Posts by RDC

21) Message boards : Cafe Rosetta : Welcome to The Rosetta Cafe Come On In! (Message 312) Posted 22 Sep 2005 by RDC Post: One of the things we'll doing within the Res Halls to encourage participation is offering up small prizes (We have a very excited Director who is willing to cover the cost). While I think the idea of helping out science is enough reason to join, others might only be fully convinced with the prospect free ice cream. Send me lots of free coffee and I'll join :P
22) Message boards : Cafe Rosetta : RDC is UOTD (Message 311) Posted 22 Sep 2005 by RDC Post: Thanks. First time I was a real UOTD on a project. In the past I've been the user with the most recently updated profile but that lasted less than an hour ;)
23) Message boards : Number crunching : Optimized Windows Application (Message 310) Posted 22 Sep 2005 by RDC Post: Hi all, I just updated the windows and linux app to version 4.76, still working on the mac app. Thanks for the update. Can't wait to finish this WU up that I'm crunching now to try the new application out.
24) Message boards : Rosetta@home Science : How long .... (Message 309) Posted 22 Sep 2005 by RDC Post: With an AMD 1200mhz it took 39 hours for the first WU and reduced to about 19 hours on the next two. No idea what the 4th will do yet but it seems to be moving faster than the others. A new Windows application is available now and should cut down the times some but I have to finish this WU up before I can get the optimized client.
25) Message boards : Number crunching : canonical result (Message 296) Posted 21 Sep 2005 by RDC Post: The CPU Clock continuing to run while the Science App is left in memory is a Known Problem. The only workaround that I know of is to set Boinc to NOT leave the application in memory when swapping apps. You can set up a different venue for your Win9x machine(s) and let the default stay at remove for W2000/XP etc. Yes but that isn't the problem I'm running into as BOINC on the Win98 box is set to crunch only one project, usually Predictor but currently on LHC due to Predictor not issuing WU's until next week. Having BOINC set to dump from memory won't help if I forget to exit out of BOINC before doing something else like play a high CPU intensive game or use a high CPU intensive graphics program on the PC. It's a related issue with the CPU clock timing but not the known and reported issue the devs are aware of.
26) Message boards : Number crunching : canonical result (Message 294) Posted 21 Sep 2005 by RDC Post: I'm having the same issue with Win XP Home SP2. It's not as severe as what occurs when running on Win98 but it does happen. On WinXP, the CPU bounces between the games and BOINC science application so every few seconds the science application will bounce up to 97% or so and drop back to around 5%. It does drag out the CPU time however. I tested it on a SZTAKI WU and the original estimate at 50% complete stated I should have about 1.5 hours left to crunch (and it's usually pretty close at that point to being somewhat accurate) but took an extra 45 minutes after playing a game for two hours. On the Win98 box, it would have added 2 hours to the crunch time from earlier observations. I agree with Paul Buck on this one regarding it being how Windows is handling the timing. Luckily I don't use the Win98 box for other applications as much so the problem on that PC can be minimized simply for the reason of not using it for other things as often.
27) Message boards : Number crunching : My experience with Rosetta WU's (Message 293) Posted 21 Sep 2005 by RDC Post: Resetting of cpu time to zero also happens if Boinc it's doing benchmarks. Application in progress will be removed from memory and if this is rosetta, then cpu time is zero after benchmarks. Just saw that on my linux box. The last WU that I processed involved a BOINC benchmark running in the middle of the WU. It dumped the WU out of memory like it should and brought it back after the benchmarking was completed without losing any of the CPU time. Looks like they fixed that problem.
28) Message boards : Number crunching : canonical result (Message 264) Posted 20 Sep 2005 by RDC Post: Anything in your Event Viewer when you are starting + running the games? What happens if you shut down BOINC, start the game, let it run up 100% CPU and then restart BOINC. Does the same thing happen? Everything appears normal except that it shows two things running at 98-100%. Doing what you suggested doesn't solve the problem, both continue to try and claim full useage of the CPU. I would say it's a Windows 98 problem but I'm having the same issues on WinXP as well. I couldn't try the request on my XP unit yet as I have a Rosetta WU being crunched currently on it but I am expecting the same results as I experienced on the Win98 unit with both reporting full CPU useage.
29) Message boards : Number crunching : canonical result (Message 259) Posted 20 Sep 2005 by RDC Post: boinc.exe is set for normal. I was referring to the science applications that are set for low. All of the priorities are as they should be on installation. It has to be something with the games themselves and how they interact with BOINC in a Windows environment. Not all games cause BOINC to behave in such a manner. CPU intensive things do increase times slightly but what I've experienced is far from a slight increase. Everquest is another game that will cause increases in crunching time but not to the extent that Mech Warrior and Masters of Orion do. BOINC should release the science application's use of the CPU when something else that has higher priority is using it. With some games, the CPU appears to be shared at full load with little to no effect on the game but a huge effect on the science application. I e-mailed the devs about this problem a couple of years ago before other projects were out there and the e-mail I received back stated that I was misunderstanding how BOINC worked. I tend to think that they misunderstood what the problem is.
30) Message boards : Number crunching : canonical result (Message 256) Posted 20 Sep 2005 by RDC Post: What version of the CC are you running? is it a custom compiled or direct from berekeley. This sounds more like a windows problem then a BOINC problem but since it's affecting 2 of your computers... CC 4.45 direct from Berkeley. I initially thought it was just a Win98 thing as that O/S was a mess to start with but tried the games on my WinXP PC and had the same issues. No performance issues with the games. The CPU is pegged at 100% for both the game and Boinc application program (P@H, S@H, etc) when this occurs. I have no form of hyperthreading available on either PC. (edit) Priority is set for low on the various BOINC programs so it should give way to the higher priority game but for some reason Windows isn't releasing the BOINC application but is attempting to share it with other non-related applications. (/edit)
31) Message boards : Number crunching : canonical result (Message 255) Posted 20 Sep 2005 by RDC Post: I think the doubling effect is why they use quorums and discard the top and bottom result and use the average so that's it's fairer in that sense. With Rosetta currently assigning each WU to just one user, this allows cheating to go ahead but people should not care about the credit (I admit it does look good). But if they are crunching for credit, they are crunching for the wrong reasons. They should be crunching for the science and the quicker a workunit is crunched the sooner a new WU is sent to them and the more science they can get done. Exactly to both statements. I'm in this for the science primarily but do enjoy watching my credits go up and helping my team out. Science comes first however and that's the main reason I've brought the point up. It's something that does need to be addressed by the developers instead of just depending on the quorum system of validation to keep such things under control.
32) Message boards : Number crunching : canonical result (Message 251) Posted 20 Sep 2005 by RDC Post: Here's a couple of examples of what I mean on Predictor that show the doubling + of claimed credit: With a game running: http://predictor.scripps.edu/workunit.php?wuid=1388891 claimed 15.91 granted 6.85 Without a game running: http://predictor.scripps.edu/workunit.php?wuid=1388889 claimed 8.62 granted 8.11 With a game running: http://predictor.scripps.edu/workunit.php?wuid=1313326 claimed 18.14 granted 6.66 Without a game running: http://predictor.scripps.edu/workunit.php?wuid=1313336 claimed 6.62 granted 6.62
33) Message boards : Number crunching : canonical result (Message 250) Posted 20 Sep 2005 by RDC Post: this is definately strange, but i think boinc devs have little impact there. seems like windows is messing something up there. will try to recreate the situation here, have master of orion 3 at home. windows should count the time the process actually got, not the time that past by in real world. what windows version do you see this with? Win98 SE and WinXP Home Edition SP2. On both systems, BOINC seems to count elapsed time when a high CPU intensive game is run. I've had similar happen with high CPU intensive graphics programs as well but not to the extent that games have.
34) Message boards : Number crunching : If There Is No Screensaver........ (Message 247) Posted 20 Sep 2005 by RDC Post: easy... not everyone that notes there is non is automatically moaning about it. normaly you note things you see during beta stage. there are live projects without screensafer (like predictor), so i agree on being not top priority, though it seems to be a "crowd pleaser" in the long run ;) The one quoted in the link sure was ;) I never understood the fascination people have with screensavers. Some, adults no less, to the point of literally throwing a temper tantrum if a project doesn't have one or it isn't to their liking as has been seen many times in other project's forums.
35) Message boards : Number crunching : canonical result (Message 246) Posted 20 Sep 2005 by RDC Post: I'm not sure that using your CPU for other processes will inflate your credit all that much. The claimed credit should be based on CPU time spent on a given work unit, not the elapsed time between starting and finishing the unit. If I play a game like Mech Warrior III or Master of Orion without shutting BOINC down first, I can literally double to triple the time taken to process and double to triple the credit claimed on a WU. Not all games cause this behavior but the above ones do and a 2 hour stint in one of those games will cause the WU to claim 2 or more hours additional time and 2 or more hours additional credit. If I leave the game up longer, I can claim more credits with that WU. I try to remember to shut BOINC down first but I do forget at times. I shut it down because those games also greatly increase the risk the WU having a computational error and thereby wasting the time spend crunching it but at least half of the screwed up WU's are taken as valid WU's but the credits get tossed in the quorum validation process. In short, the more you play certain games the more you can stretch out the time and credit. I have brought this up before to the BOINC programmers and nobody seemed to think it is a real problem but if I can double or triple my claimed credit without cheating but by simply playing a game for a few hours, there is a large potential problem. Maybe I'm not making myself clear on the issue, I don't know. The fact is that you can greatly inflate the WU credits without intending to, without any form of cheating and without touching one BOINC/Project file.
36) Message boards : Number crunching : canonical result (Message 226) Posted 20 Sep 2005 by RDC Post: ie get the system to flag any claimed credits that are above expectation? One thing I worry about with something like that and that is what time is expected? I've done 2 WU's so far. One 36 hours long and one 19 hours long and both done while stalling on other things I need to do on my computer so as not to drag out the processing time. That's a pretty big gap between the two times and could easily be flagged as suspicious due to the huge difference between my two WU's. Plus, if I do anything with my PC such as play a game or do something with graphic programs, it has the unplanned problem of artificially inflating my CPU time during the time I am doing something other than dedicating the PC to BOINC. No, it's not cheating but it is a problem with how BOINC benchmarks and how the BOINC/project application uses and records the CPU cycles. Credit, while lower in priority, is one reason out of many many projects do require multiple WU's be processed.
37) Message boards : Number crunching : Warning: Don't shut down BOINC Manager..!! (Message 221) Posted 20 Sep 2005 by RDC Post: Also, I though the BOINC registrations were being keyed off email and a password now - what happened to that? I'm not 100% positive but I recall reading one one of the project sites that the e-mail login feature was dependent on if the project servers have the latest BOINC scripting installed. The Seti@home site always has the most current scripts while the other projects usually are lagging behind on keeping the scripts updated. Also remember, Rosetta is a Beta project, there will be some problems
38) Message boards : Number crunching : My experience with Rosetta WU's (Message 209) Posted 19 Sep 2005 by RDC Post: Mine took about 36 hours on a 1200 mhz AMD with WinXP and 512 ram.
39) Message boards : Number crunching : Crossproject ID (Message 182) Posted 19 Sep 2005 by RDC Post: Just noticed, the crossproject id is not the same as in other projects. Is this intended? Some time ago CPDN also had another crossproject id compared to the other projects but has now corrected the display. Mine is the same across all projects. It's supposed to synch up on it's own but I know some do have problems with it.
40) Message boards : Cafe Rosetta : Welcome to The Rosetta Cafe Come On In! (Message 133) Posted 18 Sep 2005 by RDC Post: I just posted them on the site. http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/rah_misc.php. I included the pdf, even though it is a pretty big file. That's one of the better marketing efforts I've seen in several years, not just for distributed computing but for anything. Great job!

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