News Updates for 2009
Unit Twentysix is now online. 35 years, 169 days, 19 hours of Run Time (Rank: #534)
Unit Twentyfive is now online. 35 years, 83 days, 17 hours of Run Time (Rank: #537)
Well, I've finally had a chance to work on the units since getting the third UPS. I've upgraded Units
Thirteen, Fifteen and Sixteen. All are running smoothly, and once again I have 24 units in production.
35 years, 31 days, 7 hours of Run Time (Rank: #537)
The new power outlet was installed today for the third UPS. I've moved Unit Fifteen over to it and
brought it back online. 33 years, 269 days, 17 hours of Run Time (Rank: #559)
WOW, another month and I've broken into the top 600 for processing time. All units are running smoothly.
31 years, 116 days, 6 hours of Run Time (Rank: #596)
Not much to report, I had to manually start a few units after a power failure, but they all recovered
well. 28 years, 277 days, 2 hours of Run Time (Rank: #643)
I've decided that having the Unit status updates is sufficient for monitoring the network status. Other
than that, every thing is running smoothly. 27 years, 163 days, of Run Time (Rank: #678)
Unit Thirteen seems to be on the fritz, so I've brought Fourteen back on line to cover for it. Also, the
Network monitoring tool I was useing has been turned off. I'm working on a replacement method of
verifying that the network is up. 26 years, 128 days, 8 hours of Run Time (Rank: #712)
Well, Unit Sixteen seems to have suffered a HDD failure, so while I work on that I've turned back on
Unit Twentythree. 25 years, 49 days, 7 hours of Run Time (Rank: #752)
Not much to report, all seems to be running smoothly. I have made a few back-office changes to the
website to make it easier to maintain. 23 years, 343 days, 23 hours of Run Time (Rank: #792)
Units Six and Nine are now running using 2 of the 3 new servers that were donated. Unfortunately, this
means that Fourteen, Fifteen and Twentythree have had to be powered down to keep the UPS in bounds.
I just worked out a deal with my sponsor to add a third UPS to the pool. This will allow me to increase
the number of units to somewhere in the low to mid 30s. Also, I received word that 3 old servers would
be available soon. This should give Refuse For Research the horsepower to break 500 in the run-time
rankings by the end of the year.
Unit Nine has been removed from the pool. Unit Fifteen has been recommissioned and is back at work.
The memory tests on Unit Nine all passed, so with a new install of Linux on a replacement HDD, Nine is
back to work. It seems to have locked up again overnight, so I've changed the reboot schedule to be
every 4 hours instead of weekly. Perhaps this will keep it working.
Well, Unit Nine seems to be having difficulties with random lockups. I've tried changing out the HDD,
but then it locked up during install. I'm running a memory test on it now, so we'll have to wait and
see. 19 years, 86 days, of Run Time (Rank: #992).
WOW! It's been just over a year since I started Refuse For Research, and I have completed 16 years, 316
days, 23 hours of Run Time!! I can't believe that something so simple has had such a large payoff. As
for the computers in the pool, everything is just humming.
Nothing much to report, it's been a quiet few weeks. 15 years, 112 days, 7 hours of Run Time (Rank:
#1,276).
Big news!! The RSS feed is complete! Now you can subscibe to Refuse For Research in your favorite News
reader and keep up to date with what's going on. Use the RSS icon in the menu bar to go directly to the
feed, or copy and paste this URL into your reader: http://Refuse For Research.org/rssfeed.xml
Unit Eighteen had a memory failure, it's now running with 1GB of Ram. 13 years, 327 days, 17 hours of
Run Time (Rank: #1,427).
I've just completed loading the News Updates into a mySQL db and programming the attendant php scripts.
Hopefully this will allow me to write an RSS feed for the News Updates.
All of the upgrades have overloaded the UPSs. Sadly, I've been forced to shut down the two slowest
units: Six and Fifteen.
Unit Three has been upgraded. 12 years, 83 days, 20 hours of Run Time (Rank: #1,659).
Unit Sixteen has been upgraded.
I received replacements for Unit Seven, Ten and Thirteen. I'm sorry to see the current Unit Seven go,
but it's seriously slow.
I've received the first of the next set of computers for the Pool and will set it up as Unit One.
The new Unit One has been recalled. Unit Nine has had to be rebooted, but it appears to be running
normally. Instead of my ranking, I'm going to track the cumulative CPU time going forward. To date: 11
years, 160 days, 18 hours of Run Time (Rank: #1,803).
Unit ten has had a PSU failure.
I've broken the 5000 barrier!!!! I'm now ranked #4,859 out of 432,334 members. Also I have a new Unit
One.
Unit Fourteen has had to have the system rebuilt, but it appears to be running normally. I'm now ranked
#5,401 out of 430,686 members.
Units One and Thirteen have been sent to assist at another local charity.
Unit Two's blower has been replaced and is busily working away. I'm now ranked #6,586 out of 428,160
members.
Sadly, Unit Two's CPU fan has failed. Unit Two is off-line until I can get a replacement fan. A few
upgrades to report: Unit 3 and 15 get a small boost in memory and Unit Six is upgraded. My current
ranking is #7,401 out of 426,796 members.
It's a New Year and I broke the 10,000 barrier!! I'm now ranked #9,952 out of 423,519 members.