We have a lot of servers in play around here, and once in a while an operating system on one particular server falls far enough behind in spec that the best move is to do a clean reinstall of the latest OS version from DVD (as opposed to trying to do 3 or 4 separate upgrades over the net, one revision at a time). Such was the case with vader, and I bit the bullet yesterday and tackled that project. It mostly acts as a compute server and a redundant download server, so it wasn't really missed for the 24 hours it was offline. Only one annoying snag: we have a lot of systems already running this OS, but this was the first 64-bit clean install from DVD, and turns out there's a package dependency bug that caused the install to crash until I figured out the offending package and left it off the list. This morning I wrapped up work and it's back online. That's good, but I still have a few more servers needing similar upgrades.

The summer we have a volunteer undergrad, Luke, working on radar blanking code. Background: our multibeam data is inundated with military radar noise of semi-predictable rate and frequency. Such data collected since early 2008 has a "blanking signal" embedded by Arecibo within the raw data, so we can easily tell when the radar is on or off and we can ignore the loud noise. What Luke's working on is a program that analyzes pre-2008 data to retroactively find the radar noise and recreate a similar "blanking signal" so we can clean it up. We (me, Jeff, Eric, and Luke) had a code walkthrough yesterday. So far, so good. In the process of making this program Luke also found phase issues, even with the Arecibo blanking signal, which is probably why we still get overflow workunits from time to time. So there's still a little work to be done. When we have an observatory on the dark side of the moon, this won't be a problem. Don't see that happening anytime soon, though...

Still messing around with this new/old NAS system. It's becoming a real time sink. Lots of waiting through long reboots, then trying to figure out why X or Y isn't working as expected.

I don't come into the lab on Fridays, and Monday is a national holiday. So signing off for a few days...

- 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 Matt for the Post - and To Each of You @ Berkeley - Have a Great Weekend

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BOINC Wiki . . .

Science Status Page . . .

We have a lot of servers in play around here, and once in a while an operating system on one particular server falls far enough behind in spec that the best move is to do a clean reinstall of the latest OS version from DVD (as opposed to trying to do 3 or 4 separate upgrades over the net, one revision at a time). ... Vader

I've just tried a similar 'quick update' of one rather old Linux OS version to a few up... It locked out on various impossible dependencies and packages no longer supported. I guess I should have done the DVD trick from the outset, except that old machine has no DVD drive... Ok, so it got upgraded to a 2006 version that is on CD that I had to hand and is still supported!

In short, my sympathies for your fun!

... When we have an observatory on the dark side of the moon, this won't be a problem. Don't see that happening anytime soon, though...

Something beyond at the Lagrange point would be much more effective and cheaper, even if you need manned maintenance.

The moon is looking like a time-wasting sink.

I hope Luke isn't spooked by naming coincidences!

Still messing around with this new/old NAS system. It's becoming a real time sink. Lots of waiting through long reboots, then trying to figure out why X or Y isn't working as expected.

Why not as expected? There must be someone who knows about that kit out of all the forum people?

(Yes, I can guess the problems with new technology BIG disks on old technology controllers... :-( )

I don't come into the lab on Fridays, and Monday is a national holiday. So signing off for a few days...

Enjoy your brief break, the millions will still be here...

Regards,
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

[...]When we have an observatory on the dark side of the moon, this won't be a problem.[...]

Just for the dubious sake of nitpicking: shouldn't that be the far side of the moon, which is actually the bright side half of the time... ;-)

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[...]When we have an observatory on the dark side of the moon, this won't be a problem.[...]

Just for the dubious sake of nitpicking: shouldn't that be the far side of the moon, which is actually the bright side half of the time... ;-)

"Dark" side is more poetic, but he meant the far side relative to the Earth. :)

BTW, the reason the Moon's far side is superb for radio observations, is that that location is totally shielded from radio signals emanating from Earth.

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We may be giving the servers the weekend off, too. Right now, I'm getting "no work from project" messages and I'm down to one work unit, which will finish in about 15 minutes. Maybe I'll shut down my machine overnight to give it a rest. After all, it's a holiday weekend! :0

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... When we have an observatory on the dark side of the moon, this won't be a problem. Don't see that happening anytime soon, though...

Something beyond at the Lagrange point would be much more effective and cheaper, even if you need manned maintenance.

The moon is looking like a time-wasting sink.

The farther you get from the thing providing the shield, the more signal is going to knife-edge around it.

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We may be giving the servers the weekend off, too. Right now, I'm getting "no work from project" messages and I'm down to one work unit, which will finish in about 15 minutes. Maybe I'll shut down my machine overnight to give it a rest. After all, it's a holiday weekend! :0

We might be in another stretch of "shorties" -- work units that finish very quickly. If that's true, we're keeping up with the splitters, and work will be spotty.

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