I'm having an odd problem with Taverna 1.7.2 on Mac OS X 10.5. (The workflow 
uses JDBC, so Taverna 2 is not an option.)

I am trying to run a workflow multiple times to process different batches of 
data (a total of about 1000 runs of the workflow). To automate the process, I 
wrote a simple perl script that runs through the various parameters for the 
workflow, puts the parameters into files and calls the "no GUI" shell script to 
run the workflow with the inputs taken from the files. (In passing, it would be 
nice to be able to pass workflow inputs as shell arguments when they're simple 
things like one number.)

BTW, I originally tried doing this all in Taverna by having a single workflow 
that invoked an embedded workflow repeatedly but that ran slower and slower and 
slower until it just stopped after a few hundred iterations. I suspect that 
some part of the workflow is creating objects that aren't getting freed and so 
Taverna is running out of memory, but I didn't investigate in detail. Hence the 
new approach of running the workflow as a fresh instance of Taverna for each 
set of parameters. (Actually, it's a bit more complicated, but that's the basic 
idea.) 

The problem I've run into is that after a few dozen executions of Taverna, the 
workflow starts to fail with an odd message: 

Shared archive: sharing disabled for server vm
There is a problem connecting to the 
url:http://www.mygrid.org.uk/taverna/updates/1.7.2/taverna-1.7.2-profiles.xml
There is a problem connecting to the 
url:http://bioinf.ncl.ac.uk/mirror/taverna/updates/1.7.2/taverna-1.7.2-profiles.xml
There is a problem connecting to the 
url:http://mirror.omii.ac.uk/taverna/updates/1.7.2/taverna-1.7.2-profiles.xml
Unable to connect to any of the mirror sites for to check for updated profiles.
THIS STRONGLY INDICATES YOU HAVE NO NETWORK ACCESS.
(Followed by errors accessing the various web services and the workflow 
failing.)

The first time this happened, I figured that perhaps the server had fallen off 
the network momentarily, and restarted the perl script, which worked. However, 
it's happening repeatedly and as I can ssh into the server to restart the run, 
it seems that the server does have network access; it's just Taverna that is 
having trouble for some reason. Indeed, I can be logged into the server 
watching the run and get that message. Restarting the perl script usually gets 
things working again, at least for another few dozen runs. 

Since restarting the run seemed to work, I modified the perl script to check if 
the workflow had finished by checking for the output file, and if not, to wait 
5 minutes and rerun the workflow. Interestingly, that does not work--the 
attempt to rerun the workflow fails with the same message. But if I kill the 
perl script and restart it, the next run of the same data almost always does 
work. I'm not sure what the difference is, but apparently there is one. 

Since my attempts to work around the apparent network problem has been 
unsuccessful, I'm wondering if I can solve them. Any ideas about why Taverna 
might suddenly not be able to access the network? Or other ideas for a 
different work around? Or even solutions to getting it all to work in Taverna? 


Kevin Crowston
Syracuse University                                     Phone:  +1 (315) 
464-0272
School of Information Studies                   Fax:    +1 (866) 265-7407
348 Hinds Hall                                          Web:    
http://crowston.syr.edu/
Syracuse, NY   13244-4100   USA                


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