Posts by Gerry Rough

1) Message boards : Number crunching : Two Preferences (Message 60505) Posted 5 Apr 2009 by Gerry Rough Post: A related question that I forgot to mention at the beginning of this thread is why is the connect interval not enforced by BOINC? If I tell BOINC to connect once every day, it connects every few hours; if I tell BOINC to connect every .1 days, you guessed it, it connects every few hours. I have yet to see any clear pattern with this preference, other than the results being more or less cache.
2) Message boards : Number crunching : 100 Teraflops (Message 60415) Posted 31 Mar 2009 by Gerry Rough Post: Until Rosie lets them down as well. NO I am not thinking or even wishing ill will, just looking pragmatically. Rosie is computers, computers have issues, ie Rodie will have problems. Now like it was said earlier E@H and S@H have different expectations of achieving their goals than Rosie does. Therefore Rosie SHOULD garner more interest than either of those other projects!! Part of that problem is that EVERYONE has heard of Seti, until you start Boincing few have heard of ALL the rest of the available choices!! Actually no. Remember that the reason that they joined Rosie was to keep BOINC running since projects are often offline for different reasons. Rosie will eventually be offline, and they will give Rosie the same lattitude that they gave the others before they joined. They will simply realise that Rosie's offline-ness is normal and not fret a wit: they have now planned ahead and are reaping the existential benefits. Life in the BOINC lane, really! :-)
3) Message boards : Number crunching : Two Preferences (Message 60410) Posted 31 Mar 2009 by Gerry Rough Post: The connect interval indicates to BOINC how often it is allowed to connect, with 0 indicating always on. This usually has the side effect of lowering the queue maintained. The maintain work should keep one days work on hand but the calculations don't seem to work well for multi-core systems particularly when work on hand has widely varying completion times (CPDN along side IBERCIVIS for example). [snip] Oh, last point, projects that run out of work or go off-line also screws up this big time. EaH and MW both went off the air this weekend and BOINC does not handle that as well as it should either ... I have wondered about both of these variables for months, actually. You just said it better. :-/ My thought for curing my "low cache" ills (sounds like a cigarette) are to increase the connect interval and see what that does over the next week or so. I will try that first as the independent variable in my erstwhile endeavor. Running 6.4.7, by the way.
4) Message boards : Number crunching : Two Preferences (Message 60399) Posted 31 Mar 2009 by Gerry Rough Post: Recently, I changed my global preferences to try to cut down on my cache of WUs: it was getting way too large. But now that I've changed things, now BOINC seems to have barely enough work to keep going. My "connect to network" preference is 0 days, and my "maintain enough work" preference is 1 day. I thought that would do the trick, but I think I need some help. Hence the question: What is the difference between the "Connect to network about every" preference, and the "Maintain enough work for an additional" preference? If you check the unofficial BOINC wiki page, they seem to have overlapping functions, although they are obviously not the same. They both seem to tell BOINC how much cache to have so that BOINC will not run out of work.
5) Message boards : Number crunching : 100 Teraflops (Message 60398) Posted 31 Mar 2009 by Gerry Rough Post: Well Einstein is down and Seti has not enough work to send out, so naturally there are a lot idling hosts out there. Let's hope some will stay. I would think that almost all will. They have just learned the lesson that a second or third project is mandatory to keep BOINC crunching away, and Rosie will no doubt be part of that mix from now on.
6) Message boards : Number crunching : Detaching and reataching (Message 53588) Posted 8 Jun 2008 by Gerry Rough Post: The only place it can matter is in your cross-project stats on various BOINC-stats-sites. If none of your active computers is attached to some of the projects, it's possible the <cross_project_id> gets changed, leading to credits "fragmented" across that looks like multiple accounts to the stats-sites. If this is a concern for you, the easy method is to keep 1 active computer attached to all projects, and just set "No new work" on whatever project(s) don't want to run actively. On any other computers you can detach whatever projects you wants. Thanks for your reply. I am definitely aware of the CPID problem: had it once, been there, done that. Would it be better to put the resource share at zero for projects that are offline for a few months? If I set NNT as you suggest, the unused resources will be distributed to the other projects evenly, without me saying what shares go where. Isn't that the way it goes with unused resources?
7) Message boards : Number crunching : Detaching and reataching (Message 53575) Posted 7 Jun 2008 by Gerry Rough Post: I've been thinking about detaching from a couple of projects in my list. The question is what happens if I reattach to those projects in the future, say in a year or so? When I reattach, will they still recognize the old hosts, or will they create new accounts for a new host?
8) Message boards : Number crunching : Difference between GHZ and FSB? (Message 50669) Posted 13 Jan 2008 by Gerry Rough Post: Thanks for the great descriptions, it is too pity that Intel did not release fair descriptions of their products and mislead its non IT professed customers. Before this architecture talk I was considering ghz and fsb are the main stuffs to measure a cpu power. For the rest of us who are not IT buffs, when does the fast FSB kick in for crunching speeds? When I upgraded my boxes recently, I chose the faster clock speeds when possible, and wondered about FSB speed for crunching (didn't have any faster options here though).
9) Message boards : Number crunching : Update BOINC immediately! (Message 47875) Posted 20 Oct 2007 by Gerry Rough Post: Anyone here know if there are plans in the works to restrict the number of times the client contacts the server when the project is offline for long periods? I'm thinking of projects like Proteins or Orbit. I would like to see times of a week or so, but that's just me. I would think this would really help bandwitdth for the offline projects, and reduce the client workload. I know this has been mentioned by others before, but I wonder if this is on the agenda currently? I've even wondered if the projects could set the time intervals for long term offlines to a date to update the client queries, and when they get near the times to start issuing WUs, the project would start setting shorter time intervals. The whole point being lots latitude for the projects to set times and dates for server queries.
10) Message boards : Number crunching : Bone-headed move on my part (Message 45891) Posted 10 Sep 2007 by Gerry Rough Post: I wouldn't be too hard on yourself: lots of crunchers have made similar mistakes like this where they lost lots of credit. I now have a split CPID problem that I can't get rid of until Proteins@home comes back online. I technically haven't lost anything, but I am beginning to fear lately my lost host credits will not be retreived because P@h will be offline too long to line things up again. I think the only thing I can do then is merge my old hosts with my current ones to get everything to show up again. If anyone knows when P@h will be back, let me know.
11) Message boards : Number crunching : Laptop cooling fan going full blast! (Message 45429) Posted 25 Aug 2007 by Gerry Rough Post: Even if you do go with a threadmaster type of software which certainly helps, you might want to consider getting a laptop cooler. I have a lapcool 2 with two fans and I think it's the best thing since sliced bread. I run my laptop 24/7 without a problem.
12) Message boards : Number crunching : Merging accounts (Message 45334) Posted 24 Aug 2007 by Gerry Rough Post: My question is related to this thread with regard to different emails. I changed my email address lately on all of my boinc projects and really stepped into it big with my boincstats -- it killed my host stats and now I have three CPIDs who have not lined up yet into one CPID. It's been close to a week. How long will it take for my CPIDs to line up so my stats will get back on track? Or do I need to do something? Also, how do I get back my totals for my old hosts? They are waiting to be donated. I could hook them up for a while longer, but it would be a hassle.
13) Message boards : Number crunching : t flops (Message 45333) Posted 24 Aug 2007 by Gerry Rough Post: Looks like our teraflops just got to the magic number of 60 again. Looks like it might be the active users who are up pretty good lately according to boincstats. The hosts are up big today as well. :D
14) Questions and Answers : Web site : CPID Issue between Rosetta and BoincStats.com (Message 45234) Posted 21 Aug 2007 by Gerry Rough Post: It usually takes 2 sucessfull RPC's that get work to each project for the CPIDs to line up. The past detailed stats will probably be messed up forever. Any hosts that are not currently active will not be updated. It's been three full days of running for my newer hosts, and both are still showing zeros for the past few days in my detailed stats. Does this mean they will not line up until simap releases new WUs at the start of September (the rest are pretty constant)?
15) Questions and Answers : Web site : CPID Issue between Rosetta and BoincStats.com (Message 45207) Posted 20 Aug 2007 by Gerry Rough Post: The other day I changed my email address and threw a monkey wrench into my boincstats detailed stats page. Now the two new hosts are only showing up for the past couple of days, and my old hosts don't exist. I know this is a CPID issue, so I have a couple of questions: When will my CPIDs line up for my new hosts on boincstats? Will my past detailed stats come back? How do I get back my stats for my old hosts (I would have them churning away while they are waiting to be donated to a worthy cause, but it is impractical)?
16) Message boards : Number crunching : Quad Core Intel Price Drops (Message 45011) Posted 15 Aug 2007 by Gerry Rough Post: Are there 4 memory slots? I went with the "free upgrade" to 2 GB, which I "assume" is two 1 GB sticks, with room for two more sticks of my own, yes? And I can "dream" about getting the G0 stepping, not for oc'ing, but keeping the electric bill somewhat reasonable... Yyyyup. My ram is listed thus: 311-5122 1 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz - 4 DIMMs. So unless they give you two-gig sticks you are right. HTH. :) Not sure about the GO stepping though.
17) Message boards : Number crunching : Quad Core Intel Price Drops (Message 45004) Posted 15 Aug 2007 by Gerry Rough Post: Price is now down to $609, but no free upgrade to Vista Premium. I'm going to take my chances, and pull the trigger. In for one, thinking about two. Figuring that BOINC will keep all four cores at 100%. Maybe the Dell poster was having problems with a specific piece of software. Gotta do something to save my Rosetta RAC !!! If I had to do it again, I would get a couple of aftermarket 1 gig ram sticks. I went with dell's 4 gigs of ram and paid for it. Still happy I pulled the trigger though.
18) Message boards : Number crunching : Quad Core Intel Price Drops (Message 44993) Posted 15 Aug 2007 by Gerry Rough Post: Just saw this on SlickDeals.net, fwiw: For the people who have gotten their 9200 quad already; can you comment on its performance. There is this guy in the dell forums who is claiming that the Dell quad is running 30% slower than a non DELL quad core.. Atrocious Computing Performance of Core Quad Q6600 in XPS 410/Dimension 9200 I can't give you any numbers yet; perhaps in a week or so when results are being validated on a more consistent basis. Also, your link is to the dell forums page login. Can you point it to the article? You know, I was just thinking this morning that since I crunch for five different projects at present, though Rosy gets the biggest share, do you want me to hit the 'no new tasks' button on the other projects for a week or so, or would this help?
19) Message boards : Number crunching : Quad Core Intel Price Drops (Message 44958) Posted 14 Aug 2007 by Gerry Rough Post: Just saw this on SlickDeals.net, fwiw: For the people who have gotten their 9200 quad already; can you comment on its performance. There is this guy in the dell forums who is claiming that the Dell quad is running 30% slower than a non DELL quad core.. Atrocious Computing Performance of Core Quad Q6600 in XPS 410/Dimension 9200 I can't give you any numbers yet; perhaps in a week or so when results are being validated on a more consistent basis. Also, your link is to the dell forums page login. Can you point it to the article?
20) Message boards : Number crunching : How to get a million credits? (Message 44850) Posted 10 Aug 2007 by Gerry Rough Post: And then there's the heavy hitters that are IT pros who have countless computers at work running boinc with their name on the account. Geez. Sorta makes me sick. But then again, we need the great people like that who bring serious firepower to boinc. Boinc output in teraflops would be far less without the heavy hitters!

Next 20