Software Error Causes Loss of 34 Million Research Files at Kyoto University

A new script malfunctioned and deleted 34 million files from the Japanese university's supercomputer, some of which cannot be recovered by backups.

On December 16, Kyoto University began investigating a problem caused by a software update from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). It was discovered that approximately 77TB of files from 14 research groups had been deleted in the previous two days. Although the university has admitted that it will contact those affected, HPE itself has taken full responsibility, and said that the update to the Japanese university's supercomputer system was originally designed to "improve visibility and readability" by deleting log files older than 10 days.

According to the statement issued, the US company admits that there was a "lack of consideration" in the procedure for releasing the new script, and that it was not aware of any potential side effects when it was applied. This caused a script to be overwritten while it was still running, "resulting in undefined variables" that caused the original log files on the supercomputer to be deleted "instead of deleting the[log] file saved in the directory". 

HPE added that measures will be taken to ensure that the problem does not reoccur in the future, including checking for updates before application and retraining the engineers responsible for preventing risks and human errors.

Kyoto University is Japan's second oldest university, founded in 1897. It is one of Japan's leading research-oriented institutions and has produced several Nobel Prize winners.

Microsoft itself also faced a software problem at the beginning of the year, when its Exchange servers stopped working properly when the clock struck midnight on New Year's Eve. The servers were unable to accommodate the year 2022, which led some to call it the Y2K22 bug.