LHC@home

Hello,

Just posting again with a full and frank update. The last day was just a quick hit and run and I was not in yesterday.

I know things have been very quiet around here with regards answers and keeping you informed and the team would like to thank you for your patience in this regard. There are some users out there who have not only been patient and understanding but also very good at explaining the situation to other users and we thank them for their work.

The migration is not a simple job and we are working hard on making it as seamless as possible so that there will be as little downtime as possible to the service.

We have not updated the news on the website for various reasons. The first being we needed to get CERN access accounts which is not as easy as it seems. Then we had to be allowed access to the server and the first thing we went to look at was the BOINC installation so we could get the ball moving on the migration. There was also the issue that we did not have any answers to your questions because the answer frankly to all your questions are "It will migrate to QMUL and from mid to late January be administrated from there". All other problems that you encounter/we encounter will be dealt with as soon as we are installed and ready to go. As this will be a clean install (no you will not lose your stats/credits) we hope that all the issues you have currently will be sorted out by that.

The biggest issue facing us seems to be a lack of Work Units. This is something we are very aware of and are working on getting as many LHC related projects on to the service as possible. We do not know when these will be integrated in to the project but it is a priority for us after the server move. We have enlisted Imperial College London to assist with this.

I will generally be involved in the dissemination/outreach for the project with some basic tech support. I work with GridPP in a similar role and will be skulking on the forums most days and hope I will be able to respond quickly to any issues you have.

Just to finish we would like to apologise for the silence and realise it is very frustrating but that there will be no major improvements to the LHC@home server until it is 100% under our adminstration. We would also like to thank the previous people who have worked on LHC@home, mostly in their spare time, some you know like Ben Segal and Chrulle and others you may not like Ignacio Reguero and Phil Defert. These guys have been instrumental in helping us get this move going.

We're looking forward to getting some serious number crunching done in the new year and we wish you all a happy holidays and you will hear a lot more from us in the new year.

Later days,
Neasan

Thanks for the news. :)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2007 !

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Do you want to get banned for 31 years, your account and credits deleted at a Boinc project ? Predictor@home is your best choice.

Thanks a lot for this excellent news. Hope the migration will help a lot CERN in this LHC project.

Good luck with the last issues you could encounter.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Excellent info....thanks much.
I look forward to the work and maybe someday sharing several pints !

Peace in the '07 !

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Thanks for the update and please realize that even though we may not all show it, we DO appreciate the complexities of a phased transition of the magnitude that you folks are in process with.

We all (well anyone who's been here longer then a month at least... :o) by now should understand that at least sometimes the only answer that you will have for us at any particular moment or in response to a question asked is no answer at all which is "ok" as long as there are posts like this one to keep us in the loop and excited about the future moving forward to the re-emergence of a leaner, meaner LHC@home over the next 4-6 weeks..

Thanks Neasan and I for one am looking forward to hearing more from you in the coming weeks.

ed. spelling

:)

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Dear Neasan.

Thank you for your post. Relax. LHC @Home users are patient... sometimes....

Happy Holidays!

Sysfried

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Thanks for all the info! We will be here when you are ready.

In the meantime, we all wish you the best in this holiday season, and a happy and peaceful new year.

-Gene

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Dear Neasan.

Thank you for your post. Relax. LHC @Home users are patient... sometimes....

Happy Holidays!

Sysfried

The ones that are still here are patient.

I actually kind of like the intermittant work here. In my opinion it is a very strong vindication of the BOINC platform. I don't think a stand alone project could possibly survive without providing a mostly constant stream of work. With BOINC there are other projects to take up the slack so my hosts don't get lazy and a project like this one can get a decent supply of CPU time when needed.

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BOINC WIKI

BOINCing since 2002/12/8

I kind of lilke the intermittant work as well. I have my LHC resource share set pretty high so when there is work, most of my computers do almost only LHC until it is done. However I DO like doing other projects as well. Plus it is kind of satisfying to know that we finished all the work in a batch.

One quick question that shouldn't be too difficult to answer: will the project URL change? Of course all the users would be affected however the 3rd party stats sites like mine will be affected as well and it would be good to start getting the word out.

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- A member of The Knights Who Say NI!
My BOINC stats site

[quote]One quick question that shouldn't be too difficult to answer: will the project URL change? Of course all the users would be affected however the 3rd party stats sites like mine will be affected as well and it would be good to start getting the word out.[/quote

No the URL will NOT be changing it's a relatively simple operation to change the IP the domain points to. The change can take up to 24 hours to spread around the net but plenty of notice will be given and it won't effect the project too much if at all.

Later Days,
Neasan

No the URL will NOT be changing it's a relatively simple operation to change the IP the domain points to. The change can take up to 24 hours to spread around the net but plenty of notice will be given and it won't effect the project too much if at all.

Later Days,
Neasan

Cheers! That makes things easy and I'm always a big fan of easy things.

Merry Christmas!

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- A member of The Knights Who Say NI!
My BOINC stats site

No the URL will NOT be changing it's a relatively simple operation to change the IP the domain points to. The change can take up to 24 hours to spread around the net but plenty of notice will be given and it won't effect the project too much if at all.

If you can get someone with access to the authoritative CERN nameservers, you can make the transition faster, I believe, by setting a short "time to live" value for the lhcathome lookups - I have been advised in the past that for best results this should be done more than 5 days before the move, and set to a very short time to live (eg a few minutes).

River~~

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As promised and advertised, albeit a little late, here is some visual proof that a) we are doing something and b) that at least Alex exists (he's the one in the photos):
http://www.gridpp.ac.uk/lhcathome/photos.html

:-) Thanks 4 the info and like some one else said, do keep writing :-)
As the project resources r set high and due to lack of work. my machines do have a tendency off hogging themselves :-) so they will be around. Rivers :-) honest i dont do a thing 2 them :-( they r just starving.
Regars
Masud.

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As promised and advertised, albeit a little late, here is some visual proof that a) we are doing something and b) that at least Alex exists (he's the one in the photos):
http://www.gridpp.ac.uk/lhcathome/photos.html

Thank you Neasan!

Nice visual proof and plenty of literary/informational proof too!

Gives me something to do here at 3am

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Volunteer Mad Scientist For Life