My work units all disappeared at some point yesterday, and I haven't received any news ones. I've reset the project and that didn't help. What's going on?

There has been a problem at source and work units have been hard to get. However, it looks like the situation is gradually getting resolved as I have just received another supply of work units.

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Since my computers are currently running 24/7 anyway, I've increased the default running time to 24 hours.
I think, this is the best way to deal with the lack of available WUs.

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Just be aware that when you change the target runtime like that, that it effects all of the tasks that you have on-board at the time you update to the project and your machine gets that setting. So you want to be sure you don't have a big cache full of tasks, otherwise you will end up with too much work to finish before the deadlines. It just depends how frequently you are at the machine to be able to switch things back, and how much you value not babysitting the machine as compared to having some idle CPU time.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

Just be aware that when you change the target runtime like that, that it effects all of the tasks that you have on-board at the time you update to the project and your machine gets that setting. So you want to be sure you don't have a big cache full of tasks, otherwise you will end up with too much work to finish before the deadlines...

What are the chances of that at the moment?! Tending rapidly to zero right now.

I just didn't want others to read that post later and not be aware of how it works.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

Failed humour on my part. Sorry.

I'm running another project as back-up but I much prefer Rosetta. It looks like there are many tasks but the make_work server is the problem. Someone give it a kick. Quick.

Well actually ModSense's advice wasn't even usesless at this point. On one of my computers I got 80 (eighty!!!!) new WUs last night. I didn't expect this at all.

Since the BOINC manager hadn't realized, that I changed from 6 to 24 hours running time, I now got a 10 days cache... Taking into consideration, that some of the ProteinInterfaceDesign-tasks will be long running models, I already might have a problem...

I will keep an eye on this and in the worst case I will revert to 12 or 6 hours running time.

With not many WUs available, I felt rather save, increasing the cache size and default running time at the same time.
I know this is not a good idea, if there's enough work available and I usually set the cache size to 0 and let it empty the cache before increasing the running time. And of course the BOINC manager needs to realize the change in the running time, before increasing the cache again.

My other two computers do hardly get enough work, to keep all cores busy...

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Well actually ModSense's advice wasn't even usesless at this point.

TRY not to sound so surprised! :)

Yes, the good news is you can just watch how it is doing for a few days here and if needed, lower the runtime, update to the project to get the change of preference, and then remaining will run with the lower preference.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

I have received no new work units in the past 36 hours or so. I have rebooted my machine, and I even shut it down last night. Still no work units, even though the "Server Status" page indicates that all servers are up and running. So ,,, what's wrong?

deesy

TRY not to sound so surprised! :)

This was primarily directed to HW&JC.

As I said, I WAS totally suprised to get 80 WUs on that computer. The chances of this happening are probably as low as winning the once in a century jackpot in a lottery. ;)

Actually, I'm just sitting here, trying to figure out, if should fill in a lottery-ticket. This week's Jackpot is as high as 11,000,000 Euro. I just don't know whether I have a run of luck, or whether I just wasted my lifetime's luck on getting Rosetta WUs. ;)

cu

Joe

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I have received no new work units in the past 36 hours or so. I have rebooted my machine, and I even shut it down last night. Still no work units, even though the "Server Status" page indicates that all servers are up and running. So ,,, what's wrong?

deesy

There's nothing wrong and absolutely nothing you could do. Rosetta just generates only a limited number of WUs right now.

You could try one of these old pagan sacrificial offerings, I've read about in one of the other posts... ;)

cu Joe

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Do I understand this correctly? The problems are so big that only grid computing can solve them, but they are not big enough to keep the grid busy?

deesy

Do I understand this correctly? The problems are so big that only grid computing can solve them, but they are not big enough to keep the grid busy?

deesy

No, there is a problem with the servers. Look on the server status page and you will see they have taken nearly all of them off line while they make a proper fix.

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Do I understand this correctly? The problems are so big that only grid computing can solve them, but they are not big enough to keep the grid busy?

deesy

Nope. More like "the problems are so big that only grid computing can solve them, but the servers are put under pressure 24 hours a day every day of the year so something is bound to breakdown every now and then".

There are years of work still to do on this project, we just have to wait until the current difficulties are resolved.

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As I pointed out earlier, I checked the "Server Status" page, and it indicates that all servers are running. Have you checked that page?

If the servers are running, what next?

deesy

As I pointed out earlier, I checked the "Server Status" page, and it indicates that all servers are running. Have you checked that page?

If the servers are running, what next?

deesy

The servers are going up and down. There is obviously a problem that the team are trying to fix. Problems like this occur once every six to twelve months but are just temporary glitches that last a few days or a couple of weeks at most.

If you are worried about your computer sitting idle, feel free to crunch some work units for another project for a while.

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If the servers are running, what next?

...wait patiently.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

You know I think that we all understand that the servers at Rosetta@home have been having some issues the past few days but I think we all need to stop for a moment and reflect on what a "soft" outage this has been.

There have been times these past few days when I have not been able to keep all my cores "well fed" but you know I have never been flat out of work either.

I am not exactly sure what the nature of the problems are (I am curious) but as a system's guy for the last thirty years I am amazed with how the staff has minimized the issues - they have been able to keep a fair amount of support going throughout the week when I am sure it would have been much easier to shut down to a cold-iron state and work the issues "off line"

I for one am impressed and don't mind saying so.

Yes, I agree with Chris, it is absolutely amazing how smoothly rosetta runs considering the volume of users and work units. It seems that on the rosetta home page, the "Server status" box almost always says "scheduler running," but when the "Estimated TeraFlops" figure dips significantly from its usual 100 or so, that indicates that the servers aren't running smoothly.

Time to crunch some malaria control wu's!