CERN meeting

# 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