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The current handler accepts the format as described in EDOC417.
There exists offline tape and disc versions, and online (fast ethernet) sort spy.

Config File

A config file is required to map the VXI ADC addresses into group+items as required by the user.
A default config file is included with the MTsort distribution (/MIDAS/MTsort/config/exogam.cf),
and it will be copied into the sort directory (.mtsort.cf) when the sort program is compiled.
The default config file should be checked before running the sort as it may not include all the detectors in current use.
Access to the config file is from the sort run window, via the input handler button and the config button.
The config file is organised as a list of VXI addresses for a particular group number.
This list defines the number of items in the group and their order.
The input format specification in the sort program file must match this list.

Tape handler

A config file valid for the experiment should be used. This may have been available during the experiment if MTsort was in use online.

The tape written online uses the IN2P3 format. It should only be necessary to investigate this format if tape reading problems arise. See Ganil web site for further information if necessary.

Online Spy handler

This version spies data blocks on the network as they pass from Event Builder to Tape server.

It requires a daemon running as root. The data blocks are then shared with the sort program via a memory-mapped file.

/MIDAS/bin_SunOS/exogam-spy device event-builder-host tape-server-host nstreams

for example ...

/MIDAS/bin_SunOS/exogam-spy hme1 10.0.0.94 10.0.0.173 1

Config file example

#Format: group    ...
#Clover[0:15] (ea,eb,ec,ed,ta,tb,tc,td)
group 0   0x65 0x66 0x67 0x68 0x165 0x166 0x167 0x168
group 1   0x69 0x6a 0x6b 0x6c 0x169 0x16a 0x16b 0x16c
#posn[20:35] (pe0,pe1,pe2,pe3,pe4,pe5,pe6,pe7,pe8)
group 20  0x75 0x76 0x77 0x78 0x79 0x7a 0x7b 0x7c 0x7d
group 21  0x085 0x185 0x285 0x385 0x485 0x585 0x685 0x785 0x885
#posn[40:55] (pt0,pt1,pt2,pt3,pt4,pt5,pt6,pt7,pt8)
group 40  0x175 0x176 0x177 0x178 0x179 0x17a 0x17b 0x17c 0x17d

Points to note

There are a small number of bad events reported by the online sort program.
These are caused by duplicated ADC parameter addresses within an event, and seem to be correlated with hardware event number re-synchronisation in VXI.
These events are suppressed before writing to tape, and so do not appear in the offline sorts.

Tape file details

The runfile details to be provided for the input handler for tape sorts should be of the form ... 

TAPE1 RUN3
TAPE1 RUN4
TAPE2 RUN5
etc.
The first word on each line (tape name field) is only checked to see if it changes, to force the program to unload the current tape, and allow the user to load the next tape.
However, the second field (file name) is checked against the file header. It should be of the form "RUN" followed by the correct run number.

Maintained by Janet Sampson and John Cresswell (University of Liverpool)
Email to support@ns.ph.liv.ac.uk