From nch@roe.ac.uk Fri Mar 5 16:59:04 2004 Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 12:10:22 +0000 (GMT) From: Nigel Hambly To: WFCAM Science Archive Team -- Eckhard Sutorius , Harvey MacGillivray , Ian Bond , Mike Read , Nigel Hambly , Bob Mann Cc: CCs for WSA weekly meeting minutes distribution -- Clive Davenhall , Andrew Lawrence , Andy Adamson , Peter Shillan , John Taylor , Jim Emerson , Martin Hill , Mike Irwin , Peredur Williams Subject: WFAU WSA weekly meeting: 5th March 2004 Minutes of WFCAM Science Archive meeting: 5th March 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ Present: MAR, HMG, RGM, GPS, MCH, JMS, NCH, ETWS, PMW, IAB, JDT Apologies: JPE, AL, DONM: 10am, Friday 12th March 2004, plate library. Actions discharged: ------------------- ACTION: IAB & NCH to meet Tues pm for an integration session. Discharged. ACTION: NCH to email NAW and MCH the results of the SSA-DR1 join. Discharged. ACTION: PMW to communicate the 0.5 rack/year power dissipation requirement to RP. Discharged - see Hardware. Actions partly discharged but continuing: ----------------------------------------- ACTION: ALL to review risk register and think of any new internal or external risks that should be documented in the risk register. Defered until top level plan is explicitly defined. PMW tabled the VISTA risk register as an example. ACTION: JPE to design and set up centralised VDFS web pages. Progressing. (there is now a link to it from our WSA Twiki). - continuing; thanks for progressing these. Actions carried forward from 27/02/04 meeting: ----------------------------------------------- None. Specific points and new actions: -------------------------------- Project management: NCH noted that the VDFS Management Team meeting (VDMT) takes place this afternoon at 1:30pm. No issues arose in this meeting for discussion at VDMT; NCH noted the good progress over February (lots of 100%s). NCH noted that WJS had circulated a new draft of the VDFS UK User Requirements Document, and suggested that we circulate an annotate one copy over the next week; NCH will collate and send comments back to WJS. Comments and issues arising from CASU fortnightly minutes: NCH noted that JAC are distributing a draft WFCAM User Guide for comments; the meeting expressed an interest in seeing this document. ACTION: NCH to email Paul Hirst and ask to see a copy of the WFCAM UG. Networking: ETWS noted further record breaking transfer from CASU (14 Mbyte/s); but noted that this was for 1 Gbyte-sized files. NCH has had email exchanges with Jim Gray, Alex Szalay and Jonathan (Irwin) in relation to concerns over the integrity of the SDSS DR1 data on the SneakerNet box. We have recopied the master database files (.MDFs) for the databases and substituted them for our own copies of the DR1; running MS SQL Server "dbcc checkdb" shows no problems with the DR1 database, and yet there are still unexplained errors in the Windows Application event logs on ahmose; there are similar errors logged on the SneakerNet box. Presently no-one understands what's going on, but the bottom line is that the copies of DR1 seem to be fine and producing sensible results (eg. in conjunction with the SSA), so NCH suggested we not worry about this for the time being. Hardware: NCH reported a fairly unproductive day spent with Eclipse trying to reconfigure the disks on amenhotep in an attempt to completely stabilise the IO subsystem. After many hours of fiddling, it seems that server amenhotep has several problems (possibly motherboard issues in addition to any firmware and driver problems) so Ian Davidson has removed the complete server/jbod plus 32 disks back to their labs so that the can, as a top priority over the next week, attempt to fathom out exactly what the problems are. In the meantime, server ahmose seems to be totally happy (NCH reminded everyone that it's disks are currently running at U160 speed), and the team felt that there was no more reason for delaying release of the full-blown SSA (see later). HMG & PMW reported that estimates for power consumption/dissipation in C1 over the medium term have been sent to RPL, and that RPL had thanked him for these. HMG noted that it was his understanding that a further aircon unit was to be installed in C1 to introduce spare capacity. Software: IAB reported: "I've firmed the definitions for the --/Q, --/K, and --/F in the database table schemas. I have designed two classes to deal with schema evolution. A "builder" class encapsulates properties of a particular type of table and a "method" class encapsulates the ways in which the different attributes are calculated. If the schema for a particular table changes, one either modifies the class or adds a new subclass. Similarly with the attribute calculation methods." ETWS and NCH have been working on CU19 and CU20. SSA: NCH reported that the SSA is being joined to 2MASS and USNOB. The team discussed going live with the service now, and a decision was made to simply forge ahead since the server has been stable for over a month now. RGM, NCH and MAR need to finally look over the cookbook and any further indexing issues prior to attaching the new server to the web interface. Miscellaneous: ETWS reported that the Vista web pages seem to be rather out of date (eg. last change June 2002), and JMS pointed out that there are several sets of Vista web pages and that may be part of the problem.