with the replacement PC are:
1. AC 220 V cable.
2. Ethernet RJ45 cable.
3. RS-232 (25 poles) cable including the null-modem unit to the COM2: port.
4. PS/2 mouse.



5. Eventually a keyboard.
6. Eventually a video screen.
   The last 2 items are only needed for debugging the cases where a remote login with pcAnywhere or VNC is not possible, because the boot procedure stalls before the network is up.
• The PC name and the IP address have to be changed to the name and address of the replaced server PC. The name modification is done by right-clicking the Network desktop icon -> Properties -> Identification -> Computer name: replace pc397 by the PC name of your area PC server, which can be taken from table 1. The IP address modification is done by right-clicking the Network desktop icon -> Configuration -> double-clicking TCP/IP … In the IP-Address field modify the last 2 numbers according to the corresponding IP address given in table 1.
• The proper device.lis file, which represents the magnet/slit-configuration of your experimental setup has to be put into the C:\optima directory. The different possible files may be found in C:\beamline\xyz\Server, where xyz means MuE1, MuE4, PiE1, PiE3, PiE5, PiM1 or PiM3. Eventually it has to be edited, because you may have changed it since the last backup (date ?). The newly loaded device.lis becomes only activated after a reboot of the server PC or after stopping and restarting the Set-Point program on your area PC.
• Some additional hints: Do the above mentioned software modifications in my office, where the spare PC is running (hooked-up to a screen, a mouse and a keyboard). After a reboot do not exit the Accstat program but iconize it. Do not have 2 PCs running simultaneously with the same name or IP address.

Table 1:



Area	Server name	IP-address
µE1	PC202	129.129.140.46
µE4	PC451	129.129.140.44
E1	PC130	129.129.141.27
E3	PC144	129.129.140.45
E5	PC98	129.129.140.41
M1	PC235	129.129.140.43
M3	PC231	129.129.140.42


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Last updated by Urs Rohrer on 11-Oct-2006