Labyrinth of Light (Oct 06 2011)

Hey gang. I've been back in the lab for a few days. Figured I'd say hi and mention a couple things.

The HE problems are indeed getting weirder, and multi-faceted. We know the router itself needs more memory. Getting memory isn't the problem. Getting access to the router is. Knowing this, one hopeful option is to perhaps get ourselves off the current link and move entirely back to using campus infrastructure, now that there's enough bandwidth to handle us. But there are so many parties involved on all fronts that, as always, this sort of thing is moving at a snails pace. Meanwhile, one of the routers in our chain, unrelated to us but still affecting us, was the victim of a DDOS attack the other day. Another reason we need to simplify our setup already.

Note that there have been other issues affecting general connectivity. For example: our mysql schedule database swelled too large because db_purge wasn't running for a while, so it started falling out of memory and slowing everything down. This is clearing up on its own at the moment. There were also some scheduler bugs that have been introduced but then mostly if not entirely have been fixed. Meanwhile we turned off "resend lost results" until the smoke clears a bit.

We're also weighing our options for improving the science database throughput. The solutions include (and aren't mutually exclusive) moving entirely to solid state disks (which I find a little scary), changing the schema of our signal tables to bifurcate into good/uninteresting signals (which will vastly reduce lookups and what we need to keep in memory, but will require major changes to all our backend code), and perhaps just adding another disk enclosure with SATA drives.

Meanwhile I just started another informative mass e-mail. It's going out now verrrry slowly (due to recent campus mail configuration changes). If you're curious, here it is.

By the way that Secret Chiefs 3 US/Canada tour was super fun, and I'm about to head out on a shorter one in Europe (Iceland/France/England). There may be other similar tours on my plate in the new year (Western US, Australia, South America). Sorry about the absence, but I'll be back in November and then not going anywhere for a couple months I think.

- 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

Welcome back Matt, and thanks for the update,

Claggy

Thanks for dropping us a line and it's great to hear you're having fun outside of your duties at SETI@Home.

Hi Matt, welcome back.

Do you have any idea why the RAM which has been adequate for the last three years has suddenly become too little?

Howdy Matt,
Welcome back for awhile and Thanks for the update.

Jim
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I Desire Peace and Justice, Jim Scott

Getting memory isn't the problem. Getting access to the router is.

One lesson that needs to be learned about SSDs before you install them. They need to be backed up religiously. If the drive fails, the data is gone and there is no recovery other than the backups.
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BOINC WIKI

Perhaps it would be a good idea to put the goodsearch/goodshop link on the donation page (since it wasn't mentioned in the email)
Bob
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Do you Good Search for Seti@Home? http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=888957
Or Good Shop? http://www.goodshop.com/?charityid=888957

Great to see your face in da place, Matt.

Glad you had fun on your tour.

See ya in November.

And thanks, as always, for yet another informative post.

Meow!
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******

"Ask not, what your kitty can do for you. Ask what you can do for your kitty."

As it is kitten, so shall it be done.

Welcome back Matt, glad you had fun on the tour, and thanks for the news.

Thanks for the update Matt.

Its good to see you back.

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Hi Matt

There seems to be some routing issue in HE as well.

I can connect from one location on one ISP but not from another.

From the ISP that I cannot connect (optus), the route dies at HE:

traceroute to setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu (208.68.240.20), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 10.0.1.1 (10.0.1.1) 1.066 ms 1.906 ms 0.580 ms
2 10.63.0.1 (10.63.0.1) 23.003 ms 9.393 ms 9.953 ms
3 riv3-ge0-2.gw.optusnet.com.au (198.142.160.241) 10.112 ms 9.969 ms 29.102 ms
4 riv5-ge5-0.gw.optusnet.com.au (211.29.126.29) 8.199 ms 11.851 ms 9.064 ms
5 203.208.190.125 (203.208.190.125) 162.840 ms 168.029 ms 166.840 ms
6 pos3-2.sngtp-ar2.ix.singtel.com (203.208.182.205) 184.330 ms
xe-0-0-0-0.plapx-cr2.ix.singtel.com (203.208.183.161) 171.129 ms
pos3-2.sngtp-ar2.ix.singtel.com (203.208.182.205) 168.020 ms
7 paix.he.net (198.32.176.20) 190.950 ms 181.960 ms 181.067 ms
8 * * *
9 * * *
10 * * *

PING setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu (208.68.240.20): 56 data bytes
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
Request timeout for icmp_seq 1


The ISP that will connect (TPG):

traceroute to setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu (208.68.240.20), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 1.377 ms 0.412 ms 0.323 ms
2 10.20.21.49 (10.20.21.49) 80.781 ms 17.424 ms 17.383 ms
3 202.7.173.185 (202.7.173.185) 19.036 ms 17.518 ms 17.013 ms
4 syd-nxg-men-crt2-ge-7-1-0.tpgi.com.au (202.7.162.37) 15.958 ms 16.214 ms 15.787 ms
5 10gigabitethernet1-3.core1.sjc1.he.net (72.52.93.37) 229.097 ms 170.447 ms 177.884 ms
6 10.122.122.18 (10.122.122.18) 250.467 ms 171.295 ms 175.204 ms
7 64.71.140.42 (64.71.140.42) 166.409 ms 203.883 ms 223.715 ms
8 * 208.68.243.254 (208.68.243.254) 172.653 ms *


PING setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu (208.68.240.20): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 208.68.240.20: icmp_seq=0 ttl=55 time=210.032 ms
64 bytes from 208.68.240.20: icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=205.536 ms
64 bytes from 208.68.240.20: icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=208.649 ms

From HE's Looking Glass page some of their locations cannot route to setiboinc at all and some can. I have sent a message to their looking glass support about this, hopefully they find the problem.
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There are TWO threads at the top of NUMBER CRUNCHING, have a look there because one gives a workaround for the KNOWN problems within Hurricane Electric
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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Thanks to Matt and the team for keeping things going.

Meanwhile we turned off "resend lost results" until the smoke clears a bit.