User Support News 20 Feb 2007

The items from which I expect feed-back are marked in red and the item which I propose as action items in the JOC meeting are marked in bold red .

Tutorials

Next tutorial

The next tutorial session at CERN will be on Tuesday, 27th Feb https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki/bin/view/CMS/February07CMSweekTutorials. All speakers found.

Scheduled tutorial items

A visualization tutorial by Yana Osborne is scheduled for April. Other suggestions?

Documentation

Reminder:

• WorkBook: to get started and up to first analysis
• Reference Manual: brief description of content and purpose of each package
• CMS Offline Guide:
  • description of algorithms
  • usage and "how-to" documents which are too detailed for the WorkBook
  • gathers information currently spread in numerous wiki pages to a single structure.

WorkBook

Julia Andreeva will provide material for the instructions how to use the CMS dasboard job monitoring in the WorkBook. (See also Job monitoring and exit codes)

CMS Offline Guide

Most of the "Main areas" pages have been migrated to the Offline Guide, proceeding with the reconstructed objects. Much work done by Jenny Williams.

I'm waiting feedback from

• Tommaso and Shahram on https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki/bin/view/CMS/SWGuideReco
• Luca and Oliver on how to proceed with https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki/bin/view/CMS/CalAliDB
• DPG coordinators on tracks, HCAL and muon pages

Reference Manual

The release for which all the subsystem and packages are required to have a documentation page in the reference manual is 1_4_0. The announcement send to the software development HN forum: https://hypernews.cern.ch/HyperNews/CMS/get/swDevelopment/858.html

The release notes summary should be added to the Reference Manual. Does sw development tools group have someone having knowledge of the Reference Manual general structure?

Getting help

Problem reporting channel for data/computing issues

I have proposed to have a "computing front end" person (or a rotating task) to monitor and follow the different channels used in reporting computing problems (HN, ggus, savannah). I will discuss this with Christoph after the workshop this week.

Job monitoring and exit codes

Julia Andreeva and Elena Tikhonenko are working to improve the information given by the the CMS dasboard job monitoring. In particular, they will analyze the exit codes in case of probelms (you find the codes if you go the page above, and click on the number under the Fail column on the bottom of the page). This is potentially very useful. as if the exit codes in case of program crash all well defined, a user will in many cases be able to figure out the problem (and the remedy). Julia and Elena will need the collaboration of the developers to proceed this work, and as Elena is staying for one month only, a prompt reply to their questions would be appreciated. I will send a reminder of this to the software development HN forum, but offline conveners, please advertise this in your groups.

-- CMSUserSupport - 20 Feb 2007