Acc8 Migration

Migration of FESA software from acc7 (CentOS7) to acc8 (Rocky8)

Recipe

Upgrade FESA Design.
Rebuild with new gcc version
Configure startscripts
Configure ramdisk image

FESA

On the acc8 cluster use eclipse-2021-06 and FESA eclipse plugin 2.10.x. The new eclipse version will require a workspace update. (On acc8 the home directories (/home/ ) are no longer linked to (/common/home/), this may affect configuration paths.)

Upgrade the Design and the Deploy Unit to FESA 7.4.0. No changes to the design or user code are required if upgrading from 7.3.0.

Generate and Build the Class and DU.

Release for 7.4.0

Timing

FESA 7.4.0 uses Timing Runtime Environment fallout 6.2.x for rocky8. No changes to user code are required to use this version of Saftlib.

In Makefile.dep SAFT_HOME will point to the required RTE. Run code generation to update the makefiles.
SAFT_HOME ?= /common/export/timing-rte/tg-fallout-v6.2.x-rocky8/x86_64

If you use etherbone directly, check that your paths are updated.

C++

Rebuild any 1st/3rd party libraries and drivers. It is possible that some binaries will work without recompilation, but anything using std::string will fail due to a change in the ABI between gcc 4.8.5 and 8.5.0.

If you have linker errors complaining about missing functions with [abi:cxx11](), you have linked old libraries with new softweare

Frontend Configuration

The configuration scripts in /common/export/nfsinit/$myfrontend must include:

Timing script

Link to the timing-rte for rocky8, currently:

/common/export/nfsinit/global/timing-rte-tg-fallout-v6.2.x-rocky8

More information here: https://www-acc.gsi.de/wiki/FESA/FESA3_TimingRTE_700

FESA script

The same FESA start script will work for acc7 and acc8. A deployment using eclipse will automatically link one of these scripts for the appropriate environment.

In your frontend directory, check that one of these 3 FESA startscripts is linked:
fesa_64bit_dev
fesa_64bit_int
fesa_64bit_pro

For acc8 the start script has been updated to use fesa_generic with options. If the configuration uses an older start script (e.g. fesa_64bit_dev_environment_x), please use one of the 3 links above.

RAMDISK IMAGE

The operating system image is configured in /common/tftp/csco/pxe/pxelinux.cfg. The default image "scuxl" is currently acc7. This must be changed to "scuxl.el8" to work with FESA 7.4.0

Use the tool:
/common/usr/cscofe/bin/pxe-config
To view and change the image configuration

#Show configurations
pxe-config -l scuxl0001
#Set configuration to acc8
pxe-config -c scuxl0001 scuxl.el8

More information here: https://www-acc.gsi.de/wiki/FESA/FEC

Once the transition to acc8 is complete, the default image "scuxl" will be changed to rocky8. Then the pxe links can be changed to scuxl.

-- DominicDay - 25 Jul 2022