EPICS-for-Dummies

Install PV Info

A web front end to ChannelFinder: search PVs by name or by metadata, and cross-link to every other service that knows about them.

Overview: Toolbox → PV Info.

   
Source github.com/ChannelFinder/pvinfo

Prerequisites

Install

Follow the repository’s README — it’s a web application, and the deployment method (container image, Node/npm build, or servlet container) depends on the current version. Check there rather than trusting a snapshot in this guide.

The configuration that matters is the set of service URLs: ChannelFinder, the archiver’s retrieval endpoint, the alarm logger, save & restore, and Olog.

Those links are the whole point. Given a PV name, PV Info can then show:

Question Answered from
What is this PV, and what type? ChannelFinder
Which IOC serves it, on which host? ChannelFinder (via recsync)
What subsystem, area, criticality? ChannelFinder properties
What does its history look like? Archiver
Is it alarmed, and how often does it trip? Alarm logger
Which save sets include it? Save & restore
Has anyone written about it? Olog

“What is this PV and what’s going on with it?” is asked dozens of times a day at a facility. Answering it in one page instead of five tools is a real productivity gain, and it’s the reason to deploy this rather than just using ChannelFinder’s REST API.

Search patterns worth knowing

SR-C05-*                  everything in cell 5
*-DI-BPM-*:X-Mon          every horizontal BPM reading
subsystem=vacuum          every vacuum PV, however named
iocName=SR-C05-VA-IOC-01  everything on one IOC
recordType=motor          every motor axis in the facility

The last three only work if you populated properties deliberately with info() tags in your databases. This is where that investment shows up.

Deploy it safely

Same posture as the other web interfaces: TLS and authentication at a reverse proxy, and read-only. PV Info is inherently a read-only tool, which makes it the safest thing in this section to expose to a wider audience — and a good candidate for the facility’s general-purpose “what is this?” page.

Verify

  1. Search for a PV you know is in ChannelFinder.
  2. Confirm the IOC name and host are correct.
  3. Follow the archive link and see history.
  4. Search by one of your own properties (subsystem=vacuum).
  5. Search for a PV that doesn’t exist, and confirm the failure is clear rather than an empty page that looks like a broken service.

Next

Gateways