Farm news
More bad news this week. The KVM that I mentioned last week has been pronounced dead as a dodo. I have had to order a new one to replace it. In addition the stock they expected to get didn't come in so its been back ordered and is now expected in late November.
The power brick for the Drobo is dead as a dodo as well. The good thing about it is its under warranty and Drobo have already shipped a replacement out of Singapore. Its expected early next week. Hopefully the Drobo itself will be fine.
Last week I went to update the old file server only to find its LAN card had also died. It hasn't even been plugged in for 6 months. No problem I had an old 100Mbit one brand new in a box, so I swapped out the old one. Then the machine wouldn't boot and I had problems getting it to work. I removed the RAID controller and spent the rest of the day reinstalling Windows. In the end I put an 80Gb hard disk in it that I also had brand new still sealed in its anti-static bag. I reinstalled windows yet again and then left it to download the 170 updates which took all day to get and install.
The 56k dial-up is still waiting on the ISP to give me account details. I haven't been able to start using it until they can provide this information. My current thinking is to use the old file server as a proxy server with the 56k dial-up and then switch each machine to using it as needed.
My CPDN work is still failing to upload and scheduler requests are still failing. Its been about 3 weeks now.
I have to pickup a bunch of 2Tb hard disks from the shop tomorrow. These are destined to replace the 1Tb drives in the main file server. This is more a preventative maintenance thing as well as doubling the available space.
BOINC testing
we're up to 7.2.25 this week. It has a correction around Intel GPU exclusions and a change to the way VirtualBox memory limits are set. I haven't tried it yet but I do have one machine which has been running 7.2.23 for almost a week so I will update it.
Parallella update
They missed their October delivery deadline. One of their key staff left. As well as that one of their suppliers decided to end-of-life one of their components so they had to rework the board design. The good news is they have replaced the key staff member and rejigged the board. They also made the Epiphany III chip available for public sale (ie without the Parallella) after they have shipped the Parallella's to backers and pre-orders.
26 October 2013
15 October 2013
15th of October
Farm news
We had a few hot days again this week where the farm was completely off.
Late last week I did a UPS test by switching off the power board that its plugged into to see if the server continued running. It did. After 10 minutes I turned it back on to find the KVM was no longer working. After a number of attempts to get it going I have had to take it back to the shop. New ones cost $600 and the distributor doesn't have stock until next month. I have asked to get it repaired and of course its not under warranty. Because the other cluster of machines are off I have swapped the other KVM over to get going.
The Intel-GPU machines are still finishing off their climate models. The Raspberry Pi's are running Einstein work because Asteroid ran out of work.
BOINC testing
We got up to 7.2.21 early this week (or .22 on the Mac). The main change with this is OpenCL support of CPUs.
Project news - Climate Prediction
I still can't upload. This week their server is reporting its out of disk space. As well as that I can't report any completed work.
I have ordered a 56k dial-up modem which I will use via another ISP in case of issues like this.
We had a few hot days again this week where the farm was completely off.
Late last week I did a UPS test by switching off the power board that its plugged into to see if the server continued running. It did. After 10 minutes I turned it back on to find the KVM was no longer working. After a number of attempts to get it going I have had to take it back to the shop. New ones cost $600 and the distributor doesn't have stock until next month. I have asked to get it repaired and of course its not under warranty. Because the other cluster of machines are off I have swapped the other KVM over to get going.
The Intel-GPU machines are still finishing off their climate models. The Raspberry Pi's are running Einstein work because Asteroid ran out of work.
BOINC testing
We got up to 7.2.21 early this week (or .22 on the Mac). The main change with this is OpenCL support of CPUs.
Project news - Climate Prediction
I still can't upload. This week their server is reporting its out of disk space. As well as that I can't report any completed work.
I have ordered a 56k dial-up modem which I will use via another ISP in case of issues like this.
08 October 2013
8th of October
Farm news
On and Off is probably the best way to describe the past week. We had a few hot days so the farm was off for those and a few cooler days where the Intel GPU machines were running. The farm is still concentrating on CPDN work with their 240+ hour full resolution ocean (RAPIT) work units.
While that's going on I am running the Einstein BRP4 work units on the Intel GPUs. They take around 13 minutes a work unit so between 5 machines they can get a fair few completed in a day.
The Raspberry Pi's are also happily running a mix of Einstein BRP4U and Asteroids work units.
Climate Prediction woes
Its been a rather frustrating two weeks. I can't upload most of the CPDN results. The uploads are failing part of the way through. I have tried using UK-based proxy servers and no proxy server but it seems to make no difference. I even went back to an older version of the BOINC client just to prove that it wasn't the alpha-test version I use. Some of the step files have tried 26 times to upload.
To make matters worse I get "HTTP Internal Server error" messages when trying to report the few work units that have completed. Two work units have failed and a few have managed to upload their result files. You get 4 step files per work unit - if they work. I won't be doing any more CPDN work any time soon.
On and Off is probably the best way to describe the past week. We had a few hot days so the farm was off for those and a few cooler days where the Intel GPU machines were running. The farm is still concentrating on CPDN work with their 240+ hour full resolution ocean (RAPIT) work units.
While that's going on I am running the Einstein BRP4 work units on the Intel GPUs. They take around 13 minutes a work unit so between 5 machines they can get a fair few completed in a day.
The Raspberry Pi's are also happily running a mix of Einstein BRP4U and Asteroids work units.
Climate Prediction woes
Its been a rather frustrating two weeks. I can't upload most of the CPDN results. The uploads are failing part of the way through. I have tried using UK-based proxy servers and no proxy server but it seems to make no difference. I even went back to an older version of the BOINC client just to prove that it wasn't the alpha-test version I use. Some of the step files have tried 26 times to upload.
To make matters worse I get "HTTP Internal Server error" messages when trying to report the few work units that have completed. Two work units have failed and a few have managed to upload their result files. You get 4 step files per work unit - if they work. I won't be doing any more CPDN work any time soon.
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