Station Cron Scripts

The offline cron jobs are a fairly simple, but important part of the automatic station operations.

Principles of Operation

The cron jobs are all written in a similar manner to allow easier problem diagnostis. All cron scripts are run from the workstation "sadira" as user "ovlbi". Below the cron scripts are listed with a summary and schedule for execution.
mergeLogs
Every night at 1 am, the previous days logs are merged to produce a single days logs.
checkLogs
Every morning at 7 am the previous days logs are checked and a pass Summary produced.
checkAnomaly
Every morning at 7 am the previous days logs are checked for anonmalies.
vsopSrs
Every hour, the FTP site at ISAS in Japan is checked for new schedule files.
vsopBsp
Every three hours, the FTP site at JPL in California is checked for new satelite predictions.
vsopTelemetry
Every 15 minutes, the latest log file is examined for new telemetry header data. If any is found, it is placed in the ovlbi output FTP area.

Inputs

Both the space radio telescope schedule files and satellite orbit prediction files are retrieved automatically by cron jobs. The orbit prediction files are automatically processed by the cron job into a form that can be used internally. The schedule file is processed into a comamnd file using the schedco program. The command file must be started by an operator.

Log Processing

Three log processing tasks are handled automatically by programs run from cron jobs.

Merging Logs

At the end of every day, the 96 logs from the previous day are merged to produce a single log file for that day. The script "mergeLogs" runs a program "logMerge", and writes a summary to a file in directory "~ovlbi/offline/scriptFiles".

Pass Summary

After the logs are merged, the tracking activities and problems are reported in a summary e-mailed to the station staff. The script "dailySummary" runs the program "passSummary". The daily summary file is also written to the directory "~ovlbi/summary".

Anomaly Summary

Also after the logs are merge, a summary is produced of all anomalous station conditions detected by the realtime MONCHK task. The summary is e-mailed to the station staff.

Outputs

Telemetry Headers

The satellite telemetry headers are extracted from the 15 minute length realtime logs by script "vsopTelemetry", which is run every 15 minutes. The telemetry header files are placed in the OVLBI output ftp area.

Eventually, more output data files will be generated automatically.

Return to the Station Software Guide. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a facillity of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

glangsto@nrao.edu
Last update: 97 June 24