FACES News

Last weekend, a new version of FACES was released on the live server. This was a GUI (Graphical User Interface) release.  That means that the layout of FACES has changed dramatically. The aim of this release was to make the navigation within and also the work with FACES more user friendly. Further on, the layout was adapted to the layout of other eSciDoc solutions like PubMan. Additionally, some minor bugs have been fixed in this release, too.

Album List

One major change is that there is now only one album list instead of two (published albums and private albums). This list displays all albums accessible to the user: all albums created by the individual user (identified via the user account) irrespective of their state (private, published, or withdrawn) and all albums published by FACES users. Further on, the album list can be filtered for following criteria: all albums, all public albums, my albums, my public albums, my private albums, and my withdrawn albums. Therfore the user can decide by himself, which albums shall be displayed in the list.

If the user is not logged in, this list contains only all published albums.

Please feel free to give us feedback about the new look of FACES via the comments link below this blog entry.

Due to a technical release, which is currently scheduled for the upcoming Friday, February 12th 2010 we have to shut down the FACES server from Friday early morning probably until Monday, February 15th 2010 in the late evening. That long downtime is required because the release contains far-reaching technical changes. The new release will not bring much changes for the usage of FACES, but a lot of technical issues in the background have been modified and you will see a new, user-friendlier design .

Thanks for your understanding!

Due to maintenance issues (more) Faces will be down on Friday, 11th of December.

We apologize for any inconveniences.

Yesterday evening, we released a new Faces Version (3.2) on the live server. For the users there will be hardly any changes visible, but in some points the layout has changed a bit. Further on, several minor bugs are fixed now.
The really new functionality is the link in the meta menu “Download Collection”, where you can download all pictures of FACES in one step. But please be aware that the download can take up to 20 minutes, the file is about 3,5 GB big. This link is only a workaround as at the moment it is not possible to download more than 800 pictures in a single step. But we are already working on that problem and hope to fix it with one of the next releases.

The concept behind this release was to generalize the FACES software so that it can be reused to manage all sort of pictures together with their metadata. This generalization works, so that now other organizations can use the software as well.

We have to do some maintenance issues with Faces during this night (14.10.-15.10.09). Therefore it could happen that from today 18:00 till tomorrow morning 10:00 some pictures within FACES will not be available for a short time. We apologize for any inconveniences.

Due to a case of emergency at our hosting partner GWGD in Goettingen, we have to shutdown all servers which are hosted at this location.
Unfortunately FACES is one of these solutions.
The GWGD is trying to restart the servers at approximately 16:00 today.

Sorry for any inconveniences.

This week on Thursdays, 13.08.09, a new version of the eSciDoc software used for Faces will be released on the Faces server. Therfore we have to shut down the server for one whole day (starting at 09:00 on Thursday morning till 09:00 on Friday morning).

The new software will not bring any changes for the usage of Faces, only some technics in the background will change.

We apologize for any inconveniences!

On Tuesday, 21st of July 2009 around 12:00 an error in the so called “Fabric” at the hosting-site of our hosting-partner GWDG occurred. The “Fabric” is the part of the SAN (Storage Area Network) that connect the SAN with the actual servers.

When we decided for the hardware to be acquired for the production environment of FACES we deliberately chose the SAN for storage, because a SAN is one of the most secure ways to strore data, because it’s eliminating most single points of failure. Due to this error one of the two connections to the SAN was lost, but as there was another one still working, everything was still fine – that’s what this redundant connection is meant for anyway. Approx. 40 min later, write-errors occurred on the remaining path and the OS switched the whole file system to read-only. The particular reason for the failure of both paths is currently investigated at GWDG together with the vendor of the SAN (FalconStor).

We set the FACES online again on Thursday, 23rd of July 2009. But due to maintenance work at the hosting-site of GWDG, the connection to the SAN was lost again around Friday, 24th July 2009, 11:00 am. Since the recovery of the system takes some time and was also delayed by the weekend, the system was ready again on Monday, 28th of July 2009.

We once again apologize for any inconveniences.
As you see, the problem is already investigated to make sure that it won’t come up again.

The digital version of the FACES flyer (stand April 08) is available in eDoc (see eSciDoc FACES).

If you need printed versions of this flyer, please contact the Faces Support Team (faces-support(at)gwdg.de).

Finally, the storage problems have been solved, FACES is available again.

Sorry again for any inconveniences!