News Updates for 2011
Merry Christmas everyone! What a great year this has been. My first quad processor server, passing the
100 years of processor time mark, converting all the servers to Ubuntu Server 11.04, and now, according
to last nights stats update from WCG, I've broken the 700th ranking I've been bumping up against and got
699!!!!! Points Awarded: 47,141,143 (#699 out of 581,516).
It appears the Unit Sixteen has died. No amber MOBO lights, but no POST either. It's a bit of a puzzle,
so while I work on that unit, I've brought Units Thirteen, Nineteen and Twenty back on line to help take
up some of the slack. 42,596,303 (#727 out of 574,164).
This month's update: all units are running, with no issues other than Unit Four is right on the edge of
overheating. Unfortunately, that model of server has no capacity for additional fans. So, I'll keep an
eye on it and see what happens. 39,836,810 (#757 out of 566,435).
The last few weeks have seen no issues, and all units are running. 37,539,409 (#780 out of 563,313).
Another update reporting that all units are running. 36,556,183 (#787 out of 562,085).
Well, nothing much to report tonight, except I'm now ranked 798!!!!!!! FINALLY broke 800.
Whooooo-Hooooo!!!!! 35,901,158 (#798 out of 561,336).
Unit Eightteen has been built and is now running at full speed. Unfortunately, due to the power
constraints, I have had to turn off Units Thirteen and Twenty. 35,135,167 (#803 out of 559,277).
So the big news this week is that I've crossed the 100 year mark!! Wooo-hooo!!! All units are going
strong, and the new memory for what will be Unit Eightteen should arrive shortly. Also, there's some new
graphs to look at, and the menu has been rearranged to support all the new web pages. 34,915,198 (#806
out of 558,849).
Unit Six has replacement memory. While the fans did seem to slow down the frequency of the memory
errors, they were still happening, so I've gotten replacement memory in the unit. Hopefully this will
work. 34,525,454 (#810 out of 558,164).
Unit Six's memory checked out, but I noticed that it was pretty hot after running the tests. So, I moved
one of the internal cage fans over closer to the memory. Perhaps it was having overheat related issues.
After a few hours, it does seem to be running better. I may have to rethink my position of removing as
many of the redundant fans as I can to save on power if it causes other components to overheat. On a
second note, the new "Graphs & Charts" page is launched. I figure it's about time I showed some of the
data I've collected for this project. 34,019,795 (#814 out of 557,324)
Well, it appears that Unit Six has some bad memory. So I'll be taking a close look at that over the next
few days. Other than that, all seems to be going well. 33,915,107 (#814 out of 557,070)
I received two single processor servers today. Luckily they were the same make/model so I was able to
take one of the processors and put it in the other server to make a dual processor Unit. It has now
replaced Unit Fourteen. However, due to UPS load constraints, this means I have had to take Unit
Nineteen offline. Unit Six had a HDD failure, so it has now been replaced and Ubuntu installed. The
Statistics display on the web page has been improved with more information made available. 33,657,681
(#818 out of 556,490)
Continued power monitoring has led me to turn off Unit Fourteen. UPS C was running way over it's max.
33,439,316 Points (Rank: #819 out of 556,014)
The website has been updated to HTML5 and has been validated as such. Also, the code has been upgraded
to PHP5. 33,371,496 Points (Rank: #821 out of 555,826)
Unit One apparently has issues with Hyper-Threading. This appears to be the cause of the rebooting. So
I've turned that off. Also, with all of the new servers, I've been overloading the UPSs. So, I've taken
the slowest Unit out of the pool, Unit Eightteen. Also, Unit Ten was apparently running hot over CPU #2,
so I added in another fan to assist cooling it. 33,262,770 Points (Rank: #820)
Wow, huge update tonight. Where to start, well, OK, let's start with the memory upgrades and swaps. I
recently went through all of the PC's that I had to remove from the pool to make room for the servers
and pulled all their memory sticks. This allowed me to make these changes to the current Units: Seven,
Seventeen, Nineteen and Twenty all had their memory doubled to 1024 MB. Unit Fourteen tripled it's
memory to 1520 MB. As for the servers in the pool, I evened out the memory allocation and got every
server except one to 2048 MB per processor. Unit Fifteen only got half that, but it still doubles the
512 MB per processor it had. Unit Twentysix has been renamed Unit Twenty as part of being upgraded to
Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS. Unit One got itself into a reboot loop, so I reinstalled Ubuntu, and it still
is rebooting on its own, so I'm doing a deep memory test. *WHEW* This completes the Ubuntu upgrade as
all Units are now running 10.04 LTS. 33,224,457 Points (Rank: #820)
Unit Twentyone has been renamed to Unit Seventeen as part of being upgraded to Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS.
Unit Six got a memory boost taking it to 1536 MB. 33,184,032 Points (Rank: #820)
Unit Twentyfour has been renamed to Unit Fourteen as part of being upgraded to Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS.
33,056,684 Points (Rank: #820)
Unit Twentyseven has been renamed to Unit Thirteen as part of being upgraded to Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS.
32,732,332 Points (Rank: #816)
Unit Seven has been upgraded to Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS. 32,577,592 Points (Rank: #818)
The old Unit Sixteen is back as Unit Eightteen. Also, Unit One is up and running. 32,416,837 Points
(Rank: #822)
A spot of bad news, Unit One has had a HDD failure and Unit Eightteen is to too old for the Ubuntu 10.4
kernel to work properly. On the plus side, I have been given a new server that will take the place of
Unit One. 32,151,845 Points (Rank: #827)
Unit Eight has been upgraded to Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS. 31,787,368 Points (Rank: #825)
Units Four and Six have been upgraded to Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS. 31,662,369 Points (Rank: #826)
Unit Nine has been upgraded to Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS. 31,478,778 Points (Rank: #827)
Unit Seventeen has been renamed to Unit Three as part of being upgraded to Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS
Unit Twenty has been renamed to Unit Two as part of being upgraded to Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS.
31,260,337 Points (Rank: #824)
Unit Twentyeight has been renamed Unit Twelve as part of being upgraded to Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS.
30,406,449 Points (Rank: #827)
Unit Thirtyone has been renamed to Unit Ten as part of being upgraded to Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS.
30,359,336 Points (Rank: #827)
Unit Thirtytwo has been renamed to Unit Five as part of being upgraded to Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS. Also,
the new OS version has allowed me turn back on the Hyper-Threading, so it's now processing 4 workunits
at a time. 30,314,850 Points (Rank: #826)
Unit Sixteen has been upgraded to a Dual 3GHz Xeon Server. Also, since I have been bringing servers
online, I have had to take slower units (mostly PCs) offline to keep within the boundaries set by my 3
UPS's. While I will miss having 32 units running (I'm now at 20), the servers should give better overall
performance. 30,270,571 Points (Rank: #825)
Unit Eleven's issues have been conquered! After eight plus hours of research, it turns out all I had to
do was un-comment a line in the GRUB configuration file. Also, I have been notified of yet another
server to be turned over to Refuse For Research. 30,092,107 Points (Rank: #827)
Whew! I finally got Eleven running. Well, sort of. It won't boot completely without human interaction,
but that aside, it's processing 8 work units at the same time! Hopefully this will restart my move to
the top 500, as having so many units turned off for over a month has caused me to lose a few positions.
30,025,585 Points (Rank: #827)
I'm having "issues" getting the new server to boot the drive I installed Ubuntu on. It will be the new
Unit Eleven. Not sure what the solution is, but I'm sure I'll get it sorted. Also, I've been given
another Dual processor server. 28,777,104 Points (Rank: #826)
I have been given a Quad processor server. This should really be able to push some research out.
28,397,471 Points (Rank: #828)
Happy New Year!!! Well, nearly so anyways. Starting off the year right: 27,308,264 Points (Rank: #845)