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| Stephen Brooks 2012-05-15 20:12:03 | A couple of weeks ago I noticed the stats server threw a blue screen and when I came into work today it wouldn't stay stable for a minute under windows. It was roughly 5 years old so I'm not surprised it's failed after such heavy use. Anyway, I've got to order a new machine. I'll also be away at the particle accelerator conference from 20-28 May, so realistically the stats won't update until near the end of the month. Feel free to try other projects if this annoys you, or alternatively keep submitting results because they'll stack up on the muon FTP servers until I'm ready. The current database is safely in a hard disk in my cupboard. My work and other assorted scripts are backed up on a network-attached storage system here - in fact so is another copy of the muon database. |
| K`Tetch 2012-05-15 21:13:24 | Indeed. And as a result, the weekly stats roundup that goes to twitter and facebook will obviously not be updating at the same time. Kinda annoying, as yoyo@home (an important part of the Muon1 project family) is taking part in the Bionc pentathlon (http://www.seti-germany.de/boinc_pentathlon/) right now, so we'll have LOTS of stats to process afterwards. |
| Zerberus 2012-05-16 10:12:07 | Oh, well... Shit happens. And technology fails. It's mostly the mainboard condensers or the ones in the power supply failing after long-term use. They tend to dry out over time unless they are hard-capped. |
| Stephen Brooks 2012-05-16 14:28:11 | This was acting symptomatically like a CPU glitch - I got about a minute of Windows but then either the video failed (black screen) or I got NULL pointer errors followed by a blue screen when I tried to do something difficult (e.g. load PowerPoint). But that could in turn be because of bad power to the CPU (or bad RAM, knackered motherboard, or just about anything I suppose). New machine's ordered. I don't get much choice from the corporate system but there was a configuration for a Core i5 from Dell, which seemed reasonable. |
| Zerberus 2012-05-17 09:23:46 | Nearly everything on a mainboard is powered through it. When a mainboard's power becomes flaky/unstable, it causes all sorts of weird symptoms. Yours absolutely fitting into this range. [Edited by Zerberus at 2012-05-17 09:28:16] |
| Stephen Brooks 2012-05-17 15:41:53 | Hmm new computer's actually a Xeon E5620 to replace the old one, which I think was a X5355. Changed to a "workstation" configuration so I have room for more hard drives (you can probably guess why). |
| Stephen Brooks 2012-05-28 09:31:43 | Dell's delivery date for this machine was either Friday or today, but it has to go through IT support first. I've informed them it's to replace a dead machine so more urgent than standard PC upgrades. |
| K`Tetch 2012-05-28 13:28:26 | In the meantime, since the stats ox is down, the stats are not updating, meaning we have some static stats for once! So I've got some stable figures to do some analysis with  http://muon1.blogspot.com/2012/05/muon1-results-broken-down.html |
| Stephen Brooks 2012-06-01 11:22:48 | Still no news from corporate IT. I can't set anything up on this interim computer because it doesn't have FTP access. For some reason, the fact that it's not properly on the work domain means they block outgoing FTP *specifically* (I'm not sure why the association between FTP and malware, it's not 1995), so none of the stats scripts would work anyway. You can see the results you've sent piling up on my FTP server here, although you personally may have sent to a different one (which will also be storing up the results). So the new ETA on this is something like June 8th/9th, I *hope*. There's a 4-day weekend here from June 2-5 so nothing will happen until Wednesday at the earliest. |
| Stephen Brooks 2012-06-01 17:08:10 | UPDATE: Some partial progress. After lunch I checked again with IT and it turned out they had just finished dealing with the new workstation and it was sitting on a table there. I'm using it now. I'm getting some of the scripts working (requires installation of tools like PNG converters) but main problem is I've lost the file containing the private FTP logins to the Muon1 FTP servers! I put that file in the directory that I deliberately exclude from backups because it contains security information. Anyway, IT still have the old disk with this folder on, but they've now gone home for the long weekend. On Wednesday I'm going to come back in and ask for the file back. Rest of the scripts are looking to be in a fairly hopeful state, though. [edit] I've also e-mailed all the server admins. If we can get a complete set of passwords (currently there are three FTP servers including mine) before Wednesday, I might drive in here during the weekend and see if it does the trick. The date on the coloured results-distribution graphs is updating now! But not much else. |
| Stephen Brooks 2012-06-01 21:29:27 | Specs 210-32210 Precision T7500 : Standard Base Full Tower (Vertical orientation) 1 1,307.84 1,307.84 S 213-11880 Processor : One Intel Xeon E5620(2.4GHz,5.86GT/s,12MB,4C)-Memory runs at 1066MHz 1 S 340-14985 Resource DVD : Not Included 1 S 340-16178 Ship Accessory : English Docs with UK/Irish Power Cord 1 S 370-21108 Memory : 12GB (6x2GB ) 1333MHz DDR3 ECC RDIMM Requires 64 Bit OS 1 S 385-10562 Floppy Disk Drive : Not Included 1 S 400-15909 Hard Drive : 500GB 3.5inch Serial ATA (7.200 Rpm) Hard Drive 1 S 405-10987 Raid Controller : Not Included Perc6i Internal Controller Card 1 S 405-10946 Raid Controller : C1 All SATA Hard Drives, NON-RAID for 1 Hard Drive 1 S 641-10052 Windows Live for Window7 429-15633 Optical Software : PowerDVD Software for Vista Home Premium and Ultimate, WIN7 Home Premium, Pro or Ultimate 429-12873 Optical Drive : 16X DVD-ROM Drive 1 S 461-10125 Security : Chassis Intrusion Switch 1 S 293-10040 No Asset Label Required 1 S 480-11055 Display : Not Included (for Bundles only) 1 S 490-11919 Graphics : 256MB ATI FirePro 2260 (2DP) (2DP-DVI adapter) (ULGA9B ) 1 S 510-10239 Audio : Creative SoundBlaster Xfi Titanium Music Card (PCIe card) 1 S 520-10218 Speakers : Not Included 1 S 570-10079 Mice : Not Included 1 S 580-16255 Keyboard : UK/Irish (QWERTY) Dell KB212-B QuietKey USB Keyboard Black 1 S 619-32198 Operating System : English Genuine Windows 7 Professional (64Bit OS) 1 S 620-13448 OS Media : MUI Windows 7 Professional (64Bit OS) Resource DVD 1 S ...but I've replaced the low-end FirePro card with a Radeon HD5670 from my old machine. |
| Stephen Brooks 2012-06-01 21:38:54 | Pics   This thing is pretty huge, there's only 4 inches between its top and the underside of my desk. Trivia: SATA bay 1 (top right) is the Muon1 results hard drive. |
| Stephen Brooks 2012-06-02 12:28:21 | By 1am last night I had all three passwords (thanks to white_panther and Skaari), so I've just reconstructed the file the stats script needed to do its logins. The first stats run looked OK and I see some tens of thousands of results have come in. This will now run "at risk" over the weekend, so any remaining glitches will be fixed from Wednesday onwards. Do post to this thread if you see anything odd going on. |
| Stephen Brooks 2012-06-07 11:08:43 | We seem to be missing the BOINC part of the network. I realised this is because I've not got the password for yoyo@home's server, so I've e-mailed yoyo to ask for it. No reply just yet. |
| Independence 2012-06-07 11:21:02 | Good work Stephen . Nice Environment! What for NAS storage do you use? Cheers Indy alias Skaari |
| Stephen Brooks 2012-06-07 15:44:37 | Those are Thecus N5200s, filled with 5x750GB hard disks in RAID5 (so 3TB of logical storage on each). They do backup for the whole research group of ~7 people. They're actually a bit old now - you can get 3TB in a single hard disk! So if we need more storage I'll probably buy a new NAS with bigger drives rather than upgrade the existing ones. |
| Stephen Brooks 2012-06-15 18:29:10 | This afternoon I got an e-mail from yoyo with the passwords saying he was back from a holiday trip. So I added his server to the list of FTP servers and the BOINC results have come in, providing a bump in the graphs (and muon yield in the 9Xc2 andd 7Xc2 cases). |
| yoyo 2012-06-16 20:53:54 | Sorry for the late answer, I was abroad on a holiday trip for 2 weeks. |
