Surely at some point each day someone could spare a couple of minutes to say 'Hey guys, we do know there's a problem, and yes we're working on it'. It would be even better if they were able to say what they think is causing the problem and how it might be resolved. Failing that at least they could say the issue is yet to be diagnosed but we've checked and it isn't x, y or z. Such messages should be on the homepage not buried in a Technical journal.

The SETI project is all about communications right? So let's have some please!

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ROTFL.

Great title.

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Join the PACK!

People were complaining that there was no news on the problems people were having, so Eric posted in the Tech News. Now that there's something in Tech News, you're complaining that it isn't on the front page. Can't make everyone happy.

The admins have said before that adding things to the front page is cumbersome, and I would imagine that it's time consuming. I'd rather they focus on fixing the issue than fiddling with the front page.

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People were complaining that there was no news on the problems people were having, so Eric posted in the Tech News. Now that there's something in Tech News, you're complaining that it isn't on the front page. Can't make everyone happy.

The admins have said before that adding things to the front page is cumbersome, and I would imagine that it's time consuming. I'd rather they focus on fixing the issue than fiddling with the front page.

And rather than add to it, you think you would link to it. LOL.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

Hi Ozzfan,
I can't see why putting an update on a front page is any more difficult than on any other page, but that's a secondary issue. The main issue is it's now 24 hours since Eric's post in Tech News. Unfortunately, there was no news at all in the several days leading up to that point and there has been nothing since. That's not good public relations.

I don't ask for or want a minute-by-minute account of what's happening, but it's not unreasonable to expect a daily update on what is obviously a major problem.

If the Project want users to stop bashing the 'retry' key for instance in an attempt to reduce traffic then posting this in such an update could be very, very good use of someone's time in that it would help identify/resolve the issue quicker.

Cheers,
Kieron.

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I can't see why putting an update on a front page is any more difficult than on any other page, but that's a secondary issue.

I can't tell you why, I can only tell you what was said.

The main issue is it's now 24 hours since Eric's post in Tech News. Unfortunately, there was no news at all in the several days leading up to that point and there has been nothing since. That's not good public relations.

Knowing that they are working on the problem and have acknowledged it is good enough for me. They only have 4 people, I don't think any of their jobs is Public Relations.

I don't ask for or want a minute-by-minute account of what's happening, but it's not unreasonable to expect a daily update on what is obviously a major problem.

Depends on your view. I find it unreasonable to expect anything.

If the Project want users to stop bashing the 'retry' key for instance in an attempt to reduce traffic then posting this in such an update could be very, very good use of someone's time in that it would help identify/resolve the issue quicker.

Or instead of trying to use a hammer to fix the problem, users could just let the software do it's thing. We already know there's a problem due to the flurry of complaints. That's good enough to know that it's not our machines.

-OzzFan

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Common sense should tell us not to abuse the buttons. The project backoff on uploads was introduced after the last major hiccup at Seti produced a DOS like attack on the project servers.

From what I read, the worse offenders of the button pushing appear to be the same users that have ridiculously large caches, do not have backup projects, and apparently also refuse to upgrade to a Boinc version with the feature designed specifically to moderate upload server overloads. They can only blame themselves if the outage is a longer than it need be.

Added: They also seem to be the most vocal complainers.

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Boinc V7.2.42
Win7 i5 3.33G 4GB, GTX470

Just a small observation: in my country most people get some time off on a Saturday.

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I don't have a problem with Project Backoff,but it seems to happen to quickly.
After the coundown to zero goes to upload and when an upload is nearly finished.
Bang up comes Project Backoff.
If you are just a couple of hops from Berkeley you have plenty of time ms wise if you are 30 hops away it takes longer stands to reason.
Project Backoff happens to quickly for users farther away than the U.S.

Dave

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Project backoff begins after 3 failed uploads. Starting with a 1 minute backoff, each additional failure then exponetially increases the size of the backoff to a max of 24 hrs. All it take to reset the project backoff is a single file to get though. With three more failed uploads and project wide backoff restarts at 1 minute. Rince and repeat.

You can't go by the percentage of upload shown. The Seti upload file are so small that they seem to fit in the Boinc buffer, which is the % you're seeing. If the project acknowledge receiving part of the file it wouldn't restart upload at 0% since Boinc is capable of restarting upload at the failed point. I've seen partial transfer restart at the failed point on both uploads and downloads at other projects where the files are larger.

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Boinc V7.2.42
Win7 i5 3.33G 4GB, GTX470

I can't see why putting an update on a front page is any more difficult than on any other page, but that's a secondary issue.

I can't tell you why, I can only tell you what was said.

As far as I can remember, it's because the front page server isn't on the network, so someone will have to go to the server cabinet and type in the News there. You just have to be there, and not in your office, or at home.

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Of course some folks find it unreasonable to expect nothing.

With an effective outage in the 5 day working on 7 day cycle, then again, perhaps expecting more of nothing is reasonable.

That being said, there are a BUNCH of other projects, doing actual science research and they are running and processing as we remain stymied over here.

Depends on your view. I find it unreasonable to expect anything.

Or instead of trying to use a hammer to fix the problem, users could just let the software do it's thing. We already know there's a problem due to the flurry of complaints. That's good enough to know that it's not our machines.

-OzzFan

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In the past when I was a mod we put stickies on the forums as a courtesy to remind people of a major outage...that would've been easy enough to do. *shrug*

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Another thing that sets off a flurry of button pushers is someone posting they managed to get through. "Hey, they got through, maybe if I push this button a couple of times mine will go too!! :-)

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PROUD MEMBER OF Team Starfire World BOINC

button pushers ARE NOT THE CAUSE OF THIS OUTAGE, so get off your soapbox.

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No soapbox, just posting an observation. From the looks of things it's not anyone's fault here in the SETI community.

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PROUD MEMBER OF Team Starfire World BOINC

If we assume the current situation is due to a blockage or choke point somewhere (in the server closet, in California, or wherever), than anybody who sends handshake bits through the choke point out of turn, and without actually producing an upload or download, is theoretically adding to the problem.

Having said that, I suspect that the percentage of users who even know about manual updates is so small that they are probably only making the difference between really bad and really REALLY bad.

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In the past when I was a mod we put stickies on the forums as a courtesy to remind people of a major outage...that would've been easy enough to do. *shrug*

Unless that particular forum is already overrun with stickies. Who wants to read thru all that. After a certain point I changed my acct settings to ignore the sticky ordering. Admin could also add reminders to the main page.

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me@rescam.org

I can't see why putting an update on a front page is any more difficult than on any other page, but that's a secondary issue.

I can't tell you why, I can only tell you what was said.

As far as I can remember, it's because the front page server isn't on the network, so someone will have to go to the server cabinet and type in the News there. You just have to be there, and not in your office, or at home.

That is what SSH is for, so you can be anywhere. Or are you saying BOINC server isn't a daemon and needs to be connected to a console 24/7/365?


@World, Remember the server closet cooked, baked and fried when the A/C went down. It isn't unreasonable to expect drives to fail for the next couple of weeks from the stress. Each time one goes down the RAID software has to do a sync. That adds to the disk I/O and slows everything down to a crawl. It simply takes time, perhaps a lot, before things can get back to normal. I'm also sure that SETI is going to be in need of a bunch of drives so watch the hardware donation pages in a week or two.

To put it simply the choke point is the server disk I/O.

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Ok my 2 cents and that might be what it is worth

If they are rebuilding a raid 5 and the drives are <1 terabyte this takes some time. I would not think they allow access to the array until it is finished. I've been crunching for a while and they always fix things in short order. This seems to be a bit longer. Heck, I been waiting for a OpebBSD port for Boinc since the end of the old seti program :> I only do seti so I will wait with a smile!

drx

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