Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Mark Rivers <[email protected]> · Thu, 6 Sep 2018 23:23:32 +0000

Hi,

I am having a serious problem with soft motor device support.  These are databases that have worked fine for over 10 years.  The databases are the ones in motorApp/Db: pseudoMotor.db and sumDiff2D.db.

The databases are very simple: there are 2 real motors and 2 soft motors.  One soft motor moves both real motors in the same direction, and the other soft motor moves the real motors in the opposite direction.  The readback of the first soft motor is the average of the real motors, while the other is the difference of the real motors.  The calculations are done in transform records.  There is also a transform record that calculates when the soft motors are done moving, which is just the logical AND of the real motor .DMOV fields.

The main problem I am seeing is that the transform records are updating OK, but for some motors these values are not getting back into the motor record.

Here is an example of the debugging output of the devSoft.cc when a real motor is moved, and the soft motors, pm5 and pm6 are updating during that real motor move.

soft_dinp_func(): HARDMOVE set for 13BMD:pm5.
soft_rdbl_func(): updated RMP = 901 for 13BMD:pm5.
update(): dmov=0 for 13BMD:pm5.
update(): DMOV=0 for 13BMD:pm5.
soft_rdbl_func(): updated RMP = 23 for 13BMD:pm6.
update(): dmov=1 for 13BMD:pm6.
update(): DMOV=1 for 13BMD:pm6.
soft_rdbl_func(): updated RMP = 930 for 13BMD:pm5.
update(): dmov=0 for 13BMD:pm5.
update(): DMOV=0 for 13BMD:pm5.
soft_rdbl_func(): updated RMP = 80 for 13BMD:pm6.
update(): dmov=1 for 13BMD:pm6.
update(): DMOV=1 for 13BMD:pm6.
soft_dinp_func(): Done moving set for 13BMD:pm5.
update(): dmov=0 for 13BMD:pm5.
update(): DMOV=1 for 13BMD:pm5.
soft_rdbl_func(): updated RMP = 940 for 13BMD:pm5.
update(): dmov=1 for 13BMD:pm5.
update(): DMOV=1 for 13BMD:pm5.
soft_rdbl_func(): updated RMP = 101 for 13BMD:pm6.
update(): dmov=1 for 13BMD:pm6.
update(): DMOV=1 for 13BMD:pm6.

In this case pm5 is working fine.  It detected that dmov initially went to 0, and so at the end of the move it set the VAL field to match the RBV field.

However, pm6 is not working correctly.  It is detecting the readback changes, but it does not get the correct value of dmov.  It always sees it as 1, not as 0 which it should.  This means that at the end of the move it does not set the VAL field to match RBV.  pm5 and pm6 are configured identically, and they both get their DMOV value from the same field of the same transform record.  Why does one work and one not work?

Here are some symptoms of the problem:

- Some soft motors work fine, and others do not, even when they are apparently configured identically.  For one set of soft motors in one of my IOCs there are no updates printed with debugging in devSoft.cc.  For these soft motors neither the RBV fields nor the VAL fields update at all when the real motors are moved.

- The behavior of a particular motor is always the same, through multiple reboots, i.e. it either works or does not work.

- This has all worked fine until this shutdown when I made a lot of changes:
    Base 3.15.5 > 7.0.1.1
    synApps modules (motor, calc, etc.): master January 2018 to master August 2018.

- The devSoft.cc has not changed since 2015 so that cannot be the problem.

- I tried reverting the motorRecord.cc to the commit from Jan. 4, 2018 which is what I was using in the last run when it worked fine.  That did NOT fix the problem, which was very surprising.  This suggests that perhaps the problem has something to do with links in the transform record, or some change in base?

- I reverted the entire IOC application to the version I was running in the last run (3.15.5, master branch of synApps from January 2018) and all of the soft motors work fine.  This seems to prove it is some software change in base 7.0.1 vs 3.15.5, or a change in synApps since January.  But it is NOT the motor record itself.

Help!

Thanks,
Mark

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System