The ClimatePrediction News and Announcements thread is here in the top section. (Separate registration is required for that forum.)

I/we will try to copy news of server or credits crises here as well, but please go through the link for our full news.

Mo

The cpdn server is again telling members that there's 'no space left on device'. The device as always means the server, not our computers at home.

As the new server was delivered last week, I expect this reoccurrence of the problem will be sorted out fairly quickly, except that Monday is a public holiday in the UK. We think that Milo knows about 'the device'.

So there's no need to take elaborate precautions this time, but if you do get these messages it would be a good idea to keep boinc network activity suspended as much as possible for the next two or three days. Select this through the boinc manager Activity menu.

Edit: we now know that the server is not accepting 10-year zip file uploads (you'll know if you have one waiting to upload by looking at the boinc manager Transfers tab). If you have one of these, do please suspend network activity until the problem is solved.

The server problem will also cause delays in the awarding of credits. Credits are never lost and always catch up eventually.

Cpdn and BBC servers now OK for both trickles and file uploads.

Spotted by Geophi:

From the front page of the Seasonal Attribution Project...

30 May, 2007
In the past few months we've been doing analysis of the results from the project. In light of this analysis we've decided to extend the project even further! This will again be a small extension, similar to the extension in January 2007, and will help us to study some of the more interesting issues that have emerged from this project, and have more confident final conclusions. It also means anyone waiting for new simulations to crunch will now have something to work on! Watch this space for more details to follow very soon.

The SAP project is at http://attribution.cpdn.org/. It's a single-year climate model, but runs in more detail than the 160 year coupled model (so needs more memory - 1GB RAM recommended for one model, 1.5GB recommended for two models in parallel).

Lots of these models are still available, but when they're gone, they're gone.....

There are currently server problems at cpdn. News and advice here:

http://www.climateprediction.net/board/viewtopic.php?p=65139#65139

The BBC and cpdn-boinc forums are at the moment unreachable, but the independent cpdn forum (the one in the link) is available. Separate registration is required there.

Carl, who's the former chief cpdn programmer, has been working remotely on the Oxford servers from Philadelphia during the weekend. He thinks the servers could be back to normal late on Monday 25 June. So there will be big credit spikes for BBC and cpdn crunchers - just don't expect them to show up in the stats immediately! More detailed news is available at the link in my last post.

When shorter workunits become available as an alternative to crunch at cpdn, (very soon I hope), details will also be posted there. They should please many of the crunchers who've been asking for shorter WUs for more than a year, but will still be long compared with WUs from other projects.

PLANNED CPDN SERVER OUTAGE ON SATURDAY 11 AUGUST

Milo has announced

'We have been told that the university computing services will be doing their 5-yearly electrical inspection on the 11th of August, which will affect some of our services, e.g. the cpdn and cpdn beta servers. The results server and those parts of the web site hosted at Open U will still be running.
The affected services will be powered down for at least the first half of that day, and potentially a bit longer depending on whether Tolu or I can get into the building over the weekend to power them up again.'


The cpdn independent forum is hosted at the Open University in Milton Keynes and should not be affected. (Separate registration is required there.)

But our models may not be able to contact the servers until Monday 13 Aug. It would be a good idea to suspend network activity in the boinc manager activity menu before the outage.

Mo

Milo went into work earlier today to turn the servers back on. Thank you, Milo - I hope you at least got home in time for lunch!

On BBC, cpdn, cpdn beta and SAP everything is now running again including trickles, uploads and downloads, with the exception of the beta project's data-driven web pages eg the beta forum.

As usual after a server outage, members' credits will take at least 24 hours and more likely 48 to catch up.

Edit: cpdn beta is now fully-functional again.

One of the cpdn upload servers has been down since Friday. The programmers know about this.

Cpdn server status page

If you find you have a zip file waiting in your boinc manager Transfers tab to upload and the upload stalls, the best thing is to suspend network activity using the boinc manager Activity menu until the problem is resolved. This avoids multiple failed upload attempts and vast quantities of boinc manager messages about the problem.

Multi-project crunchers who need work from their other projects should, if they encounter this problem with cpdn, keep network activity suspended as much as possible.

Milo says 'Sorry about apps3 — its disk filled up yesterday and we've been moving stuff off it. That seems to be proceeding well so it should be up again this weekend or on Monday'.

The cpdn servers are now all working again.

From now on I will record the dates of cpdn/cpdn beta/BBC/SAP server outages in the News Archive. All in a single post called Log of Server Outages.

Some of the cpdn servers are down at the moment. The cpdn-boinc forum is down, though the BBC message boards are open.

http://climateapps2.oucs.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/server_status.php

Everyone can still post on the independent cpdn forum (link in top post of this thread).

Now all up and running again.

The current optimised version of cpdn HADCM3 models is advantageous in that these models are more likely to complete. But they run about 20% more slowly. Tolu has now readjusted by +20% the credits we are awarded for running optimised HADCM3 models. This applies to Windows, Linux and Mac. Previous crunching of these models will be taken into account.

Credit awarded for crunching pre-optimised HADCM3 models and HADSM3 slab models remains unchanged. This means there will be no adjustment to BBC credit.

The server which runs the server web pages for our cpdn results/models is down for maintenance. Members' BBC, cpdn beta and SAP results pages are also down, and some of the forums are affected. Trickles, uploads and downloads should be functioning normally.

There will probably be a delay of at least one day in the reporting of credits from all ClimatePrediction projects to the stats sites.

The server status of all ClimatePrediction projects can be checked here:

CPDN
http://climateapps2.oucs.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/server_status.php
BBC
http://bbc.cpdn.org/server_status.php
Beta
http://climateapps1.oucs.ox.ac.uk/beta/server_status.php
SAP
http://attribution.cpdn.org/server_status.php

The CPDN, Beta and SAP servers are now all up and running again. The boinc software has been updated and the private messaging facility added to the Beta and SAP forums.

A few minor issues resulting from the upgrade remain on Beta and SAP web pages. The server that runs BBC data-driven web pages is still down, so the BBC forum is still unavailable. Tolu and Milo know about this and will deal with the remaining issues after the weekend.

Trickles, downloads and uploads have not been affected and are fully-functional on all ClimatePrediction projects.

On Wednesday 19 Sep the cpdn server for data-driven web pages was down again for a few hours. It was soon running again but there may be some delay in the awarding of credits.

BBC web pages (the BBC forum and results pages) are still down. Milo is taking action to avoid the server disks filling up.

There are links to the server status pages of all four ClimatePrediction projects further up this thread.

All ClimatePrediction servers for all projects are now running again.

However, Milo says there was a problem with the database yesterday 20 Sep - a mysterious crash the cause of which could not be determined. This was entirely separate from the outage to upgrade the web pages, forums &c. It is likely that the credit generation script didn't run for that reason.

Credits should be up again by tomorrow; the script will run overnight. It may be a bit slow to catch up, as usual after an outage. So members may not receive their outstanding credits until Sunday or Monday.

A new file server will be installed in Oxford soon, probably within a week or two, easing the pressure on disk space and of course on Milo and Tolu.

PROBLEMS WITH MODELS

None of the currently of the available ClimatePrediction models can run on a boinc version of less than 5.0.0. If you last downloaded or upgraded boinc before 2006, you probably have an outdated version. To check which version you have, right-click on the boinc icon in the tray at the lower right of your screen and select About boinc manager. If you have version 4 you need to upgrade.

Version 4 must be uninstalled before upgrading to version 5. To uninstall it, go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add or remove programs. Select BOINC and Remove.

A new boinc upgrade can be installed 'on top' of boinc version 5. (Version 5 does not need to be uninstalled first.) To do this, first check where boinc is currently located on your disk. Suspend your model/s, exit from boinc (File > Exit in boinc manager). Look for boinc by opening My computer > Local disk C > Program files. In most cases boinc will be in the list of Program files. That is its location and is where the upgrade needs to go. New boinc onto old boinc.

If you have a currently running model, back up your boinc folder contents before you upgrade.

Download a new version of boinc here. If you have Linux or Intel Mac, go to All versions and choose the recommended stable version.

If you run a 64-bit operating system, and are currently using the 32-bit Boinc client, it is best to stay with the 32-bit client. Download it from http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php.

* If you no longer wish to run climate models, in the Projects tab of boinc manager select ClimatePrediction, then click No new Tasks or Detach.

* If your climate models constantly crash or seem to go back to the beginning or do not produce trickles, or you don't understand the boinc manager messages you are receiving, please post on any of the ClimatePrediction forums where lots of members can help diagnose and correct problems.

* If you have completed your last BBC model, you will need to attach to cpdn to get a new one. How to switch over is explained here.

* The most detailed and practical advice to help members complete any type of climate model is in the project READMEs which are here.

* Except for Open University students following the climate course, nobody should now be running cpdn Classic. This project is now completely finished.

The boinc servers in Berkeley CA are currently down. This means boinc can't at the moment be downloaded or upgraded and the boinc_dev forum is down.

This has no effect on ClimatePrediction servers which are all working. Our trickles are continuing normally.

The cpdn independent forum hosted on an Open University server in Milton Keynes is down. It's the middle link here. The other two links are to the cpdn-boinc forums which are unaffected.

The forum outage is not boinc-related and will not affect models, trickles or credits.

Astro's discovered that while the Milton Keynes server is down it's impossible to attach to ClimatePrediction. The 'Attach' command from the computer to Oxford is routed through the MK server and at the moment can't get through.

It may also be impossible to detach from cpdn at the moment, but I'm not going to test this.......

Milo has had no indication yet from the Open University about what is wrong with their server.

The Open Uni server is now functioning again. So the independent forum is open and it's again possible to attach to CPDN.

I'm afraid there's now a different problem with one of the Oxford servers. A CPDN HadCM coupled model has been unable to upload a 10-year zip file, getting the boinc manager message 'No space left on device/server'. This does not mean your computer disk is full. The server disk has filled up.

The problem may also affect HadCM trickles and HadSM slab zip uploads and trickles.

It would be a good idea for anyone running a CPDN model to suspend network activity in the Activity menu of boinc manager until the problem is resolved. The model can then safely run.

We realise this is difficult for multi-project crunchers who need to keep network activity enabled. They may prefer to avoid the problem by setting CPDN to No new work (using the button in the Projects tab) and suspending their model in the Tasks tab. Then crunch other projects' tasks until the problem is resolved.

It's best to avoid multiple failed uploads of zip files. These are produced at the beginning of December at the end of each decade (eg 1930, 2040) for HadCM and at the end of each 15-year phase for HadSM slabs.

BBC, CPDN beta and SAP models should not be affected by this problem.

The server status of all ClimatePrediction projects can be checked here:

CPDN
http://climateapps2.oucs.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/server_status.php
BBC
http://bbc.cpdn.org/server_status.php
Beta
http://climateapps1.oucs.ox.ac.uk/beta/server_status.php
SAP
http://attribution.cpdn.org/server_status.php