While we are on the subject of hardware failure (such as has hit the DMSP satellite NSIDC and Cryosphere Today use) Climate Audit is down due to a file system or HD error. It happens. I’m on my way to the Colo (90 miles away) to effect a repair. Comments may be delayed for a few hours if other moderators aren’t online.
UPDATE: 5:30PM
The Climate Audit server is in fact RAIDed, I built it that way for just such an emergency, but some corrupted data was written before the one disk of the array failed. Since I could not stay at the CoLo all day, I’ve brought the CA server to my office for repairs. Hopefully the RAID rebuild goes smoothly (it takes several hours) and I’ll be able to repair the problem areas. Hard drives were both new, RAID quality units, with 3 year warranty. One failed 1.5 years into the warranty – that’s Murphy for ya.
Wish me luck, otherwise I have to rebuild from scratch and restore from backups which is also a chore.
Just for those who like to know about hardware, here is what Climate Audit runs on:
3.4 GHz Intel Pentium D CPU
2 GB ECC DDR2 400 RAM
RAID1 Dual Western Digital 250GB SATAII drives with 16MB cache ram
Running Linux with WordPress in LAMP config
1u Intel Server enclosure like this one:
Thanks to those who hit the tip jar.
UPDATE: 8:30PM
One hard drive of the RAID failed. Now before you panic let me say I anticipated this (but like 2 years from now) and this was a RAIDed system with two drives setup to mirror. Normally when one drive fails, I can unplug the other and reboot the system and it will come up and run on the one, then I can install a new second drive and rebuild the RAID, and off we go.
I’ve done that dozens of times in my own systems. It is why I built the CA server the way I did. It is an identical server to 15 others I’m running here.
But for some reason known only to Murphy, this time when the system failed sometime last night, it appears it wrote corrupted data to the “good” drive before the full hardware failure. So at the moment the system is unbootable.
The good news is that most everything should be recoverable, but it takes time. If I can’t repair the boot sector on the good drive, then we have to rebuild two new drives from scratch, mount the one good drive, and pull files over. Though I don’t know just yet how much corruption there is and how much of it can be fixed.
The annoying thing is that these mirrored Western Digital 250GB drives had only 1.5 years on them, and less that 10% full. They were brand new when I purchased and installed them specifically for CA. They have a 3 year warranty. They’ve been in a temperature controlled and dust controlled environment at the CoLo. For one to totally fail now is quite the surprise. I wasn’t all that worried about regular backups due to the RAID mirroring, now the RAID fails with the drive.
I was able to rebuild the RAID, but it appears that the boot sector is corrupted. This will require a mount from a CDROM boot and fix the file system and make copies that way.
Best laid plans….
I anticipate it will be Monday evening before CA is back up and running.
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Mark
Read Booker & North’s book “Scared to Death”. I’m not sure about his take on Darwinism which I think is only meant to be a bit provocative(!) but there are cogent arguments for the other things you mention.
The biggest survey ever carried out on the second-hand smoke scam was commissioned by the American Cancer Society which “forgot” to publish the results when it came up with the “wrong” answer.
Ceolfrith (10:06:17) :
The UK Telegraph says so 😉
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/4742293/Climate-change-rhetoric-spirals-out-of-control.html
You couldn’t make it up if you tried !!! Brilliant incompetence:
From the referenced article by a famed climate columnist
This scientific howler provoked much amusement and derision on expert US blogs, such as Anthony Watts’s Watts Up With That – since “negative feedback” would lower temperatures rather than raise them. The BBC soon pulled its video.
NEGATIVE FEEDBACK LOWERS TEMPERATURE!!!! (it stabilises temperature!)
How long before this howler gets corrected/pulled
Mike
The co-location center is run by Rippleweb.com somewhere near Sacramento, so Anthony has to drive 90 miles in order to boot the server in single user mode and use fsck
I wonder if he’s driving 90 miles in his electric car? Can it reach there on one charge?
Mark (13:57:12):-
“His scientific views have resulted in the initiation of the “Christopher Booker Prize 2009″ [6] offered for producing clap-trap about climate change.”
True, but since that was instituted by George Monbiot who is one the most colossally stupid people ever to write on the subject of climate change, that is really a plus point. The Grauniad has many odd people writing for it; Monbiot is definitely amongst their number.
thefordprefect
Negative feedback only stabilises according to a classification which seems to be unique to Earth Sciences.
According to engineering and mathematics (disciplines that have a record of making things that work in practice), feedback can be stable or unstable, whether positive or negative.
Let’s try not to be too harsh on the journalists for being confused by the terminology.
John A
See my comment at 12:13:00. Its cheap and it works.
“Paul Penrose (12:09:28) : Thanks for dropping everything and running out to repair it Anthony. Your efforts are very much appreciated.”
I second that. Thanks Anthony!
Hi.
Bad news about the Server! Hope it gets sorted fine and no data loss!
I have a question. Would it be possible to create regular articles which could be sent to leading newspapers world wide or perhaps to members of WUWT in different countries who can forward these to the major newspapers of their countries. I ask this because that is what our nemesis is doing. The people at IPCC are sending their reports to every newspaper in the world! and it gets syndicated and millions of people get to be brainwashed. It’s cooling now and there is still propaganda coming out. And I approach people and tell them it’s all false, it’s propaganda, and people think I’m loopy.
We need to get our voice out and correct this false ideology that we are causing the planets downfall. It’s in so pervasive in popular culture that all the brain-dead Main Stream Media Info feeders are seriously scared about getting toasted the day after tomorrow.
I have been writing articles for a few of the major newspapers in South Africa referencing stuff I see on this site, but my writing is appalling and I probably do more damage than good.
I would appreciate if we could perhaps have a fortnightly or monthly article with evidence and important events that I could forward to all the editors of the major newspapers in South Africa. They are all keen to put articles in, and as far as I can see are open to debate regarding AGW.
I would like to get something like this going and I’m sure other Climate Change Activists would be happy to forward these articles to relevant media outlets in their area.
many thanks for this wonderful resource.
Maybe the server was too close to a barbeque grill.
90 miles sounds like maybe Sacramento? If you could benefit from some added hands or eyes on the problem, let me know. Done more ‘dead of night colo hardware reconstructions’ than I care to think about. Generally good with everything from PCs to Suns to mainframes…
Built up a 16 processor Sun server one weekend. They ‘client’ asked me to ‘bring up his server’ (insert boot CD, answer config script think I) but neglected to tell me it was a bunch of boxes of ‘repair parts’. He had discovered he could buy parts cheaper than a whole new machine. There were a few ‘release level’ issues but I did manage to make a 12 processor box go… Things you run into as a ‘consultant’…
Mark (13:57:12) : Via his long-running column in the UK’s Sunday Telegraph, Booker has claimed that man-made global warming was “disproved” in 2008[1],
I’m OK with that. A little late to the party, but substantially right.
that white asbestos is “chemically identical to talcum powder” and poses a “non-existent risk” to human health[2],
What? I think… from the wiki’s on talc and asbestos we get:
white asbestos is: Mg3[Si2O5](OH)4
talc is: Mg3Si4O10(OH)2
Mighty darned similar… A bet less Mg per silicate and a bit fewer OH, but close enough to be at least thought of as first cousins… (Or more Si2O5 and less OH per Mg)
Further down under Talc safety we get:
Several studies have established preliminary links between talc and pulmonary issues,[4] lung cancer,[5][6] skin cancer and ovarian cancer.[7] This is a major concern considering talc’s widespread commercial and household use. In 1993, a US National Toxicology Program report found that cosmetic grade talc caused tumours in animals (animal testing), even though it contained no asbestos-like fibres.[5] Scientists have been aware of the toxicity of talc since the late 1960s, and in 1971 researchers found particles of talc embedded in 75 percent of the ovarian tumors studied.[8] However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers non-asbestiform talc, that is, talc which does not contain potentially carcinogenic asbestiform amphibole fibers, to be generally recognized as safe (GRAS) for use in cosmetics. [9]
So it looks like talc and asbestos are similar…
Yeah, so maybe he messed up a ‘talc and asbestos have similar risks’ into ‘asbestos is safe’ when he ought to have gotten ‘talc is not safe’. But with the FDA giving an OK I have to say he has ‘peer review’ on his side 😉
that “scientific evidence to support [the] belief that inhaling other people’s smoke causes cancer simply does not exist”[3]
Well, last time I looked they didn’t. Now I’m a rabid anti-tobacco person (I swell up, turn red, and ‘have issues’ if I don’t clean up after a night of bar hopping) and I’m all for banning the stuff anywhere I might be; but the expectation that 2nd hand smoke causes cancer is more a projection than an established fact. It’s highly confounded by other issues (like shared food, housing, radon, etc…). The possibility exists that cancer has a ‘threshold dose’ and that 2nd hand smoke is below that threshold.
(Heck, there is even some evidence that small amounts of some toxins and carcinogens stimulate more immune response than they cause problems: i.e. they are mildly protective. Now I don’t want folks to know that too much because I like smoke free air, but, well, the 2nd hand smoke issue is more about politics than facts…)
and that there is “no proof that BSE causes CJD in humans”[4].
It is speculated to cause variant CJD, but it’s not exactly like you can go shooting people up with BSE juice to prove it… CJD has at least 2 factors (one is genetic, the other is likely a prion) and maybe 3 (random protein folding error). Good luck sorting out causality in that stew. So ‘proof’? Not much. Strong correlation? Probably. Confounding causes? You bet (at least one genetic fault leading to variant folding of the protein and at least a few cases caused by spontaneous (radiation?) bad folding.) Oh, and animals other than cows may be an issue too… Would I eat a BSE steak? Not on your life. Proof? Too high a standard, but not proven yet; just very very strongly correlated. (Well, ‘yet’ in this sentence is as of 5 years ago when I was on my BSE ‘kick’ and attending presentations about it by then current researchers. Maybe by now they have more than then…)
He has also defended the theory of Intelligent Design, maintaining that Darwinians “rest their case on nothing more than blind faith and unexamined a priori assumptions”.[5]
Darwinians are not the same as Darwin. Oddly, Darwin was a creationist. He felt that evolution was simply a means by which God elaborated His creation. “Darwinians” vs “Intelligent Design” is, in fact, an oxymoron. There is no real conflict between Darwin and his God…
So once you get past the idea that Darwin asserted spontaneous generation of life (when he did not), well, “Darwinians” who assert God does not exists are not basing that hypothesis on Darwin! What they are basing it on is left as an exercise for the student…
So, where does this leave me? Booker seems like a generally smart fellow who has most of his facts straight and is maybe a bit too skeptical of what is ‘established science’ but frankly, his positions are more correct that the opposite of each of the above hypotheses. (AGW is proven, Talc is completely unlike asbestos, CJD comes only from BSE, Darwin proved there is no God and no Creation).
Sounds to me like a bright guy with whom it would be fun to have a long discussion of the world… (Though I would have to tell him to put away the talcum powder and avoid the asbestos underwear …)
His scientific views have resulted in the initiation of the “Christopher Booker Prize 2009″ [6] offered for producing clap-trap about climate change.
“My enemies enemy…” I’d buy him a beer.
So much for Linux Reliability.
Being a Systems Admin myself I sympathize with your ordeal. RAID rebuilds and restore from backup are never fun but sometimes necessary. Try not to stare at the progress bar for too long 🙂
OT
I came across a Bloomberg.com mention of the NSIDC “sensor drift” via drudgereport… sadly, no mention of you or WUWT calling it out first.
Best luck to climateaudit repairs…
So much for Linux Reliability. (What criticism of Linux is not allowed here?)
RAID 1 – a mirror? OK, I’d use RAID 5 and a third disk, but a mirror is usually OK, just the recovery takes longer… and sometimes it isn’t so clear to the OS which disk is the good one until after the OS has duped the bad data onto the good one… but i think you may be discovering that 8-}
You ought to be able to get three disks into the enclosure (you might need to use physically smaller sized disks). Maybe not worth it if this is just a once every 2 years thing…
At times like this I am grateful for knowing nothing about computers. Well, ok, not quite nothing, I know where the on button is and how to use the little rodent thingy (although why it has clicky things on both the left and the right will always be a mystery).
In the early days of my own feeble blog I mentioned that I didn’t know how to create links. A very kind soul, and regular reader and contributor here, went to great trouble to explain it to me. I felt so guilty because he might as well have written it in Swahili for all it meant to me.
Those of you who understand these things should be grateful for the ignorant like me. We provide you with work and give you an admiring audience.
Not that I am glorying in my ignorance. I save that for my comments about “global climate warming change” as it should now be known.
If the colo is in the old Pacific Telephone Revenue Accounting Center on Watt, the problem could be the lawn on the roof leaking again.
With Climate Audit being down Gavin Schmidt will have nothing to read.
I’m getting withdrawal symptoms…
Anthony, “yer a good guy and a bookworm”, as we used to say in high school (“gentleman” and “scholar” were sort of beyond our ken in the 60’s…) maybe it’s time Steve upgraded to running two servers with a roll-over capability. I used to really hate that monopoly which should never be named, but I’ve had good experiences with their server products and they actually have programs (promotions, not digital instruction sets) that will let you lease thousands of dollars worth of software for about $300 per year. You and Steve both are becoming a bit too important for single-server operations…. maybe even single site operations. The hardware you are describing has to be less than a grand, so let’s hit the tip jar, folks!
OT: an AGW leaning survey found 36% meteorologists are against AGW
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uoia-ssa011609.php
todcom,
Who cares? Science isn’t about consensus, even if you agree with it.
Raid 5 if possible, yes.
EM Smith: “Oddly, Darwin was a creationist. He felt that evolution was simply a means by which God elaborated His creation.”
Darwin’s religious views – whatever they were – are irrelevant to the theory of evolution. Science is based on methodological naturalism, and therefore evolutionary theory does not address the existence or otherwise of God or a creator.
“Darwinians” vs “Intelligent Design” is, in fact, an oxymoron.”
“Darwinians”, ‘Darwinism’ and ‘Darwinist’ are often used as code words by creationists and IDers to refer to the theory of evolution. Booker seems to be using the terms in this way.
This wordplay tries to imply that evolution is an ideology, and by extension tries to create a false equivalence between evolutionary theory and intelligent design. No such equivalence exists. Evolution is a theory about how life evolved. Intelligent design is an attempt to establish the existence of a creator.
It’s true that some evolutionists use the theory to promote atheism, but that is not the practice of science and one need not be an atheist to accept evolution. However, one needs to be a believer of some sort to accept intelligent design.
Booker’s questioning of evolution does not necessarily show that his views on other scientific matters are bogus, but it does bring into question the quality of his understanding of science.
In an inspired ten minutes I wrote an absolutely brilliant piece that scientifically completely demolished the whole concept of AGW. Unfortunately it seems to have failed to land at the CA server and I forgot to keep a copy. Can I still have a Nobel prize please?
tonyB