Same as on my AW51. How cool is that, huh? If you are going to try and read it directly, be aware that almhist is _mostly_ a flat text file. It has no line feeds, so you have to process it as fixed-length records, and there is some garbage data at the front of it (well, I presume the system uses it somehow, but it's not relevant if you just want to read alarm events out of it). I believe the alarm managers access this file for the alarm history display. Unfortunately, it does so over an rmount, which makes it slower than a slug climbing out of a Prozac bottle. It would be cool if I could somehow make the system read this over my 100Mbps 2nd Ethernet; I may have to look into that. Sample output from my logging scripts (very long lines; the list software will probably mangle them). As Tom pointed out, the priority is right before the alarm type. R1260A:VT1260AR1 BEARING VIBRATION NORTH SIDE 0HIABS 2007-01-18 00:05:42 0.12 IN/SEC ( 0.20) HIGH VIBRATION RTN H2:LC152D1.->XSOV152D1 D152 ON-OFF LVL CTRL 5LOABS 2007-01-18 00:06:32 9.46 % ( 10.00) CLOSE VLV ALM H2:LC152D1.->XSOV152D1 D152 ON-OFF LVL CTRL 0LOABS 2007-01-18 00:06:44 13.61 % ( 10.00) CLOSE VLV RTN D271:FI271D PRODUCTION FLOW 1DISABL 2007-01-18 00:15:08 ALARM DETECTION DISABLED D271:FI271D PRODUCTION FLOW 1ENABLE 2007-01-18 00:26:52 ALARM DETECTION ENABLED HSE06_DIGTAL:AT250RAD_FF AT250RAD FLOW FAULT 3STATE 2007-01-18 00:36:18 FLOW FAULT Pnt 00 HSE06_DIGTAL:AT250RAE_FF AT250RAE FLOW FAULT 3STATE 2007-01-18 00:36:18 FLOW FAULT Pnt 00 Corey Clingo BASF Corporation <tom.vandewater@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent by: foxboro-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 01/19/2007 01:44 PM Please respond to foxboro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To <foxboro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> cc Subject Re: [foxboro] Priority in Alarm messages First off, the following disclaimer. The following can only be counted on if you are using a UNIX based Legacy Foxboro alarm historian but may be true in other configurations. The alarm priority is obviously passed to the alarm historian but is filtered out of the printer output. You can follow the results of my telnet session below which dumps the contents of the file /usr/hstorian/almhist which is a flat text(data)file that stores alarm messages. Notice the (4LOABS) in the first alarm. The 4 just before LOABS is the alarm priority. In my research of 3rd party alarm packages some of them access the almhist file directly as a database for their own manipulations which you can also do;<) 04AW01# /usr/bin/strings /usr/hstorian/almhist |more C0904:FI24008.C10 5566 COMPRESSOR OIL FLOW 4LOABS 01-15 23:32:33 69.97 GPM ( 70.00) OIL TO 5566 LO FLOW ALM C0904:FI24008.C10 5566 COMPRESSOR OIL FLOW 0LOABS Cheers, Tom VandeWater Control Systems Developer/Analyst Dow Corning Corp. Carrollton, KY USA -----Original Message----- From: foxboro-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:foxboro-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Corey R Clingo Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 1:19 PM To: foxboro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: [foxboro] Priority in Alarm messages Hmm...I didn't know that the priority did not come out on the printer. Not=20 really sure why this would be the case, as the Alarm Manager and legacy historian know about it. Is this true of any non-AM alarm device? To do long-term alarm logging, I have some scripts to read and parse the almhist file that the legacy historian uses for a circular alarm history buffer. These were based on some code I found on the Cassandra site and in some Foxboro HH documents, but I've had to modify them several times as=20 I've come across weird data the historian puts in this file for certain=20 alarm types, and to add additional features (like putting the year in the=20 timestamp). It's not real-time (it runs out of cron every hour), but=20 suits my needs. I hope to get this into some kind of database (either my=20 own or some alarm-management product's) for better analysis capabilities. As for how the alarm management vendors determine priority, most of the=20 packages I've seen also import part or all of the system configuration=20 (either periodically from iccprt dumps or live via OPC) and get the=20 priorities from that. Corey Clingo BASF Corporation "Ghodhbani, Hafedh" <Hafedh.Ghodhbani@xxxxxxxxxxxx>=20 Sent by: foxboro-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 01/19/2007 04:32 AM Please respond to foxboro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To <foxboro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> cc Subject [foxboro] Priority in Alarm messages Hello, We are sending plant alarms continuously to a PC for analysis. We would like to add the alarm priority to the alarm message text. Can you please advise how to proceed. For your information, this is the alarm message we want to modify the structure: PK2103:PC21103.PK2103 HP N2 PURGE GAS LOABS 01-19-07 09:35:45:2 0.05BAR ( 0.05) LOW ALARMS ALM Regards Lead C&I Eng BG Group Tel:+21674259250 ex 574 ______________________________________________________________________ BG Energy Holdings Limited Registered in England & Wales No: 3763515 Registered address: 100 Thames Valley Park Drive Reading, Berkshire RG6 1PT UK Telephone: +44 (0)118 935 3222 Website: http://www.BG-Group.com This e-mail is intended only for the addressee named above. As this e-mail may contain confidential or privileged information, please advise us immediately if you are not the named addressee or the person responsible for delivering the message to the named addressee. The contents should not be disclosed to any other person nor copies taken. _______________________________________________________________________ This mailing list is neither sponsored nor endorsed by Invensys Process Systems (formerly The Foxboro Company). Use the info you obtain here at your own risks. Read http://www.thecassandraproject.org/disclaimer.html foxboro mailing list: //www.freelists.org/list/foxboro to subscribe: mailto:foxboro-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=join to unsubscribe: mailto:foxboro-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=leave