Is there anything I can do on this end to fix it? I am attached to:
Master URL http://climateprediction.net/

Not speaking with authority here but I don't think there is anything to do but wait. It may be possible to sign up to the backup server [url]http://ithaqua.oerc.ox.ac.uk [/url] to get new work if any appears before things go back to the main server but once anything is reported, it will be necessary to go back to the old url.

Once one of my computers runs out of work, I might test this theory or I might just wait. If I do test it in about a weeks time, I will report on what I find.

My understanding is that this is a major problem on Oxford Uni's IT system, possibly caused by the size of the CPDN data base.

My own view is that it would be great if the CPDN machines could be decoupled from the hardware that runs much other stuff at Oxford but I may well be spouting off with far to little information to back up what I say on that one!

I’m starting to wonder if this project is finished. Given the resources available it may never be able to get things sorted out and come back. That would be a shame.

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Well Oxford is a noted academic institution... for the Arts. It it is not known as an IT related power house. So we will wait for our staff and their staff to resolve the issues.

Consider that while this project is important to the world, at Oxford it is probably unknown to most of the campus or student body. It is not in their world of interest or awareness.

Until we can crunch again we will crunch for other science related projects.

Bill F
Dalls TX

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In October 1969 I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
There was no expiration date.

Consider that while this project is important to the world, at Oxford it is probably unknown to most of the campus or student body. It is not in their world of interest or awareness.

I was going to suggest just turning it over to WCG, but wasn't sure what sort of reception that would get at Oxford.

Consider that while this project is important to the world, at Oxford it is probably unknown to most of the campus or student body. It is not in their world of interest or awareness.

I was going to suggest just turning it over to WCG, but wasn't sure what sort of reception that would get at Oxford.

... my understanding is that WCG has requirements for projects in order to maintain a satisfactory service, and CPDN does not satisfy those requirements because the climate modelling part of the code is the property of the MetOffice.

... my understanding is that WCG has requirements for projects in order to maintain a satisfactory service, and CPDN does not satisfy those requirements because the climate modelling part of the code is the property of the MetOffice.

That could be a big stumbling block. Otherwise, WCG is able to accommodate some unusual configurations. For example for the CEP2 (Clean Energy Phase 2) project, the data for each work unit was downloaded from WCG, as usual, but the results were uploaded directly to Harvard, because they were so large.

So I think they could accommodate zips, trickles, etc. But proprietary information would need to be worked on. Maybe they could think of something. They are smart people.
And desperate times call for desperate measures.

They're only desperate in the minds of a few, mostly Americans if the "Country" they claim to be from can be believed.

Just be patient.

! Bill F
! Well Oxford is a noted academic institution... for the Arts. It it is not
! known !as an IT related power house. So we will wait for our staff and their
! staff to !resolve the issues.

! Consider that while this project is important to the world, at Oxford it is
! probably unknown to most of the campus or student body. It is not in their
! world !of interest or awareness.

This comment does seem to show astonishing ignorance about Oxford University as well as making an extraordinarily sweeping generalisation highlighting the same ignorance.

Oxford’s staff and alumni have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine 16 times, the prize for Chemistry 11 times, the prize for Economics nine times, and the prizes for Physics, Literature and Peace five times each. Linus Pauling, who was George Eastman Visiting Professor in 1948, is one of only four people to have been awarded more than one Nobel Prize – in his case, the Chemistry prize and the Peace prize. The most recent Oxford winner is Sir John Gurdon, who studied at Christ Church and was a lecturer at the Department of Zoology. He won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2012 for his work on stem cells.

No university of this standing doesn't have a substantial expertise in IT.
(I assume the author of the quote understands the double negative)

I hope that the moderators don't feel that this is a too aggressive response.

Incidentally, Oxford University’s Radcliffe Meteorological Station is the longest running continuous weather station in the UK. On 15 May, the Met Office will present an award to the University ‘in recognition of 200 years of continuous climate observations at the Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford’. The Station, based at Green Templeton College and maintained by the University’s School of Geography and the Environment, holds the longest series of temperature and rainfall records for one site in Britain, with daily full records from 1815, and less frequent observations dating as far back as 1767. The current observers are doctoral students from the School of Geography and the Environment, where the IT resources are as good as anywhere.

This had me searching for the, "Like" button.

I now have 6 completed tasks waiting to report. The last 2 active tasks I have will complete within the next 3 weeks, after which, I will be out of work units for this project until things return to relative "normal". On the plus side of this waiting time is the deadlines are dated 2019. Still I hope for all connected to this project that it is all back up and running before then. Climate predictions loss of our collective cpu power will at least in the short term may well be other projects gains. Is there a similar Bonic project that is climate related, or should I keep looking to the stars with Eisenstein and Seti in the meantime? Climate research is a global issue, especially with so many countries trying to get Carbon neutral sooner rather than later.
Without knowing the mixture of operating system and software environment this project runs on, I find myself wondering why the project doesn't do some sort of offline Backup system using something like windows system image. that would make restoring from a system failure easier and quicker to recover from. Seti for instance, goes offline weekly for 4ish hours for just such a purpose. Hindsight of course has better vision than waiting until disaster strikes.
I of course wish those working to solve the issues every success in getting things back online as soon as they can and learning from this outage, rather than seeing it as a set back to repair.

I think the problem is the university doesn't want to budget the money for the software or hardware or give it large enough facilities. I wish there was a way to get the student body involved, the "millennial's" seem to be very environmentally conscience and might want to effect a change.

I'm surprised there isn't a scientist on the project that lobbies for CPDN's interests. I don't suppose there is a way we could donate money directly to the project?

Hi Dave Roberts

That's interesting about the Radcliffe Meteorological Station.
Info like that doesn't seem to show up outside the UK. (If UK is the current correct label.)

Thanks for posting it.

Hi Vicki

Servers run on Unix systems, in this case Apache.
There IS a backup system / server - it's what we're currently running on.

Data is stored on various NASs around the university, where ever space can be found. The "servers" that do the actual work are all virtual servers for security reasons. Not just cpdn, but the entire uni.

The University of Oxford is most of the City of Oxford.
So, big place.

And it wasn't just cpdn stuff that was affected this time; a large part of the underlying gear (cables / routers / switches and so on) were affected.
All of this started when the uni was between terms. (Hilary finished on Saturday 10 March, and Trinity didn't start until Sunday 22 April.)

So the only people on site were those doing long planned maintenance, upgrades, etc. "Our people" were off on hols somewhere.
Which made it difficult to start fixing things, when the only IT people around would probably not have a clue about any of it.

(What's that? You're breaking up. Do I cut the red wire first or the blue one?)

I think the problem is the university doesn't want to budget the money for the software or hardware or give it large enough facilities. I wish there was a way to get the student body involved, the "millennial's" seem to be very environmentally conscience and might want to effect a change.

I'm surprised there isn't a scientist on the project that lobbies for CPDN's interests. I don't suppose there is a way we could donate money directly to the project?

cpdn is only a teensy little research project in one department of the uni.
And large parts of the uni were affected by the problem that occurred.

ALL of the professors and doctors associated with cpdn are constantly giving talks / lectures on their part of the research. I think that hinting about funding would also happen. I know that Prof Myles Allen, who devised the project does. It's been posted about in the main non-BOINC pages numerous times.

And for those wanting to donate, there's a link in the bottom right corner of the project's front page. And has been for ages.

Climate predictions loss of our collective cpu power will at least in the short term may well be other projects gains. Is there a similar Bonic project that is climate related, or should I keep looking to the stars with Eisenstein and Seti in the meantime?

Hi Vicki Climateathome is an alternative. https://climateathome.info/climateathome/

Not sure how it is doing at the moment because it too seems to have long periods with no work. There are messages on their forum about problems with tasks about 15 days ago. Currently their server status shows nothing available. I did run it for some time during a previous long outage of CPDN.

Edit: I will probably have another go with it if there are not tasks for CPDN when current ones are finished.

It can be a little more fun/trouble to set up depending on your viewpoint as it requires virtual box to run. I found that I had to keep at least one core free when running it to stop my computers locking up completely.

HI Dave.
Climate@home isn't on the add project list. How do I get around that? Bonic 7.8.3 and virtual box version: 5.1.26 are installed already.

Hi Les
Way back when I was at polytech, we had a unix based pdp network that frequently went offline & crashed rather badly. that was 1988 -1990. Fortunately I was using msdos 3.3 / windows Version 1 in the subjects I was taking part in. Still the idea of a system image of all servers related to each project before a big upgrade (or should that be downgrade considering the results) makes a lot of sense.

transmission gap Blue Gap then gap purple gap red

clear transmission resumes
some things seam timeless. Interesting to learn more about Oxford Uni.
Over, Loud, Proud and Out!

Climate@home isn't on the add project list. How do I get around that?

Hi Vicki,
you have to add it manually. - type www.climateathome.info into the url box after clicking on the add project button.

This is the same procedure as for testing on a number of BOINC projects.

I have vague memories of searching for some time to find the information as to exactly what url to use when I signed up for it before. Not sure whether it works with WINE or not - I was going to wait till my current tasks were finished before trying it natively under Linux.

Edit: Just tried connecting and I get a, "feeder not running" message in the event log. This was confirmed by a visit to their server status page. I have noted that between batches of work, their servers are often down.

I have just switched on the PC at our holiday cottage ( it has not been used for 3 months) and have a message on the BOINC notices that this project is using the wrong URL. I seem to remember this happened before and that those of us who changed the URL then had loads of problems getting back in. I presume the message is coming because the backup server is in use and that I should not change it

Is that correct?

Ian

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I have just switched on the PC at our holiday cottage ( it has not been used for 3 months) and have a message on the BOINC notices that this project is using the wrong URL. I seem to remember this happened before and that those of us who changed the URL then had loads of problems getting back in. I presume the message is coming because the backup server is in use and that I should not change it

Is that correct?

Ian

That would be my advice. If your holiday is long enough then the procject may actually reappear in its normal guise.