Dept of Astrophysics
University of NSW
Sydney
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Quick-Boot Guide

Checklist for booting the Mopra computer systems from scratch:

Program Machine Description

Login to MOPRA and WARRUM.

On a MOPRA decterm execute the following:
camon MOPRA Should start automatically on boot.
Reports on antenna status. Useful pages: /mopra, /pp, /3mm, /comms
sda MOPRA Start the 'Array' process. Controls communication between programs.
No feedback.
cain MOPRA Choose 'C' and set the integration time to 10s.
Should report 'success' against antenna 1.
mmdrive MOPRA Start the reciever tuner server. Initialises the LO frequency generators.
Should open a socket ready for connection.
reciever tuner GUI mmdrive Start the mm Reciever Tuner GUI.
mmdrive should report a connection established.
The recievers can be tuned at any stage after this.
assistance MOPRA Start the friendly monitoring program.
Beeps to alert you to a major error.
a_test MOPRA Low level command line interface to the reciever hardware.
Used to set the course and fine attenuators or entere manual pointing corrections if needed.

Create 3 xterms to MPCCC on WARRUM:
warrum> xhost +mpccc
warrum> ssh -l <username> mpccc
mpccc> xterm &
mpccc> xterm &
Execute the following in individual MPCCC xterms:

mpcor MPCCC (xterm 1) Start the correcator control program. The GUI (in addition to other windows) will pop-up
spd MPCCC (xterm 2) Start the live data display. Move to a new desktop for ease of use
cd MPCCC (xterm 2) cd /data/MPCCC_1/corr/dat/ for checking progress of data acquisition and for data transfer via moput and mopnt
tcs MOPRA Starts the telescope control system server.
Should connect to mpcor GUI.
tcs WARRUM Start the TCS GUI in expert mode.

A schematic layout of the Mopra computer systems is available here for the interested.

  • Before observing set the coarse and fine attenuators to a suitable value using the commands:
    • set fine/coarse 'ab00'
    • atten
  • Where a and b are the values between 1 and 7.
  • Aim to get a GTP of ~2.5 (given on the /mopra page in camon) with fine attenuators around 4.

Page created by Cormac Purcell and maintained by Nadia Lo. If you have any comments and suggestions, please direct your email to nlo@phys.unsw.edu.au.