LHC@home

Dear LHC @ Home Team.

In the past, I had my hosts run 24/7, not worrying about deadlines.. My PC's crunched fast enough so it was never a problem.

Now my hosts have 98 % uptime, but I want to have my computers turned off. Sometimes for 8 hours only (while I sleep or while I'm gone), sometimes for 24 or more hours.

With previous 14 day deadlines and actual 30% crunching times that wouldn't have been a problem.

With the recent 5 day deadline (as mentioned in other threads) I decided to resign for now.

I fully understand that you guys need the results back ASAP, but that doesn't work out for me.

And neither one of us wants results invalid because they got back to you too late.

I hope this thread will initiate a discussion so we all end up happy.

Cheers,

Sysfried

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Even though the shorter deadlines are a real pain in the arse I will not be resigning. BOINC now goes into EDF mode immediately it downloads LHC (I have comps on the equivalent of dial-up). To overcome this I will probably suspend the project to allow the other projects I attach to get some cpu crunch some as well. Since the LHC wu estimation times are just soooo pathetically bad, this is no real problem for me since the wu's will be completed before the deadline (but only just). Overall does this mean that my LHC wu's are returned any quicker or slower than before the wu deadline change? Nope! Will the studies be completed any quicker than before? I really doubt it, but it makes Chrulle happy.

Give 'em an inch and they'll want a mile! I'm sure I read that in it's beta stage (read limited release stage) LHC@home/BOINC completed more work in a few months than the CERN had ever been able complete before. This change in wu deadline is just being gready and absolutely fscks with EDF mode/project debts and increases significantly user interaction to ensure satisfactory overall operation of BOINC.

Live long and crunch.

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Paul
(S@H1 8888)
BOINC/SAH BETA

It is their project not yours or mine, so whats the problem. Never had any problems with Einstein and have no problems with LHC.......SO if you leave, leave and we will all be happy.

First and foremost they(LHC)do not need to justify their actions to anyone, if the short deadlines do not work to their advantage they will change them....

This is about them not us or if you prefer, it is about SCIENCE not CREDITS....

And do not let my start date fool you, I have been around many years........

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Why not just let the BOINC Manager do what it was designed to do? If it goes to EDF mode, so what? The resulting LTD for LHC will mean that the other projects get their fair share of CPU time later, and it should all even out in the end. What's the obsession with micro-managing the manager?

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<blockquote>Why not just let the BOINC Manager do what it was designed to do? If it goes to EDF mode, so what? The resulting LTD for LHC will mean that the other projects get their fair share of CPU time later, and it should all even out in the end. What's the obsession with micro-managing the manager?</blockquote>

Because the "Manager" is not managing to the user's set preferences. And Users fuel the projects. And STATS fuel the users, notwithstanding the few percent who really think we're all in it for the science - they are in denial.

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<blockquote><blockquote>Why not just let the BOINC Manager do what it was designed to do? If it goes to EDF mode, so what? The resulting LTD for LHC will mean that the other projects get their fair share of CPU time later, and it should all even out in the end. What's the obsession with micro-managing the manager?</blockquote>

Because the "Manager" is not managing to the user's set preferences. And Users fuel the projects. And STATS fuel the users, notwithstanding the few percent who really think we're all in it for the science - they are in denial.</blockquote>

According to your own post in this thread, Angus, you've quit the project. What difference does it make to you now?

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

<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote>Why not just let the BOINC Manager do what it was designed to do? If it goes to EDF mode, so what? The resulting LTD for LHC will mean that the other projects get their fair share of CPU time later, and it should all even out in the end. What's the obsession with micro-managing the manager?</blockquote>

Because the "Manager" is not managing to the user's set preferences. And Users fuel the projects. And STATS fuel the users, notwithstanding the few percent who really think we're all in it for the science - they are in denial.</blockquote>

According to your own post in this thread, Angus, you've quit the project. What difference does it make to you now?

</blockquote>

Just because I'm not currently crunching WUs here, does not mean I am not monitoring the project. If/when the WU deadlines improve to reasonable settings, I will resume crunching.

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<blockquote>Because the "Manager" is not managing to the user's set preferences.</blockquote>

How so? Just because the method is being widely misunderstood and misinterpreted doesn't mean it's not doing it's job.

<blockquote>If/when the WU deadlines improve to reasonable settings, I will resume crunching.</blockquote>

Just because you find them unreasonable doesn't make it so. Since the work is still getting done, the deadlines must be reasonable to enough participants to make the project feasible.

It only becomes unreasonable when the work isn't getting done. Not simply because one or more users says so.

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<blockquote>Why not just let the BOINC Manager do what it was designed to do? If it goes to EDF mode, so what? The resulting LTD for LHC will mean that the other projects get their fair share of CPU time later, and it should all even out in the end. What's the obsession with micro-managing the manager?</blockquote>
Did I say I was on the equivalent of dial-up on some of my machines? Oh I did. I have no issue with the machine that is connected almost 24/7, but the ones that are not on a 24/7 connection are going to have real issues with the new shorter deadlines especially since they are 65%LHC/35%SETI and seti is currently fubar. Did I say it was just a pain in the arse...oh I did! I WILL need to micromanage BOINC to ensure I get enough work to allow the machines that are not on a 24/7 connection to not run out of work.

Look, I can understand the need for short deadlines IF there are results that have not been returned at the end of a study and they need to be crunched quickly to allow further studies to be done. In fact we have seen that before and when I received some of those results I almost felt honoured to crunch them (I am a pathetic BOINCerI know). However, to have short deadlines for the whole of a study is a little draconian.

Live long and crunch.

Paul.

This is again a problem with longterm and short term view of things.

GasGiant you want your machines not to run out of work, which is understandable, but if we give long deadlines we will have a very long tail of jobs that do not finish. This will then lead to a very long time for a study to finish, and therefore a much longer time between runs where you will have work outages from us.

I think we all noticed that the last work outage was on the order of days and not weeks or months as we have seen before.

I agree that maybe the current deadline is a bit short, but it is what the statistics say will give us the best turnaround time(well it is actually two standard deviations more to not give a too low deadline), if too many people drop out and stop crunching the statistics will automatically detect this and raise the deadline again. I might incorporate a minimum deadline of say 6-7 days. I do not think that a 5 day deadline is way too low but it is about the smallest reasonable amount.

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Chrulle
Research Assistant &amp; Ex-LHC@home developer
Niels Bohr Institute

<blockquote>This is again a problem with longterm and short term view of things.

GasGiant you want your machines not to run out of work, which is understandable, but if we give long deadlines we will have a very long tail of jobs that do not finish. This will then lead to a very long time for a study to finish, and therefore a much longer time between runs where you will have work outages from us.

I think we all noticed that the last work outage was on the order of days and not weeks or months as we have seen before.

I agree that maybe the current deadline is a bit short, but it is what the statistics say will give us the best turnaround time(well it is actually two standard deviations more to not give a too low deadline), if too many people drop out and stop crunching the statistics will automatically detect this and raise the deadline again. I might incorporate a minimum deadline of say 6-7 days. I do not think that a 5 day deadline is way too low but it is about the smallest reasonable amount.
</blockquote>

It's also a function of the wu estimated completion time. The initial estimation still needs to be reduced somewhat to make things "easier" for us not on 24/7 connections.

Thanks for the reply. :)

I too will be withdrawing my services from LHC. I consider these short deadline WU an attempt to hijack my computer by forcing it into emergency crunch mode, superceding the other projects I crunch for.
To me, this action by LHC is on par with adware or a virus.
This Project is now in 'No new work' mode and will be suspended as soon as the last WU is returned.
I have not yet decided how long I will withdraw my computer, but I am considering considering a date of January 1st 2006.

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Questions? Answers are in the BOINC Wiki.

Boinc V6.10.56 Recommended
WinXP C2D 2.1G 3GB

Yes indeed, for multi project crunching this deadline is way too short. Just recently Einstein raised their deadline from 7 to 14 days. This step here is very counterproductive.
Just my 0.02 €

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greetz, Uli

<blockquote>I too will be withdrawing my services from LHC. I consider these short deadline WU an attempt to hijack my computer by forcing it into emergency crunch mode, superceding the other projects I crunch for.
To me, this action by LHC is on par with adware or a virus.
This Project is now in 'No new work' mode and will be suspended as soon as the last WU is returned.
I have not yet decided how long I will withdraw my computer, but I am considering considering a date of January 1st 2006.</blockquote>

Nobody has forced you to crunch for LHC, that's your own choiche. The fact that you compare a virus with something that you chose for yourself is quite ridiculous.

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BOINC.BE: The team for Belgians and their friends who love the smell of glowing red cpu's in the morning

<blockquote><blockquote>I too will be withdrawing my services from LHC. I consider these short deadline WU an attempt to hijack my computer by forcing it into emergency crunch mode, superceding the other projects I crunch for.
To me, this action by LHC is on par with adware or a virus.
This Project is now in 'No new work' mode and will be suspended as soon as the last WU is returned.
I have not yet decided how long I will withdraw my computer, but I am considering a date of January 1st 2006.</blockquote>

Nobody has forced you to crunch for LHC, that's your own choiche. The fact that you compare a virus with something that you chose for yourself is quite ridiculous.</blockquote>

You are correct I don't 'have' to crunch for LHC, and I won't be for a while. However, having offered my system to help this project doesn't give LHC management the right to abuse my generosity. I believe my action is the best way to reinforce my point.
I can only hope that others will join me in my boycott so that the point is made and other projects are not tempted to do the same in the future.

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Questions? Answers are in the BOINC Wiki.

Boinc V6.10.56 Recommended
WinXP C2D 2.1G 3GB

<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote>I too will be withdrawing my services from LHC. I consider these short deadline WU an attempt to hijack my computer by forcing it into emergency crunch mode, superceding the other projects I crunch for.
To me, this action by LHC is on par with adware or a virus.
This Project is now in 'No new work' mode and will be suspended as soon as the last WU is returned.
I have not yet decided how long I will withdraw my computer, but I am considering a date of January 1st 2006.</blockquote>

Nobody has forced you to crunch for LHC, that's your own choiche. The fact that you compare a virus with something that you chose for yourself is quite ridiculous.</blockquote>

You are correct I don't 'have' to crunch for LHC, and I won't be for a while. However, having offered my system to help this project doesn't give LHC management the rignt to abuse my generosity. I believe my action is the best way to reinforce my point.
I can only hope that others will join me in my boycott so that the point is made and other projects are not tempted to do the same in the future.
</blockquote>

It's your right to stop crunching for LHC as it is the right of LHC to see how far they can go with the flexibility of the crunchers. IF the short deadlines give faster results then I don't see any reason why LHC should change their deadlines. Do they have to change their deadlines just to make a couple of users happy? Or should they change the deadlines so that the project as a whole advances as fast as possible?

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BOINC.BE: The team for Belgians and their friends who love the smell of glowing red cpu's in the morning

Remember that BOINC will try to make sure that it runs the projects according to your set percentages seen over a LONG period of time. If LHC has short deadline and therefore momentarily gets more time than the percentage you have set that will then be compensate for. However this will only be the case when you let the client run untouched for several weeks.

If you have too many projects atatched, and they have very different deadlines, you willl most likely see even more short time variatation in this. Not all combination of projects are good if you want balance on very short time scales, like a week, and there is no way around that, except an extremely small cache.

LHC has not abused anyone. It has set its paramters according to the needs of the the project, and after that it is up to every user to see if they are willing to work within those limits.

As far as the project is concerned there can not be anything seriously wrong with the parameters as long as the number of active users is increasing, since that means that the project is still getting more and more done.

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I said it in another thread but I still don't understand how it can be interesting to have hundred WUs in stock. Sorry, I'm probably stupid but I can't see where is the advantage.

Last time in Sztaki, the project was waiting until all the WUs are finished to go a step further. And there was no work during almost a week waiting until the WUs collector had finished their WUs. I think this is more stupid than have short deadlines and one week for WUs of 6 hours is not a short deadline, in my opinion.

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I generally do not care to get involved in long BB discussions, especially when I must be on the negative side, but I feel a need to clarify my point to the pompom people.

What LHC has done with its short deadline WU is jump the queue. This is annoying at best, and absolutely rude in any civilized society.

My nice 3 day queue (an acceptable balance in my opinion) which had finally stablelized (with Einstein now using an acceptable deadline) after months of patience, has now again been totally disrupted.

LHC's greed has caused other project WU to fall behind and are also now EDF mode. This is not being a good citizen of the Boinc community and will not serve them well in the long run. They are now minus 1 cruncher.

This will be my last post on the subject.

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Questions? Answers are in the BOINC Wiki.

Boinc V6.10.56 Recommended
WinXP C2D 2.1G 3GB

That's exactly the problem with short deadlines (those significantly different from the rest of the BOINC projects).

As soon as a short deadline WU hits the work queue, it immediately puts BOINC into EDF mode. This causes the other attached projects to start increasing their LTD. When the few short deadlines WUs have finished, the other projects start crunching, and no new short deadline WUs are downloaded.

It's a short term hijacking of the user's BOINC PC, forcing the WUs to the front of the queue. I think that it will backfire, both in political and real terms. After a short blip of work activity (maybe a week?), the PCs that are working off the LTD on other projects won't be crunching LHC.

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