Posts by [B^S] Paul@home

1) Message boards : Number crunching : Report stuck & aborted WU here please (Message 9444) Posted 20 Jan 2006 by [B^S] Paul@home Post: Hi Phil, It would be really great if it worked the way it is documented. The fact is that while not linear in the sence that adding 1 to the DCF will give you 1 additional min of processing time, adjusting the DCF does in fact increase the time. Depending on the system benchmarks this adjustment provides varying amounts of increase. u have been loking at this in more detail than I have and, admitedly, it was 2am when i was trawling code last night so I do accept what you are saying. I just can't find it in the code (yet!). The only place I can see DCF used is in calculating the client's estimated to-completion time (what u see in BOINC Manager). This figure does not appear to have any relationship to the max allowed cpu time for a work unit. I think that the sum of the earlier discussion was that the bound value should be increased. I suspect that that is what David (Kim) was looking at. It would seem that this value may have been static while the WU size increased, and that may be the problem. Regards Phil It certainly would! I believe it is quite difficult for them to get a reasonable estimate for the number of fpops in a given WU type but if they could manage that somehow, they may fix the problem. Perhaps as David B. suggests, they may be able to run a few of each WU type thru a test server to determine an accurate run time. If this was a public server they would not even need to do the work themselves - just set a high fpops_bound in the WU and let them out. Bound value could be increased / reduced accordingly. Cheers and have a good weekend (I'm not back at a computer till monday! ) Paul.
2) Message boards : Number crunching : Report stuck & aborted WU here please (Message 9417) Posted 20 Jan 2006 by [B^S] Paul@home Post: Hi guys, found this thread interesting as i have been 'hit' with wuite a few max time errors. I could be way off the mark here, but there does not appear to be a link (that I can find) between max cpu time and duration correction factor. The only place I can see max cpu time being set is in app.C. Here it sets max cpu time to be fpops bound / bemchmarked fpops value. max_cpu_time = rp->wup->rsc_fpops_bound/gstate.host_info.p_fpops; However, that means for optimised BOINC clients where the p_fpops value is very high, the max cpu time will drop and runs the risk of being exceeded - even if there WU is progressing correctly. Same problem happeds if the fpops_bound value is too low... The only way around that would be to have a sufficiently high fpops_bound or try to exclude non standard clients (that would be a tin of worms!) edit - since standard clients can also hit this error, it would seem that the fpops_bound value in some of the WUs might be a bit on the low side... Also, it has been noted before that BOINC can at times record CPU time closer to wall time rather than actual crunch time. I can't find the posts to back this up but if that was happening, then the current_cpu_time would be increasing even though little work was being done.... and more results win hit max_cpu.. cheers, Paul
3) Message boards : Number crunching : Credits Granted (Message 8852) Posted 12 Jan 2006 by [B^S] Paul@home Post: ok. Guess I should have read the news in a little more detail! Thanks David, Paul.
4) Message boards : Number crunching : Credits Granted (Message 8848) Posted 12 Jan 2006 by [B^S] Paul@home Post: Hi David, I have a few of these units that have claimed several hundred credits in total. Yet my total granted from this process seems to be less than 1. here is an example of one WU - claimed = 85.61; granted =0 http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/workunit.php?wuid=4821170 Cheers, Paul edit - from the file you have availabel thru tech news:, it seems that all of my WUs were granted very low credit... [font=courrier] ID userid hostid teamid granted_credit 4275 418 92733 7 8.24962133409567E-02 11053 418 92733 7 0.111273962180825 17651 418 92733 7 8.63332465196058E-02 21576 418 92733 7 9.97628626448779E-02 22259 418 92733 7 0.101681379234202 28697 418 92733 7 8.24962133409567E-02 30257 418 92733 7 8.82517631089305E-02 37614 418 92733 7 0.109235538304668 38362 418 92733 7 8.63332465196058E-02 57644 418 92733 7 0.103539942180111 61297 418 92733 7 0.109355445591501 67016 418 92733 7 0.109355445591501 67837 418 92733 7 0.103539942180111 70283 418 92733 7 9.94031407843795E-02 78640 418 92733 7 0.101681379234202 116978 418 92733 7 0.110824309855202 116979 418 92733 7 3.60222473420885 116980 418 92733 7 8.24962133409567E-02 116981 418 92733 7 8.44147299302813E-02 116982 418 92733 7 0.113162501948442 116983 418 92733 7 0.093977336055196 116984 418 92733 7 0.109325468769793 ID SumOfgranted_credit 418 8.11119954502401E-02 [/font]
5) Message boards : Number crunching : Maximum CPU time Exceeded...How about some granted credit! (Message 8477) Posted 6 Jan 2006 by [B^S] Paul@home Post: Got a couple of these myself... hopefully they can fix the problem! cheers, Paul
6) Message boards : Cafe Rosetta : I hate computers (Message 7155) Posted 22 Dec 2005 by [B^S] Paul@home Post: Well that's just not right. You should put it all back in the box and get your money back... or else insist one of their tech's come and install a new CPU / motherboard that actully work together. Paul
7) Message boards : Cafe Rosetta : I hate computers (Message 6920) Posted 20 Dec 2005 by [B^S] Paul@home Post:
8) Message boards : Cafe Rosetta : I hate computers (Message 6899) Posted 20 Dec 2005 by [B^S] Paul@home Post: Any IT department that would consider subjecting people to Lotus Notes do need to have their competence questioned. LOL :) Actually I find Lotus Notes to be very good in most regards. It is far superior to MS offerings (outlook - any version!!) as a mail client. With all the additional functionality such as location preferences, database replication, multiple databases, user programmable / customisable databases and applications; I find it to be a very powerful and useful tool. [/End of praise for Notes!] ;) cheers, Paul.
9) Message boards : Cafe Rosetta : I hate computers (Message 6875) Posted 20 Dec 2005 by [B^S] Paul@home Post: Well if I am being honest I would have to say that both of these did (surprisingly!) have labels... I was just being lazy - rushing to test a change. The test room at the time was full of ATMs, PoS devices and lots of PCs and other equipment so you can imagine the mess of cables all over the place. My Modem was there on the table... no power in it and a suitable looking jack lying beside it. I just plugged it in and pop! Cheers, Paul.
10) Message boards : Cafe Rosetta : I hate computers (Message 6871) Posted 20 Dec 2005 by [B^S] Paul@home Post: Funniest Computer component failure I have ever had was a couple of years ago with an external US Robotics Modem. Required input: 12v DC Attached transformer output: 24v AC (I just grabbed the closest free jack that fitted!): Result: Smoke, Sparks and a nasty smell that seemed to linger in the test room for many hours. heh heh heh. We got laughs out of that for days!! Speaking of bad customer support - our IT helpdesk at work took 2 days and I reckon about 10 phone calls to reset my LAN password after some problem on the Domain Controller caused my account to lock out. That was fun! An amusing footnote: Lotus Notes client 5.x spell checker does not recognise the word "Helpdesk". It suggests "Helpless" as an alternative. Ah the irony! Cheers, Paul.
11) Message boards : Cafe Rosetta : Welcome to Boinc Synergy Team (Message 2863) Posted 11 Nov 2005 by [B^S] Paul@home Post: You can say that again! that cough :)
12) Message boards : Number crunching : Wow...I can cheat on credit! (Message 2862) Posted 11 Nov 2005 by [B^S] Paul@home Post: @stephan_t: you dont even need to compile your own core client. The bog standard app will claim off-the-chart credit if you want it to. (takes a couple seconds to set up!!) @paul D.B: I read your proposal and it sounds very interesting. Would certainly make cheating alot harder and would make the granting process much fairer for everyone cheers, Paul.
13) Message boards : Number crunching : Congrats to the rest of Free-DC for hitting #1 team spot (Message 2765) Posted 9 Nov 2005 by [B^S] Paul@home Post: The difference between 1300+ members on SETI@Home and 172 on Rosetta@Home ... though I am doing as much as I can ... and I still have hopes to be getting a new machine early next year ... Ah yes but We have 174 (2 new!) members here while FDC have "only" 56. Just on that, we should be ahead - at least on RAC. Maybe they had some space capacity (why?!) or else they have pulled PCs from other projects. Either way, well done lads! cheers, Paul.
14) Message boards : Number crunching : Congrats to the rest of Free-DC for hitting #1 team spot (Message 2668) Posted 8 Nov 2005 by [B^S] Paul@home Post: Considering our numbers (BOINC Synergy), we should be waaay ahead but I guess our members are not crunching too many WUs. Congrats guys! cheers, Paul :)
15) Message boards : Number crunching : Crunching stucks on 83.33% (Message 971) Posted 5 Oct 2005 by [B^S] Paul@home Post: Hi, when you say 'more than 24 huors', so you mean more than that estimated remaining or more than 24 CPU given already? The % done does not increase at a steady rate while the work unit is being processed - it jumps to various % done values at several (12) times during processing and its value depending on what stage in the processing the unit is at. 83.33% seems to be a normal value for the WU to sit - I see mine sitting there regularly. Keep an eye on it.. it will probably move on after some time.
16) Message boards : Number crunching : A question to the BOINC community... (Message 861) Posted 1 Oct 2005 by [B^S] Paul@home Post: We haven't tried (that I am aware of) to ever poach anyone. In fact, I think i remember it coming up in the past and it was generally agreed to be a bad idea (among BS anyway). Ok, we would all love to have this number of computers crunching for us but that doesn't mean we are going to start spamming the user to get him to change team! cheers, Paul.
17) Message boards : Number crunching : can it really be so slow ? (Message 606) Posted 27 Sep 2005 by [B^S] Paul@home Post: Hi, what version of the science app did you get? you should be running 4.77 for windows. anything other than that is very slow... Paul
18) Message boards : Number crunching : Unable to download work (Message 604) Posted 27 Sep 2005 by [B^S] Paul@home Post: From the look of your computers, rosetta thinks you have downloaded work... Are there are large number of files in the trasfers tab? Rosetta should download quite a large amount of data for your first WU... Sounds like a comms issue... but odd that you can attach ok... Paul
19) Message boards : Number crunching : Top Predictions - project science feedback (Message 586) Posted 27 Sep 2005 by [B^S] Paul@home Post: Gotta agree with that! :)
20) Message boards : Number crunching : Optimized Windows Application (Message 375) Posted 23 Sep 2005 by [B^S] Paul@home Post: Yup! 4.77 seems to be doing the trick alright! It's been paused, stopped (service), benchmarked and rebooted and appears to be able to take it all in its stride. Plus its a hell of a lot faster that 4.75! @David Kim - you can relax on your vacation now!!! Thanks for the hard work to get these intial probelms sorted. Paul. ps - how is the student signup progressing? You getting make takers?

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