Page History

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• Standard translator:
  
  • directly reads the large xtc files
  • does not start until the xtc files start to appear on the offline file system
  • translation jobs run in the psana queue (fast network link to read)
  • output is to the ana file system (fast network link to write)
  • output is one Hdf5 file per run in the experiments hdf5 folder
  • the hdf5 files are added to the LCLS file manager which means they are archived to tape and can be restored if they were purged from disk.
• Monitoring translator:
  • reads the small xtc files (.smd.xtc) and the large
  • starts as soon as xtc files appear on the fast feedback nodes
  • translation jobs run in the psnehq or psfehq, or priority queues (fast network link to read from ffb)
  • output is to the ana file system (slower network link to write)
  • output is a master file, and one hdf5 file per calib cycle (step)
  • output is written to the experiments scratch folder. It is not backed up and is eligible for purging according to the Data Retention Policy Version 2.

The monitoring translator is intended for Multi-calib cycle experiments. It uses MPI to translate different calib cycles in parallel. Typically users will filter the large detectors and write smaller summary information in order to seed up translation for monitoring purposes.

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The default behavior for the Translator is to calibrate just cspad2x2 or Full cspad. To obtain the calibrations for other area detectors, as well as to use more recent calibration code, see Translating the Detector Interface.

Running by Hand

You can also run the translator by hand. You run it as you would any other psana module. Either through psana command line options or by writing a psana configuration file.  The module is Translator.H5Output. When using the psana command line interface to run the module, the only option that is required to give to the Translator is the name of the output file.  This must be a fully qualified filename, with the output directory.  For example:

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