LHC@home

Question came up from people that would like to join LHC@Home ... might it be possible to have a waiting list?

I mean, if only 200 people sign up ... then why not le them join. if 20,000 ... well, you can take that to the "powers that be" and make a pitch for more work and more stuff to do it on ...

And if there are any royalties on the concept my name is spelled Paul D. Buck ... :)

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Great idea! I'll second that.
It may make the wait more comfortable for those eager to sign up.

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I agree, a great idea.

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> I agree, a great idea.

Here the same, it would be fair!

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Not a bad idea, but what exactly would they be waiting for?

Workload is not great at present.

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Gaspode the UnDressed
http://www.littlevale.co.uk

> Not a bad idea, but what exactly would they be waiting for?
>
> Workload is not great at present.

Granted ...

But if, and more likely when, there is a desire to increase the participant base this lets them do it in a controlled and "fair" manner.

More importantly from the marketing point of view, the BOINC team can say we can't keep up with work, they run us dry so fast ... and oh by-the-way we have 20,000 more people that want to join our project.

With this in mind, maybe other groups in CERN might become much more interested in the possibilities of using BOINC.

My overall point is that, at least for me, the two projects right now that have most of my interest as far as providing support are the ones doing Physics. But we don't have a good backlog of work here ... :(

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@ Paul D. Buck
> More importantly from the marketing point of view, the BOINC team can say we
> can't keep up with work, they run us dry so fast ... and oh by-the-way we have
> 20,000 more people that want to join our project.
>
> With this in mind, maybe other groups in CERN might become much more
> interested in the possibilities of using BOINC.
>
> My overall point is that, at least for me, the two projects right now that
> have most of my interest as far as providing support are the ones doing
> Physics. But we don't have a good backlog of work here ... :(
>

I agree with your 'tactic'!
greetz littleBouncer

> Granted ...
>
> But if, and more likely when, there is a desire to increase the participant
> base this lets them do it in a controlled and "fair" manner.
>
> More importantly from the marketing point of view, the BOINC team can say we
> can't keep up with work, they run us dry so fast ... and oh by-the-way we have
> 20,000 more people that want to join our project.
>
> With this in mind, maybe other groups in CERN might become much more
> interested in the possibilities of using BOINC.
>
> My overall point is that, at least for me, the two projects right now that
> have most of my interest as far as providing support are the ones doing
> Physics. But we don't have a good backlog of work here ... :(
>
I think you have some point, but do you want some 20.000 members go nuts when there's another "ZERO cpu time" bug? Bad news is not always good news.

Let the LHC Team straighten out everything. The mere fact that we run the 20.000 WU's dry within 1 hour makes me think that the user base is big enough. Let's limit the problems to a small base. When they're 100% good to go, they'll open up.

I have friends waiting to join my team as well, but when I tell them about the lack of work and the download errors from last nite or the zero cpu time, they tell me: "ah, you go ahead, spend your cpu time.. we'll join when it's time"

regards,

sysfried

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> I think you have some point, but do you want some 20.000 members go nuts when
> there's another "ZERO cpu time" bug? Bad news is not always good news.

Actually, there were several bugs. one of them in the BOINC Daemon. The fact that LHC@Home had more instances of this was also, apparantly, due to other problems in their code. Because of the way that the bug showed up, it was almost always in LHC@Home, but if I recall correctly, ah, yes ... see my examples here:

setiathome      0.000   0.000   00:00:00   0.000  00:00:00   80
sixtrack        0.000   0.000   00:00:00   0.000  00:00:00  402
mfoldB120       0.000   0.000   00:00:00   0.000  00:00:00   14
mfoldB125       0.000   0.000   00:00:00   0.000  00:00:00   12
hadsm3          0.000   0.000   00:00:00   0.000  00:00:00    3

Which shows that this problem did, in fact, hit other projects.

> Let the LHC Team straighten out everything. The mere fact that we run the
> 20.000 WU's dry within 1 hour makes me think that the user base is big enough.
> Let's limit the problems to a small base. When they're 100% good to go,
> they'll open up.

Again, you are correct. Right now. But what about later? More importantly, what about those people that do want to participate. Granted we don't have work for them right now, but it shows that the project "cares" enough to at least go through the motions, and it also means that when the do want more participants we don't have sour people that have been trying to get into the project for months ...

> I have friends waiting to join my team as well, but when I tell them about the
> lack of work and the download errors from last nite or the zero cpu time, they
> tell me: "ah, you go ahead, spend your cpu time.. we'll join when it's time"

Well, in Paul's opinion it is time... the project's problems have not resulted in invalid science and that is what is the point of all of this. Yes I did not get all my "credit", but so what? I did the work ...

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yes Paul, but you, you are understanding and accepting those facts.

A major part of the other will probaly to.

We all are trained with the LHC projects, due experience and reading the forum.

New user would perhaps (cerntainly not all) but with 20k Users, there will be a lot, first make a cry and rant session and never accept the non granting credit situation.

This could generate a negative image from LHC what is not needed.

sure the work can/is done "ok" in scientifique purpose, I guess as more people are at the project, as more are having/passing a crise due the "missing numbers"..

Basicaly the idea for a waiting/subscribing list is great..

At Einstein, they did it that way. I subscribed with all email adresses I could remember, just to increase the "hit" for the access invitaion.
I know there where others doing the same..

Yes there is no more work ready for download, but I guess, several hundert of clients are running now at full speed for the next days..

sysfried:

If they end up with a list of 20k people, noone says they HAVE to let all 20k in the minute they want/need more participants ;) It could work just like a FIFO buffer - first in first out, just in this case it would be more like FOFI - first On the waiting list first In the project ;)

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Yes, I think that after CAREFUL consideration that the project is on a somewhat steady course ATM with the resources we currently have.

I am a member of Team Starfire over @ Broadbandreports.com and I have been in touch with literally dozens of interested team members whould would like to participate, but I have to tell them they have to wait until the sixtrack platform is a bit more stable.

I agree that the people used to working within CERN's 'offbeat' ways do know the routine and that a huge influx of n00bs would probably more counterproductive at this point in time then is needed.

The Project Dev's honestly seem to have more important issues to deal with then changing the wet nappies of new users unused to the way that LHC works who are likely to pitch a fit at the first signs of anything amiss....

Would a waiting list help control the new influx of users? sure it would but an open BETA is designed (or can be) to open the floodgates and put a "real world" level of stress on the infrastructure to see if it can maintain under the influx of many new users, which I don't see how the Dev's could get accurate info with only a few new members slowly trickling in...they'd need far larger numbers then what we all are

Or not..... :)

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> Yes, I think that after CAREFUL consideration that the project is on a
> somewhat steady course ATM with the resources we currently have.

And I agree. But, we do have "pent up" demand. And this is a way to harness that demand. More importantly, as I have stressed, it is a way to indicate to management that there is more resource available than they need at the moment, and can rival the power of the supercomputers that they are using. Even more important, it could allow them to do more with less.

> I am a member of Team
> Starfire over @ Broadbandreports.com and I have been in touch with
> literally dozens of interested team members whould would like to participate,
> but I have to tell them they have to wait until the sixtrack platform is a bit
> more stable.

None of the Science Applications, or BOINC, for that matter; are all that stable. But, in spite of that, we are doing science. For all of the projects that are out of Beta / in production.

Predictor@Home has some issues with people seeing some odd errors right now, for example. But that does not stop me from particpating. LHC@Home did have a long standing problem with checkpointing and the zeroing of CPU time, but then again, so did all projects. And all of the projects that have not yet updated their science applications still have the error (unless the participant has updated the BOINC Daemon with Dr. Anderson's fix installed, and I don't know what version that is off the top of my head).

> I agree that the people used to working within CERN's 'offbeat' ways do know
> the routine and that a huge influx of n00bs would probably more
> counterproductive at this point in time then is needed.

With all of the BOINC Projects we see this. The new people have the same questions as did we when we first started in any of the projects. Because *I* had so many questions and saw that later joiners had the same questions I had was what led me to start the FAQ.

> The Project Dev's honestly seem to have more important issues to deal with
> then changing the wet nappies of new users unused to the way that LHC works
> who are likely to pitch a fit at the first signs of anything amiss....

Let them pitch a fit. We can lead a water to drink but we cannot make it horse ... the people that are going to complain are going to do that regardless. And we will help those that want help.

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Well, all I am doing is repeating myself. I think it is a good idea to work with the participant community. It costs little, and there are plenty of volunteers here to handle many of the things that go on with no need from the administrators or developers.

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Bruno,

> first in first out, just in this case it would be more like FOFI - first On
> the waiting list first In the project

Pronounced to rhyme with "Sophie"? :)

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> Pronounced to rhyme with "Sophie"? :)

Yes, excactly :D

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oh, btw, I totally agree with Paul that there are several potential benefits with a waiting list.

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> oh, btw, I totally agree with Paul that there are several potential benefits
> with a waiting list.
>
Well, Paul has a point there and I think I'm conviced as well... You just can't resist good arguments. :-)

But I've got a little suggestion:

In order to avoid big confusion, why not make it a 'team member only' waiting list? I mean, people can only sign in if they decide which team to join in. Mostly this will be people running other boinc projects as well and they will join the team they have on other projects. I know that this could also cause some confusion. I thought I'd just speak out.

Or! LHC Admins could do a "new members on invitation" thingy. Like gmail. If you have an account, invite someone. That way, LHC admins will know that only people who know someone that does LHC @ home already will join. This can reduce troubles as I mentioned earlier in this post.

Sincerely,

Thorsten

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Or! LHC Admins could do a "new members on invitation" thingy. Like gmail. If you have an account, invite someone. That way, LHC admins will know that only people who know someone that does LHC @ home already will join. This can reduce troubles as I mentioned earlier in this post.
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Good Idea sysfried, I was thinking the same thing the other day, I thought it would be nice if they sent a Account ID # to the Current Members to give to somebody that they knew that wanted to get into the Project but couldn't because of the current Account Creation being Disabled.

I know at least one person thats a members of our Team at the other Projects & has been trying to get into LHC for quite some time now but hasn't been able to ... Being as we are just a small Team anyway it would be nice to get him in here to help out ...

This is all very well, but do the CERN team actually want any more participants?

Roughly 50,000 WUs were issued this week - all gone already.

Why do Markku, Chrulle & Ben want the administrative headache of a waiting list when fewer than 6000 participants clear the WUs so quickly?


Mike W

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Gaspode the UnDressed
http://www.littlevale.co.uk

Roughly 50,000 WUs were issued this week - all gone already.
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I noticed that too, it didn't take long to get rid of them all or most of them anyway ... A little while ago there were still about 2000 WU's left now the Server is say UP & Out of Work ... hehe

> Good Idea sysfried, I was thinking the same thing the other day, I thought it
> would be nice if they sent a Account ID # to the Current Members to give to
> somebody that they knew that wanted to get into the Project but couldn't

And I could auction mine off on ebay....hehe >>:-> (Proceeds to go to CERN of course!)