LIGO e-Lab Notes and Links Components Old Links Old News

LIGO e-Lab Notes and Links

The LIGO experiment monitors seismic activity at its observatory sites in Livingston, LA and Hanford, WA in order to account for this background in its interferometer signals. Data from the system of sensors set up at each site is made available to the ELabs LIGO e-Lab. This page contains status, documentation, links and notes for the LIGO e-Lab, the analysis tool and other software, and supporting systems.

Components

• Data Channels -- An overview of the data channels, their physical origin and nomenclature
• Data Overview -- How LIGO data is stored on the ELabs VMs: directories, file formats and naming conventions
• Data Formats -- How to read and interpret the different data files
• Dataflow -- An overview of the data's journey from LIGO's sensors to the e-Lab Analysis Tool. In more detail:
  • Upstream transfer -- LIGO servers > ELabs frame files
  • Data conversion -- Frame files > Stream files
  • Stream plotting -- Stream files > LIGO e-Lab

• LIGO Relay Server - specifications and configuration for the LIGO Data Relay Server. Right now that function is performed by the machine named "tekoa" at Hanford, but it will be replaced by a machine at Caltech
• LIGO storage requirements - sizes of the separate components of the ELabs Reduced Data Set (RDS)
• LIGOtools - LIGO software package management system we can use to distribute LIGO software to Grid nodes

• Design Notes - Eric's notes on the original LIGO e-Lab design.

Old Links

(Joel) The original LIGO UI tool was called TLA, later renamed "Bluestone." Eric Myers was in charge of its development for I2U2. There remain some references to it within the e-Lab source code, but it essentially no longer exists. Note Edit's 7/30/2014 revisions to the SVN repository, 6372-6373 "remove Bluestone references"

• Bluestone - analysis tool for LIGO environmental data (also known as TLA)
• Bluestone Versions - the various versions of Bluestone and where they are installed
• Bluestone Update - instructions for updating (rolling out) a new release of Bluestone
• BluestoneRegressionTests - tests to run after every new release or update

• LIGO Documentation - technical documentation about LIGO hardware and software, teaching documentation, Blue Pages, MediaWiki glossary, etc... (virtually all out-of-date as of 2017 - JG)

We don't use e-Logs or BOINC

• LogbookDiscussion - LIGO e-Logs and the modified BOINC logbook software

We also don't use the Grid anymore.

• Grid Execution - Details on how LIGO is executed as a Grid Workflow
• Grid Interface API - proposal for an Applications Program Interface to lanuch and control tasks on the Grid
• Parameter Files - notes on various parameter file formats
• LIGO Grid - Existing LIGO Grid resources we would like to leverage or at least try to be compatible with

RSS never really caught on for us.

• RSS News - front page news with an RSS feed

Old News

[These need to be cleaned out - JG]

• The TO-DO list Eric created when he visited the CI in January is here The items which are struck out have been completed. The remaining items in the top row are all underway, so it's now time to start talking and working on the item in the second row. (Note that these are less specific than the row above.)

• A list of ideas for LIGO investigations is at http://i2u2.spy-hill.net/glossary/index.php/LIGO_e-Lab_ideas

• We will have three (3!) teachers working at Hanford this summer on the LIGO e-Lab (last summer we had one). They are
  • John Kerr, Pasco HS (was our summer teacher last year)
  • Mandy Pihlaja, Prosser HS (attended our workshop last year)
  • Keith ?? (will be working on non ELabs activities)

• There will also be another workshop at Hanford this summer on I2U2. Dates and participants yet to be determined.

• Two of the LIGO summer teachers have started work at Hanford. You can see what they are up to, and even say hello, at http://i2u2.spy-hill.net/forum_index.php in the Gladstone Room and Teacher's Lounge.

• Eric has rolled out v0.35 of the LIGO Analysis Tool. See http://i2u2.spy-hill.net/forum_thread.php?id=99 for details.

• Eric is now working on building the LIGO software needed to run an Analysis. This includes DMT macros and GDS libraries, and the FrameCPP library. See Tool, LIGO Analysis (TLA) for details.

• This software can then be packed into tarballs which are valid LIGOtools packages, which will make it easy to install them on other machines, be it a server at Argonne or a remote Grid node.

• Mandy Pihlaja (summer teacher) has found the rough calibration and units for the ELabs sensors. See http://i2u2.spy-hill.net/forum_thread.php?id=94#376

• John Kerr (summer teacher) has begun an interesting investigation at Hanford using data from the magnetometers. You can see a report of his initial progress at http://i2u2.spy-hill.net/forum_thread.php?id=91

• 10-11 August 2009 Workshop Notes

(Please move older status and news items which are still relevant from the top of this page down to here once they have been discussed.)