In fact, in some years, stop-start supply problems have continued to the end of January, though given there's 11million in the pre-queue we may be spared this time.
Wish I was kidding, but past experience tells me this is what we have to expect.

I'm here since 2005 and i remember these issues.
Without ANY communication from staff (forum, FB, Twitter, etc), it's the right way to lose volunteers...

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nothing will change

When people come here wanting to help, and find the project unreliable and the community unfriendly, they go elsewhere. After a project loses the goodwill of its volunteers, where does it get the computing resources it needs?

So do like I did, took my computer offline and uninstalled Boinc. Best advice Sid Celery has ever given.

Tasks for computer 4415639
Interesting, you don't seem to have run out of tasks, 14 still in progress, but uninstalled BOINC because servers are not sending new ones?

They were running when I paused the project, removed the project and then uninstalled Boinc. I guess there is a time out before Rosetta realizes there are nothing coming in return and the tasks get listed as failed.

because servers are not sending new ones?

No: because he got an exceptionally rude response to a perfectly reasonable comment :-⁠(

Which is probably why Rosetta is such a small project- that very lack of community.

On WCG, for example, they publish news if they have to update/maintenance servers, so people are "advised" and not waste their time to understand what is going on

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nothing will change

When people come here wanting to help, and find the project unreliable and the community unfriendly, they go elsewhere. After a project loses the goodwill of its volunteers, where does it get the computing resources it needs?

True. This is my experience. The project do not care and the "community" is toxic. Why should I then devote time, hardware and my power bill to the project?

Not that it is that important any more with the results from AlphaFold2.

the "community" is toxic

The ‘welcome’ you received was uncharacteristically hostile. It’s not usually that bad here…

Why should I then devote time, hardware and my power bill to the project?

Because you want to contribute to the science – and as inefficient as Rosetta might be, doing even a tiny thing that might improve human health feels more worthwhile than searching for aliens in random noise, or cracking crypto, or inventing imaginary money, or whatever it is that other distributed computing projects are doing…

Not that it is that important any more with the results from AlphaFold2

Short-term it seems unlikely that the Baker Lab and friends are going to drop Rosetta, having invested so much time and energy into it. But it does feel as though the writing is on the wall…

Not that it is that important any more with the results from AlphaFold2.

Well, no.
AlphaFold2 is great and fantastic, but it does only one thing.
Rosetta is still necessary for all the other things.
The way is still long....

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AlphaFold2 is great and fantastic, but it does only one thing.
Rosetta is still necessary for all the other things.
The way is still long....

Yes.
But at some point Rosetta will have to take AI into account, either by incorporating it into the work they send us or by doing it in-house.
That is OK, but how much warning will we get? I know, we don't need much warning to change BOINC projects. And that is what we will get.

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People deserve a proper break and I'm not inclined to demand they're dragged in to suit, what are essentially, hobbyists.

No need to go in, just do a remote login & restart. If it fixes it, good. If not, then it can wait till they do go in.

If it wasn't for people in these forums, no-one would've thought of this...

But people do and start coming out with stuff about "community" and "Rosetta is us", which I will always find head-shakingly bizarre #Cranks

Which is probably why Rosetta is such a small project - that very lack of community.

Right, it's the "community" that motivates people to join and contribute to projects and hang around.
Not even sure what "community" means in this context. Traffic in forums by a few dozen people?
The kind of community that, when tasks stop coming down in the middle of a Xmas holiday, immediately sees comments about the loss of good will? Some "community".
Is this some kind of joke I'm not getting? Even though I'm laughing anyway?
Astonishing self-obsession and lack of proportionality.

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Sure, people are just donating hardware, time, power bills and more for free

Yes.
Except the 2nd sentence of your 1st post in these forums was about a loss of "good will" which you'd never established in the first place.
And a few messages later, in response to entirely plan, honest and accurate replies, if disappointing, you were trying to claim it as a loss of community.
At which point you immediately detach and send indignant PMs around. So much for it being about community and not entirely about you.
Which you confirm by sending huffy forum posts even after you detached. Using the word "we" of all things.

Really, you're not making yourself look any more justified. Rather, it's self-indulgent and pathetic.

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AlphaFold2 is great and fantastic, but it does only one thing.
Rosetta is still necessary for all the other things.
The way is still long....

Yes.
But at some point Rosetta will have to take AI into account, either by incorporating it into the work they send us or by doing it in-house.
That is OK, but how much warning will we get? I know, we don't need much warning to change BOINC projects. And that is what we will get.

I think I read somewhere that Rosetta took on board some of the first Alphafold results from a few years ago into Rosetta, before Alphafold2 took things to another level altogether.
I don't know why this would lead to Rosetta ending in some way - quite the opposite.
And, as you say, even if Rosetta were to end - something there's zero evidence of apart from random people mentioning it occasionally - switching projects is trivial.

Remind me what the issue is again? Because I couldn't see one at all.
Edit: sorry, ignore me. It wasn't you who raised it. Something from the "community" again...

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Remind me what the issue is again? Because I couldn't see one at all.

Actually, the issue is a bit obscure because I have not stated it clearly yet. It is not the day-to-day operations that I am concerned with. We can change easily.
But long term, I am interested in using my computer resources efficiently. So if Rosetta can do twice (or ten times) the work using AI, then they really don't need me so much. I can put my PC resources elsewhere. And if I know when that change is coming, I can do it in a more timely manner.

Since informing me does not necessarily do Rosetta much good, they probably don't feel much reason to keep me informed.
But for that matter, I don't need to make any assumptions about the work continuing in the normal manner either. I can make worst-case assumptions if I want to.

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Sure, people are just donating hardware, time, power bills and more for free

Yes.
Except the 2nd sentence of your 1st post in these forums was about a loss of "good will" which you'd never established in the first place.
And a few messages later, in response to entirely plan, honest and accurate replies, if disappointing, you were trying to claim it as a loss of community.
At which point you immediately detach and send indignant PMs around. So much for it being about community and not entirely about you.
Which you confirm by sending huffy forum posts even after you detached. Using the word "we" of all things.

Really, you're not making yourself look any more justified. Rather, it's self-indulgent and pathetic.

Really? Let us look at my first post:

"

Are you saying that no one can remote into and reboot the servers? Is so, that is not good. There is a _lot_ of computing and good will lost if there are millions of jobs available and no one can download them.

"

Here is the thing, if people see no new work, and a lot of jobs in que, they will go other places. Never did I use "I" but I used "no one". You see, the latter is pointing at something plural. So how you make this about me is inside your own head.

Then you reply:

In the past, some holidays have been out of all and any contact.
That may not be the case this time, but it's a possibility.
Point being, it'll be fixed when it's fixed and complaining repeatedly in the forums has rarely ever solved it

If no one complains or in any other way raise concern, how are obvious errors get fixed? Why should one just give up and let errors continue for ever? How does that improve anything?

Then i try with yet another effort on a constructive reply:

I see why the feedbacks are felt like complaints, but what it is meant as is an heads up that people want to do work and that idle CPUs are being wasted. People think that this is to important not to be mentioned because people care, and they get a bit bummed out when the reply can be interpreted as "what ever..." I guess no one is expecting people to leave their families to fix this, but it is a disappointment that there is no one who can spend ten minutes in a remote session to reboot the servers, just in case that helps.

To build a strong and lasting community there must be an "us". There must be some feeling of "we are all in on this together". Right now that feeling is diminishing, and that is not good.

I do hope there will be made some effort to both stopping this current bug to reappear, and for a solution where low effort incident resolving can be done.

Then you reply

- "Idle CPUs" is 100% always a user failure - or "bug" as you mistifyingly want to call it
- If "people think this is too important not to be mentioned" then they'll have missed it already having been mentioned a dozen times
- "ten minutes" - yeah, ok...
- "community", "us" - <puke>

Now, how is this mocking from you being helpful? How does this make people feel welcome and useful? Try to explain why idle CPU _always_ i user failure.

All you achieved is making me not wanting to contribute. You made me feel anything but welcome. You behave in a way that is just rude and sad. People i general like communities. People in general like an "us". Pe3ople in general like to contribute to a common good. This is one of the most important ways humans differ from all other animals. And no, this is not abut _me_. It is about Rosetta and the lack of a community and a lack of simple low effort moves that can be made to get even more people on board.

So tell me, do you think Rosetta could use more processing power donated to the project? Do you care if Rosetta gains or loses computing power?

deleted as it's not worth my time.

All you achieved is making me not wanting to contribute.

Ignore Sid Celery, he's a tool.

My only response to the Celery guy would be that people are entitled to their opinions, just like you are. And they have a right to state it. You're such a fellow who's attacking everyone just because their opinion doesn't match yours. This is a place to discuss and you can't shut down people okay? So grow up and perhaps try using a neutral tone.

No wonder there's no community when people like him roam around in these unmoderated forums. Check out F@H forums to see how they treat people, even for noob questions. And here we have people sitting on high horses and swinging maces for no reason smh. It's so funny lmao.

People deserve a proper break and I'm not inclined to demand they're dragged in to suit, what are essentially, hobbyists.

No need to go in, just do a remote login & restart. If it fixes it, good. If not, then it can wait till they do go in.

Restart what? I looked at the server status and saw no signs that the server has anything at a point where just restarting a program would do much to the rate at which workunits are created. All of the programs seem to be running already, ready to create new workunits from the outputs of previous workunits once those outputs are returned if the original instructions to the server had been to do a series of workunits from a smaller number of starting points. The server needs more starting points to create workunits faster, and it cannot create those starting points. People with the right knowledge can create starting points remotely using the Robetta interface, but there don't seem to be enough of those people who aren't tied up with Christmas activities.

How many of the people demanding more workunits have been nice enough that they should get any, rather than having the server send them links to pictures of LARGE lumps of coal?

[snip]

Here is the thing, if people see no new work, and a lot of jobs in que, they will go other places. Never did I use "I" but I used "no one". You see, the latter is pointing at something plural. So how you make this about me is inside your own head.

[snip]
Where do you see lots of jobs in queue? When I looked at the server status, I saw lots of jobs in progress (i.e. already sent to computers that haven't finished and returned them), but no sign of a queue.

Where do you see lots of jobs in queue? When I looked at the server status, I saw lots of jobs in progress (i.e. already sent to computers that haven't finished and returned them), but no sign of a queue.

On the project home page it shows 11,144,555 work units available. These are the output of the generator and the feeder then ensures that there are always about 30,000 in the pot that is used by the downloader.

The feeder is shown as running but is presumably not working correctly.

People deserve a proper break and I'm not inclined to demand they're dragged in to suit, what are essentially, hobbyists.

No need to go in, just do a remote login & restart. If it fixes it, good. If not, then it can wait till they do go in.

Restart what? I looked at the server status and saw no signs that the server has anything at a point where just restarting a program would do much to the rate at which workunits are created. All of the programs seem to be running already,

That's part of he problem.
It shows it's working, but nothing is happening.

It would be easier to see if all the information was on the one page, but it isn't.
On the main page it shows 11,144,555 queued jobs. In the server Status is shows Tasks ready to send is 0.

The rah_make_work1 server takes the Queued jobs and turns them in to Tasks we can actually process. Once done, they go to the Tasks ready to send queue, then get sent out when people request work.

Tasks in progress has gone from 5.5 million to less than 65k, even with all those millions of Queued jobs. That shows the system is broken. And one of the easiest & quickest fixes when a computer system has issues is to restart it. And for most server systems, management is done remotely. Hence no need for someone to go in, they just need to log in & give things a kick.


Edit- it would also help if the server status was updated more often than every few hours- and that's when it is being updated.

As near as i can tell it's presently 06:33 UTC, the time of the main page server status is 4:07:26 UTC, and on the Server status page it's 5:40:03 UTC.

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Grant
Darwin NT