MDM Trouble Report for 2009 Jan 30

Telescope: 1.3m
Observer(s): Tom Brink (University of Michigan)
Instrument: 4K

Problem(s) Encountered:
McGraw computer froze at 4:50AM.  I was using the IRAF task imexam 
to assess the quality of the previous image. I hit the 'e' key to 
do display a contour plot of a particular star in the image, and
the computer instantly froze.  The cursor would not move, and all 
numbers in the tcs Control Panel gui and the exposure countdown 
timer in prospero also froze.  The image countdown timer on the 
monitor that displays the read out image continued to function,
and this monitor showed the image read out when it finished. 
However, the image was never written to disk.

I had some trouble restarting McGraw.  I used control-alt-delete
to restart it but it froze in the middle of the restart.  I tried 
again, and it worked.  I logged in and then opened the following:

1. terminal - typed: telescope status
it said the server was running

2. The tcs control panel gui - hit initialize
Some of the numbers were displayed in the gui (ex. RA) but some
were not (ex. DEC).

3. xmis - initialized 

4. ISIS

5. TCS Agent - typed: tcinit, and then: tcstatus

6. Caliban

7. Prospero - typed: startup

Unfortunately this didn't work.  I tried restarting again, but
it still did not work.  There seemed to be a problem with the 
tcs server.  So I closed everything, opened a console, and typed:
telescope stop, and then: telescope start.  I then repeated steps
2-7 from above, and it seemed to work.  At this point it was 
twilight so I fixed the pointing of the telescope, which wasn't 
far off, and closed for the night.

AS I mentioned, everything seems to be working fine, but if I've 
neglected to do something, please send instructions, and/or I'd
greatly appreciate it if someone could log in to McGraw and make
sure everything is set properly for tonight's observations.

Thanks,

Tom

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Submitted on 2009 Jan 31 [8:32:34]