Reports until 12:48, Tuesday 04 June 2013
H1 CDS
james.batch@LIGO.ORG - posted 12:48, Tuesday 04 June 2013 - last comment - 09:25, Wednesday 05 June 2013(6617)
Restart of data concentrator 
Added H1ECATC1_PLC2.ini, H1ECATY1_PLC1.ini, H1ECATY1_PLC2.ini, H1ECATY1_PLC3.ini to master file, removed H1EDCU_ECATC1.ini.  Also edited H1EDCU_DUST.ini to include H1 diode room dust monitor channels.  Restarted data concentrator, but data concentrator could not parse the H1ECATC1_PLC2.ini file.  Error message "failed to locate first section in ...H1ECATC1_PLC2.ini"  

Edited the new H1ECAT* files, found "units=" missing actual units. Corrected, but the data concentrator still failed with the same error.  Changed slope from 1 to 1.0, removed ^M from the end of the lines, no change, data concentrator still failed.

Finally commented out the H1ECAT*.ini files to restart the data concentrator, as 20 minutes had passed.

Examined the H1ECATC1_PLC2.ini file with "od -c", found 2 unprintable characters at the beginning of the file (octal 377, 376) at the beginning of the file, and each "normal" character has a trailing 000 (byte of value 0) after...

0000000 377 376   [  000   d  000   e  000   f  000   a  000   u  000   l  000

Compare with a working .ini file:

0000000   [   d   e   f   a   u   l   t   ]  

The script that generated the H1ECAT*.ini files needs some repair.
Comments related to this report
daniel.sigg@LIGO.ORG - 18:02, Tuesday 04 June 2013 (6626)
Link 

Guess the frame builder doesn't take Unicode...
james.batch@LIGO.ORG - 09:25, Wednesday 05 June 2013 (6638)
Link 

The H1ECAT files are in a UTF-16 format.  To convert to an ASCII format that the data concentrator can read, use the command iconv on a Linux workstation, as in the following:

iconv -f UTF-16 -t UTF-8 H1ECATC1_PLC2.ini > tmp.txt
mv tmp.txt H1ECATC1_PLC2.ini