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Remote Observing Recap 05 29 2020

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Dan Avner edited this page May 29, 2020 · 4 revisions

A very successful remote observing session with CJ.

Seriously, great job everyone. All praise needs to be directed to you all and especially Scott.

Below is some notes I took throughout the night.

Requirements for Remote Observing

  • VPN Software for Draytek Router
  • Terminal for Gerard with X forwarding
    • ssh -Y rts2@ADDRESS
  • Safari window or some VNC client to connect to AzCam
    • Safari
      • vnc://ADDRESS_FOR_BIGCCD
  • At least a 27" monitor
  • Web browser
    • rts2 Homepage

TODO (Should make github issues for these)

  1. Focusing
  • Want to move away from web TCS GUI
  • Maybe standard star field queue object to focus on right after flats.
  1. Easier recovery after crash
  • After 2 hours, CJ's VPN crashed, causing all his windows to shut.
    • Everything started with startservers.sh was lost because of the windows being shut.
    • Even rts2 homepage crashed (the docker container crashed)
  • Solution
    • Run the servers in startservers.sh as "nohup"
      • The nohup command executes another program specified as its argument and ignores all SIGHUP (hangup) signals. SIGHUP is a signal that is sent to a process when its controlling terminal is closed.
    • Create either a gui or webpage with indicators about what background scripts are still running. This will make recovering after a crash easier
    • Create two scripts, one does the servers, other does all the GUIs.
    • Dan's dream, move GUIs to be web based behind a password like rts2homepage that is only live when the docker container is started, removing the need for X forwarding guis.
  1. Set up /etc/hosts to make ssh to different machines easier.
  2. Rewrite the "Observing with RTS2" to have a numbered procedure. Reading paragraphs as part of the procedure was more difficult than it needed to be. Also should rearrange that guide to have a more consistent flow.
  3. Redo rts2 Homepage
  • Does not resize well when window is changed. We need to make it be functional even on the smallest window size because not all of us have two 32" monitors for observing.
  1. Add live video feed to the dashboard app, that only loads when on the vpn network. Or we could stick it on the rts2 homepage.
  2. Get AzCam to start remotely without the need for VNC.
  3. Get github repos in order.
  • Now that we have so-mops, should we migrate from Ben's github to the official mtnops github?
  • Get branches in order
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