9th of June

Farm status
CPU only
Running Rosetta@home work.

Nvidia GPUs
Off. Have been running Asteroids@home and Einstein@home work.

Raspberry Pis
Running Einstein@home work.

For more information on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster


Other news
Running a mix of either Rosetta work (CPU), Asteroids and Einstein work (GPU). I have been alternating between the CPU machines and the GPU machines.

Still need to find time to assemble the Ryzen 7900's.

19th of May

Farm status
CPU only
Running a mix of Einstein@home and Rosetta@home work when cool enough.

Nvidia GPUs
Off

Raspberry Pis
Running 24/7.

For more information on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster


Other news
A bit of a cold snap (we're in Autumn at the moment) so I have the CPU only machines crunching away.

I still haven't found the time to build the Ryzen 7900 machines even though I've got all the parts. Work and Chia farming are keeping me rather busy.

I don't have any plans to upgrade the GPU crunchers at the moment. I won't buy a Nvidia 40 series card due to issues with their power connector. They really need to go back to using PCIe connectors.

And we're back. Partially.

Farm status
CPU only
Both Ryzen 5900X machines running Rosetta beta work when its cool enough.

Nvidia GPUs
Have been running Einstein work when its cool enough.

Raspberry Pis
Off


Other news
As you would have gathered most of the farm has been off since the end of last year due to the heat. We've had a few cooler days as we come to the end of summer so I have managed to fire up some of the farm and get going again. For the moment it will be sporadic running as the weather permits.

The Ampere Altra is unable to complete installation of Debian Bookworm so its stuck at the moment. It installs everything up until it runs into trying the Grub bootloader and that fails. I raised a bug with Debian but haven't heard anything from them. Google suggests its something to do with being in UEFI mode, but that doesn't help.

I don't have any new hardware plans at the moment for the farm apart from the Raspberry Pis.

30th of December 2023

Farm status
CPU only
Off

Nvidia GPUs
Off

Raspberry Pis
On and off depending on how hot it gets.


Blackout killed UPS
We had a blackout a fortnight ago. That cost me a CyberPower 650VA UPS that only had to power the internet cable modem and ISP's router. It appears to have totally killed the battery inside and it wouldn't power on. I have purchased another one (they are cheap) but if the power goes off for more than an hour it seems its too stupid to shut itself down and totally drains the battery. It has a lead-acid battery so if they get below about 50% that is the end of the battery.

Fortunately most things were off or in the case of the raspberries were idle.


Debian 12.3 point release
Following the issues with the Debian 12.3 point release they decided to stop the release. A day later they did a 12.4 point release which included an updated kernel that didn't have the ext4 corruption issue. They then followed that up with another kernel update a few days later due to issues with WiFi drivers.

Raspberry Pi OS still seems to be running an effected kernel that has the ext4 data corruption issue.


Parts orders
I mentioned in my last post about getting Contact Frames (or Secure Frames) for my Ryzen 7900's. I decided to get Thermal Paste Guards instead. I've ordered them so should be able to complete the builds in the new year.


Altra server issue
I decided to upgrade my Ampere Altra to debian bookworm. Unfortunately the installer fails with a "grub install dummy" failed message. This seems to be related to booting in UEFI mode, which it seems to be booting in, so I am not sure if I need to create legacy boot media for it. I'll make another attempt when the house is empty due to the noise that the server makes.