• Go to the STAR Computing Offline QA home page on drupal (i.e. from the STAR Home Page select "Computing" in the left panel, then select "Offline QA" in the table row labelled "Production" or go directly to the Offline QA and open the Auto QA browser by clicking on the "Automated Offline QA Browser" button in the upper portion of the page. You may have to enter the STAR protected area username and password. Contact your local STAR council representative or me if you do not know it.
• If the browser fails to open contact the STAR QA links and contacts ASAP. If you cannot get to the Auto QA browser then you are S.O.L.
• Enter your RCF login name.
• Generally you should follow the menu on page 2. Buttons 1.1 and 2.1 direct you to pages where Real Data Production jobs and Fast Offline Production jobs can be selected. Note that for Run 9 the Offline QA shift crew are only responsible for the fast-offline production (button 2.1) and monitoring database migration (button 2.3).
• At the beginning of your shift please check the status of the online-to-offline database migration and notify the QA experts and QA hypernews if the migration appears to be stalled.
• For Real Data Production (Button 1.1) you will typically want to filter out previously reviewed jobs and select all other run numbers for production within the past 24 hours. Queries can be made based on QA status, run number or date, and software production version.
• For the Fast Offline Production QA (Button 2.1) select the most recent run numbers which have not yet been QA reviewed. Other queries are available. You may examine the 24 TPC sectors or view the entire set of QA histograms by selecting the appropriate options in the upper portion of page 2.1. For Run 9 you may need to use the "Combine several jobs together" feature in order to have enough statistics in the histograms for proper evaluation. At a minimum please examine QA histograms for each trigger set for at least one file sequence per run number. Do more if you have time.
• Once you select a job to examine the QA shift or full set of QA histograms may be selected. Generally the smaller, "QA shift" set of histograms will suffice however you may need to examine the full set of QA plots in order to better diagnos a suspected problem. The postscript and/or pdf files are generated on the fly and displayed on your terminal. Generally it is best to have the QA shift report web form open in a different window so that you can fill it out as you check each set of histograms, job-by-job. Please follow the instructions on the QA shift web forms and supply all requested information about yourself and the jobs you have examined.
• You may refer to the sample QA shift histograms from Run 7 (Au-Au) in the Description of Offline QA Shift Histograms for Run 7 and the Reference QA Histograms for Run 8 d-Au at 200 GeV until Run 9 p-p reference histograms are ready, usually about 2 weeks into the run. You should become familiar with the QA Shift plots and have some idea of what to expect before taking your shift.
• Be sure to select the "MARK" button on the page for each job examined and reported. 
• Please mark the job as "Good" or "Bad" on this same page. Normally jobs will be "good" but under extraordinary conditions the QA shift crew may mark jobs as bad. Please consult with the QA experts before marking jobs or runs as bad.
• After completing all the listed jobs add whatever comments you think are useful and appropriate to the QA Shift Report. Be sure to include a useful summary for Fast Offline Data that will be helpful to the shift crew, i.e. report any changes from the previous day including new problems or resolution of old problems. Note that the QA Issues mechanism of the web based QA shift reportform automatically monitors day-to-day changes in these issues and lists them in the QA shift report summary that is mailed to starqa-hn.
• MOST IMPORTANT!!! If you suspect any problem with the detector(s), calibrations, reconstruction or production you must contact the appropriate expert(s). This is the basic reason for having the Auto QA system and these dedicated shifts. The experts may be contacted via either the STAR QA links and contacts or Other Expert contacts and links web pages.
• Complete your QA Shift Report and submit it. The ASCII text version will be emailed to 'starqa-hn'.
• Links to QA documentation, contacts, the Rcas/LSF monitor, Online Run Log, and the QA shift report web form are available from Page 2.
• Finally, you are done for the day; go get some rest!

Last modified: Feb 18, 2009