Introductory Physics Lab

Manuals and Software setup
diamagnetism and paramagnetism

Lab Manuals

Based on a earlier lab manuals written by John Schaefer and Dick South, I have written lab manuals in LaTeX along with instructor notes for each lab:

Instructor notes for maintaning the computer system.

Software setup for physics lab

The following details how the software was set up for the lab computers. The following is mostly for information, restoring from a backup will restore the analysis software, the luser accounts, and the comedi installation. In the following, the script do-lab executes the given command on each machine.

Experimental analysis software

Here is some software used in the physics lab. The executables should be installed in /usr/local.

xlinear, an X-windows linear equation solver.
A general-purpose program used in the introductory physics lab tarred and gzipped. It uses the comedi DAQ interface.
eXtace spectrum analyzer and oscilloscope program. extace-tng is a newer version under development. To download from cvs, add export CVS_RSH=ssh to the login file ~/.cshrc and
```
cvs -z3 -d:ext:bvds@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/extace co extace-tng
```
To build: autoconf; automake; ./configure; make.

Here is a list of various spectrum analyzer programs.

Local account generation

The following tells how to setup the luser accounts. A skeleton for these accounts should be in /usr/local/etc/skel. If this does not exist, then an account must be set up on the server jael using

/usr/sbin/useradd -d /lhome -m -s/bin/tcsh luser,
echo "geneva" | passwd --stdin luser,
log into this account, configure desktop icons as desired, and
use gnome-session-properties to turn off logout dialog.
cp -a /lhome /usr/local/etc/skel.

To setup luser accounts on the other machines:

do-lab -o /usr/sbin/useradd -d /lhome -m -k /usr/local/etc/skel -s/bin/tcsh luser
do-lab -o "echo \"geneva\" | passwd --stdin luser"

Install comedi

Interfacing for the Measurement Computing PCI-DAS1000 data aquisition boards is provided by the comedi library. Currently, comedi is installed on the clients, but not the file server jael.

If /usr/local/comedi or /usr/local/comedilib don't exist, grab the latest cvs:
- cd /usr/local
- cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.comedi.org:/var/cvs login
- cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.comedi.org:/var/cvs co comedi
- cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.comedi.org:/var/cvs co comedilib

On each machine, add the following to /etc/modules.conf:

#
# Module loading for the PCI-DAS 1000
#
alias char-major-98 comedi
alias char-major-98-0 cb_pcidas
post-install cb_pcidas PATH=/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:$PATH; comedi_config /dev/comedi0 cb_pcidas
#

On diskless nodes, this may not work if the file system is not yet mounted. In order to configure the comedi device later in the boot process, add the following to /etc/rc.d/rc.local:

#
#  comedi device initialization
#
/sbin/modprobe cb_pcidas
/usr/local/sbin/comedi_config /dev/comedi0 cb_pcidas

Make comedi itself
- cd /usr/local/comedi
- cvs update
- ./autogen.sh
- ./configure CFLAGS="-m64" --with-kernel-release=2.6.7 --with-linuxdir=/usr/local/linux-2.6.7-diskless
- make
Install comedi on all machines: do-lab -o "cd /usr/local/comedi; make install; make dev"
see if it works, try on one of the machines:
- /sbin/modprobe cb_pcidas
- /sbin/lsmod
Make and install comedilib
- cd /usr/local/comedilib
- cvs update
- ./autogen.sh
- ./configure CFLAGS="-m64" --libdir=/usr/local/lib64
- make; make install;
- run ldconfig on each machine: do-lab /sbin/ldconfig