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How to do remote planning with EIS#

Ver. 1.1, 19-Jun-2007, Peter Young

It is intended that EIS operations will be performed remotely from the US and UK from around 12-18 months after launch. This is a discussion document for how this will be done.

Before you start#

You need the following:

• an account on ssh2 at ISAS
• an up-to-date Solarsoft distribution

Files at ISAS#

It is necessary to tar up the following directories at ISAS:

/home/flare/slb/eisco/planning_db
/home/flare/slb/cp/cmdpln
/home/flare/slb/eisco/EIS_CPT_output

and put them in your home directory. I assume below that they are in /home/young.

I have a script running on ssh2 which tars up the ISAS directories at 19 JST every day (note that I've renamed the script as a .txt file, rather than a .csh file to make it more browser friendly).

Unpacking tar files and setting environment variables#

I have a script that unpacks the gzipped tar files that I pull over from ISAS. Note in this script that I'm copying the latest study database files and study description files from Solarsoft into the ISAS planning_db directory. This is important as the ISAS planning_db directory does not have up-to-date study files.

You now need to set the following environment variables:

setenv,'ZDBASE_USER=+/home/young/planning_db'
setenv,'CMDPLN=/home/young/cmdpln'
setenv,'cpt_output_dir=/home/young/EIS_CPT_output'

Running eis_mk_plan#

Enter Solarsoft IDL, and do:

IDL> s=fix_zdbase(/user)
IDL> eis_mk_plan

You should be able to see the latest as-planned entries on the timeline as well as the contact and SAA information. When you've completed the plan, you should be able to run CPT on it and generate the three output files: ORL, OBSTBL and DR files.

By ftp-ing these files into the correct directories back at ISAS, the planning process should be complete.

More details about the planning process at ISAS are given in the EIS planning guide.

Unresolved Issue#

It is necessary for the as-planned database at ISAS (in the eisco account) to be up-to-date as information in the as-planned database goes into the level-0 FITS files. Thus the database needs to be transferred from the remote planner's home machine to eisco, overwriting the existing database.

Possible Solution#

On the eisco account there is a directory called 'scripts' which contains the script db_backup.sh. This is executed by doing:

> sh ~/scripts/db_backup.sh

and it creates a tarred, gzipped version of the planning_db directory in $HOME/db_backups.

The procedure to replace the eisco planning database with the remote planner's database is then as follows:

1. The remote planner (RP) runs db_backup.sh (or some variation) at his/her remote location to create a tar file containing the planning_db directory that contains the new EIS plan.
2. The RP ftps this tar file to the ssh2 machine at ISAS.
3. The RP then does an ssh onto the ssh2 machine, and then from ssh2 onto eisco (logging in as eisco).
4. The RP copies the tar file from the ssh2 machine to the eisco home directory.
5. The RP runs the db_backup.sh script in order to backup the current as-planned database on the eisco machine. The filename should be noted.
6. The new tar file containing the new plan is unpacked.

There perhaps should be a diagnostic IDL routine that will quickly check the integrity of the new as-planned database.