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Configuring Labrad Nodes

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Eric Oelker edited this page Aug 5, 2018 · 21 revisions

Windows 7:

  1. Set environment variables for Labrad. Note: You may have to restart the computer for these changes to take effect.

LABRADNODE = yesr1 (for this example)

LABRADHOST = yecookiemonster.colorado.edu

LABRADPASSWORD = usual with ! at end

LABRAD_TLS = off

  1. Install pylabrad on yesr1: pip install pylabrad

  2. Clone the labrad_tools repo (on desktop of yesr1)

  3. Add to python path: C:\users\Desktop\labrad_tools

  4. For yesr1 we need the right version of pyserial (ver 2.7) for serial server: pip install pyserial==2.7

  5. go to labrad_tools/batch -> start_servers.bat. This will start the labrad node on yesr1.

  6. Configure Labrad node through pylabrad connection in ipython:

#Establish labrad connection
import labrad
cxn = labrad.connect()

#Go to yesr1 Node
r = cxn.registry
r.cd('Nodes')
r.cd('yesr1")

#Add labrad_tools to 'directories' so it can see the server code
r.set('directories', ['C:\Users\srgang\Desktop\labrad_tools'])
cxn.node_yesr1.refresh_servers()

#List available servers (to double-check that it worked)
cxn.node_yesr1.available_servers()

#Add any servers that we want to run automatically:  In this case the SerialServer hardware interface server
cxn.node_yesr1.autostart_add('serial')

#Call the autostart function if you want to run the server right now
cxn.node_yesr1.autostart()

Now the serial server will start automatically in the future when we execute the batch file in step 6.

Ubuntu 18.04:

  1. Go to systemd folder in labrad_tools and copy to system file directory:

cp -r labrad-node.service* /etc/systemd/system/

  1. Edit the /etc/systemd/system/labrad-node.service.d/labrad-node.conf file to define environment variables

LABRADNODE = yeelmo (for this example)

LABRADHOST = yecookiemonster.colorado.edu

LABRADPASSWORD = usual with ! at end

LABRAD_TLS = off

  1. If necessary edit /etc/systemd/system/labrad-node.service with the correct user, group name, and path to labrad-tools folder.

  2. Start the labrad node: sudo systemctl start labrad-node

  3. Enable automatic starting of labrad node: sudo systemctl enable labrad-node

  4. Copy the labrad-node-journal script into labrad_tools/systemd/ folder (I will add this to the Sr1 Git Repo)

  5. Launch the labrad-node-journal to print info from the labrad node.

  6. add the following to ~/.bashrc

export LABRADNODE = yeelmo

export LABRADHOST = yecookiemonster.colorado.edu

export LABRADPASSWORD = usual with ! at end

export LABRAD_TLS = off

export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:/path/to/labrad-tools/

  1. Configure Node through pylabrad (see step 7 in windows example)

  2. The commands at bootup will be executed as root, so the root account needs access to the environment variables we've defined. Add the following to /etc/sudoers:

Defaults env_reset

Defaults env_keep += "PYTHONPATH LABRADHOST LABRADNODE LABRADPASSWORD LABRAD_TLS$

You must use the visudo command to edit your sudoers file.

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