Installation

This CD includes the software required to run the various versions of the EScope tool presented thorough the book. Before running EScope, it is necessary to install and run some MDSplus components. In particular, you MUST run the mdsip Data Server process before running EScope.

The install shield provided in this CD will install the basic components of the MDSplus data acquisition system, as well as two databases containing experimental data which can be then displayed using EScope.

You MUST have Java 1.5 (or later) installed on your system for running the software provided with this CD.

Installing and running the MDSplus components on Windows

To install the required MDSplus component, run the installer MDSplus.exe available in the installers directory of this CD to install the basic software components of MDSplus and two databases containing experimental data which can be visualized in EScope.  Once installed, the item MDSPlus is added in the Start -> Programs Menu. The corresponding submenu is composed of the following items:

• mdsip Data Server
  Run the data server process. It is always necessary to have one Data Server process running in order to visualize data in EScope. This server listen to port 8000 for incoming data requests. When started, a Windows terminal is displayed, reporting diagnostic messages (such a the connection of a new client). To terminate the mdsip Data Server process, press <CTRL>C in this terminal.
   
• EScope
  Run a sample EScope application. This corresponds to EScope version 9.
   
• jTraverser
  This is a MDSplus tool which allows data browsing within the hierarchical structure of the database. The available databases are edam, shot 17615, corresponding to a pulse file of the experiment RFX, and h1data, shot 37025, corresponding to a pulse file for the experiment H1.
   
• jScope
  The original waveform visualization tool of MDSplus. jScope and jTraverser are not required to exercise the EScope versions presented thorough the book. They are provided to give an example of real world tools used in experimental physics.
   
• Unistall MDSplus
  The unistall procedure for this package.

All you need to exercise the EScope versions provided in the source directory is a running mdsip Data Server. You do not need any additional knowledge of MDSplus. The interested readers may refer to the MDSplus site (www.mdsplus.org). In particular, the authors suggest reading the MDSplus tutorial, available in the documentation section of the site.

Installing and running the MDSPlus components on Linux

The installation of the required MDSplus components and of the two experimental databases (edam, shot 17615 and h1, shot 37025) are carried out on Linux by the rpm file MDSplus-0.1-1.i386.rpm available in the installers directory of this CD. To install the MDSplus components and the databases, give the command

        rpm -i MDSplus-0.1-1.i386.rpm

Since this is a binary installer, you may get error messages preventing the installation in the case some system components are older than the required ones. In this case you need to update first those components for a successful installation.

After the installation, you need to define the following enviroment variable:

• PATH, to include directory /usr/local/mdsplus/bin
• MDS_PATH which must be set to /usr/local/mdsplus/tdi
• LD_LIBRARY_PATH, to include directory /usr/local/mdsplus/lib
• CLASSPATH, to include jTraverser.jar, jScope.jar and EScope10.jar in /usr/local/mdsplus/java

We suggest that you add the following lines in your bash setup file .bashrc:

    export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/mdsplus/bin

    export MDS_PATH=/usr/local/mdsplus/tdi

    export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/mdsplus/lib

    export CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:/usr/local/mdsplus/java/jScope.jar:/usr/local/mdsplus/java/jTraverser.jar:/usr/local/mdsplus/java/EScope10.jar

After installing the software and setting the environment variables, the included components can be started as follows:

• mdsip Data Server, via command start_mdsip
• EScope (version 10), via command start_escope
• jTraverser, via command start_traverser
• jScope, via command start_scope

Building the EScope versions from the source files

The source directory of this CD contains the source files of every pre-EScope (subdirectory preescopes) and EScope (subdirectory escopes) versions presented in the book. We recommend to copy the whole source directory from the CD into your Hard Disk, and that you use an integrated environment (IDE) for editing, compiling and debugging the source codes. 

The detailed instruction on how to build the pre-EScope and the EScope versions are available following the links visible on the left panel of this Web Page.