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<== Date ==> <== Thread ==>

Subject: Re: Calcout using CA output link sometimes gets INVALID severity
From: "J. Lewis Muir" <[email protected]>
To: Andrew Johnson <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2012 12:33:24 -0500
On 10/12/12 11:38 AM, Andrew Johnson wrote:
> Hi Lewis,
> 
> On 2012-10-12 J. Lewis Muir wrote:
>> Yes, inserting the delay makes the problem go away.
>>
>> But this seems like a bug to me.  Isn't the IOC supposed to be
>> in the "running" state after iocInit completes?  I would expect
>> this to mean that any threads related to CA link processing have
>> completed starting and are in a state ready to service CA
>> requests.  I would not expect to have to insert epicsThreadSleep
>> calls after iocInit to make things work.
> 
> The threads involved have all started and are processing, but connecting CA 
> channels is fundamentally an asynchronous process.  You wouldn't want us to 
> delay the completion of iocInit until all CA links in the database are 
> connected up; the database has no idea whether a CA link points to a local or 
> remote PV, it treats them all identically.

Hi, Andrew.

This is where my naivety about how the CA links work in the IOC
has caused me look at things in a different way.  To me it seems
crazy that I would have to worry about a CA link not connecting
when it is a local PV.

Anyway, no, I wouldn't want the iocInit to wait until all CA
links in the database are connected if those links can be to PVs
that are not local and may not exist.  I didn't know they all
get connected at start-up.  I thought they got connected as
needed.  So, for this calcout problem, I would have expected the
calcout record (or some built-in EPICS Base facility) to
establish the CA connection if needed before doing the write.
Or, whatever, the calcout record could command a write using an
EPICS Base facility, and that facility would ensure the CA link
is connected before doing the write.

> I may have removed an epicsThreadSleep() from the iocInit code in the past; I 
> could put one back in so you don't have to provide one yourself, but that 
> would unnecessarily delay IOCs that don't actually need to wait.

Agreed.

> In your case the delay is really a requirement before doing the dbpf because 
> you don't want to process that calcout record until the output link has 
> connected.  Maybe a more robust alternative might be to provide a command 
> which waits for a named link field to have connected, so instead of a delay 
> you'd use something like
>     dbcaWaitConnected "ioc23:PresetHistoryAdd.OUT"
> but I don't know how easy it would be to implement that.

That would be nice--way better than a delay.

Even better for me would be a dbcaWaitAllLocalConnected that
would wait for all local PVs to be connected.  I'd put that
after iocInit in every single one of my IOCs.  I can't even
think of a case where I wouldn't do that.  Is there a case where
one wouldn't want to do that?  Of course, if there is no case
where one wouldn't want to do that, then it starts to seem like
it should be in iocInit.

>> Also, I don't know exactly how the pause and run stuff works,
>> but if the IOC is paused and then run again at a later time,
>> will the same problem occur?  If so, I guess I'd have to add a
>> delay on coming out of the paused state to ensure my record will
>> process correctly.  That would be pretty lame.
> 
> Pausing won't help, that stops the CA server side of the IOC so requires 
> reconnecting.  It was added to solve a completely different problem.

I understand that it was added for a redundancy solution.  I
wasn't suggesting that pausing would help; I was wondering if
coming out of a pause would be the same as what happens right
after iocInit completes.  If it is, then there could be cases
right after the IOC came out of a pause where a record using CA
links to local PVs would fail because the CA links have not been
established yet.

Thanks,

Lewis

Replies:
Re: Calcout using CA output link sometimes gets INVALID severity Andrew Johnson
References:
Calcout using CA output link sometimes gets INVALID severity J. Lewis Muir
Re: Calcout using CA output link sometimes gets INVALID severity Andrew Johnson
Re: Calcout using CA output link sometimes gets INVALID severity J. Lewis Muir
Re: Calcout using CA output link sometimes gets INVALID severity Andrew Johnson

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