Jonathan says:

One of the project servers has gone offline with a major disk problem.

This will primarily affect those people processing the regional model (WeatherAtHome; Hadam3p), because certain upload files are set to be received by the server Uploader1.atm.ox.ac.uk.

There may also be problems accessing file downloads from this server

The earliest fix date for this is tomorrow (4 October 2011) afternoon (GMT), assuming that the replacement disk arrives on time.

Please accept our apologies for the disruption.

Jonathan Miller

_________________
Jonathan Miller
CPDN SysAdmin

---

Cpdn news

The new hard disk has been installed, and the RAID is currently re-building itself.
This could take a loooooong time. :)

---

Backups: Here

The server is now back up and running.

---

Backups: Here

Some of the latest batch of hadam3p models have a problem with 'permissions' on one of the mirror servers.
This will cause 2 of the ancillary files to have a temporary download failure.

And it's the weekend at Oxford again.

---

Backups: Here

The permissions problem causing HADAM3P download errors should now have been fixed. If anyone gets a new occurence of this problem then please report it in this thread ...

As many members already know, CPDN was down for a week before being brought back up yesterday.

Last week Jonathan posted on the independent forum:

'On 18 October 2011 the CPDN project server was attacked. We have had to respond by taking the project offline.

I will provide more info as I have it, but I will be devoting my time to fixing the issues and determining the extent of the problem.

Jonathan'

And yesterday Andy added this:

'Update to: Security incident

On 18 October 2011 we suffered a hacking attack on the servers of the CPDN project.

As a volunteer driven research project for studying climate change we were very dismayed such action caused to disrupt the project. This attack unfortunately forced us to take the project down whilst the issue was investigated, during this time we conducting a full security analysis, now we are satisfied of the results of the security analysis we have brought the project back online.

Unfortunately some data of our users had been compromised. We have contacted by email all those users that are affected by this, this represents less than 0.5% of participants. If you have not been emailed (to the email address associated with that CPDN account) then you won't be affect by this issue and you need take no action on this.

We can only send this email to the email addresses associated with the accounts concerned, some of these address may now be inactive so please check any old addresses that you may have used when registering with the CPDN project. There also a possibility that your spam filter may have withheld the email.

We offer our apologies for any inconvenience caused by this. This is an exciting time for the project in terms of science, and we deeply value all the continued contribution of participants.'

Please do check that you are using an up-to-date email address for your Boinc projects. And that you use the same one for every project you join. So if you have to change your email address for CPDN please change it for your other projects too.

---

Cpdn news

Reminder

It's a good idea for all CPDN members also to register on the independent forum. So if this forum is ever down you can still post about problems. Registration there is separate from this forum.

http://climateprediction.net/board/index.php

---

Cpdn news

For those people concerned that the data they're returning isn't showing up on the servers, and that they've not been getting credit lately, there is a simple answer:

Some of the scripts (programs), haven't been restarted yet.

It'll all work out in the end.

---

Backups: Here

The trickles are starting to show up, so one more step on the path to a full recovery.

---

Backups: Here

CPDN will be taken offline at 9.00 am GMT on Thursday 10 November 2011.

This is to facilitate the relocation of our project servers. It is anticipated that the downtime will be for no longer than 48 hours, but the project should be considered 'at-risk' until noon on 14 November 2011 GMT.

Jonathan

_________________
Jonathan Miller
CPDN SysAdmin

---

Cpdn news

The servers are up and running again. Some hadam3p regional model files are still unable to upload; this problem will probably be fixed on Wednesday but it will take some time for the large backlog of waiting files to upload.

Many thanks to Jonathan who spent a good part of his weekend with the servers.

---

Cpdn news

There's still a problem for a few uploads, as the university's IT people haven't yet updated the relevant DNS records for the servers that were moved.
So more thumb twiddling.

---

Backups: Here

There's a continuing problem with the servers storing user's data. It's possible that it's something to do with mirroring the data to a second server, intended to reduce the load on the main server.
It affects all data returned, which, at least for my models, gives the impression that the data is disappearing into a black hole. Perhaps the huge amount of accumulated data has caused the data base to reach a critical point, and form a worm hole into another universe.

The project people know about the problem and are still investigating.

---

Backups: Here

There are some reports of files still not uploading.
If this is the case for anyone, would they please post here.
Include your computer ID so that it can be looked at in the database.
If there are messages saying why they aren't uploading, include those as well.

---

Backups: Here

Jonathan says:

On behalf of all the members of the CPDN team I should like to wish you all a very happy Christmas.

It has been an eventful year at CPDN. Andy and I have spent most of it wrestling with hardware failures, software misconfigurations, storage issues etc.

Throughout this period we've had pretty solid support from all of our volunteers who have crunched their way through over 100 billion CPU cycles, donating the equivalent of thousands of years of CPU time to climate science research.

Thanks again, and see you in the New Year.

Jonathan

---

Cpdn news

From the News on our php board:

Submission of new Weather At Home batch (HadAM3P_EU workunits)

We have just submitted a new batch of Weather At Home workunits. These new workunits form part of the Weather At Home project and are a perturbed physics ensemble of historical (1998-present) climate. The first phase of the Weather At Home project, launched in November 2010, has provided us with many useful simulations which we have compared to observations of top-of-atmosphere radiative fluxes to evaluate model performance. This evaluation has enabled us to further constrain parameter values to fit with historical observations, forming a new ensemble of workunits which is now being released. Once again, thank you all for running these models!

Andy

---

Backups: Here

From the News on our php board:

Happy New Year to everyone involved in climateprediction.net!

We recently passed the first anniversary of the launch of the "Weatherathome" regional modelling experiment. CPDN extends huge thanks to all participants for crunching these demanding models, which will enable scientists to investigate the potential changes to regional patterns of weather, and extreme weather, as climate changes in the future.

You may be interested to know a few facts and figures relating to this first year of Weatherathome, in which three regions have been modelled - Europe, Southern Africa and the western U.S.

As of 30 November, 2011:

- 172,831 individual Weatherathome model runs have been successfully completed - this is equivalent to 172,831 simulation years.

- These models have been run by 33,328 computers - these computers are owned by 19,987 users in 142 different countries.

- The total CPDN credit granted to these users for running these models is: 424,719,023.4259

- The total CPU time donated to run these models is: 69,288,699,787.3355 seconds. This is equal to 2,197 years of CPU time, which is equivalent to running a machine with 2,197 processors full-time for one year.


.... all of which reminds us just how awesome a facility the CPDN crunchers provide. Big thanks to everyone for their continued support.

SueR

---

Backups: Here

Just posted by Andy on our php board:

Submission of new Weather At Home batch (HadAM3P_PNW workunits)

We have just submitted a new batch of Weather At Home workunits. These new workunits form part of the Weather at Home project and are a perturbed physics ensemble of historical (1999-present) climate. The workunits are for the Western US region and are identical to those released for the EU region at the beginning of January 2012. We are investigating modelling uncertainty by perturbing 12 important model parameters. The aim is to quantify how these perturbations effect simulated weather in the Western US. Many thanks for running these models!

---

Backups: Here

Posted by Andy on our php board:

Submission of new Weather At Home batch (HadAM3P_EU workunits)

We have just submitted a new batch of Weather At Home workunits. These new workunits form part of the Weather at Home project and are a perturbed physics ensemble of historical (1960-present) climate. The workunits are for the European region. We are investigating modelling uncertainty by perturbing 12 important model parameters. The aim is to quantify how these perturbations effect simulated weather in Europe. Again many thanks for running these models!

---

Backups: Here

From:
Jonathan Miller
CPDN SysAdmin

The server that receives completed work units for the EU region of the Weather@home project is suffering intermittent faults, resulting in failed uploads.
The name of the affected server is uploader1.atm.ox.ac.uk

We will let participants know when we have more information on the likely time for completion of the repairs.

---

Backups: Here