MPC Status Page: Archive (2004 October-December)

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

Older Enhancements and Resolved Problems

• Telnet-based Extended Computer Service

  2004 Dec. 26: 13:30. The telnet interface to the MPCUPDATE service has been retired.

• MPES

  2004 Dec. 23: 15:38. A number of enhancements have been added to the MPES. Both the features listed below apply only to objects with uncertainty maps, these are typically one-opposition NEOs.
  • Access is now possible to the variant orbital elements used to generate the plots and lists of uncertainty regions. To request the n-th variant orbit for a particular object put the required number after the designation enclosed in square brackets: e.g., "2004 EC104 [23]" will return variant orbits number 23 for 2004 EC104. Residual blocks are not available for these variant orbits and no uncertainty information is displayed.
  • The size of the major axis (in arcseconds) and the position angle of the three-sigma uncertainty are now displayed on each ephemeris date. This feature is intended for current dates only and the information is suppressed for dates more than 400 days away from the current standard epoch.
  This information will work its way into the PDF documentation in the New Year.

• Web-based Extended Computer Service

  2004 Nov. 25: 13:30. The Web-based ECS has been extended in a number of ways:
  • The MPCAT-OBS service now includes data files containing observations of Pluto and the outer irregular natural satellites of the giant planets.
  • The MPCUPDATE service now includes a link to download a zip file containing all the data files associated with a particular batch of MPCs.
  These changes are part of an on-going effort to retire the telnet-based computer services.

• MPES

  2004 Nov. 24: 12:10. There has been a long-standing minor difference in the MPES regarding the dates of last observation and desirability of further observations between the full output and the summary output. This difference has now been removed.

• CBATMPC Upgrade

  2004 Oct. 8: 14:20. The MPC/CBAT has one Unix box, cbatmpc, which is administered by the CF and which we use primarily to e-mail out the MPECs and IAUCs. The CF started a planned OS upgrade on this machine at 07:00. The first upgrade didn't take, so they tried again. That didn't take. There are apparently problems in completing the upgrade. The machine is currently in an unusable state. If it cannot be fixed today, tonight's DOU MPEC will have to be abandoned. The next mid-month MPS batch may also be affected if the machine is not back online by tomorrow night.
  • 14:47. We are now informed that we should have the machine back on-line today.
  • 15:08. We have just heard that cbatmpc is back on-line. Assuming no problems with the upgrade, DOU MPECs and mid-month MPS batches should be issued as normal.

• MPCORB Mirror

  2004 Oct. 8: 11:00. A user remarked, not to the MPC but on a mailing list, that the MPCORB mirror site in the Czech Republic had not been updated since Sept. 8. An attempt to run the update script manually resulted in an odd message. Consultation with CF followed. It turned out that when one of the CF boxes was upgraded on Sept. 8, the version of SSH2 was also upgraded. Unfortunately for anyone trying to do any real work on the system, the command-line flags for the new version of SSH2 were incompatible with the command-line flags on the original version! Yet the authors of the new incompatible version retained the same command name! Fortunately, the fix is simple, and the MPCORB files have been updated.

• Full Disk and AUTOACK

  2004 Oct. 8: 10:00. A user disk filled up overnight. Observers will have received bouncebacks from their submissions, but, as noted in the Guide to Minor Body Astrometry, the observations will still have been received by the automated processing routines.

  An unrelated problem caused AUTOACK to stop processing at around the same time the disk filled up. A fix has been made to a library routine to try and prevent this particular problem happening again.

• Sending of Designations

  2004 Oct. 1: 13:10. We are still having problems sending out designation batches to observers in a consistent manner. This is a result of the CF's policy on blocking direct SMTP access to observatory machines. Some of our machines are an exclusion list to the above policy. We want the exclusion list extended to all our machines, the CF wants it emptied. One staff member's workstation is not on the exclusion list and consequently many designation batches have not made it out from his machine. In the coming days, we will be moving over from a per-user scheme for handling designations to a system-wide scheme. This should alleviate the problem.

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