Diary

So, feel free to lurk in complete safety with the assurance that your identity is unknown to me...

January 1 – January 7:

Goals:

Activities:

• Got separate briefings from Amber, Alan, and Paul
• Began trying to understand WNT Release sequence
• Set up office, acquired a PC from Dave Fagan
• Began putting Linux onto the PC in a dual boot format so can get into ODS resources if necessary
• Met with Ruth and Amber

January 8 – January 14:

Goals:

Activities:

• Completed putting Linux on PC – some issues remain but expect to deal with them eventually
• Began trying to get PC (in it’s Windows NT incarnation) to have all the necessary things on it so I could become a D0 WNT developer: cygwin, CERN product, others as described on http://d0ntwg01.fnal.gov/nt/
• Got NetMeeting installed on PC (for use with WNT build process).
• Began trying to get Visual C++ 6.0 installed on PC. Got access to APPS directory. Attempted install.Various problems. (Need product number and user id) Still no success.
• Paul gave me a walk-through of the build process on WNT. Will need another but am getting the hang of it, I think. The goal is to get to the point where I could do the WNT weekly/daily test release.
• Met with Gordon.He will e-mail me some info about the current arrangements of things. We will talk the next time he is out—if not before via e-mail.
• Did Build 8 of t01.29.00 and nt01.29.00 under Paul's direction (i.e., I typed at the keyboard on NT, Linux, and IRIX and Paul told me what to type).

January 15 – January 21:

Goals:

Activities:

• Got product number and user id for Visual C++. Made it further with install. Needed access to MSDN_Lib_Disc1 and _Disc2 on APPS directory. Got that. Completed Visual C++ install on D0NT114. Installed Service Pack 3. I appear to be able now to develop C++ code on this PC. Will go back to WNT at D0 check list and see how to proceed.
• Did the first build of the week for WNT under Alan's direction (i.e., I typed at the keyboard on NT. Alan told me what to type--maybe a little less of Alan telling me now, given my earlier experiences.)
• Learned more about how D0 NT builds actually make it to the L3 trigger processor PC's.
• Pretty much did the NT builds from Wednesday on with a minium of handholding.
• Got some more education in the things you have to do to build the executables on the actually trigger processor PC's.

January 22 - January 29:

Goals:

Activities:

• (Dealt with some non-D0-related backup problems on fndaub)
• Learned about how optimized builds in NT are being done.Was reminded that I need to learn how to freeze a release.
• Did an NT release (nt01.31.00) Build 01.  Messed it up afterwards, however, so Alan had to restart it for me leading to Build 02 being done. (Thanks, Alan)
• Did NT Build 03.
• Learned from Gordon Watts how to make a new release available for use with the web builder. Made nt01.29.00 and nt01.30.00 available. Asked Daniel to try it. Learned how to kick the web builder when it hangs.
• Organized my e-mail folders to deal with the ~130 messages a day that the release process generates.
• Did NT Build 04.  Unfortunately, I mistakenly added a ZOOM package into the build because it's version had changed and, for some reason, I didn't realize it was a ZOOM package.  So, Alan had to kill that build and I had to back out the build.  Fortunately, according to Paul, it was a package that was only used internally by ZOOM so it was not necessary to re-build the whole thing--only to remove the tmp folder within the particular Zoom Package in the D0reldb area and then begin again but with Build 05, having appropriately indicated that we were down reving the package in question which I had up-rev'd.  Hence the NT build begain about 1:30 or 2 pm which means it probably won't be done until midnight.
• Saw a bit of the Linear Collider talks over lunch.
• With NT Build 05 going, I turned to trying to get the document that instructs one how to do release packages out of the D0reldb product area with an idea to update it with what I am learning (NOT?) to do in building WNT releases.  Though there are easy ways to do this now, I ought to be able (if I understand things) to get this document onto my PC in the local /d0reldb (?) directories by checking it out of cvs.
• Since I need this also to work for doing package development, I returned to trying to get CYGWIN going on my PC (a 266 MHZ with 64 Mb).  For some reason the Cygwin device table was having difficulty mounting the Microsoft Visual Studio C++ include directory.  I fiddled around with this for some time and got it to work but then the d0dist local directory mount was hosed.  Eventually by unmounting that and bringing Cygwin up again, I managed to get it to all come up correctly with no mount errors.
• Lesson seems to be to remember that the mount table has a memory and once it gets the wrong memory one needs to umount it and bring it up again. I now have Cygwin up and Visual C++ up.  Setup d0cvs works but attempting to actually access the cvs repository fails.  I will talk to Alan about this tomorrow to learn the secret of making rsh talk to the d0cvs repository.
• I have also been collecting various documents, lessons, etc. off the d0 web site that pertain to developing packages and such.  Goal is to eventually be able to develop some sort of a brain dead package on this box in order to go through the development cycle that others are going through in order to see what their life is like and possibly make it better.

January 29 - February 4:

Goals:

• Get this PC into a C++ WNT Build Station for the Level 3 related packages
• Update Gordon's web builder so it can do the next release
• Review "broken" messages from NT builds that are being done through the week. Determine the causes of the "broken"s.  Review with Paul and Alan and others and feedback the cause info to the developers.
• Categorize the "broken" messages and be prepared to present the categorization at the Subsystem Coordinators meeting on Friday.

Activities:

• Get cvs to work on PC
• ?

February 5 - February 12:

Goals:

• Analyze Level 3 Messages
• Get PC to be a WNT D0 Build Station

Activities:

• I analyzed and posted on my web site the errors resulting from three builds of the D0 WNT Level 3 packages
• I have successfully removed the release (nt01.29.00) and installed the new release (nt01.31.00).
• I have successfully (I think) gone through G. Watt's steps for building a local Thread Util package against the new release. I will document these steps next week.