Translation by software:

Breakdown or progams

I can not find the right forum, I chose this one randomly.

I just want to understand why for more than a month, posts Boinc Manager
(localhost) for SETI, are generally as follows (with some exceptions):

Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
Requesting new tasks
Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks
Message from server: Project has no available tasks

My computer, running more than 12 hours per day, specifically to participate
in this project is not profitable.
Is there a system crash setihome, or is this a programming problem? If it is
because of the lineup, so this program does not fully participate in
ordinations.
Thank you.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/tech_news.php

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Janice

Hi

So, barring any other problems, when do you really feel that the project will be running again, at a normal rate?

Ron

Hi

So, barring any other problems, when do you really feel that the project will be running again, at a normal rate?

Ron

About another week if all goes smooth.

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Janice

I don't know if you regularly do any EMC testing of suppression integrity there, but I encourage your group to do so. From your description, I'd begin with the facility grounding system.

Good luck, and again.... Thank You.

Doing such testing PROPERLY on a regular basis has two downfall, first it costs money, and two, it will most definitely shorten the life of the surge protection system. Its far better to work on a life expectancy and bin (sorry, recycle) at the end of the projected life.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Some folks are assuming that the two servers were brought down by a conducted pulse, which may not be the case. Near miss lightening is one of the biggest non-nuclear sources of radiated EMP, which can case all sorts of fun, such as destroying a watch on my wrist and leaving the equipment I was working on, and me, totally unharmed!

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Some folks are assuming that the two servers were brought down by a conducted pulse, which may not be the case. Near miss lightening is one of the biggest non-nuclear sources of radiated EMP, which can case all sorts of fun, such as destroying a watch on my wrist and leaving the equipment I was working on, and me, totally unharmed!

Over the weekend, two metal roofed buildings on a hilltop took some kind of power hit. From that, both servers have recovered and are functioning. It more amazes me that the other ones stayed on.

No permanent harm seems to have been done, and the installation of two NEW servers continue. One online already, one still being configured. Carolyn is on the server list, and Mork has been retired from it.

And life goes on. Soon both servers will be installed, expanding the capacity and reducing the chance of crashes due to overload(the most common type lately).

The computers are in a closet, much like a telecomm room. They run on commercial voltages, with a UPS for some of the more critical applications. Not much more they can do without massive additional costs. And unless someone here is buying... I would not wait up.

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Janice

Guess i'm Stupid
I can't see the problem with transferring a db to a new machine
that has more capability

Yes it has to be set up to do the db
Yes the transfer may take some time due to its size
Ok minimize the size to transfer to lessen the time it takes

Where is the down part ??? The great deal taking time ?
It can't be that big

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Guess i'm Stupid
I can't see the problem with transferring a db to a new machine
that has more capability

Yes it has to be set up to do the db
Yes the transfer may take some time due to its size
Ok minimize the size to transfer to lessen the time it takes

Where is the down part ??? The great deal taking time ?
It can't be that big

In the first post Matt said the "spike merge" of the existing database took several months, and there is more clean up to do before the transfer. I think this must be a fairly big database.

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Guess i'm Stupid
I can't see the problem with transferring a db to a new machine
that has more capability

Yes it has to be set up to do the db
Yes the transfer may take some time due to its size
Ok minimize the size to transfer to lessen the time it takes

Where is the down part ??? The great deal taking time ?
It can't be that big

In the first post Matt said the "spike merge" of the existing database took several months, and there is more clean up to do before the transfer. I think this must be a fairly big database.

Spike merge has Has little to do with moving the db
Unless they put it's results in the same db as the data
If thats the case Shame shame
it only takes a few hrs to replace the db when it goes aerie
Why days to put on on a new machine ?
You can move gig's of data in a few hrs on these machines

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Why days to put on on a new machine ?

[sarcasm=on]
I love moving a db. It gives me opportunity to do things I wouldn't otherwise. Like doing laundry, redesign and various bits and pieces. I can hide mishaps from lusers blaming it on DB move.
Additionaly, I can pretend to be busy for weeks if not months.
[sarcasm=off]

Seriously, if you're to move huge database, then the best thing is not to hurry. Particularly if there's no need to hurry to begin with.

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Metod ...

All I know is what Matt tells me ..

This may take a while - the spike merge (which was the last major part of the "clean up") did finally complete last week (after running about 2-3 months) but there was still a discrepancy of about a million missing spikes which Jeff is successfully tracking down. So there are a few extra merges to do yet.

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...though I have heard on numerous occasions that discharging the batteries to at least 50% once per month can in some cases double the life of them.

Depends on the battery. For lead acid, every discharge cycle shortens the battery life. It's best to always keep these cells fully charged.
For NiCad and Nickel metal Hydrate, the cells should be drained to as near zero as possible. With NiCad the cycle time is once a month and for Nickel metal Hydrate once every 3 months. These batteries should not be reversed as that is the kiss of death.
With Lithium, the total amount of power drained out of the cell over the month should total the capacity of the cell. Four quarter discharges over a month would do the job. Again, this cell should not be drained to zero.

For those who would like to learn more about batteries than they ever thought existed, look at Battery University.

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...though I have heard on numerous occasions that discharging the batteries to at least 50% once per month can in some cases double the life of them.

Depends on the battery. For lead acid, every discharge cycle shortens the battery life.

Though it got left out of the quoted portion, the person posting the 50% comment was specifically speaking of UPS batteries. In that context, I think there were mistaken or misinformed.

I think that the considerable majority of UPS batteries out there are lead-acid, and with Dena Wiltse I understand intentional discharge of Lead Acid to be nearly always a bad idea from a life enhancement point of view.

I admit my sample of "serious" UPS installations viewed is tiny. The one I can recall was at an Intel factory, and appeared to be made up of a large number of roughly car battery sized objects, each of which appeared to be a single cell (rather than the six in a standard car battery) and were definitely lead acid. All the consumer UPS batteries I've personally encountered or heard about were lead acid. While I have a small amount of evidence that a couple of decades ago some categories of medical equipment used big NiCd cells for standby power, I don't think they were part of a standalone UPS.

Anyone here know of an important category of UPS today using Lithium, NiCd or NiMH batteries?

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In my shed I charge lead acid batterys with wind power to run small tools
by way of a dc to ac converter

archae86 wrote:

...
Anyone here know of an important category of UPS today using Lithium, NiCd or NiMH batteries?

I think the Lithium packs in Notebook/Laptop computers qualify, but your definition of UPS might be narrower than mine.

                                                                 Joe

Anyone here know of an important category of UPS today using Lithium, NiCd or NiMH batteries?

The only Lithium battery UPS systems I know of are some large energy storage projects that are more of a research project with lots of funding than a commercial product.

Lead-acid batteries are used in most UPS from a hundred watts to several Megawatts. Lead-acid batteries have a much lower cost per watt-hour than any other battery technology. The lower cost more than offsets the lower energy density. In the Middle East and in some locations in Europe you may see some large Ni-Cd products.

If properly built, lead-acid batteries can operate in excess of 1500 complete discharge cycles. These are the batteries in more electric lift trucks (fork lifts) In these applications, the battery is considered to be at end of life when it can not deliver 80% of it's rated capacity to a specified end voltage of 1.75 volts per cell. Many consumer applications run the batteries well beyond this end of life point.

Another benefit to lead-acid is recycling. 80%+ of all lead in batteries sold in the US is recycled material. Ni-Cd batteries are shipped overseas for recycling because there are not recycling facilities in the US. I don't know of any NiMH or Lithium battery recycling of any substantial size. This is one of the concerns with the battery packs in the new electric cars.

I hope this sheds some additional light on the battery technologies.

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Why days to put on on a new machine ?

[sarcasm=on]
I love moving a db. It gives me opportunity to do things I wouldn't otherwise. Like doing laundry, redesign and various bits and pieces. I can hide mishaps from lusers blaming it on DB move.
Additionaly, I can pretend to be busy for weeks if not months.
[sarcasm=off]

Seriously, if you're to move huge database, then the best thing is not to hurry. Particularly if there's no need to hurry to begin with.

And these DBs are truly large. I believe I heard that the master science DB is a couple of Peta Bytes of storage.

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BOINC WIKI

I admit my sample of "serious" UPS installations viewed is tiny. The one I can recall was at an Intel factory, and appeared to be made up of a large number of roughly car battery sized objects, each of which appeared to be a single cell (rather than the six in a standard car battery) and were definitely lead acid.

When I was in high school in the early '80s, my electronics class went on a field trip to the nearest AT&T Long Lines facility (a few little buildings on top of a huge underground bunker full of phone switching equipment; they said it was designed to withstand a nuclear strike of 1 megaton 1 mile away, except that the vents were never installed). My admittedly vague memory of their battery backup is of several rows of lead acid cells a bit over 1 foot square and about 4 feet tall, with copper busses that seemed to be about the size of the floor joists in my house (maybe thicker) connecting them together at the top. I think they said this was at 24 volts. They were always connected (like a laptop computer battery), so when there was outside power they were getting charged and when power was lost there was no switchover. And all of this was only intended to keep the place running for the 110 seconds it took for the backup generator to come on line.

Battery technology has certainly advanced since then, but I bet that battery farm still looks pretty similar today.

David

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Basic full time power setup is -48v strings, Lead Anamoly Batteries, yep huge glass jar batteries.. from 4 to 48hour storage (depending on a ton of factors) with backup generators is typical. Almost all of the equipment runs on the -48v, kept topped off by rectifiers. If AC is specifically needed by equipment, they hook inverters off of the battery strings.

And things still break.

If SETI@home comes up with a spare oh.. half million to a million, I am sure they could get the same hooked up. But they would definately need a bigger closet.

But today, everything is non-redundant. That is what we are working within, that is reality. And it mostly works. Hardware gets old and has problems, workload increases and overwhelms the setup, And we all put our heads together and form a rockpile to get beyond it.

The amazing part of the dancing elephant is not how well the elephant dances, it is that it can dance at all!

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Janice