RE: PV gateway renders PVs as disconnected

["Abdalla Ahmad" <abdalla.ahmad@sesame.org.jo>]

Hello all

 

Thank you for your suggestions and sorry for not following-up with this case.

 

The setup is as follows:

We have 4 VLANs: Office, machine and 2 beamlines.

The plan is to transfer machine PVs to the other VLANs, and both VLANs to the machine. So we have the following connections:

1.       Machine => Office

2.       Machine ó XAFS

3.       Machine ó IR

 

And any beamline that follows will follow the same setup.

The server hosting the gateways is a virtual server with one network interface seeing all VLANs through network rules set by the network engineers.

Each gateway will ignore requests from the other VLANs.

 

Right now I am experimenting with multiple gateways setup; 1 gateway for each connection so we have a total of 5 gateways. Here is an attempt for configuration

 

gateway_home="/home/user/gateway/machine_office/"

gateway_cip="list of ip addresses go here"

gateway_signore="10.1.1.20" #Example host to ignore. Works fine

gateway_putlog="caput.log"

gateway_log="gateway.log"

gw_test=$(ps aux | grep /gateway | wc -l)

if [[ "$gw_test" -lt 2 ]]; then

    echo "True"

    gateway -home    "${gateway_home}" \

            -log     "${gateway_log}"  \

            -putlog  "${gateway_putlog}" \

            -cip     "${gateway_cip}"  \

            -signore "${gateway_signore}" \

            -server

else

    echo "Gateway is already running."

fi

 

This setup works fine and I am configuring another gateway for such a disconnection issue.

 

I have few questions:

1.       I have learned from the video that, as I mentioned, each gateway will ignore the other gateways using the "signore" option. The broadcast address won't work and I have to add manually each host from each VLAN and with the increasing number of hosts this process is totally cumbersome. Isn't there any easy way to do this?

2.       What does the "sip" option exactly do? And is there any other options that I must use?

3.       Is it necessary to have a gateway setup per connection? Is there a better setup for our case?

 

Looking forward for your suggestions! J

Abdalla

 

From: tech-talk-bounces@aps.anl.gov [mailto:tech-talk-bounces@aps.anl.gov] On Behalf Of Ralph Lange
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2018 4:29 PM
To: EPICS Tech Talk <tech-talk@aps.anl.gov>
Subject: Re: PV gateway renders PVs as disconnected

 

Hi Abdalla,

 

How is your network context/setup?

From your mail we know that there are multiple networks. You write that your virtualized Gateway host only has one network interface. Is that one (virtual) "physical" interface, or one logical interface? In other words: does that Gateway machine have a VLAN setup?

How are data producers (IOCs) and data consumers (clients) distributed over the different LANs you mention?

 

Let me say that in such a multi-network setup it is very unlikely that a Gateway works without configuration.

Also, unless there is a clear separation between networks with producers and networks with consumers (without overlap), you are likely to need more than one Gateway instance.

 

Have you read the "Gateway Configurations" chapter in the Gateway User Guide on https://epics.anl.gov/extensions/gateway/index.php?

 

Cheers,
~Ralph

 

 

On Wed, Mar 28, 2018 at 2:33 PM, Abdalla Ahmad <abdalla.ahmad@sesame.org.jo> wrote:

Hi Ralph

 

No options, just the EPICS_CA_ADDR_LIST.

 

Abdalla.

 

From: tech-talk-bounces@aps.anl.gov [mailto:tech-talk-bounces@aps.anl.gov] On Behalf Of Ralph Lange
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2018 1:55 PM
To: EPICS Tech Talk <tech-talk@aps.anl.gov>
Subject: Re: PV gateway renders PVs as disconnected

 

Hi Abdalla,

 

How is that CA Gateway configured?

(Even when started without command line arguments, a Gateway usually needs configuration.)

 

~Ralph

 

On Wed, Mar 28, 2018 at 1:48 PM, Abdalla Ahmad <abdalla.ahmad@sesame.org.jo> wrote:

Hi

 

We are running the gateway on a virtual server with 1 network interface, this server can see all the different LANs (office, machine, beamlines, etc.) through routing rules and access lists done by the IT group. When the gateway is running, after a while entire IOCs gets disconnected. We are running the gateway with no arguments but in the .bashrc file we are defining EPICS_CA_ADDR_LIST having the IP address for the gateway to look at (Not all IOCs). This behavior happened when having all IOCs or some of them in the address list.

 

I came upon this video from APS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5Ge89Y4d1E In which, as I understood, they have multiple gateways running on the server with each gateway connects one network interfaces together to the other interfaces. So my questions are:

1.       What is happening with our setup? Some CA loops happens at some point?

2.       Is having a network interface per VLAN optional or recommended?

 

Best Regards,

 

Abdalla Ahmad

Control Engineer

SESAME

Allan, Jordan.

Tel: (+962-5) 3511348 , ext. 265

Fax: (+962-5) 3511423

Mob: (+962-7)88183296

www.sesame.org.jo