Recently, there has been more cases of the input queue getting stuck on some image that cannot be properly processed.
Unfortunately, these have occurred because:
- we had the AAVSOnet processing pipeline turned off for nearly a month, while we worked through legacy issues related to the computer break-in. Once restarted, there were over a thousand images waiting to be processed, so the likelihood of a bad image increased.
- Geir was on vacation for several weeks (common for Europeans in the summer!)
- we had a long holiday weekend in the U.S., with the critical staff out of contact
- the weekend was exactly when people wanted to use VPHOT to do their analysis
Our apologies for this. We had a meeting a couple of months ago when the last freeze occurred, and came up with a possible solution. This seemed to work until the recent issues, and so the reoccurence of the problem came as a surprise to everyone. Obviously, the solution was not correct, and when everyone returns from vacation, we'll sit down and better analyze the problem and its solution.
In the meantime, I've had Doc give me instructions as to how to clear things up if such a freeze happens again when he is out of contact, so I don't think we will have such a frustrating situation again. If you *do* see a stoppage, PLEASE post on this forum - I see all such messages, and we'll get things running again quickly.
Arne