Troubleshooting guide

casts a large amount of thermal radiation on the lower right hand corner of the array.
c) Check that the MOS dewar temperature is lower than 200 K. If the temperature is not between 80 – 95
K, and is rising monotonically with time, the MOS dewar may have run out of LN
2
. Verify that the camera
dewar is cold by checking the detector temperature, which should be near 77 K.
4) Various Problems related to image readout, wheel motion and Perle communication.
The three daemons started by initflam.pl (temperature, motor, and MCE4) work by issuing commands to
particular hardware addresses on a networked device called the perle (previously the iocomm). This device is
like a multiplexer. We have three devices (the temperature monitor, the motor controller, and the MCE4 array
controller) which accept commands via serial ports. The perle has one serial port connection for each device.
Commands from the software daemons running on flamingos1a are received by the perle via an ethernet
connection, and then passed to the correct device.
Troubleshooting several types of problems involves deciding if the problem is intrinsic to the device, or to the
communication via the perle itself.
a) Problem: The image has not read out. The exposure time counter never appears.
Sometimes the array controller crashes before the image acquisition script issues the START command
to MCE4. For example, a successfully started image acquisition should show:
/usr/local/uf/bin/ufdc -host flmn-2m-1a -port 52008 -acq "start -timeout 9 -cnt 1 -lut /usr/
local/flamingos/flamingos.headers.lut/Flamingos.lut -fits /usr/local/flamingos/flamingos.hea
ders.lut/Flamingos.fitsheader -file /data0/2mguest/Test/test -index 2"
If it hangs here for more than ~6 seconds, type ufdc -q status in another flmn-2m-1a window
ufdc> greeting: UFGemMCE4Agent -- accepted client: ufdc@flmn-2m-1b@2002:350:03:40:49.170980
2002:350:03:40:49.170980
2002:350:03:40:50.440745ufdc@flmn-2m-1b
START
GATIR *Flamingos Beta* 2.00_f.07 >>
>>>>>.....TAKING AN IMAGE OR APPLYING LUT.....
(Exposure time + number of reads = 3 + 1)
Have slept 3 seconds out of an exposure time of 4 seconds
If you do not see the START command and the exposure time counter above, then MCE4 has crashed.
The statement in the output above that saying to type ufdc -q status is a red herring, doing so will not
change anything.
Solution: Reboot MCE4 and reinitialize it with initflam.pl. To reboot MCE4 telnet to baytech from
flamingos1a with userid mce4pow and password ____________[regular flamingos1a password]. Type
reboot 1, and wait for the prompt to return. Then type logout. Example output from this procedure
follows:
4mguest@flmn-4m-1b{2001}telnet baytech
Trying 140.252.53.86...
Connected to baytech.
Escape character is '^]'.
FLAMINGOS@2.1-m, Ver. 2.39, 2011 May 13 Page 35 of 46