This week saw another Core 2 Quad replaced by a 3rd generation i7. There is one left to replace next week and that should be the upgrades for a while. The i7's provide more CPU cores, run faster and use less watts. I am using them as fairly lean (on wattage) CPU-only crunchers.
The UPS on the file server died during the week. The loft stinks of ozone as some component inside has obviously blown up. I awoke on Friday morning to a frantic beeping coming from it and a smelly loft. A new one has been ordered already.
Project news - Asteroids@home
This project has been running for a while but until this weekend only had a Linux app. This weekend the released an application for windows users. They try to map the shape of asteroids using a lightcurve method. Their web address is: http://asteroidsathome.net/boinc/index.php
I had Linux running in a virtual machine on one cruncher for the past couple of months, just for this project. Now I can remove it and use the other machines with a native windows app.
Project news - Seti@home
They had a major crash last week as a result of a local power failure in the Space Sciences Lab at UC Berkeley. It took out one of their older machines. Their science database was also compromised. They didn't manage to shut down their main database machine or the replica database machine before the UPS batteries went flat.
It has taken them a week to restore from the last backup and roll forward. They then had to verify the integrity of the database which took a few days due to its size. You can read about it in this message thread if you want to know the details: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=70199
We are back to the usual maxxed-out network connection now. Due to the scheduler time-out happening for the last fortnight they have applied hard-limits of 100 tasks per CPU core at any one time. This should mean more people can get work and those more "hungry" computers won't be able to request thousands of tasks at a time.
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