User's Guide to RunControl &minus Selecting a Partition

Each RunControl session must be assigned to one partition. A partition is an integer session identifier. The partitions 0 through 7 are associated with one TriggerSupervisor each, and are known as hardware partitions. Any partition above 7 is known as a software partition and does not have an associated TriggerSupervisor.

The TriggerSupervisor is the top-level piece of hardware that governs the CDF data acquisition system. TriggerSupervisor controls the trigger and readout system and produces the final Level1 Accept and Level2 Accept signals. For a software partition, the RunControl client software must produce its own triggers, or execute code entirely independent of the TriggerSupervisor. A software partition may also be used simply to book front end resources without initiating a run.

Each front end crate also belongs to no more than one partition. The ResourceManager provides a booking mechanism to prevent more than one partition from trying to use a given crate or client. Using this mechanism, RunControl will not allow one to use a crate already booked by another partition.

A fast text-only way to view the status of all partitions is via the partition command: 

setup fer
partition
 Id CreationTime     UserName NodeName     PId NCr Run    ClientName
* 1 2004.02.05 14:28 cdfdaq   b0dap73     2688 150 178854 Christopher x 2080  
  2 2004.02.05 22:37 reisert  b0dap72     1431   1 178663 reisert             
 16 2004.02.05 18:56 cdfdaq   b0dap74      227   1        cdfdaq
Note the existence of two hardware partitions and one software partition. The asterisk (*) next to partition 1 indicates that this is the main physics partition, which owns the Level 1 Trigger (Fred). The partition number is an optional argument to the partition command, and will list all the resources owned by that partition: 
partition 1
 Id CreationTime     UserName NodeName     PId NCr Run    ClientName
* 1 2004.02.05 14:28 cdfdaq   b0dap73     2688 150 178854 Christopher x 2080  
    0 CCAL_00                                                        
    1 CCAL_01                                                        
    2 CCAL_02                                                        
    3 CCAL_03                                                        
...
W.Badgett