Autocopy

Autocopy is used to automatically create a headquarters backup copy of your data, as well as to provide nearly instantaneous copies of the raw data in a directory where you can do on-line data reduction. You should NOT reduce data on the disk containing your raw data!! ``autocopy'' is a wrapper around copymon that removes some of the groundwork of finding a scratch disk, creating a subdirectory, etc., before copymon can be run. Observers can start "autocopy" in the afternoon and allow it to run all night. This frees the user to worry about reducing the images rather than having to manually check for new incoming images and copy them over.

Starting Autocopy

Autocopy may be started at anytime during the observing session. To start autocopy,
  1. Select from the desktop menu LRIS Utilities --> Autocopy (copymon) .
  2. An exterm will appear. Do not kill the xterm.
  3. Two new xterms appear with copymon running; one each for the red and blue side. Do not kill the xterms
  4. iconify the two xterms.
Autocopy can also be run from the command line. On the appropriate instrument computer type ``autocopy''; that's it! If you want to force autocopy to use a specific disk, you can type ``autocopy disk_name''. disk_name can even be a summit scratch disk.

copymon

The script copymon is launched by autocopy to copy incoming images into a directory. If copymon is launched from the command line, the incoming data is copied into the directory in which copymon was started. Copymon will quit if it is after 10 a.m. and the script was either started before 10 a.m. or sometime the previous day. The program can be allowed to run until quitting time, or may be stopped with repeated Ctrl-C interrupts when shutting down for the night. copymon may only be run on the instrument datataking computer lrisserver. Observers do not usually run copymon except when the autocopy script is started.

Usage

copymon instrument

Parameters

instrument - name of the instrument being used.
    Possible values are:
  1. lris - copy red side LRIS data
  2. lrisblue - copy blue side LRIS data

Example

The programs start up and print:
  > copymon is now running! Incoming lris files will be copied
  > into the current directory (/tmp_mnt/s/scratch103/lris1).
  > This program will terminate automatically in 18 hours or at 10 a.m.,
  > whichever comes first.