ZBASE: An Impedance Data Base Program

Program description:

The ZBASE program provides a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for generating, storing and processing impedance data.
The main goals of the ZBASE program are: One toward the tha above goals is to enforce a certain structure in which the impedance data is stored (-> hierarchy of directories and file name conventions). The impedance actual data can then be accessed with or without the ZBASE interface. For example the  LHC impedance data resides
on an 'afs' directory that can be accessed from a variety of computer platforms and locations:

/afs/cern.ch/eng/lhc/impedance/zbase/data

A general description of the impedance data structure and the program functionalitites can be found under the one of the following links:

-> ZBASE report
-> ZBASE conference poster

The core ZBASE program is written in the TclTk script language and thus, can be executed on a variety of computer platforms
(e.g. UNIX and WINDOWS 2000).  The TclTk code is available on the 'afs' directory under:

/afs/cern.ch/eng/lhc/impedance/zbase/zbase

Running ZBASE:

ZBASE assumes that the following environment variables are pre defined:

You need to define:

If the above directory environment variables are not defined or if they do not correspond to valid directories ZBASE will ask the user to redefine the directory environment variables during the program start-up.

The main ZBASE program can be invoked by either calling the TclTk script on the above 'afs' directory (e.g. zbase2.4.tk)
or by making a local installation of ZBASE via the archived installation file zbase.tar.gz which contains all the WINDOWS 2000 binaries.
Some of the ZBASE modules are written in FORTRAN or C code and need to be recompiled for other the platforms of interest.
The directory

/afs/cern.ch/eng/lhc/impedance/zbase/bin

is a link to a platform dependent directory and contains the pre compiled binaries for LINUX and WINDOWS systems.
All required source code for the compilation can be found in source.tar.gz and the binaries for the CERN LXPLUS cluster ('linux24') can be found in the archive file zbase.lxplus24.bin.tar.gz.
 

Description for a Local Installation under WINDOWS systems:

1) First you need to make sure TclTk in installed on your machine. You can install TclTk by following the instruction on the following HTML page:

http://www.scriptics.com/software/tcltk/8.0.html

Down-load the self extracting installation file for Windows 95 and Windows NT (this will work under Windows 2000) and execute the file under Windows.

2) If you want to use the central ZBASE data you have to make sure you have an 'afs' client running under Windows and find out to which drive letter the 'afs' directories are mapped. Instructions for installing an 'afs' client under Windows can be found under John Jowett's home page:

http://jowett.home.cern.ch/jowett/ComputingNotes/AFSinWindows2000.html

If you do not want to use the central ZBASE data base or if you do not have an 'afs' client running under Windows you have to specify a valid
local ZBASE data directory  in the environment variables. You find a description on how a ZBASE data directory must look like in the ZBASE manual (http://bruening.home.cern.ch/bruening/ZBASE/zbase1.2.pdf).
 

3) Before you can start ZBASE from WINDOWS you need to set a few environment variables (under the LINUX system this is taken care of by
a shell script called 'zbase'). You can do this via the Windows control panel under 'START' -> 'SETTINGS' -> 'CONTROL PANEL' -> 'SYSTEM'
-> 'ADVANCED' -> 'ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES'.

In the following I assume that the 'afs' home directory '/' is mapped under the Z drive of your system. If you use a different drive letter or no 'afs' directory all together substitute the path accordingly. Also note that all directory names do not include a final "\"!

You need to define:

BIGSCRATCH -> Z:\.cern.ch\project\parc\scratch\si\bruening
This directory will be used for storing big temporary files as they might occur during a MAFIA run. Since the Windows version does not yet support the execution of external programs like 'MAFIA' or 'ABCI' you do not need to worry about this and can specify any temporary directory.

HOME -> 'here you should specify a local directory where ZBASE can copy files to in case you want to save any of the data base information.

HOST -> windows 2000

LPDEST -> 'insert here a printer name' or 'NOPRINTER'

MAILID -> 'your email address'

USER -> 'your user id'

ZBASE_DATA -> Z:\.cern.ch\.user\z\zdata\public\zbase\data
-> if you have not an 'afs' client running you must specify a local directory that contains the impedance data for ZBASE.

ZBASE_DIR -> Z:\.cern.ch\.user\b\bruening\tmp
-> if you have not an 'afs' client running you must specify a local directory for temporary storage of data files. ZBASE will use this directory fo copying temporary files to. At start-up ZBASE creates a sub directory named by the date and time. All temporary files will be stored in this sub directory and all data in this directory will be removed when ZBASE is terminated.

ZBASE_EDITOR -> 'your preferred WINDOWS editor'

ZBASE_FONT -> -adobe-courier-bold-r-normal--*-160-*-*-m-*-iso8859-1  (or your preferred font)

ZBASE_SOURCE -> Z:\.cern.ch\.user\z\zdata\public\zbase
-> If you have not a running 'afs' client you must specify here the local directory that contains the ZBASE executables ('bin' directory).

GNUPLOT_DIR -> specifies a scratch directory where 'gnuplot' can store temporary input files which are required for the WINDOWS version of the program.

 

4) The archive zbase.tar.gz  contains a file called 'cygwin.dll' in the 'lib' directory. Make sure that the ZBASE 'lib' directory is in your 'PATH' environment variable or copy the 'cygwin.dll' file into a directory that is in your 'PATH' environment variable.