Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Fri, 09/29/2017 - 18:14

Hello All,

VPHOT, as most of you are aware, has recently been having technical issues. For this reason it is being taken down effective immediately (16:10 UTC) in order to update the server and provide much needed maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience and hope to have the system usable again in a few hours. Thank you for your patience.

Bert Pablo

Staff Astronomer

AAVSO

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Maintenance Complete

Hey All,

VPhot maintenance has finished and everything appears to be running smoothly. Thank you for your patience. 

 

Thanks,

Bert Pablo

Staff Astronomer

AAVSO

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Upload Issues

Hello Bert

I am glad the maintainance was finished and things are running smoothly.  Unfortunately, this did not fix the issue of uploading multiple images from my backyard observatory.  These are stored in dropbox.  I can select and upload a single image, but am not able to select multiple images.  This problem has persisted for about a month or more.  Hope this helps you figure out how to fix this.  I have no issue with my images from TMO61 going to VPhot directly.  Interested to see if the latest maintainance fixed this multiple upload issue for other members.

 

Clear Skies

Gary

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Active X

Gary

I solved my multiple selection upload problem by enabling ACTIVE X on my browser. Google enable Active X for your browser and try again.

Best!

Pablo

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Thanks for the tip

Hello Pablotwa and all

Thanks for the tip about Active X.  I did have some problems with Google accepting it.  So I downloaded an updated IE and now the multiple selection issue is solved.  Others may be able to slog thru the activation of ACTIVE X on their browser.  I can now upload a nights observations, limited only by the speed, or lack there of my internet connection.  BTW:  getting 80-95 KB/Sec on DSL up at my remote observatory, so it takes about 20 seconds for a 2MB image (8300 binned 3x3).

Thanks to all who worked on this;  George, Ken, Pablo, Bert, and anyone I have left out.  Hope everyone else that posted with issues is having clear sailing also.

 

Gary

Affiliation
Svensk Amator Astronomisk Forening, variabelsektionen (Sweden) (SAAF)
I'm happy. I think the upload

I'm happy. I think the upload have gone a lot faster since a couple of days ago.

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
My Difficulties with VPHOT Lately

As some of you know, I was having difficulties with VPHOT. George Silvis and Bert Pablo worked on it. Since their work, I have uploaded maybe 3000 4MB images with only one failure, and that was caused by operator (me) error. {As the upload was ongoing, I found an image that failed WCS because it had no stars on it. So I deleted that image. And when the upload got to it, it FAILED.}

George Silvis and Bert Pablo have done all of us a huge favor!!!

P L E A S E  tell them T H A N K  Y O U  from ALL OF US!

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
VPhot difficulties

Thank you, Lew, for your vote of confidence. And, yes, Bert and I are working on improving VPhot in the future.

But the success of your uploads in the past couple weeks I think are mostly due to Pablo Lewin's identifying the problem as related to needing to activate activeX on your browser.

So we'll keep working on things at HQ, but trust in these forums: post your problems and everyone contribute as best they can.

George

 

Affiliation
Magyar Csillagaszati Egyesulet, Valtozocsillag Szakcsoport (Hungary) (MCSE)
Out of memory right now

VPhot server should be rebooted. It worked 10 hours ago, but now it gives out of memory when attempting to open any image:

Server Error in '/app' Application.

Exception of type 'System.OutOfMemoryException' was thrown.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. 

Exception Details: System.OutOfMemoryException: Exception of type 'System.OutOfMemoryException' was thrown.

Source Error: 
 

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

Stack Trace: 
 

[OutOfMemoryException: Exception of type 'System.OutOfMemoryException' was thrown.]
BL.FITSWrapper.Open(String Filepath, Int32 imageID) +1306
Restricted_Files5.AnalyseImage(String path, Int32 indexInList, Boolean startTS, String telname, Int32 imageID) +151
Restricted_Files5.gvFiles_RowCommand(Object sender, GridViewCommandEventArgs e) +339
System.Web.UI.WebControls.GridView.OnRowCommand(GridViewCommandEventArgs e) +111
System.Web.UI.WebControls.GridView.HandleEvent(EventArgs e, Boolean causesValidation, String validationGroup) +73
System.Web.UI.WebControls.GridView.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) +201
System.Web.UI.WebControls.GridView.System.Web.UI.IPostBackEventHandler.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) +13
System.Web.UI.Page.RaisePostBackEvent(IPostBackEventHandler sourceControl, String eventArgument) +13
System.Web.UI.Page.RaisePostBackEvent(NameValueCollection postData) +9700502
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +1724

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Please send messages to HQ

Hello Csaba,

When you have issues like this please send messages to aavso@aavso.org. Posting to a thread in a forum like this may not be seen in a timely manner and we cannot correct a problem we do not know about. That being said, I was able to log on and look at images in VPhot just now without an issue, so I don't know that a reboot is necessary. If you are still having difficulties, please send further responses on this issue to email address listed above, or contact me personally.

 

Thanks,

Bert Pablo

Staff Astronomer, AAVSO

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
DSLR images are big!

DSLR images like those from a Canon 1000D (2906x2602) are 20Mbytes. These are going to stress the memory resources of VPhot. We will upgrade the VPhot server at some point and dodge this problem.

In the mean time there are ways to mitigate the strain: Use de-bayer algorithms that reduce the image size to 25% of the original image size. I know that you can do that with Maxim. And that AIP doesnot. It would be useful for someone investigate this and post recommendations.

Volunteers?

George