[cfarm-users] cfarm104 maintenance planning

[Paul H. Hargrove]

Zach,

I want to take a moment to say what I hope everyone on this list is
thinking:

THANK YOU for your continued efforts.

-Paul

On Mon, Apr 13, 2026 at 4:26 PM Zach van Rijn via cfarm-users <
cfarm-users at lists.tetaneutral.net> wrote:

> On Sat, 2026-04-11 at 14:24 -0500, Zach van Rijn via cfarm-users
> wrote:
> > On Fri, 2026-04-10 at 12:13 -0500, Zach van Rijn via cfarm-
> > users
> > wrote:
> > > ...
> > >
> > > Progress bar is around 90% but has been this way for 30
> > > minutes.
> >
> > Obviously it's still offline; I will check on it Monday and
> > then try to fix it or do a full OS reinstall. In that case, I
> > will do my best to retrieve the user data from it before doing
> > so.
> >
> > Updates were an issue the last time: see my email from
> > January.
>
> Current status:
>
> * cfarm104 was in "Recovery Mode Due to Failed Update" when I
> arrived Monday morning to inspect the machine
>
> * I powered it down and took it home to investigate
>
> * Booting and waiting an hour resulted in updates "succeeding"
>
> * The machine boots and seems to work mostly as expected
>
> * There's approximately 50GB free on the internal disk now
>
> * The external disk is fine, no issues there
>
> * The script that manages new accounts is erroring on new users,
> basically claiming that new usernames don't exist on the machine
> even though a home directory is present
>
> * I will install it in the data center again tomorrow (Tuesday)
>
> I suspect macOS is not designed to have as many users as we do.
>
> I will attempt to troubleshoot what's happening with recent
> users and what isn't working correctly during the updates,
> however until then please note that some new accounts may have
> difficulty accessing the secondary storage volume or experience
> other strange permissions errors.
>
> A fresh installation may or may not fix the issue; this will
> only be done if existing accounts experience major problems.
>
> You can expect the machine to be online within 24 hours or an
> email with additional details for why it is not.
>
> After that, please report any problems to me directly.
>
>
> Zach
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> cfarm-users mailing list
> cfarm-users at lists.tetaneutral.net
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>


-- 
Paul H. Hargrove <PHHargrove at lbl.gov>
Pronouns: he, him, his
Computer Languages & Systems Software (CLaSS) Group
Computer Science Department
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
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