VME in CMS

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1 Introduction
2 VME64x in CMS
3 VMEBridges
    3.1 CAEN
        3.1.1 Technical Info
        3.1.2 Status
        3.1.3 Software
        3.1.4 Firmware
        3.1.5 Measurements
    3.2 SBS

Software (for the USB Bridge V1718 and the optical bridge V2718)

The software is the original unmodified driver and library from CAEN. For CMS they have been packed into an rpm. The kernel module of the driver is contained in a separate binary and source rpm. Only the binary rpm for the kernel used in the experiment is given. But with the source rpm you can easily build you own binary rpm according to the instructions below.

Beware that CMS is NOT using necessarily the latest version of the CAEN software/firmware. Once we have a working setup we will not touch it until we will change our hardware or we find a compelling reason to upgrade.

Latest version of the software:

The software is included in the CMS online software. It can be downloaded or installed via the yum repositories which can be found under

http://xdaq.web.cern.ch/xdaq/repo/

Relevant RPMs for the bridges with an optical link are called (names given without version numbers):

  • daq-caenvmelib
  • daq-caenbridgeupgrade
  • daq-caenv1718
  • daq-caena3818
  • daq-caena2818
  • kernel-module-daq-caena2818
  • kernel-module-daq-caena3818

Limits: At maximum 8MB block transfers can be made.

Installation instructions for kernel modules:

If you run EXACTLY the same kernel version as given in the name of the kernel-module rpms you can directly install the binary rpm. If you have a laboratory machine with a slightly different kernel you need to re-compile the kernel modules. For this you download the source rpms (in the directory SRPM of the xdaq distribution tree). You then do the following to produce a binary rpm for your machine:
  • As superuser run 
    rpmbuild --rebuild {rpm_name}-{version}.src.rpm
    You will obtain binary RPMs in the directory below 
    /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/...
  • The binary rpms obtained in the previous step you can install on your machine. You can ignore the debug rpms. The devel rpm includes include files you need in case you want to do software development with the CAEN VME-library.
    Attention:The binary rpms of the drivers will only install on machines which run the same kernel version as the machine where you have built the rpms (i.e. where you have executed the step above).

The library is installed in /opt/xdaq/lib. The firmware upgrade utility is installed in /opt/xdaq/bin/CAENVMEUpgrade. The include files are installed in /opt/xdaq/include. In addition a service named "caenvme" is created in /etc/init.d. The service is activated with the chkconfig utility so that the driver will be loaded automatically at every reboot. If you do not want to reboot your machine after the first installation just type as superuser: 

/sbin/service caenvme start

The software documentation you find on the CAEN www side.

last changed: 2014-04-02 comments to: Christoph Schwick