MPC Status Page: Archive (2003 September)

Recent problems are listed elsewhere. Index of other older problems..

Older Enhancements and Resolved Problems

• DISCSTATUS

  2003 Sept. 22: 12:00. The new version of DISCSTATUS seems to be producing correct results. The monthly DISCSTATUS are currently been generated by a sponge-queue process.
  • DISCSTATUS reports have been mailed. Note that bouncebacks are listed on the E-Mail Woes page.
  • Note that references of the form "MPC xxxxx" will appear on the next DOU MPEC. They are appearing because of the lateness of the the DISCSTATUS preparation this month.

• Invalid Observatory Codes in MPES

  2003 Sept. 19: 15:00. A user reported that entering an observatory code of the form "lower case letter + two digits" produced a stack dump. Such values are not valid. The code has been tightened up to flag such values as invalid and then return geocentric ephemerides.

• CF Web Pages Big Move

  2003 Sept. 16: 09:00. The Computation Facility is moving all the web pages on its webserver onto a larger physical device. We cannot update our pages while this process is on-going (it is expected to take two or three hours) and users of the ECS may see anomalous behavior.
  • The move is complete, but the promised "transparency" has not materialized. One of the "update ECS" command files is barfing with an ftp rename command. The CF is looking into the problem.
  • This ftp rename problem is the reason the PS and PDF files in the ECS are not correct. This will be resolved as soon as possible.
  • 13:10. All ftp-rename related problems have been fixed.

• Dates of Last Observation of Comets

  2003 Sept. 15: 12:00. This page was not rebuilt correctly during the normal monthly update. It has been rebuilt.

• Delay in Posting Sept. 10 MPCs

  2003 Sept. 14: 17:00. The on-line ECS posting of the datafiles associated with the Sept. 10 batch of MPCs has been delayed. This decision was made after some apparent continuing network connectivity problems in the CfA network. It would be folly for us to undertake the posting procedure (which involves a lot of network traffic) if we have doubts about the integrity of the network. Hopefully, the files will be posted sometime tomorrow.
  • Sept. 15: 11:00. Posting of data in ECS has begun.

• Sept. 13 DOU MPEC

  2003 Sept. 13: 15:30. The Sept. 13 DOU MPEC procedure seems to have stalled (possibly as a result of the network connectivity problem mentioned below). We are trying to determine where it stalled, but cannot currently gain access to the .LOG file as the process refuses to be killed.
  • 17:00. Process was killed and remainder of DOU MPEC preparation routine was run.

• New Standard Epoch Elements in MPES

  2003 Sept. 12: 12:30. As a result of the way the MPC preparation works, there is a delay between the availability for unnumbered and numbered objects of 2003 Dec. 27 epoch elements (unnumbered elements being available first). This occurs every time that the standard epoch is changed. Normally, the delay will be a few hours. For the 2003 Sept. 10 batch of MPCs it will be almost one day, due to delays in various parts of the processing. We emphasize that the numbered elements that are being supplied are not "wrong".

• Network Connectivity Problems

  2003 Sept. 12: 12:10. The CfA network collapsed around 11:22 (apparently as the result of a failure of a key component and the subsequent failure of the backup device to return control to the restored primary device). As a result all of our computers lost their cluster connectivity. The cluster rebooted automatically when the CfA network was restored around 12:05. Normal operation has resumed.

• References on MPES orbits

  2003 Sept. 9: 10:00. We've just noticed a quirk in the way we handle orbits during the MPC preparation process. The orbits that have been published since the last MPCs that are available in the MPES have the reference given as "MPC xxxxx" (i.e., the MPEC references have been removed as part of the MPC preparation routine). The orbits in the MPCORB database retain the MPEC references.
  • There is no quick fix for this problem.
  • We will examine whether we need to remove the MPEC references and if this is found to be the case we will not remove the references in future months.
  • If you need the reference they can be found in the MPCORB database.
  • Once the MPC preparation is complete, normality will return.

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