MPC Status Page: Archive

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

Older Enhancements and Resolved Problems

• Outgoing SMTP e-mail

  2003 Dec. 20: 17:45. We are having problems sending SMTP e-mail from one of our machines because of the Computation Facility's policy of blocking outgoing SMTP e-mail from all machines except those designated as SMTP servers. Currently, all but one of our machines are on an exceptions list to this SMTP blocking. The CF apparently expects us to comply with their new policy by Dec. 30. Basically, this means that they want us to designate a single machine in our cluster to handle all of our e-mail. We have pointed out that creating a new single point-of-failure is not a wise move. Discussions will presumably resume on Monday...

• References on MPECs

  2003 Dec. 20: 09:00. Astute readers of the MPECs will have noticed that a temporary reference is now being encoded on the observations that appear on the circulars. The reference is of the form "E"+half-month+circular number: e.g., 2003-Y14 would be encoded as EY014. Some users of the data included on the MPECs have in the past been remiss in referencing the source of observational material that they have subsequently reused. The explicit inclusion of the reference on the observations is a reminder that an appropriate reference must be given if the data are used elsewhere.
  • When the observations subsequently appear in the MPCs or MPSs, the temporary reference is replaced with a permanent reference.

• Unavailability of cfa-ftp

  2003 Dec. 11: 09:45. The Computation Facility has informed us that the anon-ftp server cfa-ftp.harvard.edu will be unavailable from 21:00-23:30 on Sunday, Dec. 14. The purpose of the downtime is to get the server up-to-date on operating system patches.

• Computer Upgrades

  2003 Dec. 9: 10:30. The MPC is embarking on a series of upgrades, system tunings and new installations for its computer network. The full implementation of the plans may take several months to complete (working in several discrete sessions). The work will reduce a number of bottle-necks in the MPC computer system, as well as tripling our computational capacity. It is not anticipated that there will be any serious disruption, but there may be brief periods where individual machines are unavailable (with the consequent loss of Web functionality if this is the webserver machine). We will try and keep you informed of pending outages.

• MPES

  2003 Dec. 4: 14:15. A user reported that trying to get comet details from a summary page didn't work. This has been fixed.
  • On a related matter, it seems the full range of comet elements (as documented in the PDF guide) is not currently available in the MPES. Specifically, only recent comets are accessible.
  • Dec. 4: 14:40: The documented range of comet elements should again be accessible.

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