On the Horizon (May 07 2007)

Author	Message
Matt Lebofsky Volunteer moderator Project administrator Project developer Project scientist Send message Joined: 1 Mar 99 Posts: 1444 Credit: 957,058 RAC: 0	Message 562477 - Posted: 7 May 2007, 21:28:12 UTC Let me just say a couple things right off: I'm coming to realize that my tech news items are giving people a distorted view of the project as I mostly report about the failures. Let's face it - chaos and disaster is far more fun and entertaining. Nevertheless, this ultimately negative tone is doing a bit of disservice to what we are accomplishing here. I'm sure most people reading this understand, but I wanted to point this out to be safe. Also - there's clearly confusion about what we need to better this project. I'm continually overwhelmed but all the varying offers of help from our participants. I personally don't have the time to address these offers (nor does anybody around here) which sometimes leads to further confusion and perhaps hurt feelings. Knowing this, we're waiting for current avenues of hardware donation to pan out, and then Jeff, Eric, and I will sit down and revise our hardware donation page. I would also like us to revise our general public donation policies to cover certain cases where ambiguities have bitten us in the recent past. Now onto the disasters... If you haven't read the front page news, the current ETA for a new server from Sun is tomorrow (tuesday), probably in the afternoon which means if we're super lucky the science database will be alive again sometime on wednesday. Read other recent threads for more information on all that. There was a failure in the replica BOINC database over the weekend, most likely due to sidious crashing and having corrupted bin logs. No real harm there, and we'll clean that up during the usual outage tomorrow. One of our UPS's is complaining about a bad battery. Great. More positively, we're on the brink of retiring three of the older servers: kang, koloth, and kryten. They aren't doing very much anymore and are complaining more about aching disk drives and such things as they age. This will help both by reducing temperature/power consumption, but also by making room for bruno and sidious to finally move into the much cooler closet (temperatures today around Berkeley are pushing 90 degrees Fahrenheit). Plus they'll move onto the gigabit internal network which'll be nice. Snap Appliance graciously sent us a couple more spare drives in light of a recent single drive failure in gowron (an old disk that died of natural causes). They've been vastly supportive over the years. That's about it for now. - Matt -- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person -- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude ID: 562477 ·

Ian McCallion (Scally) from Burton on Trent. Send message Joined: 21 Jan 06 Posts: 3 Credit: 14,255,671 RAC: 20	Message 562480 - Posted: 7 May 2007, 21:34:52 UTC Last modified: 7 May 2007, 21:36:00 UTC Hoorah I've just got posted, thank you much indeed!!!! Ian ID: 562480 ·

Scottie Send message Joined: 17 Feb 02 Posts: 2 Credit: 2,786 RAC: 0	Message 562486 - Posted: 7 May 2007, 21:39:36 UTC Thx Matt for keeping us all posted on whats happening, am sure all these probs that you have all been having back at base is cousing everyone a big headache, but keep at it chaps, and all being well in which we all hope comes about on Wednesday. Good luck you guys and keep up the good work you are all doing. Scottie ID: 562486 ·

Guy Olinger Send message Joined: 19 Jun 99 Posts: 1 Credit: 299,565 RAC: 0	Message 562499 - Posted: 7 May 2007, 21:47:29 UTC One of you and million plus of us. It's hard for even the most well-meaning of people to visualize the absurdity of a single individual being responsive to even a tiny fraction of that million. But absurd it is. We'll be here when you get it running. In the mean time I have all this spare CPU time..... Guy. ID: 562499 ·

Lee Send message Joined: 3 Apr 99 Posts: 3 Credit: 188,125 RAC: 0	Message 562504 - Posted: 7 May 2007, 21:50:58 UTC - in response to Message 562477. Problems? What problems? These are just glitches, only the Neophytes worry about glitches. An OLD truck driver like me refuses to worry about the small "stuff". SETI, and ALL the fine folks with computers dedicated to finding ET are doing a fine job. Just please test the drives on another controller to make sure a bad drive didn't take out Thumper's controller. We don't wanna put a shorted drive in a new machine, it'd be like putting a tire that caused a wreck on a new truck. ID: 562504 ·

Silverdude Send message Joined: 14 Nov 99 Posts: 15 Credit: 78,565,901 RAC: 70	Message 562506 - Posted: 7 May 2007, 21:55:42 UTC Last modified: 7 May 2007, 21:56:42 UTC Since the outage I've powered down most of my systems, as they weren't doing anything but wasting electricity. Hopefully my electric bill will be a little lower this month! I'm down to one desktop and two laptops online at the moment (plus one workstation at work), but once I see some work units being distributed I'll turn my other 5 or so systems back on. Good luck Matt and the rest of the SETI team! ID: 562506 ·

John Clark Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 29 Sep 99 Posts: 16515 Credit: 4,418,829 RAC: 0	Message 562509 - Posted: 7 May 2007, 21:59:38 UTC Last modified: 7 May 2007, 22:01:42 UTC Matt Thanks for the update, and background. Personally, the report on the problems and fixes are informative and supportive to SETI addicts, like me, and not giving a negative impression to the likes of myself. Indeed, taking in to account the overall level of client facing server *up time since March 1999, the good news (unstated) far outweighs the bad. As hardware is getting old, it like all of us, gets creaky, and falls over sometimes, and occasionally disastrously. But, taken in context, the last time I seem to recall there being any major disruption was when the fibre was cut due to the Berkeley copper power lines being nicked. Anyway you will have a new Thumper Mk II (or whatever it's to be called) and this will be up and servicing the community, in a steady state fashion, by the end of this week. It's good to be back amongst friends and colleagues* ID: 562509 ·

HAL Send message Joined: 28 Mar 03 Posts: 704 Credit: 870,617 RAC: 0	Message 562512 - Posted: 7 May 2007, 22:01:42 UTC - in response to Message 562477. Let me just say a couple things right off: I'm coming to realize that my tech news items are giving people a distorted view of the project as I mostly report about the failures. Let's face it - chaos and disaster is far more fun and entertaining. Nevertheless, this ultimately negative tone is doing a bit of disservice to what we are accomplishing here. I'm sure most people reading this understand, but I wanted to point this out to be safe. Also - there's clearly confusion about what we need to better this project. I'm continually overwhelmed but all the varying offers of help from our participants. I personally don't have the time to address these offers (nor does anybody around here) which sometimes leads to further confusion and perhaps hurt feelings. Knowing this, we're waiting for current avenues of hardware donation to pan out, and then Jeff, Eric, and I will sit down and revise our hardware donation page. I would also like us to revise our general public donation policies to cover certain cases where ambiguities have bitten us in the recent past. Now onto the disasters... If you haven't read the front page news, the current ETA for a new server from Sun is tomorrow (tuesday), probably in the afternoon which means if we're super lucky the science database will be alive again sometime on wednesday. Read other recent threads for more information on all that. There was a failure in the replica BOINC database over the weekend, most likely due to sidious crashing and having corrupted bin logs. No real harm there, and we'll clean that up during the usual outage tomorrow. One of our UPS's is complaining about a bad battery. Great. More positively, we're on the brink of retiring three of the older servers: kang, koloth, and kryten. They aren't doing very much anymore and are complaining more about aching disk drives and such things as they age. This will help both by reducing temperature/power consumption, but also by making room for bruno and sidious to finally move into the much cooler closet (temperatures today around Berkeley are pushing 90 degrees Fahrenheit). Plus they'll move onto the gigabit internal network which'll be nice. Snap Appliance graciously sent us a couple more spare drives in light of a recent single drive failure in gowron (an old disk that died of natural causes). They've been vastly supportive over the years. That's about it for now. - Matt MATT -as a XMAS present a close friend of mine sent me a 280GB SATA drive (sans cable) and I dont have a machine that can handle it - YET - (I only have klunkers destined for the Smithsonian) IF you guys can use it E-M me with an address and it is yours it is still in the static bag and fresh from the factory Classic WU= 7,237 Classic Hours= 42,079 ID: 562512 ·

The Soundman Send message Joined: 23 Dec 05 Posts: 41 Credit: 73,900 RAC: 0	Message 562513 - Posted: 7 May 2007, 22:02:06 UTC Thanks for keeping us posted Matt. We all know that you and your team do your best to keep the project going. Let's hope the problems subside soon and we all can have a couple of months without all the server problems that have been happening of late! :o) Life Is Too Short To Worry About The Little Things ID: 562513 ·

Hole-yMan Send message Joined: 19 May 99 Posts: 15 Credit: 556,963 RAC: 0	Message 562523 - Posted: 7 May 2007, 22:20:17 UTC - in response to Message 562499. We'll be here when you get it running. Not all of us. I've already started uninstalling boinc as machines upload the last of their work units. They'll all be out in ~15 hours. I hope you guys find something but I'm not waiting for work any more. Good luck and goodbye... ID: 562523 ·

OzzFan Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 9 Apr 02 Posts: 15691 Credit: 84,761,841 RAC: 28	Message 562526 - Posted: 7 May 2007, 22:23:12 UTC - in response to Message 562523. We'll be here when you get it running. Not all of us. I've already started uninstalling boinc as machines upload the last of their work units. They'll all be out in ~15 hours. I hope you guys find something but I'm not waiting for work any more. Good luck and goodbye... So long and thanks for all the fish. ID: 562526 ·

Brian Silvers Send message Joined: 11 Jun 99 Posts: 1681 Credit: 492,052 RAC: 0	Message 562543 - Posted: 7 May 2007, 22:35:31 UTC - in response to Message 562526. So long and thanks for all the fish. Don't Panic...make sure you know where your towel is... ;-) ID: 562543 ·

KO6QK Send message Joined: 9 May 99 Posts: 4 Credit: 5,363,042 RAC: 7	Message 562553 - Posted: 7 May 2007, 22:48:01 UTC - in response to Message 562477. Matt, you guys have a tough row to hoe, but I know you come out on top!! Keep up the good work and I'm sure you have %99.999 of our support!! Thanks!! John ID: 562553 ·

tallguy-13088 Send message Joined: 13 Oct 99 Posts: 8 Credit: 5,408,234 RAC: 0	Message 562556 - Posted: 7 May 2007, 22:56:21 UTC - in response to Message 562477. Matt, You are merely getting a "taste" of what IT is all about ... not a bad thing. You are obviously keeping your head above water and you will certainly have a new outlook for those "long periods of waiting punctuated by moments of frantic activity" <grin>! Everything you have written shows your concern for your "farm" and your cool, level-headed response(s). Keep up the GREAT work! I suspect that we have a major league CIO in the making here. Hope that everyone out there appreciates all the fine work from a very talented individual! Most of this should re-enforce the reasons that "Mom and Dad" sent you to school to begin with <very big grin>! Most folks expect that machines just go around "doing their thing". Very few realize what actually goes into keeping them "humming". No one will ever laud you when things are going smoothly and the best you can expect is some level of "grousing". When the "feces hits the rotary oscillator" seems the only time your existence get acknowledged and then usually in quite a negative context. Shrug it off "for they know not what they ask". You know you have done your best and to those of us who know a little about the game, it is a VERY FINE JOB! You're winning even though it doesn't always appear to be so. Keep marching forward! ID: 562556 ·

Doc Nielsen Send message Joined: 2 Oct 00 Posts: 1 Credit: 84,024 RAC: 0	Message 562563 - Posted: 7 May 2007, 23:19:19 UTC - in response to Message 562556. yeah, what he said :D ID: 562563 ·

Brian Parkhurst Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 1 Apr 00 Posts: 11 Credit: 11,796,990 RAC: 1	Message 562569 - Posted: 7 May 2007, 23:26:44 UTC Matt, As a fellow S/A who has been under the gun for systems that are down, broken or just plain too old to still be in use. Good job and keep at it. As a fellow academic university staff person, I understand budgetary constraints and the data/com issues with siting of systems in "closets" rather that real data centers, with all the nice A/C, redundant power and other "real" computing environments. As a seti member since 2000, when running on old i486 and AMD overclocked chips was cool.... Alpha Processor forever...at least until it burns out. ID: 562569 ·

[B^S] ShanerX Send message Joined: 2 Jun 99 Posts: 1 Credit: 1,023,134 RAC: 0	Message 562574 - Posted: 7 May 2007, 23:34:04 UTC Last modified: 7 May 2007, 23:35:13 UTC yeah, what he said :D ... and I second that! Great job Matt, news is news and always helps - good or bad. Since I've been here from the beginning, I'll be here until the end (hopefully in the very, very distant future). ID: 562574 ·

Fuzzy Hollynoodles Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 3 Apr 99 Posts: 9659 Credit: 251,998 RAC: 0	Message 562603 - Posted: 8 May 2007, 0:20:09 UTC - in response to Message 562512. Last modified: 8 May 2007, 0:20:57 UTC MATT -as a XMAS present a close friend of mine sent me a 280GB SATA drive (sans cable) and I dont have a machine that can handle it - YET - (I only have klunkers destined for the Smithsonian) IF you guys can use it E-M me with an address and it is yours it is still in the static bag and fresh from the factory Please email Pappa - al dot setiboinc at gmail dot com - and/or Eric - korpela at ssl dot berkeley dot edu . Pappa is in charge of the hardware donation and he can provide you with the info needed about this and also where to have it shipped in case. Thank you. "I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me ID: 562603 ·

Jim_Hoover Send message Joined: 1 Feb 04 Posts: 1 Credit: 292,245 RAC: 0	Message 562608 - Posted: 8 May 2007, 0:29:01 UTC - in response to Message 562477. Let me just say a couple things right off: I'm coming to realize that my tech news items are giving people a distorted view of the project as I mostly report about the failures. Let's face it - chaos and disaster is far more fun and entertaining. Nevertheless, this ultimately negative tone is doing a bit of disservice to what we are accomplishing here. I'm sure most people reading this understand, but I wanted to point this out to be safe. Also - there's clearly confusion about what we need to better this project. I'm continually overwhelmed but all the varying offers of help from our participants. I personally don't have the time to address these offers (nor does anybody around here) which sometimes leads to further confusion and perhaps hurt feelings. Knowing this, we're waiting for current avenues of hardware donation to pan out, and then Jeff, Eric, and I will sit down and revise our hardware donation page. I would also like us to revise our general public donation policies to cover certain cases where ambiguities have bitten us in the recent past. Now onto the disasters... If you haven't read the front page news, the current ETA for a new server from Sun is tomorrow (tuesday), probably in the afternoon which means if we're super lucky the science database will be alive again sometime on wednesday. Read other recent threads for more information on all that. There was a failure in the replica BOINC database over the weekend, most likely due to sidious crashing and having corrupted bin logs. No real harm there, and we'll clean that up during the usual outage tomorrow. One of our UPS's is complaining about a bad battery. Great. More positively, we're on the brink of retiring three of the older servers: kang, koloth, and kryten. They aren't doing very much anymore and are complaining more about aching disk drives and such things as they age. This will help both by reducing temperature/power consumption, but also by making room for bruno and sidious to finally move into the much cooler closet (temperatures today around Berkeley are pushing 90 degrees Fahrenheit). Plus they'll move onto the gigabit internal network which'll be nice. Snap Appliance graciously sent us a couple more spare drives in light of a recent single drive failure in gowron (an old disk that died of natural causes). They've been vastly supportive over the years. That's about it for now. - Matt ID: 562608 ·

Baz Send message Joined: 15 Feb 07 Posts: 27 Credit: 50,586 RAC: 0	Message 562621 - Posted: 8 May 2007, 1:28:44 UTC - in response to Message 562477. Now onto the disasters... Now be Honest, Were would you be without the disasters? The boring tedium of the machines humming, buzzing and whirring completely normally hour after hour, day after day is much more stressful, as you are always waiting for them to crash or blow. What a relief when something happens like this. OK it is frustrating for us as we watch the W.U.'s run out and blame each other for not donating more or some cash to the cause, but if you had everything and nothing went wrong, would you be happy? :-D The only thing more exciting for you than sorting a disaster out, will be when that Pink Man somewhere up there sends you the message to say 'He is Watching Us". Keep up the pretence of working and 'we will believe'! Keep up the hard work tomorrow, or is that today and I won't tell everybody that you have been having a wild Jam Session while we thought you were pulling your hair out Baz Alien Pet Lover ID: 562621 ·

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