Software¶
SuperDARN Canada uses OpenSUSE for an operating system, but any Linux system that can support the NVIDIA drivers for the graphics card will work. The latest version of OpenSUSE that this installation has been tested on is OpenSUSE Leap 15.5.
NOTE: Commands that require root privileges will have a sudo
or su
command ahead of
them, or explicitly say ‘as root’, all others should be executed as the normal user that will run
Borealis (recommended name: radar).
NOTE: It is possible to run Borealis on the CPU, that is, without using your graphics card for
parallel computations. This will severely slow down the system, but may be useful in some cases. If
this is desired, you can skip the step of installing NVIDIA drivers on your machine, and see
the note when running install_radar_deps.py
.
Install the latest version of the NVIDIA drivers (see https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_drivers). The driver must be able to support running the GPU selected and must also be compatible with the version of CUDA that supports the compute capability version of the GPU. Getting the OS to run stable with NVIDIA is the most important step, so make sure you read this page carefully.
For our purposes the G06 drivers are required. To install the NVIDIA drivers on our OpenSUSE computers, execute the following commands (tested on OpenSUSE 15.5):
sudo zypper addrepo --refresh 'https://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/leap/$releasever' NVIDIA sudo zypper in nvidia-video-G06 nvidia-gl-G06 nvidia-compute-utils-G06
then reboot the computer. To verify that the drivers have been installed correctly, run
sudo nvidia-smi
- the output of this command should show the GPU installed on the computer.Install the latest NVIDIA CUDA drivers (see https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/cuda-installation-guide-linux/index.html). The radar software uses CUDA for accelerated data processing and is required for the best performance. Make sure the version of CUDA installed is appropriate for your GPU and works with your installed NVIDIA drivers.
The following commands work to install CUDA on OpenSUSE 15:
sudo zypper install -y kernel-<variant>-devel=<version> sudo usermod -a -G video <username> sudo zypper addrepo https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/opensuse15/x86_64/cuda-opensuse15.repo sudo zypper install cuda-toolkit nvidia-open
<variant> and <version> are retrieved from
uname -r
:$ uname -r <version>-<variant>
Optional: Use the BIOS to find a stable over-clock for the CPU. Usually the recommended turbo frequency is a good place to start. This step is optional, but will help system performance when it comes to streaming high rates from the USRP. Do not adjust higher over-clock settings without doing research. NOTE: Overclocking is no longer suggested, as the increase performance comes at the cost of reliability
Use the BIOS to enable boot-on-power. The computer should come back online when power is restored after an outage. This setting is typically referred to as Restore on AC/Power Loss.
Configure the following computer settings to run each time the computer reboots. This can be done via root crontab, as these commands are not persistent. Example root crontab for multiple ethernet interfaces:
@reboot /sbin/sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6=1 @reboot /sbin/sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6=1 @reboot /usr/sbin/ethtool -G <10G_network_device_1> tx 4096 rx 4096 @reboot /usr/sbin/ethtool -G <10G_network_device_2> tx 4096 rx 4096 @reboot /sbin/ip link set dev <10G_network_device_1> mtu 9000 @reboot /sbin/ip link set dev <10G_network_device_2> mtu 9000 @reboot /usr/bin/cpupower frequency-set -g performance @reboot /sbin/sysctl -w net.core.rmem_max=50000000 @reboot /sbin/sysctl -w net.core.wmem_max=2500000
Use
sysctl
to disable IPv6.sudo sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6=1 sudo sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6=1
Use
ethtool
to set the interface ring buffer size for both rx and tx. Make sure to use an ethernet device which is connected to the 10 GB card of the computer (not necessarily eth0). This is done to help prevent packet loss when the network traffic exceeds the capacity of the network adapter.sudo ethtool -G <10G_network_device> tx 4096 rx 4096.
To see that this works as intended, and that it persists across reboots, you can execute the following, which will output the maximums and the current settings.
sudo ethtool -g <10G_network_device>
Use
ip
to change the MTU for the interface used to connect to the USRPs. A larger MTU will reduce the amount of network overhead. An MTU larger than 1500 bytes allows what is known as Jumbo frames, which can use up to 9000 bytes of payload. NOTE this also needs to be enabled on the network switch, and any other devices in the network chain. Setting this to 1500 may be the best option, make sure you test.sudo ip link set <10G_network_device> mtu 9000
To verify that the MTU was set correctly:
ip link show <10G_network_device>
Use
cpupower
to ungovern the CPU and run at the max frequency. This should be added to a script that occurs on reboot.sudo cpupower frequency-set -g performance.
To verify that the CPU is running at maximum frequency,
cpupower frequency-info
Use
sysctl
to adjust the kernel network buffer sizes. This should be added to a script that occurs on reboot for the interface used to connect to the USRPs. That’s 50,000,000 forrmem_max
and 2,500,000 forwmem_max
.sudo sysctl -w net.core.rmem_max=50000000 sudo sysctl -w net.core.wmem_max=2500000
Verify that the kernel network buffer sizes are set:
cat /proc/sys/net/core/rmem_max cat /proc/sys/net/core/wmem_max
Install
tuned
. Usetuned-adm
to set the system’s performance to network-latency.sudo zypper in tuned sudo systemctl enable tuned sudo systemctl start tuned sudo tuned-adm profile network-latency
To verify the system’s new profile:
sudo tuned-adm profile_info
Add an environment variable in
.profile
calledBOREALISPATH
that points to the cloned Borealis git repository. For example (NOTE the extra ‘/’):export BOREALISPATH=/home/radar/borealis/ source .profile
Verify the
BOREALISPATH
environment variable exists:env | grep BOREALISPATH
Clone the Borealis software to a directory The following ensures that Borealis will be in the same directory that the ``BOREALISPATH`` environment variable points to.
sudo zypper in git git clone https://github.com/SuperDARNCanada/borealis.git $BOREALISPATH
The Borealis software has a script called
install_radar_deps.py
to help install dependencies. This script has to be run with root privileges. This script can be modified to add the package manager of a different distribution if it doesn’t exist yet. This script makes an attempt to correctly install Boost and create symbolic links to the Boost libraries the UHD (USRP Hardware Driver) understands. If UHD does not configure correctly, an improper Boost installation or library naming convention is the likely reason. Note that you needpython3
installed before you can run this script. The radar abbreviation should be the 3 letter radar code such as ‘sas’, ‘rkn’ or ‘inv’. NOTE: If you do not have CUDA installed, pass the--no-cuda
flag as an option.cd $BOREALISPATH sudo -E python3 scripts/install_radar_deps.py [radar code] $BOREALISPATH --python-version=3.11 2>&1
Edit
/etc/security/limits.conf
(as root) to add the following line that allows UHD to set thread priority. UHD automatically tries to boost its thread scheduling priority, so it will fail if the user executing UHD doesn’t have permission.@users - rtprio 99
Once all dependencies are resolved, use
scons
to build the system.SCONSFLAGS
variable can be added to.profile
to hold any flags such as-j
for parallel builds.cd $BOREALISPATH scons -c # If first time building, run to reset project state. scons release # Can also run `scons debug`
Configure PPS signal input. A PPS signal is used to discipline NTP and improve timing to within microseconds - see NTP Discipline with PPS for more info.
Find out which tty device is physically connected to your PPS signal. It may not be ttyS0, especially if you have a PCIe expansion card. It may be ttyS1, ttyS2, ttyS3 or higher. To do this, search the system log for ‘tty’ (either
dmesg
or thesyslog
). An example output with a PCIe expansion card is below. The output shows the first two (ttyS0 and ttyS1) built-in to the motherboard chipset are not accessible on this x299 PRO from MSI. The next two (ttyS4 and ttyS5) are located on the XR17V35X chip which is located on the Rosewill card:[ 1.624103] serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4, base_baud = 115200) is a 16550A [ 1.644875] serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3, base_baud = 115200) is a 16550A [ 1.645850] 0000:b4:00.0: ttyS4 at MMIO 0xfbd00000 (irq = 37, base_baud = 7812500) is a XR17V35X [ 1.645964] 0000:b4:00.0: ttyS5 at MMIO 0xfbd00400 (irq = 37, base_baud = 7812500) is a XR17V35X
Try attaching the ttySx line to a PPS line discipline using
ldattach
:/usr/sbin/ldattach PPS /dev/ttyS[0,1,2,3,etc]
Verify that the PPS signal incoming on the DCD line of ttyS0 (or ttySx where x can be any digit 0,1,2,3…) is properly routed and being received. You’ll get two lines every second corresponding to an ‘assert’ and a ‘clear’ on the PPS line along with the time in seconds since the epoch. If it’s the incorrect one, you’ll only see a timeout, and try a attaching to a different ttySx input.
sudo ppstest /dev/pps0 [sudo] password for root: trying PPS source "/dev/pps0" found PPS source "/dev/pps0" ok, found 1 source(s), now start fetching data... source 0 - assert 1585755247.999730143, sequence: 200 - clear 1585755247.199734241, sequence: 249187 source 0 - assert 1585755247.999730143, sequence: 200 - clear 1585755248.199734605, sequence: 249188
If you’re having trouble finding out which
/dev/ppsx
device to use, trygrep
-ing the output ofdmesg
for pps to find out. Here’s an example that shows how pps0 and pps1 are connected to ptp1 and ptp2, pps2 is connected to/dev/ttyS0
and pps3 is connected to/dev/ttyS5
.:[ 0.573439] pps_core: LinuxPPS API ver. 1 registered [ 0.573439] pps_core: Software ver. 5.3.6 - Copyright 2005-2007 Rodolfo Giometti <giometti@linux.it> [ 8.792473] pps pps0: new PPS source ptp1 [ 9.040732] pps pps1: new PPS source ptp2 [ 10.044514] pps_ldisc: PPS line discipline registered [ 10.045957] pps pps2: new PPS source serial0 [ 10.045960] pps pps2: source "/dev/ttyS0" added [ 227.629896] pps pps3: new PPS source serial5 [ 227.629899] pps pps3: source "/dev/ttyS5" added
Configure and start up NTP. The
install_radar_deps.py
script downloads and configures a version ofntpd
that works with incoming PPS signals on the serial port DCD line.An example configuration of ntp is shown below for
/etc/ntp.conf
. These settings usetime.usask.ca
as an NTP server, which load balances between thetick.usask.ca
andtock.usask.ca
USask NTP servers, as well as PPS via the127.127.22.X
lines. NOTE: Replace the ‘X’ with the pps number that is connected to the incoming PPS signal determined in the previous step (i.e. for pps1, PPS input is 127.127.22.1).driftfile /var/log/ntp/ntp.drift statsdir /var/log/ntp/ntpstats/ logfile /var/log/ntp/ntp_log logconfig =all statistics loopstats peerstats clockstats cryptostats protostats rawstats sysstats filegen loopstats file loopstats type day enable filegen peerstats file peerstats type day enable filegen clockstats file clockstats type day enable filegen cryptostats file cryptostats type day enable filegen protostats file protostats type day enable filegen rawstats file rawstats type day enable filegen sysstats file sysstats type day enable restrict -4 default kod notrap nomodify nopeer noquery limited restrict -6 default kod notrap nomodify nopeer noquery limited restrict 127.0.0.1 restrict ::1 restrict source notrap nomodify noquery server time.usask.ca prefer server 127.127.22.X minpoll 4 maxpoll 4 fudge 127.127.22.X time1 0.2 flag2 1 flag3 0 flag4 1 keys /etc/ntp.keys trustedkey 1 requestkey 1 controlkey 1
Start
ntpd
:sudo /usr/local/bin/ntpd
To verify that
ntpd
is working correctly, runntpq -p
:radar@rknmain207:~> ntpq --peers remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter ============================================================================== oPPS(1) .PPS. 0 l 4 16 377 0.000 +2.662 1.317 *tick.usask.ca .GPS. 1 u 55 64 377 56.055 +0.545 2.186
tick.usask.ca
should have*
in front of it, indicating that NTP is syncing to that server.PPS(X)
should haveo
in front of it, indicating PPS is being read successfully by NTP.If PPS is not working correctly, follow the NTP debug documentation, and see PPS Clock Discipline for information about PPS.
Now add the GPS disciplined NTP lines to the root
crontab
on reboot using the tty you have your PPS connected to. This will startntpd
and attach the PPS signal on reboot.@reboot /sbin/modprobe pps_ldisc && /usr/sbin/ldattach PPS /dev/ttyS[X] && /usr/local/bin/ntpd
For further reading on networking and tuning with the USRP devices, see Transport Notes and USRP Host Performance Tuning Tips and Tricks. Also check out the man pages for
tuned
,cpupower
,ethtool
,ip
,sysctl
,modprobe
, andldattach
If you’re building Borealis for a non U of S radar, use one of the U of S
[radar code]_config.ini
files (located inborealis/config/[radar code]
) as a template, or follow the config file documentation to create your own config file. Your config file should be placed inborealis/config/[radar code]/[radar code]_config.ini
In
[radar code]_config.ini
, there is an entry called “realtime_address”. This defines the protocol, interface, and port that the realtime module uses for socket communication. This should be set to"realtime_address" : "tcp://<interface>:9696"
, where <interface> is a configured interface on your computer such as “127.0.0.1”, “eth0”, or “wlan0”. This interface is selected fromip addr
, from which you should choose a device which is “UP”.To verify that the realtime module is able to communicate with other modules, run the following command in a new terminal while Borealis is running. If all is well, the command should output that there is a device listening on the channel specified.
ss --all | grep 9696
Configure the scheduler, and ensure Borealis runs. See scheduling for more information.
Enable and start the
atd
system service.at
is used to run the radar in specific modes following the radar schedule.sudo systemctl enable atd.service sudo systemctl start atd.service
Ensure the site specific schedule files exists in the
borealis_schedules
directory (ex.sas.scd
for Saskatoon).Run
scripts/start_radar.sh
to start the local radar scheduling server and attempt to start the radar. If the scheduler is working properly, the output ofatq
should show scheduled commands:radar@sasbore206:~> atq 14748 Wed Sep 25 00:00:00 2024 a radar 14749 Tue Oct 1 00:00:00 2024 a radar 14750 Tue Oct 8 00:00:00 2024 a radar 14751 Fri Oct 11 00:00:00 2024 a radar
To check that the radar is operating, run
screen -r borealis
to view the live output of all Borealis processes
Configure and install the automatic Borealis restart daemon,
restart_borealis.service
. Follow the steps outlined here to install and start the system service. This daemon will automatically start the radar after five minutes, following the radar schedule. To verify that the daemon is working:Check
systemctl status restart_borealis.service
that the system service is runningCheck the logs at
$HOME/logs/restart_borealis.log
Install necessary software to transfer, convert, and test data:
cd $HOME git clone https://github.com/SuperDARNCanada/borealis-data-utils.git git clone https://github.com/SuperDARNCanada/data_flow.git python3.11 -m venv $HOME/pydarnio-env source $HOME/pydarnio-env/bin/activate pip install pydarn # Installs pydarnio as well, as it is a dependency.
Follow the data flow documentation to properly setup and configure the data flow