[u/mrichter/AliRoot.git] / html / howtorun.html

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<TITLE>How to run AliRoot</TITLE>
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<TR>
<TD><img src="picts/MadHatter.gif" alt="ALICE Off-line Project Logo">
<TD><img src="picts/howtorun_name.gif" alt="How to Run AliRoot">
<TD><img src="picts/AliceLogo.gif" alt="ALICE Logo">
</TR>
</TABLE>


<H2><A NAME="#Content">Content</A></H2>

<UL>

<LI><A HREF="#For the impatient">For the impatient user</A></LI>

<LI><A HREF="#A more detailed view">A more detailed view</A></LI>

<LI><A HREF="#Batch processing">Batch processing</A></LI>

</UL>

<HR>

<h2><A HREF="#Content" NAME="For the impatient">For the impatient user</A></h2>

<p> <a href="picts/menubar.gif">
<img src="picts/menubar.gif" alt="AliRoot menu bar"
height=250 align=right></a>

<p> To start up AliRoot after installation just type

<p> <KBD> $ aliroot </KBD> 

<p> this starts AliRoot in interactive mode. When the <b>root [0]</b>
prompt appears, you can start an AliRoot interactive session by creating
the standard menu

<p> <KBD> root[0] .x menu.C </KBD>  

<p> The macro <A HREf="roothtml/examples/menu.C.html">menu.C</A> invokes
the <A HREF="roothtml/AliRun.html">AliRun</A>::Init() method. In turn this
calls the configuration file <A
HREF="roothtml/examples/Config.C.html">Config.C</A> where the configuration
of the detector and several simulation parameters can be specified.

<p> When the initialisation is finished the <b>root</b> prompt apears
again and the Root control bar appears.

<p> <a href="picts/display.gif">
<img src="picts/display.gif" alt="AliRoot Event Display"
height=160 align=right></a>

<p> You can now select several actions from the menu.

<p> <b>Run</b>

<p> generates an event with the number of tracks and the
configuration as specified in <A
HREF="roothtml/examples/Config.C.html">Config.C</A>. The hits deposited

<p> <b> RunLego </b>    

<p> <a href="picts/legoex.gif">
<img src="picts/legoex.gif" alt="Example of Lego Plot"
height=150 align=right></a>

<p> generates the standard lego plots for radiation and absorption
length. By default the granularity is 60 rays in theta and 60 rays in phi.

<p> To view the results when this command is finished type:

<p> <KBD> root[0] .x <A HREF="roothtml/examples/lego.C.html">lego.C</A> </KBD>

<p> the parameters of the lego run can be specified 
in the calling sequence of the RunLego method as follows:

<p> <KBD> root[3] gAlice->RunLego (your list of parameters) </KBD> 

<p> <a href="picts/treex.gif">
<img src="picts/treex.gif" alt="Example of Tree"
height=150 align=right></a>

<p> see <A HREF="roothtml/AliRun.html">AliRun</a>::RunLego for details     

<p> <b>Menu Trees</b>

<p> This shows a new menu from which you can draw the geometry tree for the
Alice detectors. Clicking with the right button on the pad with the name of
a geometrical element gives access to a number of graphic and inspect
functions. Double-clicking on the pad generates a drawing of the specifications
of the geometry of the element.

<p> <a href="picts/tpcex.gif">
<img src="picts/tpcex.gif" alt="Example of Picture"
height=150 align=right></a>

<p> <b>Menu Pictures</b>

<p> From this menu you can draw pretty pictures of the major ALICE components.
Note that some pictures may take a long time to be produced. 

<p> To quit AliRoot

<p> <KBD>root [ ] .q</KBD>

<h2><A HREF="#Content" NAME="A more detailed view">A more detailed view</A></h2>

<p> After startup of the <b>aliroot</b> program the simulation
infrastructure is initialised by the <a
href="roothtml/AliRun.html">AliRun</a>::Init() method. This method takes
an argument that is the name of the initialisation script.  The default
name for this script is <a
href="roothtml/examples/Config.C.html">Config.C</a>. This script
initialises the version of the different detectors and of the generator to
be used. In particular some generators can generate a fixed number of
particles and in this case this number is an argument of the generator
constructor.

<p> A global variable <var>gAlice</var> holds the pointer to the instance
of the <a href="roothtml/AliRun.html">AliRun</a> class. 

<p> <KBD>root [ ] gAlice->Init()</KBD>

<p> The <em>Init</em> method loads the chosen MonteCarlo (for the moment
only Geant3 is available in production) and initialises it.  Another global
variable <var>gMC</var> holds the pointer to the instance of the virtual
MonteCarlo Class <a href="roothtml/AliMC.html">AliMC</a>. This allows to
access all the functions of the Virtual Monte Carlo interface. Some of the
functions are specific to Geant3, and these can be accessed recasting this
pointer to a specific Geant3 pointer via the statement

<p> <KBD>root [ ] TGeant3 *g3 = (TGeant3*) gMC</KBD>

<p> <a href="picts/itsex.gif">
<img src="picts/itsex.gif" alt="Example of Picture"
height=150 align=right></a>

<p> In particular all the drawing functions of Geant3 are available via
this interface. To draw a cut view of the ITS the following commands
can be used

<p>
<KBD>
root [1] TGeant3 *g3 = (TGeant3*)gMC
<br>root [2] g3->Gsatt("*","seen",1)
<br>root [3] g3->Gdrawc("ITSV",1,.1,10,10,.125,.125)
</KBD>

<p> Note that several TGeant3 functions are also available by clicking with
the right button on a canvas while in the AliRoot session.

<p> The <a href="roothtml/AliRun.html">AliRun</a>::Run() method starts a run
composed by a single event. This method takes as argument the number of events
to be processed. If this number is negative, the run is not terminated and
more events can be run. If this number is positive, after the indicated number
of events the run is terminated. No more events can be run.

<h2><A HREF="#Content" NAME="Batch processing">Batch processing</A></h2>

<p> In AliRoot there is really no difference between batch and interactive
processing. An <a href="roothtml/examples/grun.C.html">elementary macro</a>
to run AliRoot in batch mode is provided amongst the examples, and it can
be used in the following way to run a 10 events run

<p> <KBD> aliroot -b -q grun.C\(10\)</KBD>

<p> Note that the backslashes are necessary to prevent the shell from
interpreting the brackets.

<p> For very large output files we strongly discourage the use of afs
space, as it has performance penalty and it is really intended to be used
for user and program files and not data files. Users needing access to
large data files should use the ALICE staging facility. The procedure is
the following:

<p><ol>

<li> Define a <var>STAGE_HOST</var> variable which is in our case
<var>shiftalice</var>

<p><li> In your <var>Config.C</var> macro, or in any other place where
you open a file, instead of opening the file as

<p><kbd>
   TFile *f = new TFile("filename","option");
</kbd>

<p>use

<p><kbd>
   TFile *f = TFile::Open("rfio:filename","option");
</kbd>

<p><li>Stage a file via the command
<p><kbd>
   stagealloc -p alice_stage filename
</kbd>

<p>This will create in your working directory a link <var>filename</var>
that points to the <em>real</em> file in the stage pool.

<p><li>Now you can run

<p><li>When done with the file, do not <kbd>rm filename</kbd>. It will
remove the link only, the file will still be in the pool, occupying our
precious disk space. To delete a staged file instead do
<p><kbd>
   stageclr -P `stageqry -p alice_stage -A filename -P`
</kbd>
<p>and this will do a proper job.
</ol>

<p>More information on stage can be found in the <a
href="http://wwwinfo.cern.ch/pdp/castor/doc/public/all_man_pages.html">man pages</a> of
the different stage commands or in the CORE <a
href="http://wwwinfo.cern.ch/pdp/sc/coreplus.html">User Guide</a>.

<br clear>
<hr>
<address>
          Last modified Thu Oct 07 11:33:05 1999
by <A href="mailto:Federico.Carminati@cern.ch">Federico Carminati</A>
</ADDRESS>
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14c31136	1	<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"
	2	"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">
	3	<HTML>
	4	<HEAD>
	5	<TITLE>How to run AliRoot</TITLE>
4c505702	6	<!-- Changed by: , 1-Nov-1999 -->
14c31136	7	<link rev="made" href="mailto:Federico.Carminati@cern.ch">
	8	<STYLE>
	9	BODY {
	10	background: #FFFFFF;
	11	}
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	13	COL, COLGROUP, TABLE, TBODY, TD, TR {
	14	color: black;
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	19	}
	20
	21	</STYLE>
	22	<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.w3.org/StyleSheets/Core/Swiss" type="text/css">
	23	</HEAD>
	24
	25	<BODY background=#FFFFFF>
	26	<TABLE>
	27	<TR>
	28	<TD><img src="picts/MadHatter.gif" alt="ALICE Off-line Project Logo">
	29	<TD><img src="picts/howtorun_name.gif" alt="How to Run AliRoot">
	30	<TD><img src="picts/AliceLogo.gif" alt="ALICE Logo">
	31	</TR>
	32	</TABLE>
	33
14c31136	34
4c505702	35	<H2><A NAME="#Content">Content</A></H2>
	36
	37	<UL>
	38
	39	<LI><A HREF="#For the impatient">For the impatient user</A></LI>
	40
	41	<LI><A HREF="#A more detailed view">A more detailed view</A></LI>
	42
319116ce	43	<LI><A HREF="#Batch processing">Batch processing</A></LI>
319116ce	44
4c505702	45	</UL>
	46
	47	<HR>
	48
319116ce	49	<h2><A HREF="#Content" NAME="For the impatient">For the impatient user</A></h2>
14c31136	50
	51	<p> <a href="picts/menubar.gif">
	52	<img src="picts/menubar.gif" alt="AliRoot menu bar"
87ad6e14	53	height=250 align=right></a>
14c31136	54
	55	<p> To start up AliRoot after installation just type
	56
	57	<p> <KBD> $ aliroot </KBD>
	58
	59	<p> this starts AliRoot in interactive mode. When the <b>root [0]</b>
	60	prompt appears, you can start an AliRoot interactive session by creating
	61	the standard menu
	62
	63	<p> <KBD> root[0] .x menu.C </KBD>
	64
	65	<p> The macro <A HREf="roothtml/examples/menu.C.html">menu.C</A> invokes
	66	the <A HREF="roothtml/AliRun.html">AliRun</A>::Init() method. In turn this
	67	calls the configuration file <A
	68	HREF="roothtml/examples/Config.C.html">Config.C</A> where the configuration
	69	of the detector and several simulation parameters can be specified.
	70
	71	<p> When the initialisation is finished the <b>root</b> prompt apears
	72	again and the Root control bar appears.
	73
	74	<p> <a href="picts/display.gif">
	75	<img src="picts/display.gif" alt="AliRoot Event Display"
87ad6e14	76	height=160 align=right></a>
14c31136	77
	78	<p> You can now select several actions from the menu.
	79
	80	<p> <b>Run</b>
	81
4c505702	82	<p> generates an event with the number of tracks and the
14c31136	83	configuration as specified in <A
	84	HREF="roothtml/examples/Config.C.html">Config.C</A>. The hits deposited
	85
	86	<p> <b> RunLego </b>
	87
	88	<p> <a href="picts/legoex.gif">
	89	<img src="picts/legoex.gif" alt="Example of Lego Plot"
87ad6e14	90	height=150 align=right></a>
14c31136	91
	92	<p> generates the standard lego plots for radiation and absorption
	93	length. By default the granularity is 60 rays in theta and 60 rays in phi.
	94
	95	<p> To view the results when this command is finished type:
	96
	97	<p> <KBD> root[0] .x <A HREF="roothtml/examples/lego.C.html">lego.C</A> </KBD>
	98
4c505702	99	<p> the parameters of the lego run can be specified
4c505702	100	in the calling sequence of the RunLego method as follows:
14c31136	101
	102	<p> <KBD> root[3] gAlice->RunLego (your list of parameters) </KBD>
	103
	104	<p> <a href="picts/treex.gif">
	105	<img src="picts/treex.gif" alt="Example of Tree"
87ad6e14	106	height=150 align=right></a>
14c31136	107
	108	<p> see <A HREF="roothtml/AliRun.html">AliRun</a>::RunLego for details
	109
	110	<p> <b>Menu Trees</b>
	111
	112	<p> This shows a new menu from which you can draw the geometry tree for the
	113	Alice detectors. Clicking with the right button on the pad with the name of
4c505702	114	a geometrical element gives access to a number of graphic and inspect
14c31136	115	functions. Double-clicking on the pad generates a drawing of the specifications
	116	of the geometry of the element.
	117
	118	<p> <a href="picts/tpcex.gif">
	119	<img src="picts/tpcex.gif" alt="Example of Picture"
87ad6e14	120	height=150 align=right></a>
14c31136	121
	122	<p> <b>Menu Pictures</b>
	123
	124	<p> From this menu you can draw pretty pictures of the major ALICE components.
	125	Note that some pictures may take a long time to be produced.
	126
	127	<p> To quit AliRoot
	128
	129	<p> <KBD>root [ ] .q</KBD>
	130
319116ce	131	<h2><A HREF="#Content" NAME="A more detailed view">A more detailed view</A></h2>
14c31136	132
	133	<p> After startup of the <b>aliroot</b> program the simulation
	134	infrastructure is initialised by the <a
	135	href="roothtml/AliRun.html">AliRun</a>::Init() method. This method takes
	136	an argument that is the name of the initialisation script. The default
	137	name for this script is <a
	138	href="roothtml/examples/Config.C.html">Config.C</a>. This script
	139	initialises the version of the different detectors and of the generator to
4c505702	140	be used. In particular some generators can generate a fixed number of
14c31136	141	particles and in this case this number is an argument of the generator
	142	constructor.
	143
	144	<p> A global variable <var>gAlice</var> holds the pointer to the instance
	145	of the <a href="roothtml/AliRun.html">AliRun</a> class.
	146
	147	<p> <KBD>root [ ] gAlice->Init()</KBD>
	148
	149	<p> The <em>Init</em> method loads the chosen MonteCarlo (for the moment
	150	only Geant3 is available in production) and initialises it. Another global
	151	variable <var>gMC</var> holds the pointer to the instance of the virtual
	152	MonteCarlo Class <a href="roothtml/AliMC.html">AliMC</a>. This allows to
	153	access all the functions of the Virtual Monte Carlo interface. Some of the
	154	functions are specific to Geant3, and these can be accessed recasting this
	155	pointer to a specific Geant3 pointer via the statement
	156
87ad6e14	157	<p> <KBD>root [ ] TGeant3 g3 = (TGeant3) gMC</KBD>
14c31136	158
	159	<p> <a href="picts/itsex.gif">
	160	<img src="picts/itsex.gif" alt="Example of Picture"
87ad6e14	161	height=150 align=right></a>
14c31136	162
14c31136	163	<p> In particular all the drawing functions of Geant3 are available via
4c505702	164	this interface. To draw a cut view of the ITS the following commands
4c505702	165	can be used
14c31136	166
	167	<p>
	168	<KBD>
	169	root [1] TGeant3 g3 = (TGeant3)gMC
	170	<br>root [2] g3->Gsatt("*","seen",1)
	171	<br>root [3] g3->Gdrawc("ITSV",1,.1,10,10,.125,.125)
	172	</KBD>
	173
	174	<p> Note that several TGeant3 functions are also available by clicking with
	175	the right button on a canvas while in the AliRoot session.
	176
	177	<p> The <a href="roothtml/AliRun.html">AliRun</a>::Run() method starts a run
	178	composed by a single event. This method takes as argument the number of events
	179	to be processed. If this number is negative, the run is not terminated and
	180	more events can be run. If this number is positive, after the indicated number
	181	of events the run is terminated. No more events can be run.
	182
319116ce	183	<h2><A HREF="#Content" NAME="Batch processing">Batch processing</A></h2>
14c31136	184
	185	<p> In AliRoot there is really no difference between batch and interactive
	186	processing. An <a href="roothtml/examples/grun.C.html">elementary macro</a>
	187	to run AliRoot in batch mode is provided amongst the examples, and it can
	188	be used in the following way to run a 10 events run
	189
d083603f	190	<p> <KBD> aliroot -b -q grun.C\(10\)</KBD>
14c31136	191
	192	<p> Note that the backslashes are necessary to prevent the shell from
	193	interpreting the brackets.
	194
319116ce	195	<p> For very large output files we strongly discourage the use of afs
	196	space, as it has performance penalty and it is really intended to be used
	197	for user and program files and not data files. Users needing access to
	198	large data files should use the ALICE staging facility. The procedure is
	199	the following:
	200
	201	<p><ol>
	202
	203	<li> Define a <var>STAGE_HOST</var> variable which is in our case
	204	<var>shiftalice</var>
	205
481bb6ef	206	<p><li> In your <var>Config.C</var> macro, or in any other place where
481bb6ef	207	you open a file, instead of opening the file as
319116ce	208
	209	<p><kbd>
	210	TFile *f = new TFile("filename","option");
	211	</kbd>
	212
	213	<p>use
	214
	215	<p><kbd>
481bb6ef	216	TFile *f = TFile::Open("rfio:filename","option");
319116ce	217	</kbd>
	218
	219	<p><li>Stage a file via the command
	220	<p><kbd>
	221	stagealloc -p alice_stage filename
	222	</kbd>
	223
	224	<p>This will create in your working directory a link <var>filename</var>
	225	that points to the <em>real</em> file in the stage pool.
	226
	227	<p><li>Now you can run
	228
	229	<p><li>When done with the file, do not <kbd>rm filename</kbd>. It will
	230	remove the link only, the file will still be in the pool, occupying our
	231	precious disk space. To delete a staged file instead do
	232	<p><kbd>
	233	stageclr -P `stageqry -p alice_stage -A filename -P`
	234	</kbd>
	235	<p>and this will do a proper job.
	236	</ol>
	237
	238	<p>More information on stage can be found in the <a
241c61af	239	href="http://wwwinfo.cern.ch/pdp/castor/doc/public/all_man_pages.html">man pages</a> of
319116ce	240	the different stage commands or in the CORE <a
	241	href="http://wwwinfo.cern.ch/pdp/sc/coreplus.html">User Guide</a>.
	242
	243	<br clear>
14c31136	244	<hr>
14c31136	245	<address>
87ad6e14	246	Last modified Thu Oct 07 11:33:05 1999
	247	by <A href="mailto:Federico.Carminati@cern.ch">Federico Carminati</A>
	248	</ADDRESS>
14c31136	249	</BODY>
14c31136	250	</HTML>