"The SDSS and e-science archiving at the University of Chicago Library"

The SDSS and e-science archiving at the University of Chicago Library

Barbara Kern, University of Chicago
Dean Armstrong, University of Chicago
Charles Blair, University of Chicago
David Farley, University of Chicago
Kathleen Feeney, University of Chicago
Eileen Ielmini, University of Chicago
Elisabeth Long, University of Chicago
Daniel Meyer, University of Chicago
Peggy Wilkins, University of Chicago



The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is a co-operative scientific project involving over 25 institutions worldwide and managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium (ARC) to map one- quarter of the entire sky in detail, determining the positions and absolute brightness of hundreds of millions of celestial objects. The project was completed in October 2008 and produced over 100 terabytes of data comprised of object catalogs, images, and spectra. While the project remained active, SDSS data was housed at Fermilab. As the project neared completion the SDSS project director (and University of Chicago faculty member) Richard Kron considered options for long term storage and preservation of the data turning to the University of Chicago Library for assistance. In 2007-2008 the University of Chicago Library undertook a pilot project to investigate the feasibility of long term storage and archiving of the project data and providing ongoing access by scientists and educators to the data through the SkyServer user interface. In late 2008 the University of Chicago Library entered into a formal agreement with ARC agreeing to assume responsibility for:

• Archiving of the survey data (long-term scientific data archiving)

• Serving up survey data to the public

• Managing the HelpDesk

• Preserving the SDSS Administrative Record

This paper outlines the various aspects of the project as well as implementation.

Ubuntu Linux

This post is brought to you by the fact that I've been running a LiveCD version of the latest version of Ubuntu Linux on my home computer for the past week since my hard drive failed (which was running Windows XP). I did it because I wanted to be back up and running quickly, without having to replace the hard drive and reinstall Windows. A simple reboot with Ubuntu in the CD drive and I was back up and running. Most reading material is web based, and I use the built-in remote desktop application to access email on my work PC, so the only thing I've really lost is gaming, which I haven't had the time to do lately anyways. And besides, I have access to Desktop Tower Defense, so what gaming have I lost really?

And you know what? Ubuntu works. It works well. So much so that after putting a new hard drive in my home PC, I'm installing Ubuntu on it. I suppose I will set up a dual-boot system, or experiment with virtualization or a WINE Windows emulation system, but for the moment I am happy and established and most importantly, up and running, with a free OS that comes off of a CD.

My background with free OSes started a while ago, when I was a student employee at the Library. A fellow student employee who was overqualified for the job installed NetBSD on our then kick-ass Pentium 60 machine in the student/storeroom down in the subbasement of the Library. It offered two X window managers: gwm or twm; both were not ready for primetime. Things have come a long way since then (circa, uh, don't judge me on this, 1995).

I've been running Ubuntu as a server for testing purposes at work for over a year; the rough edges back then have been smoothed out (for instance, multi-CPU systems required a little extra to install, as well as setting screen resolution correctly); these things seem to have been correctly thought about in the latest version (7.10). At work I could access Windows file shares via Samba; I could offer up whatever I needed to via apache (http). But since I am a Windows System Administrator, the work portion of what I do was offered up via Windows 2003 Server and IIS 6. I have nothing really against Windows 2003--it's a fine OS, but IIS was up until 6.0 the crappiest web server around. It's a lot better now, but Apache works just as well, and I'm happy running both, although for me Apache is a test environment while work items run in IIS (because the vendor made it that way).

What really got me was the situation I was in: I had a bad hard drive, and I needed access to the web and my machine at work. The easiest solution was a CD with Ubuntu on it.

I think that Linux has arrived at the casual desktop, and it really works, and most hardware now works with it. I hope it's moved out of the enthusiast market and into the real world, where people don't necessary have the technical skills to replace the kernel or compile a program. I hope that people get fed up with infected and trojaned machines, and the monoculture of Windows gets diluted a bit with a more dynamic and robust computing environment. That's not to say I'm against Windows--after all, it gives me a paying job; but I like that I can recover from a hard drive failure with one CD and one reboot.