Environment Variables

Telescope

The SKA comprises two telescopes: SKA MID (Dishes) and SKA LOW (Antennas). The behaviour of code in the ska_oso_scripting module differs depending on whether it is running in an SKA MID environment (default) or an SKA LOW environment. For example, when configured for SKA MID, the code will reject CDM payloads intended for SKA LOW.

The ska-oso-scripting code is configured for MID or LOW by setting the SKA_TELESCOPE environment variable to either ‘skamid’ or ‘skalow’. If no environment variable is specified, the code assumes it is controlling SKA MID.

The telescope setting is also exposed as a configurable value in the ska-oso-scripting Helm charts, with a default value also set to SKA MID. The ska-oso-scripting definitions in the skamid and skalow SKAMPI Helm charts set the appropriate value for their respective deployments.

Tango Device FQDNs

The SKA, and so by extension the OET, makes use of Tango Controls to control the telescope hardware. The Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDNs) or prefixes of the Tango devices used to control the central node (telescope) and sub-arrays are set as environment variables CENTRALNODE_FQDN and SUBARRAYNODE_FQDN_PREFIX respectively. These environment variables are set to the those defined in values.yaml when ska-oso-scripting/SKAMPI is deployed.