Latest Seti news.......

[msattler]

Uhhhhhhhh.....
This is a little grim.
Not pretty, but you might as well hear it from the kittyman rather than scuttlebutt down the road.

Eric informs me that mork has now been officially declared brain dead.........
Taken out of service entirely.
Leaving his cousin jocelyn to take over.  Which is not a good thing, as she's a little wimpy.

There is gonna be a rough road ahead for a couple of weeks until the new server is in place.
Sounds like HP came through with some kinda discount,,,,,,about 20%......which is good.

So the new server specs are totally in disarray.

This is gonna be a very hard time for Seti.....

I trust t hat those here are wise enough to understand and not try to run their mouths off about how badly things are going.  Facts, not bullshit, will carry us through this.

I am sad for the present term, but the kitties are dancing for the future.
It's gonna be a very bright day when it comes.
It really is.

[Geek@Play]

Thanks for the info Mark.

I'm sure Eric and Matt will make sure that they purchase equipment that is more than adequate for the job.  Thanks to HP for the 20% discount.

A bright future is in store for SETI hopefully in a few weeks time.  And thanks to you Mark for having the foresight to run the two funding drives before the total crash.  Without your help it would be a very bleak picture for SETI.

[msattler]

Thanks for the info Mark.

I'm sure Eric and Matt will make sure that they purchase equipment that is more than adequate for the job.  Thanks to HP for the 20% discount.

A bright future is in store for SETI hopefully in a few weeks time.  And thanks to you Mark for having the foresight to run the two funding drives before the total crash.  Without your help it would be a very bleak picture for SETI.

Shit.......it wasn't me........
I just presented the truth and the need, and the rest of you responded,
I dropped a K note  in the pot when I could.
I just can't anymore.
My freakin' car died, I am driving the RX, which should be in the shop by now, and things are not pretty.......

Bkut I have poured 10 years of my life into this thing, and, by God, I am gonna see it through.

[msattler]

We need a diversion.........

I don't do windows, so honey, don't even ask.

But.........I am pretty good at drinkin' beer.

Crack one and settle back, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.d


I luv you all sooo much that I can't quite express it..
Those that care will understand my feeble means of saying so.

[perryjay]

Yes, thanks for the news Mark, no matter it is not the best. I hope Jocelyn doesn't slow us down too much.  I would imagine the server specs being up in flux as the boys decide how to utilize the great discount from HP. Having the servers cost 20% less than they expected means they can load them up with even more goodies!!    I'm sure looking forward to seeing what they end up with.

I wonder though if it would be possible to cannibalize Mork and Mindy to come up with one that could hold us through. I guess that would probably be more trouble than it is worth for just the relatively short time till the new servers arrive. They might do that later just to have it as a backup  in case one of the other older servers bites the dust.  These last two fund drives have been really something, seeing how so many people really care for our project but we can only give so much. I think the old saying "give until it hurts" has been reached.  It will probably be quite some time before most of us can give again.

[msattler]

Just heard from Eric again.........
They are still trying to get jocelyn up to speed to handle mork's duties.......not sure when or how well she might perform once configured.

[Richard Haselgrove]

Just heard from Eric again.........
They are still trying to get jocelyn up to speed to handle mork's duties.......not sure when or how well she might perform once configured.

They'll need to keep the query rate down - both the number of queries, and the size of the result recordsets.

Quota is a bad tool for that. If it's high, the database, and the recordsets, get huge. If it's low, the client work request rate gets huge - probably two or three work requests per completed task (not done an exact count). With a multi-CUDA host finishing a task every couple of minutes, that'll reduce Jocelyn to a heap of smoking ashes the first day.

My judgement would be to keep quota (to keep the size down), but to add a scheduler server-requested backoff of something realistic - say 10 minutes. That wouldn't be any hardship to multi-CUDA - report five, get five, instead of report one, get one - but it would slow down the request rate dramatically.

[msattler]

Just heard from Eric again.........
They are still trying to get jocelyn up to speed to handle mork's duties.......not sure when or how well she might perform once configured.

They'll need to keep the query rate down - both the number of queries, and the size of the result recordsets.

Quota is a bad tool for that. If it's high, the database, and the recordsets, get huge. If it's low, the client work request rate gets huge - probably two or three work requests per completed task (not done an exact count). With a multi-CUDA host finishing a task every couple of minutes, that'll reduce Jocelyn to a heap of smoking ashes the first day.

My judgement would be to keep quota (to keep the size down), but to add a scheduler server-requested backoff of something realistic - say 10 minutes. That wouldn't be any hardship to multi-CUDA - report five, get five, instead of report one, get one - but it would slow down the request rate dramatically.

Whatever it takes to keep things alive until the cavalry arrives........
You won't hear any complaining from me.

Have you passed your suggestions on to Eric?

Sounds like mork is nothing but a parts donor in the future, but Eric says they might try to put him back online temporarily as the replica DB.

[Richard Haselgrove]

They'll need to keep the query rate down - both the number of queries, and the size of the result recordsets.

Quota is a bad tool for that. If it's high, the database, and the recordsets, get huge. If it's low, the client work request rate gets huge - probably two or three work requests per completed task (not done an exact count). With a multi-CUDA host finishing a task every couple of minutes, that'll reduce Jocelyn to a heap of smoking ashes the first day.

My judgement would be to keep quota (to keep the size down), but to add a scheduler server-requested backoff of something realistic - say 10 minutes. That wouldn't be any hardship to multi-CUDA - report five, get five, instead of report one, get one - but it would slow down the request rate dramatically.

Whatever it takes to keep things alive until the cavalry arrives........
You won't hear any complaining from me.

Have you passed your suggestions on to Eric?

No, I reckon he's got more then enough in his inbox to keep him busy, let alone get on with the real work. He doesn't need shrapnel from the peanut gallery.

If the community can come up with some consensus advice, based on real understanding of large-scale databases and operating system comms infrastructure, then it can go back to Eric in one of the comms channels which is already open. Yours seems to be working well at the moment.

[Richard Haselgrove]

He got the message....

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=61828&nowrap=true#1043291

[skildude]

unfortunately, they went offline at some point during the night or very early morning.  Back to square one?

[msattler]

unfortunately, they went offline at some point during the night or very early morning.  Back to square one?

Looks like they are working on it......at least the home page and server status page are accessible again....although I wouldn't trust the server status page.

[Zeus Fab3r]

From Tech News...

21 Oct 2010 1:50:22 UTC
Our capacity is a bit dicey right now. So to keep things from getting out of hand while we are not watching, we are running uploads only over night and will turn on downloads tomorrow morning (pacific time).

[msattler]

Just heard from Eric.......

Mysql crashed on jocelyn last night.
They are perusing the crash dumps and resynching tables now.

[msattler]

I also questioned Eric about the possibility of a code bug or corruption of mysql causing some of these problems...he agreed, and suggested to Jeff that they load a clean, latest revision copy.

And he will be checking in with the Berk purchasing dept. to see if he can get an updated delivery status on the new servers.