2010 August 05

Details

  • Time: 16:00 - 17:00 ET = 20:00 - 21:00 UT
  • Location: CV-ER331
  • Video Hub: 192.33.117.19
  • Domestic Call In: 434-293-7109
  • Int'l Call In: 434-293-6691

Purpose: Initial Discussion of goals and setup.

Agenda:

  1. Assessment of who and where we are and where we want to be at what time.
    • Who: Al Wootten, Scott Schnee, Stuartt Corder, Ed Fomalont, John Hibbard, Crystal Brogan, Todd Hunter, Amy Kimball, Remy Indebetouw, Kartik Sheth, Nuria Marcelino). Several of these folks are still off-shore or not employed by NAASC yet; they need not try to attend.
    • Where: Getting our feet wet.
    • Goal: For now, to set up a framework for access to and work on ALMA data in the pre-archive world. We can discuss 'what sorts of data' today.
    • What time: Science verification is still ahead of us.
  2. Comments on the first data and discussion of what sorts of data we should make available. Stuart has offered to help with this.
  3. Discussion of the walkthrough process. I think we should start simple but with some variation in the data. Four or more antennas only?
  4. AOB

Meeting Summary

  1. Present: Scott Schnee (phone), Ed Fomalont, John Hibbard, Crystal Brogan, Todd Hunter, Remy Indebetouw, Kartik Sheth, Al Wootten
  2. Discussions:
    • Al to discuss the group goals, etc. with Alison Peck and Eric Villard. An email has been sent.
    • CSV Imaging group members: Leader: Eric Villard, *Itziar de Gregorio (Deputy), Jeff Wagg, Stephane Leon, Gianni Marconi, Daniel Fulla, Manuel Aravena, Anita Richards, Martin Zwaan, Baltazar Vila-Vilaro, Kartik Sheth, Sergio Martin, Al Wootten.
    • There is also an Observing Modes group (lead: Andy Biggs), Liz Humphreys, Alison Peck (Deputy),Mark Rawlings,Tony Remijan,Sergio Martin,Tommy Wiklind
  3. Datasets
    • Stuartt, Al, CSV liaisons identify science-relevant datasets created by SB, CSV observations
    • pull asdms over and put on /home/prak/almacomm in tarred gzip format Do not reduce data there.
    • Remy to see about software tools we lack: asdmbrowser, wvrgcal (http://wikis.alma.cl/bin/view/AIV/Application)
    • fill in description on internal wiki. Al to create.
    • group members download and look at data in casapy-test.
    • after preliminary individual examination meet group and discuss specific data.
    • NB All CSV SB data are in jira tickets at jira.alma.cl CSV-142. Reports should to there; work should be logged there. Not all have access to these tickets.
  4. Products:
    • list of datasets and description and respository of asdms (goes on internal wiki)
    • feedback to csv (probably best through csv-jira and CSV imaging group members) and casa.
    • casa script through imaging (place these on csv-jira)
    • eventually casaguide for some subset of good SV dataset(s)

Clear skies, Al

Follow-up Items

Creation of Wiki's

There are now two wikis for the ALMA Tiger Teamtask:

  1. public site https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/ALMA/AlmaTiger
  2. NRAO-only site (requires an NRAO windows account) https://staff.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/ALMA/AlmaTiger

The former will be used for the task definition, and to post meeting logistics & summaries.

The latter will be used to post data descriptions.

Both are now linked to from the main NAASC wiki https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/ALMA/NAASC

Attempts to procure additional compute power for this effort

Email from J. Hibbard 8/6/2010

For this task, we decided that ~3 "moderate end" machines should be allocated to tiger team members (candidates in order of priority: Al, Todd, Kartik).

I had an action from the meeting to investigate the capabilities of the summer student machines, as D. Halstead suggested we re-direct some of these machines for our purposes.

From Dan Klopp and Derek Hart, I established that the summer student machines come in two flavors:

1) Optiplex 780 ~$1200
   4 GB RAM
   core 2 duo @ 3 GHz
   250 GB hard-disk
   21" dell monitor

2) Precision T3500 ~$1600
   4 GB Ram (extendable to 8 slots)
   xenon quad core @ 2.67 GHz
   250 GB hard-disk (w/raid capability available)
   21" dell monitor

For comparisons, the linux machines mentioned in the latest version of Mark's "Computing Strategy" Memo are:

low-end: Dell T7500 ~$4600
   12 GB RAM
   Quad core @ 2.26 GHz
   4x1TB drives
   22" monitor

high-end: Dell T7500 ~$8350
   24 GB RAM
   dual quad core @ 2.66GHz
   4x1.5TB drives
   22" monitor

(These are higher-end that Crystals "low-end" machine that she ordered for Amy. And Crystal mentioned a need for fast disks - I'll assume that is included in Mark's machines, given the price).

From this I conclude:
  • the summer student Optiplex is a no-go
  • seems to be the Precisions' could have more disk space and RAM added to make them suitable for our purposes

Derek indicated that the summer students machines had eventual homes (as upgrades to NRAO staffs machines, following a set update schedule) identified prior their purchase, so before deciding whether they could be upgraded to meet the Tiger Team needs, I would ask David to find out how many, if any, of the Precision machines are available for redeployment to the NAASC. If none, then I would suggest buying a few of the low-end machines spec'd above (or should they be close to the $2.5K machine Crystal ordered for Amy?).

These are my own opinions, and I defer to the collective wisdom of the Tiger Team, with eventual decision and actions to be communicated by Al as task lead.

- John "I'm only the ARC Manager when I am wearing my ARC Manager Secret Signet Ring" Hibbard

Software

One machine may be available for installation of ALMA Common Software (ACS). Mark and Remy made a plan to set up a machine here as close to what is used in Chile as possible, with ACS and the tools used in Chile, including asdmbrowser, telcal and wvrgcal. Then we can go from there to make them generally installed, once we understand the library dependencies etc. wvrgcal is Bojan's software, which Remy mentioned in the context of libair, from http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~bn204/alma/wvrsoft.html as described on: http://wikis.alma.cl/bin/view/AIV/Application

Data

An additional dataset has been acquired and placed in the repository.

-- AlWootten - 2010-08-12
Topic revision: r4 - 2010-08-19, AlWootten
This site is powered by FoswikiCopyright © by the contributing authors. All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
Ideas, requests, problems regarding NRAO Public Wiki? Send feedback