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Number crunching :
How often does LHC shut down?
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Send message Joined: 16 Oct 05 Posts: 6 Credit: 3,332 RAC: 0 |
In the last 2 years for several times I tried to access the project to crunch a few wu's, but every time I see shut down notice. Is there any maintenance schedule around? |
Send message Joined: 2 Sep 04 Posts: 545 Credit: 148,912 RAC: 0 |
In the last 2 years for several times I tried to access the project to crunch a few wu's, but every time I see shut down notice. Is there any maintenance schedule around? No ... This, like SIMAP is a project with intermittent work ... SIMAP now seems to be on a 'schedule" where they generate work, pause, analyze and do whatever, then issue more work (at least so far, but I have only been back for one monthly cycle) ... LHC@Home tends to "burst" mode operate on a random timer ... Lots of work, pauses, some longer than others, then more work ... with the addition of random down time too ... :) |
Send message Joined: 18 Sep 04 Posts: 47 Credit: 1,886,234 RAC: 0 |
There are folks (in canada last I heard) that submit the work when they need something done. This is done without sysops even being involved. We've gone months with no work at all.. The outage, like we're seing now, seems to happen when some of the server code just shuts down for some reason, and doesn't get fixed until someone gets to work. The server code for this project is REALLY old, but they don't plan on upgrading it. |
Send message Joined: 2 Sep 04 Posts: 545 Credit: 148,912 RAC: 0 |
Which is really sad. As the LHC guy said in the movie at the conference, "when do you see a computer center ask you for more work?" Had the work been steady I would have had LHC ahead of CPDN ... Oh well, I guess the move to the Mac Pro was not a bad decision after all ... :) |
Send message Joined: 16 Oct 05 Posts: 6 Credit: 3,332 RAC: 0 |
wow then this is a real black hole project. ha ha |
Send message Joined: 2 Sep 04 Posts: 545 Credit: 148,912 RAC: 0 |
It can be... sadly enough ... It was one of the odder ones in the beginning because they had 3 different size work units ... but any one of them could come to a halt in seconds ... when then beam hit the walls ... The screen saver sadly did not reflect anything that was really happening ... There was a little talk of moving another program to the BOINC platform ... but as far as I know that is dead ... I would be willing to bet that if they did a port of their analysis program to BOINC we could do as well as the super computers they have lined up to do their data ... One of the things that they did through most of the life of the program was to throttle the number of people that could do LHC, then with the intermittant work ... Well, if the work were constant like SaH or EaH they could have racked up numbers in that range because I know I was not the only one that would have made this my primary project... Just the thought of working with this aspect of physics ... alas, alack ... |
Send message Joined: 18 Sep 04 Posts: 2 Credit: 10,382 RAC: 0 |
In the last 2 years for several times I tried to access the project to crunch a few wu's, but every time I see shut down notice. Is there any maintenance schedule around? obviously not. Will try to upload finished WUs + start chrunching other stable applications. |
Send message Joined: 2 Sep 04 Posts: 545 Credit: 148,912 RAC: 0 |
In the last 2 years for several times I tried to access the project to crunch a few wu's, but every time I see shut down notice. Is there any maintenance schedule around? The APPLICATION is stable ... THe work load is not ... :) Same with SIMAP ... and some other projects ... CPDN, EaH, RaH and WCG have been the most consistent in being UP and having work. SaH has work but has a history of having troubles in part because of load and they tend to be the first place to try new BOINC "features". I have been having surprisingly good luck with many of the newer "beta" class projects that in my signature you can see have less than 30K ... though I am working hard to "push" some of those up to the 50K area as fast as I can ... The only other project *I* cannot recommend is PPaH (YMMV) ... If I *HAD* to pick three, and only three projects I would go with CPDN, EaH and RaH as being the most reliable, having the nicest "environment" and the stablest workloads ... but that is just me ... You have to decide for yourself what you want to support ... |
Send message Joined: 7 Oct 06 Posts: 114 Credit: 23,192 RAC: 0 |
4/14/2008 11:41:21 PM|lhcathome|Sending scheduler request: To fetch work. Requesting 31564 seconds of work, reporting 0 completed tasks 4/14/2008 11:41:26 PM|lhcathome|Scheduler request succeeded: got 0 new tasks 4/14/2008 11:41:26 PM|lhcathome|Message from server: Project encountered internal error: shared memory |
Send message Joined: 16 Oct 05 Posts: 6 Credit: 3,332 RAC: 0 |
Unbelievable I got 2 wu's! After 2 days of waiting. I thought Seti is the worst lousy project plagued with stoppages but LHC even outmatching and they do not give people official answer. Hmm it is an international project and they supposed to follow at least minimum respectful moral standard?!?! |
Send message Joined: 2 Sep 04 Posts: 545 Credit: 148,912 RAC: 0 |
Unbelievable I got 2 wu's! After 2 days of waiting. I thought Seti is the worst lousy project plagued with stoppages but LHC even outmatching and they do not give people official answer. Again, this is part of the "pattern" ... A bunch of work, then some "trickles" as they re-send some that need retesting ... I got three in flight now ... so, better than nothing ... BUt, I am also doing tons of work for other projects ... and having a little fun playing with the possibilities ... |
Send message Joined: 1 Sep 04 Posts: 275 Credit: 2,652,452 RAC: 0 |
Unbelievable I got 2 wu's! After 2 days of waiting. I thought Seti is the worst lousy project plagued with stoppages but LHC even outmatching and they do not give people official answer. Note the sticky thread at the top of this forum. The title is "this project rarely has work", seems a little official to me. BOINC WIKI BOINCing since 2002/12/8 |
Send message Joined: 13 Jul 05 Posts: 143 Credit: 263,300 RAC: 0 |
To Keck and Buck-- As 'old timers' around here you're making two apparently unwarranted assumptions: 1) That the 'sticky' notes are ever read ... 2) Assuming they are read, that they are understood. Maybe I shouldn't throw stones - heck, we all was 'newbies' at one time ... If I've lived this long, I've gotta be that old |
Send message Joined: 2 Sep 04 Posts: 545 Credit: 148,912 RAC: 0 |
To Keck and Buck-- Um, I try not to make assumptions... and I am one of those that is always asking questions. Sadly, I rarely get answers... Anyway, that is why I have been answering as I have ... that this project, like SIMAP is one where work is not as plentiful as we would like. In the EARLY days, they even limited new accounts to keep the population low to improve our chances of getting work and to lower the loads on the servers. |
Send message Joined: 30 Nov 06 Posts: 234 Credit: 11,078 RAC: 0 |
I would be willing to bet that if they did a port of their analysis program to BOINC we could do as well as the super computers they have lined up to do their data . Not a chance, a single dataset which a machine needs would be at least 1 gigabyte of data and your machine would have to download that before it could do anything else. We are TRYING to find something from the analysis of real data that will port but the big four have told us that the code is too, lets say, verbose. To address the other complaints, the reason you hear nothing from me and Alex is: a) We are not told, despite numerous times asking for notification, when new work is going up (and yes the work is being done in Triumf in Canada) b) We have nothing to say, there is no news, sadly with both of us involved in particle physics it is quite a busy period for us (I've had to field questions about the Grid replacing the Internet caused by a very very poor article in the Sunday Times of all places) We would love to tell you when work is coming and how much, we would also love to be able to dedicate all our time to get LHC@home to be the great project it can be but there is no money (we applied, we failed) and time is at a premium. I can assure I am pushing for more work (we honestly have stuff on the horizon but sometimes people can drag their feet when they hit an obstacle and that keeps happening), for an upgrade of the site code and want to keep you informed but there is nothing to say. I am on the boards most days reading comments and they mostly don't require a reply as the all focus on "why is there no work" or "the codebase is old" and they have been addressed many times by myself and by the sticky above. I understand your frustration and wish I could say or do something but my hands are tied. |
Send message Joined: 2 Sep 04 Posts: 545 Credit: 148,912 RAC: 0 |
I would be willing to bet that if they did a port of their analysis program to BOINC we could do as well as the super computers they have lined up to do their data . Well, there are quite a few of us with both the bandwidth and larger than average computers ... Of course, it would have to run on a Mac Pro ... :) As for the rest, I think many of us share your frustrations and that is why the litany of questions. Though I have no issues with the forum/site code ... I WANT THE WORK ... :) Well, the good news is that there are other projects that are related now, so, I am drifting in that direction, somewhat sadly as this really was my favorite project ... I just could not get enough work fast enough to build up my numbers ... |
Send message Joined: 13 Jul 05 Posts: 143 Credit: 263,300 RAC: 0 |
As per usual, Buck has been much more eloquent in his responses to the Leaders of the Board than I ever could, but I have to second his responses -- we are here because we want to help, if only in some small way. There are other projects running that we can support, and if we have a machine (or machines for the fortunate) select one or more of those projects to fill your waiting hours - I do ... If I've lived this long, I've gotta be that old |
Send message Joined: 16 Oct 07 Posts: 8 Credit: 102,054 RAC: 0 |
From what I've seen reading through the published data. LHC@Home has been kind of forgotten. It's not really being addressed as part for their computing needs There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of new info related to LHC@Home in the project collaboration forums, and I kind of get the feeling that a lot of individuals involved have just kind of forgotten about it, or dismissed it as not worthwhile. This is just my opinion of course, and I can't say it for certain as I don't know the individuals involved, and am not involved in the project in any way. |
Send message Joined: 28 Oct 05 Posts: 2 Credit: 7,785,661 RAC: 0 |
I would be willing to bet that if they did a port of their analysis program to BOINC we could do as well as the super computers they have lined up to do their data . I second that. The size of the downloads shouldn't cause me a bandwith problem, most of my systems have plenty of disk space (and 500 GB disks are the only $100 or so these days). Admittedly, I have several systems running XP Pro, which therefore have memory limitations. The only reason most of them are running a Windows OS at all is that proteins@home doesn't have a Linux app. Give me a steady supply of LHC work, and I'll buy memory, install Linux, and abandon proteins@home. Maybe you should create a second project for the analysis work (with strong warnings about the kind of machines required to run it). I'd be attracted to such a project, and maybe other people with serious hardware would. |
Send message Joined: 2 Sep 04 Posts: 545 Credit: 148,912 RAC: 0 |
I *KNOW* most people don't have a 2.38 TB main boot disk, or 16 G of memory on the off chance they will need it ... but compile for the Mac Pro and I got a machine for you ... :) Oh, and though they have only 500G drives in them now, I can put in a pair of 1 TB and bump this machine to 4 TB total ... though spread across 3 disks ... (the 2.38 is RAID 5 volume ... so I won't evn corrupt the data ...) :) Paul {edit}Thanks for the complement btw ... the last observation was that I was long-winded, non-specific and ranting ...{/edit} |
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