CHESS Station Computer SL 7 Update

The CHESS station data-collection computers are now running Scientific Linux 7 with SPEC 6. With this upgrade comes a number of changes from the previous generation.

Major OS Changes

Removal of specuser account.

The shared specuser account is no longer availible on the station computers. It has been replaced by a passwordless local station users. The local users are chess_xx where the xx is the station (i.e. chess_a1, chess_a2, etc). For computers like gcave, ops1, and the roll stations the user is chess_ops. These users are automatically logged in on boot or after a logout.

NOTE: These are the same user ids used on the CHESS DAQ and for saving from the detector computers.

Move to the CLASSE managed SL7 with local home directories

• Allows logins with standard CLASSE id
• Most CLASSE network filesystems and centrally installed software is available (the ops1, roll, roll2, and gcave computers have limitations due to their networking)
• The specadm and chess_xx local home directories are under /mnt/home.

Remote Access

Remote access to the station computers is limited to within the CLASSE and CHESS networks. Since there is no pasword for the chess_xx users, you will need to login with a CLASSE account. Members of the chess group can use 'sudo' to become the chess_xx user. Both full and temporary CLASSE accounts can access the station computers.

Samba access

The chess_xx user's home directory is available over samba. Any user in the chess group can read and write files to this location.

Running SPEC remotely

By default you cannot SSH into the station computer as the local chess_xx account. To run spec remotely:

1. Login to the computer with your CLASSE ID.
2. Change to the chess_xx user with the chess_xx command (i.e chess_a1, chess_f1)
3. Run spec

NOTE: Access to g1hutch, g2hutch, g2hutch, and gcave from the G-line console computers is an exception. SSH has been setup so that you just need to type ='ssh _hutch computer_' =from a console computer terminal window to be logged in remotely as the proper user.

SPEC 6 Upgrade

The station computers are now running 64-bit SPEC 6. For the most part there is no visible change for the user and most macros will work as they did before. The following are the most noticeable changes:

1. The counters macro has been re-written to us a menu system. You can now select multiple counters to plot as well as the detector and monitor counters.
2. The newfile macro now calls user_newfile by default. We no longer need our local changes to newfile for detector support.
3. Fewer CHESS macros are loaded by default. You may need to add additional macro files to your userlist.mac or station.mac files.
4. For the 'standard' monos (all except B1, C1, and G-line), the default SPEC energy macros are being used. As result of this is the safe_Emove macro is no longer used. It will not be compatible with future versions of SPEC.