Summary of HEPiX Wrap-Up Meeting, CERN, 29th Sep 92

Summary of HEPiX Wrap-Up Meeting, CERN, 29th Sep 92 =================================================== Following discussions held at the CHEP92 (Computers in High Energy Physics) meeting in Annecy and during the two days of the HEPiX meeting in CERN September 28th and 29th, it has been decided to restructure HEPiX along the following lines. In future, specific groups will be established to target specific areas and named coordinators will be sought for each group. In addition, we will form regional chapters for HEPiX, initially one European and the other North American. Other areas may follow later as interest builds up; in the meantime, interested parties in such areas are welcome to attach themselves to whichever chapter they prefer and will be invited to participate in any activities they wish in either chapter. The volunteer coordinators in these chapters will be jointly responsible for the general organisation of HEPiX and its working groups. With regard to meetings, it was agreed to try to hold at least one regional meeting per year and a full world-wide meeting once every 12 to 18 months. The final decision between 12 and 18 months will be taken at the first regional meetings next Spring. The choice is between an annual worldwide meeting and a meeting to coincide with the CHEP schedule which has now been set at 18 months between meetings. The first regional meetings should be targetted for Spring 1993, one in Europe and one in the US or Canada. Although regional in scope, interested institutes will be free to send people to either, or both. In addition, some effort will be made by each chapter to send at least one representative to the other's meeting. At that time, the coordinators will decide, based on such aspects as interest level, on whether to schedule a second set of regional meetings for late 1993 and hold the next worldwide conference around the time of CHEP94 (planned for Spring '94 in the San Francisco area) or whether to advance this larger meeting to Fall 1993. The various groups, their target areas, and the people responsible for each are as follows --- European Coordination --------------------- Alan Silverman, CERN, E-mail - ALAN@VXCERN.CERN.CH North American Coordination --------------------------- Judy Nicholls, FNAL, E-mail - NICHOLLS@FNAL.FNAL.GOV Common HEP UNIX Environment --------------------------- It was agreed that it would be useful to study if some form of common working environment could be produced among HEP UNIX sites. This could ease the life of physicists who migrate among the labs and the Universities as well as assist UNIX administrators in providing some guidelines. What constitutes the environment is not fully defined (shell, startup scripts, environment variables, window interface, tools, etc, etc). Whether some useful consensus can actually be achieved is also open to question; we may be too late in defining this, too much history out there; different sites may have vastly different constraints. Nevertheless, an attempt will be made. It was emphasised that whatever results, if any, will not be compulsory and not necessarily the default environment. The idea is simply to produce something that works across multiple platforms and is available if so desired by migratory users and others. The initial work will be coordinated by Wolfgang Friebel, DESY, E-mail friebel@ifh.de with help from John Gordon, RAL, E-mail jcg@ib.rl.ac.uk and Alan Silverman, CERN, E-mail ALAN@VXCERN.CERN.CH. Evaluations of their results should be performed by different sites, both large and small, and Rochelle Lauer, Yale, E-mail lauer@yalehep.bitnet has already offered help. Documentation Collections ------------------------- The idea of this exercise is to make available to HEPiX members all documentation on the use of UNIX in HEP which might be of interest. Such documentation will NOT be collected in a central site, it being accepted that it would be continually out of date. Instead, a central registry will be built up consisting of pointers. This registry will be made available worldwide via the use of WWW. The work will be coordinated by Judy Richards, CERN, E-mail JUDY@CERNVM.CERN.CH. Tools Database -------------- Similar to the previous group, this will consist of a set of pointers to UNIX- based tools and utilities which are of particular interest to HEP users. Once again, the tools themselves will not be stored centrally, only the pointers. Along with these pointers, the group may try to solicit reviews, hints, critiques, etc. And once again the database will be made available via WWW and FREEHEP. Carrie Kost promised to try to seed the database with a list of tools used at TRIUMF; his E-mail address is kost@erich.triumf.ca. After the meeting, Robert Bruen, MIT, E-mail Bruen@MITLNS.MIT.EDU, offered to try to coordinate this group. MICHAEL OGG of CARLETON University, Ottawa, E-mail ogg@physics.carleton.ca, had already offered during CHEP92 to try to find someone to help. NQS Extensions -------------- It had been made clear during CHEP92 that many sites had independently produced enhancements to the basic NQS package. John O'Neall, IN2P3, E-mail jon@frcpn11.in2p3.fr offered to study if some merging could be performed. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) -------------------------------- >From our experiences during the first year of HEPiX, it is clear that we need to publicise ourselves more. It was agreed that we will use both the existing USENET news group (HEPNET.HEPIX) and the existing E-mail distribution list (HEPIX@HEPNET.HEP.NET) since not every interested member uses one or the other. Alan Silverman and Judy Richards have agreed to produce an FAQ about HEPiX which they will try to keep up to date and publish at regular intervals, approximately monthly. (Although not able to be present to agree at the time, we hope Judy Nicholls will also provide input for the FAQ.) The meeting closed with a plea by the organisers of the various groups for aid in whatever way seemed appropriate - offers of talks at meetings, lists of documentation and tools, tools reviews, input and suggestions for a common environment, etc. Finally, the meeting gave a warm vote of thanks to Judy Richards who had arranged the two-day CERN meeting so successfully. Alan Silverman 14 October 1992 -- Alan Silverman UNIX Workstation Support Manager