Busy busy busy, though not many fun adventures to report in the server realm. The weekend was fairly smooth, as was the regular database backup outage today. Bob went to the MySQL conference last week, so yesterday we discussed some plans for mysql upgrades, tweaks, etc. which we won't implement until the end of next month (i.e. after the anniversary). Of course, there was discussion about the Oracle buyout of Sun, and how that will affect the future of mysql. Apparently panic is unwarranted and we were reminded that the innodb engine, which is mostly what we use within mysql, was already partly an Oracle project. Anyway we shall see.

Jeff and I are continuing to spend our time doing what we can to get the NTPCkr rolling before the anniversary, as well as scraping a talk to present together about the general data pipeline (which we hope to end with the "unveiling" of the NTPCkr). Jeff's been hitting some execution efficiency hurdles (mostly involving many long database queries), but we discovered some more significant optimizations (mostly involving getting around having to query the database in the first place). These speed-ups require some logic changes, which then means fresh code walkthroughs. Extreme programming time.

- 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

Splitters aren't running and I just ran out of work. Hopefully this is temporary.

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What if Fiction was Fact and Fact was Fiction and vice versa?

maybe someone frogot to turn on the lights after the db backup...

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Splitters aren't running and I just ran out of work. Hopefully this is temporary.

maybe someone frogot to turn on the lights after the db backup...

Nobody's perfect. There's a lot of things going on during maintenance day. The powers that be check in remotely from time to time and can kick-start those processes.

Give it some time. If anything, they'll get to it Wednesday morning. :p

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

Matt,
The NTPCkr is just a very exciting project. I think by the time you and Jeff are finished, the NTPCkr will be one very cool piece of software for analyzing data.

Thanks for your efforts, keep the spirits up,

John.

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Why are we told that the project is losing computing power when the existing base can't even be supplied with work? I added 6 boxes in the last 2 weeks and they've spent more time idle than crunching. It would seem SETI has too many crunchers, not too few.

And please withhold your ad hom attacks, or at least put them in a different font color so they can be ignored easily.

Question?

If 5 of your boxes havent contacted the server since 23 Apr or before, how are they going to get any work?

Question?

If 5 of your boxes havent contacted the server since 23 Apr or before, how are they going to get any work?

Why is every legitimate question 'answered' with an attack on these forums?

I yanked them out of SETI because of lack of work. Is there anything else I need to answer to each and every one of you to justify questioning the Great and Might SETI admins? Or do the peasants just need to STFU and mind their own business? Good lord.

Sir, what he was trying to do is help. he checked on your problem and if they are not connected they will not get work. how about reconnecting waiting a few hours then post again if there are any problems. I have found out that offten it is a small over sight a quick fix to get back running.

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Sir, what he was trying to do is help. he checked on your problem and if they are not connected they will not get work. how about reconnecting waiting a few hours then post again if there are any problems. I have found out that offten it is a small over sight a quick fix to get back running.

Quite so and thank you for your polite response.
Unfortunately, people, as well as their boxes, get turned off by being patronised and it would help if a little more understanding were to be exercised before posting such comments. A quiet PM could be far more effective.
I should know, I've been patronised by experts!

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"Why is every legitimate question 'answered' with an attack on these forums?"

A: It wasn't an attack

B: It wasnt' really a legitimate question either.

I (and most other crunchers) have had no problems getting work over the last couple of weeks. That doesn't mean that EVERY request for work gets filled. Often there are 'no work to send' messages, but they are temporary things. The machine tries again in 5 mins, and this time get to the front of the queue and gets some new work.

So the legitimate quetion was asked "Why are you having problems when everyone else isn't?" Maybe we can help you?

Sometimes there are outage for a few hours, like last nights.

Most people increase their work cache to a couple of days to cover both the expected and unexpected outages.

SETI never promises to have unlimited work available 24/7, hence the advice to cache a bit more work and have a backup project or 2. If you hadn't pulled your machines off the project, they would probably have got work after a couple of hours and would still be happily crunching it.

Or is there some completely unrelated probelm with your ISP or firewall thats causing problems? THere are people here with the technical knowledge to help your there too.

Please note this isn't a personal attack, with no (other) reference to Kool-aid, Great and Mighty or Peasants. If you ask sensible questions, you will get sensible answers, or at least sensible question to clarify things.

Ian
(Of to the shop to get some more Kool-Aid)

1) I would take elgar's post merely as a fact. He had trouble getting wu's. Just because others don't, or don't notice, doesn't negate his statement.

2) That he went off line due to frustraton is probably another fact. Frustrated users (for what ever reason) will go elsewhere.

3) Download 'problems' or perceived problems still occur. Project leaders (boinc? or seti?) should try to find ways to minimize them, especially if we are trying to keep as many participants as possible.

We should probably thank the collective for reporting issues, without prejudice.

elgar

There are many reasons why You might install Boinc get them connected, working and then after they completed the work they are not "phoning home properly."

There are many here that are willing to help, and try to help; gaining some small satisfaction besides the search for ET. Since the Beginning it has been, Users Helping Users. The More People that try, the greater chance of success. Not everyone understands the words spoken by another, now try to type the same words. Miscommunications can be common and somehow people move past that, then someone else explains in terms that can be understood. The problem is solved.

Yes, it can be frustrating on "All Sides." It started with your problem and then others get caught in what they thought they read or did not see in the problem. There are many here that have been around as long as you have and are working to help others. For Myself I have not quite been here as long as you. I have tried to Help.

That said, I did a quick peek at your computers and it seemed like they got an initial set of work and then for some reason they did to phone home correctly. With as complicated as things can get, preferences could be in place that could prevent network connections of those machines.

If you are willing to work with people they might find the problem or the Bug. Yes many problems get reported and fixed in the next version of Boinc. Unfortuantely they are not always obvious as Boinc is a Seperate Animal (and sometimes the cause of the specific issue).

So how do we figure out what the issue is?

Regards

Pappa

Why are we told that the project is losing computing power when the existing base can't even be supplied with work? I added 6 boxes in the last 2 weeks and they've spent more time idle than crunching. It would seem SETI has too many crunchers, not too few.

And please withhold your ad hom attacks, or at least put them in a different font color so they can be ignored easily.

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Please consider a Donation to the Seti Project.

1) I would take elgar's post merely as a fact. He had trouble getting wu's. Just because others don't, or don't notice, doesn't negate his statement.

2) That he went off line due to frustraton is probably another fact. Frustrated users (for what ever reason) will go elsewhere.

3) Download 'problems' or perceived problems still occur. Project leaders (boinc? or seti?) should try to find ways to minimize them, especially if we are trying to keep as many participants as possible.

We should probably thank the collective for reporting issues, without prejudice.

For those of us with engineering backgrounds, our instinct and training is to try to figure out the cause.

If elgar's post is fact (and I believe him), and others are not seeing the same issue, we need to figure out what is different for elgar -- why he can't get work when others can.

... and that means asking questions, and opening a dialog -- which apparently was taken as an attack.

I really do wish that we, as a group, could lighten up just a little. Someone found a domain name that I hold, and the third post was about the "nefarious" actions of this mystery individual.

We have an amazing ability to jump to conclusions and see malevolence in every innocent action. We should stop that.

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Question?

If 5 of your boxes havent contacted the server since 23 Apr or before, how are they going to get any work?

Why is every legitimate question 'answered' with an attack on these forums?

I yanked them out of SETI because of lack of work. Is there anything else I need to answer to each and every one of you to justify questioning the Great and Might SETI admins? Or do the peasants just need to STFU and mind their own business? Good lord.

Sorry about the delay responding.

As mentioned by others, my post was not intended as an attack as I didn't use coloured text :)

I was just wondering why you weren't getting any work when everyone else was over the last few days.

I dont know you or how well you monitor your boxes, so after I did a quick check of them and noticed the non-contact, I asked the question.

It was 3:45 am here and I was tired. I usually try to phrase my posts carefully, but I agree that I was a bit brusque that time. I apologise and assure you I did not deliberately mean to be offensive in any way.

So how do we figure out what the issue is?

Also, good comment from Ned as always.

Non-engineers likely have no idea of where whatever problem is or how to find it to fix it. There's an unfortunate amount of "magic" in computing for the users...

First step: Include a test tool in Boinc to find obvious problems with such as firewalls, DNS, internet connections, or just a bad account or corrupt local files, or disk full even!

For example, disk full at the moment simply causes Boinc to crash. Quite messy.


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)

Query:

Why is the "science status page" still showing that it was last updated on April 1? ...is this some sort of extended April Fool's joke? ;-)

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Hello, from Albany, CA!...

Query:

Why is the "science status page" still showing that it was last updated on April 1? ...is this some sort of extended April Fool's joke? ;-)

Because just one line above that it says:
"Note: This page is still vastly under construction."

I think Matt and Jeff are working on it. The best things in life are worth waiting for. Needs time.

John.

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We haven't really looked through the data since 2004, computers are much more powerful now. ET could be sitting somewhere in that mountain of data. I cant wait to see what turns up when we start sorting through it.

looking at these graphs: http://boincstats.com/stats/project_graph.php?pr=sah
(which i know are a poor indicator) you get an idea about how far we've come since 2004. In that year the total credit was around 68 million, now its closing on 50 billion!

Even if ET isn't somewhere in there we will still have made progress. Space is a big place.

Query:

Why is the "science status page" still showing that it was last updated on April 1? ...is this some sort of extended April Fool's joke? ;-)

Because just one line above that it says:
"Note: This page is still vastly under construction."

I think Matt and Jeff are working on it. The best things in life are worth waiting for. Needs time.

John.

That "under construction" line has been there since I can recall; back before April 1, when the page was working, and dating back to at least 2007! I notice that the SSP is now working... (May 10) and the first line still reads "under construction"!

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Hello, from Albany, CA!...