[auton-users] Lab machines available again, sort of.

[Paul Komarek]

Hello everyone,

Some hacking and a bit of good luck have made the lab's computers
available again.  At least for a while.

We currently have no air conditioning.  We won't have air conditioning
for several more weeks.  The room holding our computers is being fed air
from outside to cool it.  If the weather becomes warmer, the lab will
become warmer.

We're not sure how much compute load we can sustain.  But we survived
through the night with all of the lop*, lina, lira and loki all powered
on and 4 cpus busy.  It appears the outside air is currently cold enough
to sustain the lab.

If the lab's ambient temperature sensor reaches 28C, we will send a
warning to everyone that we will shutdown some or all of the lab.  If it
reaches 30C, we will shutdown immediately.  You can see the current
temperature of this sensor at

http://www2.autonlab.org/status/server24.html

(Machine Summary-> Appliance -> Ambient).

We may need to prioritize jobs running in the lab if we do a partial
shut-down.  If you have an important job that you feel must keep
running, please send us a note at admin at autonlab.org.  Alternatively you
can watch the temperature graph linked above and wait to email us until
the temperature becomes critical.

-Paul Komarek