Back up but not fully operational

It was already planned to move everything, not only the databases, to a new server. All backups had been made etc. However, the old server decided to end its life before the transition was ready, meaning, all sites have been unavailable ever since. Many things will not work at present, as everything the sites are running on are newer than earlier, from OS through PHP through database. Code that worked earlier does no longer - primary change is in PHP, but basically everything needs an overhaul, just as the remaining asp-pages need to be translated to PHP - something that was originally planned to be done while introducing the new visual design, but now needs to be done ASAP. For BOS users, it is not yet clear if the image works or will fail, but at present no updates are done to neither the image nor the XML-export. Work is underway, but please be patient - there is a huge amount of work to be done. Sorry for all the inconvenience this break down has caused.

Sporadic connectivity

Trouble at several stations in my area makes connectivity very sporadic. When there is connectivity it is only for a few minutes. My ISP is working on it

Back up

In case you have not noticed, we are back online. Things got a little more tricky than my ISP anticipated, resulting in no connectivity until early today (local time). Of course this coinsided with other things I had to attend to, which is why I could not write this 10 hours ago when things started getting back up.

Connectivity thursday

My ISP is upgrading their hardware. During this there will be no connectivity from 01:00 to 16:00 CET (their estimate). This will also change my IP, so there'll be extra time before you can get through.

Unscheduled downtime

During a routine reboot a data storage disk triggered a massive amount of unreadable file record segment reports. This made the reboot take forever an I eventually shut down the machine. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Outages

Appologies for the outages this week. Monday I started a new job where I work from home, and new equipment needed to be installed. Much to our surprise this gave alot of trouble as the new equipment needs to work together with existing equipment, and every time we took two steps forward getting things to work, we were put back two and a half. We are not fully done yet, but friday it looked like we finally got ahead. Hopefully the rest will be without further outages. As a side effect, when things actually run, it runs smoother and more secure than before.

Finally back

Sorry for the long wait, but the sites are now finally back online. The switch to a new computer was almost painless - unfortunately only almost and the thing that made it almost was inbound requests to the web server services. I have used all my spare time this week to find where the trouble was. Undoubtfully it had to be a setting somewhere that had changed without me saying so, but which one? Foolishly I did NOT look at the most obvious place until just now: Firewall settings. Now, in retrospect it is obvious that this had to be reset. During the move phase the OS couldn't detect the network adaptor on the new computer - and lost all connection settings for any adaptor that had been on the old computers. So, when using the adaptor I new would work (when finally finding the right driver) I naturally had to create a new connection for that adaptor. I did not realize that firewall settings were unique to each connection setting (or maybe I did not think that far as I have also been ill this week). Anyway: We are back :)

Update on new computer

There are still some trouble with internet connections, however I am getting there. I got a driver working and it looks like all outbound connections are working fine. Inbound, however, is a totally different matter. I have tested locally to see if both web-server services were functioning, and they are - you just cannot get in touch with them from outside at the moment. I do not know what is wrong, but I will do my best to find out and solve it.

Update on new computer

well, it has been a long day, with many ups and downs. For a while I thought a hard drive was done for, but I got it running again. Now I need to get the network adaptor running. I have no XP drivers for it at the moment, so things are not all up and running. It is late local time, so I will get some sleep and hopefully succeed in retrieving a driver tomorrow.

Todays maintainance

As mentioned earlier this week, I planned to replace the PSU on the computer this weekend, and I had planned to do some other maintainance while the computer was down anyway. Neither of those was done, as it turned out I had trouble getting it running again. Time was spent finding the source for this. Apparently the video board is getting worn out. After much trouble getting the video board to comply and getting the computer running, I decided that this is as far the road goes for this computer. The amount of things not going well, in need of replacement etc. is just mounting up, so I will let it do its final work until next weekend. I had already planned to replace this computer anyway and add a real server to take care of web, updates etc. The server is still a bit in the future, though, and the replacement workstation was supposed to be a self build one, but things sometimes do not go as planned. So, saturday I will get a new computer, and the system will be taken down while moving hard drives. Hopefully that will go much smoother than those things usually does.

Downed computer

Sorry for the inconvenience, but the computer was off when I came home - do not know for how long (if anyone knows, please inform me). Not only was the computer off, but it would not start again, until I had it physically moved to another power source - moving it back and it turned on. I am guessing that the power supply is about to go, so I have turned off intensive software that produces heat (like boinc). Replacement of the PSU will happen this weekend, if I can stretch the life of the current one that far.

boinc.exe crashes, update

The cause of the problem is found. If the size of an accoun_*.xml file exeeds 64kb, boinc.exe will crash. For many this file for QCN has done that. As far as I am told boinc-developers are working on a fix (wether that fix will be to prevent the crashes or to accept larger account files, I do not know), and QCN has already made a fix to prevent that the file exeeds the 64kb boundary. Meanwhile here is two fixes you can do to get boinc.exe running again: 1) Delete the QCN account file - this does detach your client from QCN 2) Edit the QCN account file, simply delete from the first quake-tag to the last quake end-tag (including those tags) - this will not detach your client from QCN.

boinc.exe crashes

If some of you are having trouble making boinc.exe keep running, I can inform you that the matter is being looked into - and you are by far not alone. More on this when I know more.

Recent trouble

A while ago I got tired of the mouse connected to the computer, as it was not working properly any more and it was only getting worse. So I bought a new one. It did not take many hours after I connected the new one before I experienced a spontanious reboot. Of course I emidiately suspected the new mouse, but a collegue of mine convinced me that it had to be due to heat. Since then I have been trying to keep the computer cool which has been hard most of the time. As time past, I got more and more convinced that it had to be the new mouse - the computer still did spontanious reboots, and it was always when I was home and working on the computer, and always when I clicked the left mouse button. Yesterday I got completely sure - the coolest day so far this summer, absolutely no heat problems at all, and yet again the computer rebooted when I clicked the left mouse button. I changed to another mouse and since there has been none of that. However I needed to shut down briefly this evening, just a simple reboot to complete an installation, and had trouble getting things running as they should again, so that simple short reboot turned into hours of downtime. Got it fixed. However, expect downtime saturday, as I will do some cleaning of the interior of the computer.

Beta 2

Discovered a change in some schedulers responses, so a few projects was reported unreachable while they were in fact online. Corrected in BosPoll v3 beta 2

BosPoll v3.0b1

Just took the new BosPoll version 3.0 beta 1 into use. That is the program that determines if a project is available or not. Please inform me if there are errors in project availability

Downtime next weekend

Next weekend I will add some power surge protection, which means sites and services will be down until things are ready. Better grounding and double protection. I will keep downtime as brief as possible. On another note, mentioning down time, you probably noticed that things still go unreachable around here from time to time. Clearly the solution I made does not work. Problem is I am not that experienced yet programming for Windows, so please bare with me. I will see if I can fix it tonight, if not, I will create a temporary alternate solution, which will simply restart apache once every hour no matter what.

PSU replacement postponed

Sorry about the delayed message, but the replacement of the power supply announced earlier has been postponed to this upcoming saturday.

Downtime

This weekend I will replace a PSU which means downtime for approx. an hour at the most. I expect to do this tomorrow Saturday, but it may be postponed to Sunday.

Disconnected?

It would seem so, but no, I do not get disconnected time and time again. I do not know what is going on, but I get the same problem with apache as with IIS - web server service goes balistic, running either 50% or 100% on the CPU. Maybe I am subject of DoS attacks, I am not sure. Either way, I am sorry for the inconvenience this may cause you, but I am working on a temporary solution that restarts the service when the process involved is using too much CPU at a prolonged period of time. Should be in place some time this weekend at the latest.

ISP changes at april 28th

As my current ISP has been purchased by a competitor, I have chosen to formaly change ISP now, to the ISP that has bought my current one. This is due to a better offer (price vs. speed vs. service) and a better control over the transition. This means change of equipment and IP which will happen april 28th. So expect downtime at that date. I will naturally try to keep the downtime to a minimum - and note that the IP changes as well, which means it could take a while for that to propagate.

BRaTS online

BRaTS@Home is indeed online although BOS says it is unreachable. I am investigating the problem. I know it is a connectivety problem, as I cannot reach any site on umsl.edu, but not if it is isolated to me, my ISP or Denmark.

BOS goes SecondLife

Just finished: BOS (BOINC Online Schedulers) SL Edition :) Placed right outside my mall, BOS SL will give you the opportunity to see the online status of the BOINC projects when you are online in SL. It works just like a multi-item vendor - use the arrows to flip through the projects to see their online status. Later an option to select project directly through menu will be added. It updates every 30 minutes (smaller intervals would be unsuitable in there). Just go here in Valeriya (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Valeriya/90/44/101/), and spin around until you see it :)

Server changes

The BOS site still in use and working is reachable at http://www.esea.dk:8080/esea/bos.asp a port change on the old web server was needed to keep ASP based pages available. Does not affect PHP based pages nor the BOS images, as those now reside on the new web server that took over the normal port 80 (same computer though). ASP pages will eventually be converted to PHP and reside on port 80

Connectivity abroad

There seems to be connectivity problems to and from some parts of outside of Denmark. Hopefully this is resolved soon.

Irregular updates

All updates of every kind are disabled at my server at the moment, and are only performed when I manually start them. This is due to some problems with updates qeueing up and slowing everything down, making it impossible to work. I am currently trying to uptimize some parts and de-uptimize others (de-uptimizing xml-downloads so they don't take up all bandwidth and qeueing up other outgoing updates)

Power failure

There was a power failure this morning, and I had some trouble getting things started up again. It seems that the graphics board has become unstable, but that conclusion is not 100% clear. I will try to get things running at the servers usual placement. So expect at least one more brief outage. I already had plans to build a real server, and this incedent pushes those plans up.

Lost connectivity

All of Denmark, at least for my ISP, is currently experiencing loss of internet connectivity. This occured 18:40 (reported by my ISP). I noticed the problem about 15 minutes ago, and went trouble searching and found no error on my side. By analouge modem I went to my ISP web page and found outage notice.

bos.esea2.dk scheduled downtime

At the 31st the bos.esea2.dk site will be down about 30 minutes from about 07:00 CEST. The domain host is upgrading the database. This will only affect the site at bos.esea2.dk and this RSS feed, not the BOS images, XML, the ACS XML nor the old site, as they are on another server. Please let me know if you notice problems after this upgrade.

Connectivity update

Connectivity finally came back 15 minutes ago. Speed tests mentioned earlier will be performed between 7 am and 12 am UTC. I will make it as brief as possible.

Update on connectivity

Just spoke with my ISP, and it turns out there is a failure at one of their sub contractors. They are working on it as I write this via analog modem, but time frame for re-established connectivity is not available. On a side note, my ISP was not satisfied with the speed they provide. When connectivity is re-established they want me to complete a speed test and give the result to them for further investigation. When I do that speed test the web server will be unavailable. This will not happen until tomorrow at the earliest.

Connection out

At the moment connectivity is gone. ISP web site does not report problems. I will investigate and try to restore connectivity ASAP.

MySQL down again

I will turn it back on ASAP. Seems to be during backup it crashes

MySQL down yet again

Yet again MySQL triggered "illegal action". I do not know when, but it was some time after 6 am UTC. Read more in the thread called "Trouble solving and changes" at the message boards.

Database down

I just learned that the database is down yet again. Most probably another illegal action. It will be a couple of hours before I can re-start it.

Power outage

Early this morning a part of the town experienced a power outage. It seems to be a car hitting a transformer cage nearby that caused it. I came home early to restart the server.

Retired projects

The following projects are set to retired and are therefore not exported any longer: Belgian Beer@home, Renderfarm@home, HashClash, TMRL and Zebra RSA Bruteforce. If any of them should become active again, please let me know.

Connection issues

Apparently a cable somewhere in Denmark was cut making transfers either very slow or unavailable on the Internet. Internal networking was out as well, but a port change on a switch restored connection. As these two occurances happened within the same time frame I suspect them to be connected somehow, but I will keep an eye on the switch to make sure it is not damaged.

URL generator ready

The new URL generator is ready. It took a little longer than anticipated as ASP to PHP conversions can be a little time consuming. I will go on with the static images tomorrow.

URL generator and static images

If you have not noticed yet, the new dynamic image is now in use, with some added projects and projects are now listed in alphabetical order. Those using percentages will notice that they have been reset - and they will now cover a specific amount of polls (approx. 30 days worth) in stead of all polls. Later graphs of uptime will be available. Right now I am working on the new URL generator - should be ready in a couple of hours. Note that it itself will change URL as this one is made in PHP, not ASP, so if you have the old one bookmarked you might want to update the bookmark at that time. Static images are not updated at the moment as they are generated from the old databases. When the new URL generator is done, I will get working on those. Note that some of the sstatic images (those that only display one project) might change URL. The XML version is currently not updated, as it is based on the old databases. I will get to that when the static images are ready.

Changes to project selection

Note to those who select/de-select projects in the dynamic image: Later today the image code will have changed in a way that your selections/de-selections might not work anymore. The URL generator will be updated as well, so if your selections/de-selections does not work anymore, go to the URL generator and get the new URL. A message will be posted here when the updated URL generator is ready.

BOS updates turned back on

Updates are back to regular run, although with the old scripts. The new ones seem to work fine now, but since the images and xml exporter work on the old databases the old polling scripts are used until those are updated. Things should go faster, btw. Planned for tomorrow: Make the updates to images and xml exporter (you will know it is the new ones used when you notice som new added projects), create pre-image and php include scripts to run on your own site - this would make it possible to display something when the BOS server is down. A bit slower, and it WILL be optional.

BOS updates turned off

I have turned updating off temporarily in order nor to have unessesary polls to the projects while I work on some better scripts. New scripts should increase reliability of the report status of the schedulers and increase the speed in which new projects are added, as I now only operate with one project database. Changes in scheduler url will be updated automatically, if the web site url is not changed, and things generally will be easier for me to manage. The images and xml-exporter will be updated to this when the polling-system is ready.

Outage?

Earlier today a cable was cut somewhere one Sealand, affecting many, including where I was at the time. Naturally I was not able to check if my sites were affected, but now youknow why if they were.

Added account creation status

Added a new status for account creation: Invitation code required

Database back up

Two things seemed to have went wrong. Apparently the MySQL service annoyed Windows so much that it needed to be closed with that famous message. And the web server somehow stalled affecting only attempts to connect to the database. A restart of both did the trick. Whatever was the initial cause remains unknown.

Database down

Just realized that the database server is not responding - which means everything that uses the database is not working. Unfortunately I am not able to correct it/re-start it until a few hours from now. Hopefully it will correct itself shortly. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Inconsistant uptime

It seems there might be other heat problems than the old PSU. I am trying to find the source of the problem - which could be harddrives with no air around then and/or the normal place the computer is placed. I will leave the computer with the case off for a while, and keep an eye on the temperature and smell, after taking out a crad reader I never used anyway out. That crad reader was placed between two harddrives - and the area with those three units seemed to be the hottest areas. If this looks/smells satisfactory, I will put the case on it and let it run again while monitoring. If that seems ok too, I will try putting the computer back to its original place and monitor it there. I have to admit, I have not checked the area mentioned before for heat - I only recognize there might be a problem by the smell of something being way too hot. I may be fooled this time by the new PSU smelling a bit like that while it is being broken in.

Unscheduled downtime

Sorry for the inconvenience, but the server has been down for about twelve hours. The power supply went too hot so I had to shut down. The smell got to the point were I was indeed very worried, and as the smell was mostly intens outside this room, it took some time to find the source. I got a new and more powerfull PSU today, which was planned anyway - just not like this. Things should be fully operational again.

Memory increased

Got more RAM installed today. It did not go as well as hoped, but at least much, much better than my attempts with the previous machine. I installed 4GB and got 3GB - so the amount is tripled. Hopefully this will solve a few issues

Downtime this weekend

The server will be down this weekend while I attempt to increase memory

4 projects added

Recently added projects: NCSSM Grid Computing Project (NCSSM Grid), APS@home, PS3GRID and Hydrogen@home.

Possibly outages

There might be some outages within the next 12 hours. I will try to avoid it, and if I cannot avoid it I will try to keep it as short as possible.

One in, one out

LHC@home alpha has been on closed status for a long time, so it has been removed. Zebra RSA Bruteforce on the other hand has been added.

Expect downtime today

Lately I am experiencing problems due to lack of memory on the server, causing scheduled tasks to queue up, and sometimes stalling in queue. To make sure I get the right RAM for the machine I am going to shut it down briefly to check current RAM blocks. While I am at it, I will check the PSU type, as I am getting a more powerful one.

Inoperable computer

I woke up to an inoperable computer today. All attempts to do anything resulted in an "insufficient system resources" message. I don't how much was affected and for how long (my guess is about 4 hours). Reboot was only solution. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Brief outage

The server was briefly out due to a re-boot while installing hardware.

Pirates@home correct display

Thanks to Wormholio, Pirates@home now displays the correct status.

NanoHive@home properly supported

Thanks to Shai Hulud, who noticed something was wrong, NanoHive@home is now properly supported. It turned out that the URL generator did not have checkboxes to select/deselect NanoHive@home. It does now.

Short brake

I will take a short brake from developing the new web site. Variation can be a good thing, sometimes. During this brake I will do the bandwidth controlling code for the XML downloads I announced earlier, and do some of the changes/additions to the account manager at my teams web site that I originally had planned to do when the new BOS site was ready. The log in system is done, though, just not uploaded yet, as it will not give you any additional features yet.

Router attempt postponed

My attempt with the new router is postponed to tomorrow.

Downtime Monday or Tuesday

Monday or Tuesday I will attempt to make the new router run, yet again.

Bandwidth

At 00:00 hours UTC (recently moved from 23:00 hours UTC) the server downloads XML stats. Normally this would take about an hour to complete, during which there is not much inbound bandwidth left. This may affect the availability of outbound activity as well as other outbound activity. I will redo the code for those XML downloads and implement som speed control to slow down the download when needed.

Suggestions/requests

If you have any suggestions/requests for the new site, please post them in the thread I have created at the message boards in the Feature requests forum. On another note, I am currently working on the log on system of the site, and will move on to the translation system after that.

Language support

Support for Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian is added to the new web site. I cannot make preliminary translations for those languages, though, as my knowledge of for example Cyrillic is too small. Only the first sentence of the front page will be translated, for demonstration purposes to future translators.

More translated

I have used Google to translate even more pages at http://bos.esea2.dk - and I have added the language chooser to the menu.

More translated pages

Some more pages on the new site has been translated (badly ;) ). The first three under About. Danish at http://bos.esea2.dk/whatisit.php?l=2, French at http://bos.esea2.dk/whatisit.php?l=5, German at http://bos.esea2.dk/whatisit.php?l=6, Italian at http://bos.esea2.dk/whatisit.php?l=7, Portuguese at http://bos.esea2.dk/whatisit.php?l=10 and Spanish at http://bos.esea2.dk/whatisit.php?l=12 - this points to the first of these pages, just use the menu to see the rest.

Router attempt postponed

I announced that I would make another attempt today, Friday, but this has been postponed to Monday.

E-mail resolved

E-mails are up again - registration at the message boards available again.

E-mails are out

I announced a change at my ISP regarding e-mail setup. The date that was to change apparently was not what I told you before - but was today. This means, I am not able to send all e-mails I need to - effectively rendering registration at the message boards ineffective, as you will not get the activation e-mail. I hope I can get sufficient help from my ISP to correct this tomorrow (local time right now is 11:16 pm).

No luck

No luck today either. Will try again Friday.

Trying again today

Expect the server to be down today, as I will attempt to make the new router work.

Failure #1

As usual things do not turn out right the first time :) It turns out that I had not done my research thoroughly enough: The router I have bought is also an ADSL modem - and my research did not tell me that. This means there are setup items that I did not know I needed to worry about - some of them were things I needed to get information about from my ISP, which they apparently cannot help me with (all of it, at least). So, I will try to get some more info elsewhere, and try again tomorrow.

Router setup begins

My initial plan has changed, as the new router needs to be connected to the ADSL to allow setup. I had hoped I could make some initial setup from another computer while it was not connected to the ADSL. This means the downtime will be longer, and it starts now.

Downtime expected

The new router is expected to arrive tomorrow, so the server will be unavailable for a while. If all goes well estimated max. is 20 minutes while the router is waiting for the IP, but as mentioned earlier, it is a new brand with a different setup procedure, so do not really expect things to go perfectly smoothly. I will keep max downtime to three hours, leaving room for the unexpected. If I do not get it running within those three hours, I will postpone further attempts to wednesday. Time of day is unknown at this point, but I will post here again when I start (this feed will still be available).

Front page ready

The front page of the new BOS site is ready. You can view it in English at http://bos.esea2.dk and in Danish at http://bos.esea2.dk/index.php?l=2 - other languages is also available, but not verified (and propably bad) translations: For French go to http://bos.esea2.dk/index.php?l=5 - for German go to http://bos.esea2.dk/index.php?l=6 - for Italian go to http://bos.esea2.dk/index.php?l=7 - for Portuguese go to http://bos.esea2.dk/index.php?l=10 - for Spanish goto http://bos.esea2.dk/index.php?l=12 - and more will come. The automatic translations have helped discovering trouble with some languages. These troubles can be overcome, but I need some help with it - no coding experience needed, just some help by looking at some pages and reporting back to me. So anyone from Russia, Korea, Japan, China and from an Arabic speaking country that want to help out with this, please e-mail me at bos@esea.dk - you can write to me in either English, German or any Scandinavian language.

An update on the new web site

Development of the new web site is going smoothly, and should be up and running within a few weeks, if not sooner. I have promised a multi-language site, and that you will get. For starters there will be about twelve languages to choose from, English and Danish will be complete, the rest will be a preliminary version, using Googles automatic translations. I hope volunteers will help proof read etc. when I get the translation pages ready.

Router replacement

I am going to order a new router as the current one cannont keep up with the speed I am actually paying for, and what I plan to upgrade to when available in my town. This will result in at least some downtime when I switch them, but can result in longer downtime as I am also switching brand - the setup is different and I might not get it right at first go - and every time I switch there will be a delay of about 20 minutes before the attached router gets the IP. I am not sure yet when this will happen, but now you have been warned about this - and I will post a reminder when I know more.

RSS times fixed

A small error on my part made the RSS export times in 12 hour format and not the regular 24 hour format. This has been fixed.

Back up

Ok, it took a bit longer than anticipated, but things are up and running again. On another note, times on this new RSS feed may be off, but I will look into that later. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Brief outage

I will shut down the system in a short while to get to some cords hidden behind the computer. I will make the outage as short as possible. Sorry this was not posted earlier, but I did not know about this until now.

New web site in the making

As I have mentioned in my blog, I am working on a new web site for BOS. Now, I have only just started, so not much is done yet, but you can take a peek at what I have done so far, at the new location for the BOS web site: http://bos.esea2.dk - the message boards will remain at the old location until I have created all new code (and scrap phpbb). More on this as I finish things.

New URL for RSS feed

This RSS feed has changed URL to a new location. Current URL will not be updated after this message. Please add the following URL to your favorite RSS news reader: http://bos.esea2.dk/bos_devserv_news.php

Blog

I have setup a blog at http://blog.esea2.dk which already contain something of interest for BOS users.

Homepage updates

On the homepage you will now be able to find 3rd party tools for BOS. Some of these are created by fans of BOS, some are made by BOS developers themselves (currently just me). First two have already been added: The BOINC Server Status by Gandalf, which is a Yahoo Widgets widget that enables you to have the BOS image on your desktop - and the BOS Google gadget that enables you to have the image on your Google personalized homepage. The homepage has also been updated with info on the XML version and the Account Creation Status XML. A further note, this RSS feed has been added to Google.

Reminder of down time

Remember: This weekend I will change the hard drive with the database. Just had some trouble getting it running yet again. So expect some down time.

Updated static images

Static images have not been enhanced since Chess960@home, so now I have added Leiden Classical, VTU@home, TANPAKU, Nano-Hive@home, Rectilinear Crossing Numbers, Riesel Sieve, Proteins@home, Spinhenge@home, Docking@home, Project Neuron, RenderFarm@home, BOINC Alpha, DepSpid, ABC@home Beta, BelgianBeer@home, climateprediction.net beta, WEP-M+2 Project, ABC@home and TheMinouche Research Laboratories Distributed Rainbow Table Generator to the full image and seperate images for each of these projects. Sorry for the wait.

Projects added to URL generator

The following projects was never added to the URL generator, but are now: Proteins@home, Docking@home, Project Neuron, RenderFarm@home, BOINC Alpha, DepSpid, ABC@home beta, BelgianBeer@home, climateprediction.net beta, WEP-M+2 Project, ABC@home and TheMinouche Research Laboratories Distributed Rainbow Table Generator. Sorry for the wait.

Ampersand corrected

Ampersand was not always output correctly. This has been corrected.

BBcode URL fully working

BBcode part of the URL generator did not work with the following projects: Leiden Classical, VTU@home, TANPAKU, Nano-Hive@home, Rectilinear Crossing Numbers, Riesel Sieve and Spinhenge@home. This has been corrected. Sorry for the inconvenience.

DepSpid display not accurate

Due to the IP for DepSpid changing once a day, BOS may display the project as Unreachable although it is online. The only way to correct this at my end would be to reboot the server every day. I am not going to do that, and I do not even know when to do this. They are working on a solution, as this also affects the BOINC core client, so until then, please bare with me. Once the scheduler is up three days in a row and BOS also displays that, you will know that re-starting/re-booting to fetch work/return work will no longer be needed.

Bug with Docking@home

Docking@home implementation had a bug that would influence the hight of the image, and thereby hight of text, for all projects when choosing either which projects not to show or choosing which projects to show. This has been corrected.

Three added projects

Added BelgianBeer@home, climateprediction.net beta and WEP-M+2 to the image and XML export today.

XML export available

XML export of BOS is available. I will add a page about this to the web site later, until then find more in the message boards.

Message boards support

I have promissed to add better support for message boards, but it seems I will have to delay this. My initial trials have failed with a big bang, and as far as I have researched this is due to my non-apache web server. I have already planned to change to apache, but this is a bit of a complex process, as I want to disturb people least possible and I do have lots of asp that would need to be re-written in php. So please bare with me on that delay. In the meantime I am contemplating a temporary alternative, that consists of registrering to the site, designing your image, which will then be created as a static image. This solution will include the possibility of designing multiple images if needed.

Site down today

The website was down today for unknown reasons. When I left for work this morning everything was ok. But as I got to work things was already off, and there was nothing I could do remotely (although a few thing were attempted, not knowing the cause). As I got home it was clear that my suspicions were wrong. It was not due to too many connections. Lots of error messages from boincview covered the screen, as well as error messages saying div. php modules could not be found. I suspect things just got overloaded due to repeated error messages from boincview filling up the memory - I have seen this before, but not nearly to this degree, and it has always been when I was home. Anyway, things should be up and running again.

Outage notice

This weekend there will be one or more down periods. I finaly got the cords and cables I ordered, so I will work on the RAID setup and drive imaging. Hopefully it will work as planned. I do see a possible problem, though: the Y-cords may be too short. But I will see if I can make things fit anyway.

Riesel Sieve unreachable

It displays unreachable, but it is up. Only they've changed some DNS making it impossible to reach them for a brief period, unless you make some changes. I will keep things as they are at my end on purpose - not many would make the changes needed, and those changes would only be needed for a brief period - this way you will be able to see when things are back to normal.

Server down tomorrow

Server will be down tomorrow while I install the new network adapter.

Downtime

While the site hasn't been up consistently the past few weeks, I'm getting closer to get there.This weekend I can promise some downtime, as I'll install the new IDE/RAID controller, and some new harddrives - hopefully the new network adapter will have arrived as well, so I can install that one too.During installation of new harddrives I'll try to do some back-up and restore to set up some RAID 1 for the system/boot drive and/or the database drive - or at least make the replacement of the old drives with the new ones.I don't expect this to be hassle free, so longer downtime periods are to be expected.

Added projects

Some projects have been added to the BOS image for a while, but have not been added to the URL generator. Those have now been added to the URL generator. Those projects are: Leiden Classical, VTU@home and TANPAKU. Recently added projects are: Rectilinear Crossing Numbers (called RCN on the image), Riesel Sieve and Spinhenge@home. A special thanks to bryan of Riesel Sieve and Thomas Hilbig of Spinhenge@home for providing me with the needed URLs for those projects as I do not yet participate in those projects myself.

Boards online

Message boards are now online at http://www.esea.dk/bos/forum/index.php - link is available from the site (opens in new window).

Current developments

Thought I would give you an update on what is comming. Thanks to Niel Munday I may be able to finally make the dynamic image compatible with all those boards that block php-images. An XML export of the BOS status messages is on the way - when it is ready I will make the final touches to another XML export which gives you info on projects account creation status. I have been informed that some projects official names are a bit different from that mentioned in the BOS image - I will go through every one of them to make sure it is as correct as possible (long project names will continue to be shortened one way or another). And finally I will setup some message boards on the BOS web site.

Downtime

You may have wondered what had happened to the site the last few days. I tried to make another attempt to add more memory to the computer, which wasn't really a scheduled thing. I was going to replace the monitor and thought I might try as the computer was shut down anyway. Somehow things went a bit wrong - making the computer unable to boot. It turned out to be the graphics board that was dislodged during the process. But we're up and running again - and the memory addition was yet again a failure.

Additions/changes

Static images have been added - well, they are updated automatically, but they are compatible with sites and forums that block .php. Inspired by a request there is an image for each project as well as the full BOS image. And UBT - Halifax--lad requested BBcode tags to be available as well, so I have added this, as well as the other request for English style date format for the time stamp.

Chess960@home Alpha added

The new project, Chess960@home Alpha, was added today.

Outages

Sorry for all the outages today. They were too many and too long lasting. I was doing a software upgrade and expected a few short outages, but for some reason my mail server gave errors. I have tried to find the error, but still unsuccessful. The diagnostics tool suggested a few things but I was able to rule those out. I even uninstalled the softwae that was being upgraded with no effect. So, temporarily all mail addresses at esea.dk are out. Shortly you will be able to contact me through bruno@greenholt.dk.

False status

I apologize for the false status messages lately for SETI@home and SETI@home BETA. I have been late in discovering that the scheduler reply from those projects has changed. This has been fixed. In the next couple of days I'll make sure a similar change at other projects will not give these false messages.

Seasonal Attribution and HashClash added

The spin-off project of climateprediction.net, Seasonal Attribution has been added along with another new project called HashClash.

Malaria Control . Net added

Malaria Control has been public alpha for a while, but I was not able to add it at the time as I did not have an account at the project. Now the project is beta, and I am finally able to add it - and here it is.

XtremLab re-activated

As XtremLab is back it has been re-activated.

QMC@home added

The new project, QMC@home, was added today.

Added projects and a bug fix

Some of you have noticed that whenever uFluids@home was unreachable BOS displayed nothing (except percentage for those who have chosen to display that). This bug has been fixed. I have added two new projects to BOS: BBC Climate Change Experiment (called Climate Change on the image) and RALPH@home. This brings us very close to 20 projects - and it is clear to me that I have to consider adding a feature to split the list automatically into two coloumns - this would then be a choice you make, by clicking a checkbox at the URL generator. Already brewing as an upcoming feature is an XML export so you will be able to place the status information as you like on your website. Basic PHP code to fetch and import the data to a database will be available.

URL more HTML compliant

Thanks to Lee Carre who brought this to my attention. The URL generator now produces a more HTML standards compliant code.

Two additions

TAs Pirates@home has re-opened it is now re-added to BOS - and a new addition, SETI@home BETA has been made.

LHC@home ALPHA added

The alpha test scheduler of LHC@home has been added.

Four weddings and a funeral

The four weddings: Rosetta@home is finally fully added - World Community Grid was added, thanks to the good people of the project who had made a nice change I was not aware of before, although I had to shorten the name a bit - uFluids@home has been added - SIMAP@home has been added. The funeral: XtremLab seems to have disappeared from Earth, and although they might return they have been gone so long that I have decided to, at least temporary, remove that project. Oh, and a small note to those who have used the full URL generated by the URL generator: Please remove the height and width part of the URL - the project list is increasing at an ever faster rate at the moment, so I have removed that part from the URL generator as well.

A little update

A little update to keep you informed. I am working on completely adding the latest projects: Rosetta@home, World Community Grid and uFluids@home. Rosetta was only added to the BOS image but not to the URL generator, this will be done. However, WCG is giving me a few problems, so I am trying to figure this out while working on a couple of my other projects. I may end up adding WCG without status indicator for starters. As you may know, I am working on a new version of BOS. This is a total re-write of every bit of code as well as extending and adding a bunch of things. When this version is ready, the URL will change as well as BOS will go Open Source. But as I still have not figured out how to make the image itself multilinguiable, making it display for example chinese chars, I may create an intermediate version, disposing of the word indicators and replacing them with coloured filled circles. This version may be on a new temporary URL so it will not cause any trouble at sites already using BOS - but more on this later. Malaria Control will be added to BOS at a later date, as it seems to be relatively closed to the public at the moment. All for now.

XtremLab added

This new project has been added. As Pirates have been removed there is no change in the full image height.

Pirates removed

After a longer period where Pirates@home has been listed as Closed, the final step of removing Pirates@home has been done.

Bug on Message@home fixed

A small bug would sometimes display SZTAKI data and not Message@home data. This was fixed.

SZTAKI Desktop Grid added

I have just added SZTAKI Desktop Grid to BOS. This means an increase of full image size by 11 pixels.

Pirates@home to be removed

Pirates@home has closed down permanently. This means Pirates@home will be removed from BOS, but to give people a heads up first, I have introduced a new status message: Closed. Pirates@home will remain on BOS with this status for a week or so, after which it will be removed. This way people will be informed about what is happening, and website owners displaying BOS with Pirates@home activated will get a chance to make changes if needed. Hight of the BOS image will be reduced by 11 pixels when Pirates@home is removed (if your BOS image displays Pirates@home status). Later I will make the needed ajustments to the BOS website to enable translations of the new status message.

Three languages added

While still having trouble with many charsets (did another test today, unsuccessful), I added three more languages today: Hungarian, Portuguese and Polish. I apologize if any chars are not displayed correctly, both in these new languages and the ones already supported, but for now that is the best I can do.

Orbit@home added

Orbit@home has been added. As it has been a while since I last did anything on BOS there might be some oversights - please let me know if anything is out of the ordinary.

Another fix

It seems the checking of the last fix was just a little off, but it was easy to fix. This also means I could use the same code for all projects schedulers regardless of them using the old or the new reporting, so when the remaining projects change to the new reporting scheme BOS would be unaffected. With the mix of old and new reporting being analysed correctly by the same code right now, I am confident that this latest fix should do the trick. I cannot be sure, however, that a third version of reporting does not affect BOS if one turns up.

Report fix fixed (maybe)

I discovered two errors with the last fix. First of all the fix wasn't properly added to all projects. Secondly the fix it self wasn't correct which I was not able to discover at the time. Now that all project schedulers are up and running it seems things are working, but I cannot tell if it really is so until one of them goes down for maintainance. So right now I am both hoping and not hoping that will happen.

Report fix

As BURP went down for maintaince it was wrongly reported as Unreachable. I did not anticipate a switch in this case to the old report type, so I have fixed all projects that have switched to the new report type for BOS to be able to handle both the old and the new report type.

Version 0.99

A small update before the 1.0 release. Added the possibility to add a timestamp to the image. It displays the date and time of the last update.

BURP status fixed

BURP made the same change in reporting as Einstein and SETI has made. BOS now reads the report from BURP correctly.

Upgrade status

The upgrade took alot longer than expected, and was not all that successful. RAM expansion made the OS unable to boot. I'll make another try next month. I have not tested the charset changes all through but it looks like this was unsuccessful as well.

Version 0.97

Made some multi language changes:- Changed the font from build in font to true type Arial. This eliminates alot of character problems- The image now has dynamic width. It changes if states in a variety of languages are longer then the standard width.- Added four languages. I will wait adding chinese and russian untill I have conquered a charset problem. I will look into this saturday when the server is offline anyway. Naturally the URL generator is changed accordingly.

Server upgrade schedule

The server will be down April 2nd from 11:00 UTC to perform the upgrades mentioned earlier.

Network connection lost

For some unknown reason internet connection was lost. It has been re-established, but for a short period the BOS image and the URL generator site was unreachable. Ironic, actually.

Fixed wrong Unreachable status for SETI@home

The backend script getting SETI@home scheduler online status was changed to deal with the new reporting from SETI@home. This new reporting mix XML and HTML so the parser believed that there was nothing to parse i.e. no connection. I'll change the rest of the scripts today to be sure this will not happen for the rest of the projects if they decide to make the same change.

Added RSS news feed

I wanted to do some more work in BOS but as I knew there might be a need for a news feed, in light of the message I posted on the front page, I decided to create an RSS feed. I hope this will be useful.

Web server upgrades

I've just ordered some more RAM, another harddrive and more cooling for the web server. This means down time for a couple of ours while installing. It will propably happen this weekend, but I'll post the date and time here when I get the parts.

Version 0.93

Added background transparency. As the image is .png this might not work in all Internet Explorer versions. Fixed a bug that made the image display the uptime percentage of Pirates@home as the uptime percentage for BURP in some cases. Added links page to URL generator site. Added background image to URL generator so that you can see how transparency works.