Connect to an archiver and IOCs

archiveview reads history from an Archiver Appliance over HTTP and live values from IOCs over Channel Access or PV Access. Either can be left out: with no archiver it plots live values only, and a PV the archiver does not know about still plots live.

Point it at the archiver

Pass the appliance's retrieval URL, normally port 17668:

archiveview --archiver http://archiver.example.org:17668 SR-DI-DCCT-01:SIGNAL

/retrieval is added for you, so http://host:17668 and http://host:17668/retrieval mean the same. A single-container appliance that serves everything on one port works the same way, e.g. http://host:17665. See The archiver URL and API.

--archiver is remembered: archiveview writes it to settings.json as archiver_url (see Config files), so later runs use it without being told. Give --archiver again only to change archivers, or --no-archiver for a run with live values only.

At start-up the archiver is chosen in this order:

1. --archiver URL;
2. none, with --no-archiver;
3. the archiver the opened view was saved with (the default view restored at start-up, or --view NAME);
4. archiver_url in settings.json.

See and change the archiver

The pill right of Live in the top bar shows the archiver's host and a dot:

archiveview asks the appliance for its version (bpl/getVersion) at start-up and after a change. After that every history fetch and search updates the dot: a success turns it green, and a failure that looks like the archiver's is checked with another version request before the dot turns amber (one slow query timing out is not the archiver down). While it is amber the archiver is checked again every minute, so it turns green when the archiver comes back. A PV that is not archived (a 404 for that PV) is not an archiver error.

Hover over the pill for the full retrieval URL, the appliance's version, and the last error and when it happened. Click it to switch archivers without restarting: type a URL and press Enter (or Use), pick one of the recently used archivers, or choose No archiver. Use on the archiver already in use checks it again at once. The plotted PVs' history is fetched again from the new archiver.

A switch to another archiver, in the pill or by opening a view saved with one, is remembered in settings.json like --archiver. No archiver is for this run only: the settings keep the last archiver, so the next run without --archiver uses it again. In a narrow window the pill shrinks to its dot.

Reach the IOCs

Live values use the standard EPICS client environment variables, as any CA or PVA client does:

export EPICS_CA_ADDR_LIST="10.0.0.10" EPICS_CA_AUTO_ADDR_LIST=NO
export EPICS_PVA_ADDR_LIST="10.0.0.10" EPICS_PVA_AUTO_ADDR_LIST=NO

A PV name with no prefix uses Channel Access. Prefix it with pva:// for PV Access, e.g. pva://bl01t:SUM. The other prefixes of bobview's pv crate also work for live values (sim://sine, loc://name), which is handy for trying the plot out; the archiver is asked only about plain names.

archiveview never writes to PVs.

Check what is happening

The plot's chips show a PV's state: a spinner while its history loads, a grey "—" when it is disconnected (hover for the reason), and a "live only" mark when the archiver has no record of it (HTTP 404). A ! on a chip means its last archive request failed; hover the chip for the error. For more detail run with ARCHIVEVIEW_LOG=debug, which logs every archiver request.