After running for a while (on the latest occurrence of this problem, the client had been started about six hours earlier) top shows that hadsm3um_4.04_i goes into an idle state. Further, top comments that this process is in 'residual' (or something) state - but does not say zombie. (Climateprediction was the only application running on my SuSE 9.1 system. I do not have X running.)

I could not kill the idling hadsm3um_4.04_i from root. However, I had started it from the console, and entering ctrl-C on the console *did* end it. When I then started the client from the console again, the process by that name (but different number) started executing anew.

I could not find any messages on stderr or in any of the files in any of the climateprediction directories. My system runs OFFLINE -- I would have to manually set up a relay for it to be able to communicate with the server(s).

mikus

check your "general preferences" web page here, it may be that you have it setup to suspend if computer is in use, only run at certain times, etc?

> check your "general preferences" web page here, it may be that you have it
> setup to suspend if computer is in use, only run at certain times, etc?
>
"Do work while computer is in use?" shows yes. "Do work only between the hours of" shows (no restriction). "Leave applications in memory while preempted?" shows yes. "Confirm before connecting to internet?" shows yes. Climateprediction "Resource share" shows 100. I see nothing in preferences that would explain the problem I am seeing.

BTW, it stopped again (after only a couple of hours). And what top has to say about the idling process is 'defunct'.

Happened to look at 'top'. This time there was __no__ hadsm3um_4.04_i process - neither running nor defunct. But stderr had a "deferring communication for 21 minutes 43 seconds" message. NOTE: the previous message (in same interval of there being no path to the server) was "deferring communication for 37 minutes 15 seconds". Meaning that the client had REDUCED the "deferring" amount (presumably at the time hadsm3um_4.04_i vanished).

Although my system was idle, I decided to wait until the end of the "deferred" 21 minutes. (In the meantime I set up the relay to the server, which had not existed in the preceding three hours.) When the "deferred" period expired, the client communicated with the server and started a new hadsm3um-4.04_i process.

Curiouser and curiouser.

mikus

Since I had not received any information that would have helped me with this problem, I decided to start all over again with a clean slate. I detached from the project, and erased all the climateprediction-related files from my harddisk. I then forced a new download of all the files used by the client. Although I had never been overclocked, I deliberately reduced the clock frequency of my AMD Barton chip.

I have now been running more than 24 hours without the climateprediction client going into an idle state. Hopefully, I've made the problem go away.

mikus

> Since I had not received any information that would have helped me with this
> problem, I decided to start all over again with a clean slate. I detached
> from the project, and erased all the climateprediction-related files from my
> harddisk. I then forced a new download of all the files used by the client.
> Although I had never been overclocked, I deliberately reduced the clock
> frequency of my AMD Barton chip.

Mikus:

Sounds like you have the problem under control. when it drops to 0 activity it generally means that the current simulation has crashed. This is occasionally due to model parameters but usually due to system stability. As you may have read CP stresses you system more that most other programs and will tend to find any system problems which will cause computational errors. as each successive step depends on previous results a very minor error can have propogating disastrous results.

You could check the Climateprediction.net discussion forum for more information on the stability of systems, what to check etc. Might be simplely raising thw memory voltage a little (careful with this and check information available on the internet about overclocking etc)

DaveN