Last night the assimilators stopped inserting work into the science database. We discovered that one of the indexes on the result table was corrupt - whether or not this was caused by the recent drive failures, or if this had anything to do with the assimilator problem was anybody's guess.

I started off the result index checker last night and quickly after that a THIRD drive failed on thumper in as many days. This is getting ridiculous, especially as there are no apparent signs why the drives are failing, and we're running low on spares.

This morning Bob started rebuilding the corrupt index and once that is finish I'll start the assimilators (hopefully they will be happy) and catch up on the major backlog. Maybe then I'll start the splitters, but given how our science database might tank any second we might hold off on that. In short: there may be no new work until Monday.

- 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

Last night the assimilators stopped inserting work into the science database. We discovered that one of the indexes on the result table was corrupt - whether or not this was caused by the recent drive failures, or if this had anything to do with the assimilator problem was anybody's guess.

I started off the result index checker last night and quickly after that a THIRD drive failed on thumper in as many days. This is getting ridiculous, especially as there are no apparent signs why the drives are failing, and we're running low on spares.

This morning Bob started rebuilding the corrupt index and once that is finish I'll start the assimilators (hopefully they will be happy) and catch up on the major backlog. Maybe then I'll start the splitters, but given how our science database might tank any second we might hold off on that. In short: there may be no new work until Monday.

- Matt

Sounds like some of my days. Every machine goes down at once.

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Hopefully the cosmos is not trying to reverse the charges.
Moderation in all things.

Quick read......
The drives are not failing.......the controller is. Drives just do not fail that often. Look for the true source of the problem.

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

Yes, PLEASE replace that drive controller ASAP. It seems to be getting worse and the server is on borrowed time waiting to corrupt all the drives.

Quick read......
The drives are not failing.......the controller is. Drives just do not fail that often. Look for the true source of the problem.

Or maybe even a power supply. We had several drives auger in in rapid succession due to a dying PS doing rude things with the voltages to the drives. Either way, I recommend drinking 3 beers and calling me in the morning.

Dr. Scarecrow

It's funny, every time I see that I'm not getting any new work I always assume it's my computer. Hopefully you can bag this problem soon. You'll probably find that the drives that you thought were failing are perfectly fine once you find the true cause of the problem.

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And I do not mean to be rude guys. I have even had RAM problems make the OS tell me that my hard drive had failed. Even tho the drive was only a few weeks old. So please don't take my post as an insult. I truly find it hard to accept that 3 hard drives would fail in a couple of days time.

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

Put an oscilloscope on the power leads and look for transients. A simple digital voltmeter is not good enough.
Go beg the EE’s for one.

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Strange how Seti went down with disk problems about the same time Rosetta@Home did! Spooky.

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Oh.. we are VERY aware that these drive failures may be spurious. Remember that the original thumper failed because of the main drive controller board.

- 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

Funny - had a wrecked controller this week too...

Not really the "week of storage"

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mic.

Oh.. we are VERY aware that these drive failures may be spurious. Remember that the original thumper failed because of the main drive controller board.

- Matt

OK Matt, sorry to try to point out the obvious. It's just that your previous posts hadn't mentioned anything other than the drives had failed. Carry on, my friend.

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

No problem - it's a constant battle to decide how much detail is too much or too little in every post I make. Too much: boring, redundant, confusing. Too little: unclear, vague, misleading.

- Matt

OK Matt, sorry to try to point out the obvious. It's just that your previous posts hadn't mentioned anything other than the drives had failed. Carry on, my friend.

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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

No problem - it's a constant battle to decide how much detail is too much or too little in every post I make. Too much: boring, redundant, confusing. Too little: unclear, vague, misleading.

- Matt

OK Matt, sorry to try to point out the obvious. It's just that your previous posts hadn't mentioned anything other than the drives had failed. Carry on, my friend.

LOL...I kinda like the boring, redundant, confusing ones.

Regards,
Mark.

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

Will there be any more WU's this weekend, or is that still too early to tell?

No problem - it's a constant battle to decide how much detail is too much or too little in every post I make. Too much: boring, redundant, confusing. Too little: unclear, vague, misleading.

The more info the better!
Gives us (at least me) the feeling of beeing part of it...

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mic.

LOL...I kinda like the boring, redundant, confusing ones.

Lol, me too.. sometimes I even get bored enough to go back and read tech news from several months ago and go "wow, what utter crap the SETI crew have to put up with so often"

Careface*

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[quote]No problem - it's a constant battle to decide how much detail is too much or too little in every post I make. Too much: boring, redundant, confusing. Too little: unclear, vague, misleading.

Matt - Thanks for doing such a great job! Parts fail - things happen - I've been there - and appreciate your dedication.

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Strange how Seti went down with disk problems about the same time Rosetta@Home did! Spooky.

@Terry

No, Rosetta went down a day before there was any indication of a problem with SETI...probably just a coincidence, as (IIRC) Rosetta does not have any hardware models in common with SETI. (my two main projects at the moment...) Had to re-start Einstein because one 'puter (that was on S@H and R@H) ran out of work.

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Hello, from Albany, CA!...

Sounds like some of my days. Every machine goes down at once.

I hope you meant "at least once"! (insertion in bold) ;-)

There have been days that a computer in my care (I was a mainframe operator at the time...) has died several times a day for more than two months, on a random schedule! (The tech staff/customer engineers finally tracked that bug to a bad wiring harness... we got a new [same model] computer on warrenty...)

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Hello, from Albany, CA!...