News archive

April 28, 2009
A total of 5000 credits have been added to profiles of all active Cosmo@home users. This is meant for expired/failed WUs due to project down-time and to compensate for the earlier low credit per WU payment for resource intensive CAMB 2.16 WUs. Also, the time bound for these new WUs has been incresaed from 10 days to 15 days which should be enough to complete crunching them even on machines ~5 years old.

April 18, 2009
We have restored CAMB 2.16 apps successfully for all platforms so all project specific errors (Signature and/or Checksum) should no longer be present. Also, most WUs for camb 2.16 are more resource heavy than the previous WU's for 2.15 so we have increased the credit for each WU from 140 to 200. If there are any disputes about this we will be happy to address them. If you feel that the credit being given for the 2.16 app, WUs is too little/ too much please start a thread related to this on the Wish List message board. Thank you.

March 27, 2009
After replacing a damaged RAID drive, the server kept throwing I/O errors and kernel panics, which required us to have the motherboard and RAID controller replaced as well. Hopefully this last round of hardware replacements will solve the problem and we will be back up today.

March 26, 2009
The website is mostly up and running at the moment. We'll have the project daemons up as soon as possible.

March 13, 2009
The Cosmology@home server has been suffering abnormal crashes ever few hours since the campus power outage on March 8, 2009. We will be taking to server offline soon for maintanence and repairs during which time Cosmolosy@home will not run. This website and the forums will also not be accessible at that time. We are working as fast as possible to get the project back up and running to its full potential.

March 8, 2009
There had been a power outage at the University of Illinois campus today for approximately 12 hours due to strong winds knocking down large power lines in the county. Due to this some of you may have experienced download problems from Cosmo@home over the course of the day but the power has now been restored and everything should be back to normal. If someone still experiences problems please let us know through the forums. Thank you.

March 3, 2009
A problem which was causing the test parameter file generator to output empty parameter files has been corrected. I just tested a new test WU on my machine and it seems to be working file. I'll be creating another 500 WUs to test the app on other architectures. The credit for these WUs (excluding the 5 that I just made to test whether parameter file generation was working correctly) will be 3 times the normal amount.

March 2, 2009
We're in the process of debugging the test app. There will periodically be test WUs released in small batches to test the new app version. The new WUs should require lower accuracy and should complete more quickly than the last batch.

Credit will be given out for successfully completed WUs (that is, WUs without errors). However, we'd like to remind everybody that credit is not guaranteed for test WUs. Test WUs help us to release new versions of CAMB and keep C@H going; be aware, however, that these WUs can (and often do) fail, so if you would rather crunch regular WUs and not have to deal with the hassle of failed WUs, then disable test work in your project preferences. Crunching test WUs will never be compulsory. That being said, however, we will make every effort to reward users who donate their CPU time to help us test.

February 24, 2009
A new test application has been released and 500 test WUs created. Please enable test work in your project preferences if you would like to help us test this new version so we can put it into production.

February 17, 2009
All Cosmology hosts are now visible in stat sites. The database was curropted due to the server crash last November and has now been fixed.

February 2, 2009
We are hiring - please look at the job posting for more information.

December 10, 2008
Our new validator has completed its testing phase and is finally ready to go live! An important new feature of this validator is that it eliminates the need for homogenous redundancy and sets quorum of all WUs to 1. As with any major update there may be bugs so we request your help in identifying them. Thanks and Merry Christmas!

November 29, 2008
Once again, the ghosts in the machine attacked when everybody was out of town for Thanksgiving, rendering the server non-functional until someone could make it back in town. After replacing the network switch and the NIC, and applying a hefty dose of holy water to ward away any further geist attacks, the server is up again.

November 15, 2008
We have generated 50 test work units each worth 120 credits to test our new validator. The new validator essentially eliminates the need for homogenous redundancy and will also be used to organize our data more efficiently. Checking to see if these test work units download correctly will also help us narrow down possibilities and help find a solution to the HTTP errors many of you have been experiencing with this project.
-Anshul

October 18, 2008
Fixed a problem with the work generator and made approximately 10k new WUs. Sorry for the inconvenience.
-Scott

October 15, 2008
The WUs for the test application have been removed and we have started up the work generator. You should see regular WU traffic soon.

October 10, 2008
The old WUs are still around, since I made a mistake in the script used to cancel them, so I've just manually cancelled all of the old ones again. This shouldn't affect the new WUs at all.

October 10, 2008
Making some work today (for the main app) to test the new validation system. If the work starts to come back properly, then we'll start making more.

October 4, 2008
Anshul and I are going to spend the day working on the project. The first thing will be to clear out the WU queue and start from scratch. We'll keep you posted.

September 30, 2008
We've just hired a new administrator for Cosmology@Home, Anshul Kanakia. I will be working with him in the next couple of weeks to get the project up and running. Anshul is an undergraduate at the Univerisity of Illinois, so he will have as much time (or more) than I had in the past to dedicate to the project. Please welcome him and help him out if you can!

September 5, 2008
It should also be noted that test work will be validated regardless of whether or not it matches the partner WU. This will insure that nobody is penalized for running test work with the experimental HR.

September 5, 2008
After a little more work, we are going to release some work for the test app test_camb, which will be using a different (although not final) version of HR. The credit for these WUs will be higher than that for normal WUs (140 versus 120). If you want to participate in testing, please enable test work in your project preferences.

NOTE: This post has been edited to reflect the correct credit values.

September 3, 2008
The RAID array on our server broke down over the weekend, and after an incredibly-long recovery process, the server is back up.

August 29, 2008
The projct will be down while we work on the major problems facing the project right now, including work distribution, HR, and credit. We will be making work for a test application so we can test the new HR model.

August 9, 2008
Workunits created over two weeks ago have been piling up, so we've made a small change to the feeder code and cancelled the offending WUs.

July 31, 2008
The i686 Linux app issue has been fixed.

July 24, 2008
Due to a typo in the work-generation script and non-aggressive PHP error checking, work generation was down yesterday. It's been fixed now.

July 22, 2008
The new CAMB is now up and work generation has commenced; in addition, credit for the new WUs has been increased, since lensing is now re-enabled.

Although we let the old WUs drain as much as possible, there may yet still be some in the queue, which may cause some problems with the new CAMB. TTherefore, if you get work that is dated before the 22nd, you may want to play it safe and abort the WU.

July 22, 2008
We are nearly done with the new CAMB app with lensing, so it should be up later on today along with the new parameter generator.

July 14, 2008
The number of WUs awaiting validation is now under 2000, so we should be back in business soon. We've also fixed the lensing problem with CAMB, so we'll be releasing a new app version soon. Before that, however, we have to let the work queue drain a bit, so we'll be keeping the WU generator offline until the queue goes back to normal.

July 12, 2008
The server is back up after being shut down during some thunderstorms in Champaign-Urbana this afternoon.

July 10, 2008
We're going to shut down the scheduler for a couple of hours so that the validator can deal with the significant increase in traffic.

July 9, 2008
The database is having some issues currently, so we will be bringing it down for a little while to investigate.

July 4, 2008
There will be a bit of down time later tonight while we tweak the database a bit.

June 18, 2008
For those who prefer the old design, it is currently accessible here.

June 16, 2008
The new website design is up. Please report any bugs on the forums.

May 13, 2008
We've got the stats working again and we've cancelled all of the WUs that were created yesterday that were erroring out.

May 13, 2008
Recompiled the work generator to work with the server OS upgrades, so the new WUs should work fine. I'm now looking getting the stats export to work again.

May 13, 2008
I've seen the errors with the new WUs and I will take care of it first thing in the morning.

May 12, 2008
OK, now the work generator is *really* up.

May 11, 2008
It looks like work is flowing a bit better now, so I'm going to restart the work generator and see what happens.

May 10, 2008
After more work, the source of a number of the database and bandwidth errors were located and fixed. Please report if the situation pops up again.

May 9, 2008
The project daemons seems to be mostly working at this point. There are still some problems with scheduling, though, and there are *far* too many WUs in the queue due to the population script not being able to get queries out in time, so we're going to wait a while to see if it settles. However, it looks like the database is doing *much* better and there are no hanging queries. I'll keep you posted on changes.

May 9, 2008
Still having problems with the validator. After I grab some shut-eye, I'll work on it some more (it's only permission problems).

May 9, 2008
After much shenanigans, logging in is now working again, so the message board is up. Still working on the rest.

May 9, 2008
The website is mostly up right now, but I'm still ironing out some bugs having to do with logging in. The project daemons seems to be up and running but I haven't verified that they are working properly yet. More updates to come.

May 8, 2008
Project will be going down later on today. Since we'll be doing OS updates, the web server will also be down.

May 5, 2008
On Thursday, May 8, we will be bringing down the server for most of the day to perform the maintainence we previous mentioned.

April 20, 2008
Early next month, we plan on performing some major maintainence on our server hardware which will require that we shut down the server for a number of hours. We'll give a more specific date around that time, but we thought you all would appreciate the heads up.

April 7, 2008
We're finished with the database maintainence for now. Some more may be required tomorrow as well, if the database keeps acting up.

April 7, 2008
Since CAMB sans lensing seems to be much, MUCH faster than CAMB with lensing, we're temporarily lowered the credit again to 50, which still is pretty high, just not ridiculous like it is now.

April 7, 2008
The scheduler will be down for a little while while we tool around with the database in order to fix the slow query issue.

April 5, 2008
A message to Cosmology@Home users

April 5, 2008
We've been working on the server for the past week every day trying to get the server back to an acceptable state. However, the database has been extremely stubborn in going back to normal. We will continue to work on it *every day* until it's 100% right, so please don't think that we are unaware or or ignoring the problems.

April 4, 2008
The database activity has finally gone down to an acceptable level, so we've restarted the project daemons.

April 2, 2008
Due to the flux in workunits that has been taking place recently, there's quite a lot of strain on the database. So, until the validator and the other daemons are caught up on their work, we aren't going to send out any more WUs. We'll restart the scheduler as soon as it's done. Thank you for your patience.

April 1, 2008
The database appears to be up and working again. To learn more about the issues, read this post.

March 31, 2008
We are experiencing some problems with our mysql server which started at some point over the weekend. I am currently working on it and will post as soon as I have it up again.

March 26, 2008
Despite temporarily disabling the lensing component of CAMB, the results are still very useful to us, so please don't worry that your time here at Cosmology@Home is wasted.

March 26, 2008
Until we fix CAMB's lensing component, we will be temporarily lowering credit granted to all WUs from 100 to 80.

March 20, 2008
It seems that the WUs in the queue right now will not run correctly, so we are going to cancel all of the current WUs and give credit to the WUs which have already been completed. Then, we will enable the new WU generator. Make sure to update your BOINC client so that you don't accidentally crunch WUs that have been canceled.

March 19, 2008
The project is now back up and running. The generator will be down for a bit until we run down the available WUs, but then the new generator will kick in.

March 18, 2008
We are suspending WU generation until the "Rombint" errors are solved and a new generator is up and running.

March 15, 2008
The server is back up after cleaning out the old versions of CAMB that are no longer being used.

March 14, 2008
CAMB 2.12 has been released and now correctly resolves the output filenames to prevent "cannot rename output file" errors.

March 11, 2008
If you are experiencing problems with CAMB 2.10 and below, abort those WUs and get the newest version of CAMB, 2.11

January 24, 2008
An update about the current server situation is here.

January 24, 2008
Note that between today and tomorrow, the site URL might change between "www.cosmologyathome.org" and "cosmologyathome.org", although they are more or less equivalent. Tomorrow night, it should stay permanently at the former one. Sorry for any confusion this may cause.

January 24, 2008
There have been a lot of problems caused by the move across servers, mostly caused by complications with apache and the BOINC client. I've spent most of my day working on a solution, which I will outline here.

January 18, 2008
On the coming Wednesday (1/23/2008), we will be performing some server maintenence at 5 PM CST (11 PM UTC). The server may be down for a period of a couple of hours, but I'll try to get it back up and running ASAP.