Minutes of the LSUG Teleconference
Thursday, 27 March 2003  (10:00PST)
Attendance:   Igor,  Matt,  Stuart,  Albert,  Peter,  Kent,  Scott, 
Duncan,  Bruce,  Jolien,  Patrick,  Joe,  Warren,  JOhn,  Ben,  Philip, 
Mariallessandra,  Xavi,  

Actions:

        1.  Bruce to start ball rolling on validation of detector
        response function and barycentering code in LAL
        
        2.  Everybody is to start moving generic routines to a common
        location in LAL.  This is a long term task,  but should get
        started to clean up LAL.    This needs some discussion.  Jolien
        will spend some time and circulate the organizational structure.
        
        3. Get started with a basic set of instructions and guidelines
        for LALApps development which can use condor.   Try to answer
        the questions that were raised about the why's and the how's.


Minutes:

1.  Status LDAS:
        they have been able to fix core dumping in the frame.  Still
        having some issues in mpiAPI,  but still not ready to push a new
        release.   Cannot push anything before next week.  Only if there
        is pressure to do so.  The sites appear to be doing pretty
        well;  unless that changes,  will not push new version.  New
        version on ldas-sw next week.  
        
        Database deadlock.   Configuration changes to reduce deadlock
        problem by re-configuring DB2.  Don't know if this is a real
        problem.  Alan's bug report on this.   Kent will send Alan an
        e-mail about this.  
        
        Development of 0.7.0 will be mid-late May.  
        

2.   LAL/LALWrapper

        Julien still has a bug in TFclusters.   Never converges.  Will
        change to bisection algorithm.   
        
        FFTW new release.  Philip has looked more than Kent.  There are
        issues of changing the packing order.  Kent cannot gaurantee
        anything until a closer look is take at the new versions. 
        Jolien thinks the re-write of LAL would not be too difficult. 
        No transition to new FFTW until the S2a or S3 run release;  i.e.
        wait until about 6 months from April.  October as target date to
        transition to fftw3.   
        
        Seems like no real reason to upgrade to new version of fftw2. 
        Nor reports of numerical calculation.  
        
        Validation discussion at LSC meeting and how to proceed: 
        testing of antenna patterns.   Greg did some independent testing
        of Fx,+:  no documentation.  Did not test the timing issue. 
        Bruce will get the code that rejean used to test the barycenter
        routines into lalapps.   He will talk to some people about this.
        Stuart asked about barycentering code:  there are corrections
        that may differ from the predictions.    Do update right after
        S2 is over.  
        
        Frame reading code:  need to be able to do random access.  The
        new framelib may allow use of the TOC to do proper random
        access.   There seems to be a problem with getting the header
        information.   Jolien will try to resolve this.   
        
        Suggestion by Stuart to help people to figure out what needs to
        be moved ....  
        
        
Deploying search codes on grid:
        Peter wanted to know what the scope is.   Bruce has one
        suggestion:  concentration in LSUG on application.  Lots o'
        discussion about the technical aspects of running standalone
        codes using condor and needs on various systems.  
        
        How about data movement.  LDR will handle larger issues of data
        movement.  LDR uses cataloging approach which lists data
        available at that sites.  Query ...... what data.  Sites update
        each other with their contents.  Local query.   This
        functionality will hopefully provide standard interface to the
        codes through LAL,  etc.   
        
        Stuart also asked why we were working toward the Grid at all. 
        Doesn't condor and LDAS solve our problem already?   No
        satisfying answer was presented except the generic one that the
        grid will allow access to computational resources that are not
        directly available.  
        
        There was an extensive discussion of the requirements for being
        able to run codes at different sites.  In particular,  the
        discussion of static versus dynamic linking came up.
        
Meeting adjourned at 13:40 CST.  

Patrick Brady