Spring Back (Apr 01 2008)

Last night the workunit storage server acted up again. I attempted to reconfigure it at midnight last night, but then it reset itself an hour later, and again every hour since. So whatever the problem is, it's gotten worse. Jeff and I did some diagnosing during the regular weekly database backup outage today. The reigning theory is still a faulty faceplate sending erroneous resets to the motherboard. So as it stands now the server is running without its faceplate (and therefore no control panel - which makes powering on quite difficult)! And so far no resets. If this stays stable for a week I think we'll have nailed the problem. Meanwhile the kind folks at Adaptec already have a complete replacement at the ready if we need it - we might just need to replace the faceplate.

No other real big shakes about today's outage. I added more machines to the new kvm (which meant being able to pull more cables out of the closet) and we added a new field to the workunit table in the BOINC database - so far that hasn't broken anything as far as we can tell. The beta uploads are failing again, but hopefully that will clear up on its own like last time (I'd still like an explanation, however).

Happy April Fools, by the way!

- Matt

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-- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person
-- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude

Thanks for the update Matt. Glad you think you found the intermittent problem. They are the worst to nail!
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You're right - that doesn't explain it, because the server status page hardly reflected reality (i.e. which servers are doing what). I just made some updates. Check it out.

- Matt

That doesn't explain why the upload/download/scheduler server is disabled. I got assigned some work units yesterday, but it hasn't been able to download the data files for them yet.

upload/download server bruno Disabled
scheduler bruno Disabled