staff blogs

distributed.net staff keep (relatively) up-to-date logs of their activities in .plan files. These were traditionally available via finger, but we've put them on the web for easier consumption.

2010-11-26

stats server down for upgrade

Filed under: stats @ 17:04 +00:00

We’ve taken our stats server temporarily offline while we do the final cut-over to our new server hardware.  If all goes well, the upgrade should be complete in time for today’s statsrun.

2010-11-17

rc5-72 workunit distribution restored

Filed under: keyservers @ 21:03 +00:00

There was a brief interruption in the distribution of RC5-72 workunits earlier today, however the problem has been fixed and clients should be again receiving workunits.  OGR-27 was completely unaffected during this time.  Additionally, RC5-72 results continued to be accepted without interruption.

The problem was caused by our migration to some new webserver hardware (unrelated to the new stats servers), which disrupted some of our alert monitoring systems.

Keep on crunching! ]:8)

2010-10-09

Stats now read-only for a few days

Filed under: stats @ 19:44 +00:00

We’ve temporarily put our stats server into “read-only” mode, which means that you’ll be able to view your current stats (and they will continue to be updated daily) but you won’t be able to make any changes to your user account or team.  As usual, no client work will be affected during this period.

This is being done to prepare for switchover to new hardware that will replace our aging stats server some time next week.  Read-only mode allows us to make and restore database backups without losing any user-made edits.  We’ll make another announcement once the new hardware is fully deployed.

If you’re curious, some details about the new stats hardware are listed on our FAQ page.

Moo! ]:8)

2010-09-21

Integer boundaries

Filed under: stats,Uncategorized — Tags: , , , @ 15:31 +00:00

So, stats hit a milestone of sorts. We’re got a team that has now done 2^63 keys in rc5. This has overflowed the column that it was stored in.

The temporary solution is to increase these columns to NUMERIC(25), which is 10^25. This gives us over a million times more storage until we get a more “correct” solution, which is to store stats units in the database. But that requires more work, and we’re looking to get things up as quickly as possible.

We apologize for the downtime but we didn’t realize how good you guys are!

Stats interruption due to overflow

Filed under: stats @ 04:54 +00:00

It seems that we’ve encountered an unexpected milestone in the our RC5-72 project’s status!  Last night’s stats processing hit a data overflow error in one of the team database columns.

We will be making some schema changes to one of the backend team tables and hope to have stats processing back online later today.  Once we’re done, stats should again properly reflect all received results.

Keep on crunching!  ]:8)

2010-08-14

Stats back

Filed under: stats @ 18:08 +00:00

Stats server is back online and fully caught up after the outage.  We’re still running on reduced redundancy on the power supplies, however.

It is probably time to consider a complete replacement of this machine, since it has been running for more than six years (April 2004).  It has also recently been suffering from regular failures on one of its RAID controller ports, regardless of the drive connected to it.

As a reference, the current stats hardware is described at the top of http://faq.distributed.net/?file=63

We’ll be investigating our resources and options over the next few days and hopefully be able to begin the replacement process soon.

Thanks for your support!

2010-08-03

Stats down again

Filed under: stats @ 22:22 +00:00

One of the three power supplies in our stats server has failed again, causing it to be unstable while operating on the remaining units.  We’re in the process of trying to get the failed unit replaced, but it may take a few days.

Until then, all results sent by dnetc clients will be saved by our keyservers and will be reflected once the stats server is brought back online.  Thanks for your support!

2010-07-27

Stats back online

Filed under: stats @ 20:24 +00:00

The Stats server is now back online and has caught up on processing.  It just needed a power-cycling.

Stats temporarily unavailable

Filed under: stats @ 03:40 +00:00

Unfortunately, we’re having some problems with our stats server, but we’re hoping to have the issue fixed soon.  All work submitted by clients is being stored and will be reflected once our stats server is back online.  More details will be provided once they’re available.  Thanks for your patience!  ]:8)

2010-07-09

mikereed [09-Jul-2010 @ 17:10]

Filed under: clients,project status @ 16:10 +00:00

Today, we mark the passing of 500 days working on the OGR-27 project. By cosmic coincidence, it’s also Cow Appreciation Day today!

In other news, we have recently added new CUDA 3.1-cowpatible clients for Windows and Mac OS X to our pre-release page. Link

We thank you for your continued support.

Moo! ]:8)

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