RE: Question about two minor issues with IOCs

[Mark Rivers via Tech-talk <tech-talk@aps.anl.gov>]

Ø  Error (511,511) PV: 13SIM1::TIMEZONE devStringinEnvVar (init_record) Illegal INP parm field

 

I now understand this problem.  The iocStats file Db/iocAdminSoft.substitutions contains this line:

 

        { "$(IOC)" , TIMEZONE     , EPICS_TIMEZONE                  , epics  }

 

The problem is that as of 3.15.7 the EPICS_TIMEZONE environment variable has been replaced by EPICS_TZ.  Replacing  EPICS_TIMEZONE in this file with EPICS_TZ eliminates this error.

 

The question is how to modify this file so it will work on versions before and after 3.15.7.

 

Mark

 

 

From: Mark Rivers
Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2020 11:40 AM
To: 'Wlodek, Jakub' <jwlodek@bnl.gov>
Cc: tech-talk@aps.anl.gov
Subject: RE: Question about two minor issues with IOCs

 

Hi Jakub,

 

I have been seeing both of those messages on my areaDetector IOCs as well.

 

Ø  Error (511,511) PV: 13SIM1::TIMEZONE devStringinEnvVar (init_record) Illegal INP parm field

 

That message happens every time the IOC boots for me.  I have been assuming is a problem with devIocStats, and have been meaning to track it down.

 

Ø  callbackRequest: cbLow ring buffer full

 

That message only very occasionally happens for me at the end of iocInit.  I believe it happens when the number and rate of driver callbacks for PVs are too large, so that the queue in EPICS base overflows.  We could probably eliminate them by increasing the size of that queue.  But before doing that I want to know why they just started happening, and I did not see them before.

 

I am running base 7.0.3.1 and the master branch of asyn.  The question is whether it was a change in either of those that caused the messages to start happening.

 

Note that this error can actually be serious, because it means that some records will not have their correct values, because the callback events were missed.

 

Do you see those cbLow messages every time you boot?  What version of base,  asyn and ADCore are you using?

 

Mark

 

 

From: Tech-talk <tech-talk-bounces@aps.anl.gov> On Behalf Of Wlodek, Jakub via Tech-talk
Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2020 9:53 AM
To: tech-talk@aps.anl.gov
Subject: Question about two minor issues with IOCs

 

Hi all,

 

I have been working on setting up some new USB cameras at a beamline recently, and I noticed two errors showing up in the IOC

shell, though the IOCs for the cameras actually work fine after startup. I wanted to ask if anyone knows why these show up, and how

to resolve them. To make sure it wasn't specific to the driver I had written, I compiled ADSimDetector against the same base, asyn etc,

and I still saw them showing up:

 

The first seems to be an issue with autosave, as this shows up right after reboot_restore starts:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

reboot_restore: entry for file 'auto_settings.sav'

reboot_restore: Found filename 'auto_settings.sav' in restoreFileList.

*** restoring from './autosave/auto_settings.sav' at initHookState 6 (before record/device init) ***

reboot_restore: done with file 'auto_settings.sav'

 

Error (511,511) PV: 13SIM1::TIMEZONE devStringinEnvVar (init_record) Illegal INP parm field

 

 

The second issue happens after the auto_settings.req file is loaded:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

create_monitor_set("auto_settings.req", 30, "P=13SIM1:")

callbackRequest: cbLow ring buffer full

callbackRequest: cbLow ring buffer full

callbackRequest: cbLow ring buffer full

 

And is buffer full message is repeated ~30 times.

 

After all of these messages, I get a message that all the PVs are connected, and the IOC runs with no issues, which is puzzling to me.

If anyone could give me some advice on the source and solution to these that would be great.

 

Regards,

Jakub Wlodek