LHC@home

The server page shows a zero at "Tasks ready to send" but I got some WU's to crunch a few minutes ago.

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Greetings from,
TJ

The server page shows a zero at "Tasks ready to send" but I got some WU's to crunch a few minutes ago.

Yes, that page is a cached page. Resneds can be generated and probably were after that time and you probabbly got some of those.

Yes that can happen quite often as it even did here in the previous version.

But the good thing is now you can usually get new tasks that are the real thing instead of the 30 second tasks and zero credits.

It is always good to check at least once per day even if the server says zero tasks.

There is 293 there right now but earlier today it said 40 and I got more than that myself.

I tend to check several times per day if I don't have any or just a few.

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Volunteer Mad Scientist For Life

How often is updated server status page?

I think it's long, because when I get work, the page is to "Tasks ready to send 0"

Before LHC@home move to CERN, the page was updated in real time.
That was very useful.

This could be what I'm noticing then, but in reverse. The server status page is showing over 1,000 tasks, but the client isn't getting. I was wondering if it might have been just tasks for another platform available or something, maybe not...

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Checked the project Server Status about 10 minutes ago and it said zero but "pumped" the Project anyway and got 10 WU (46 min long) . Due dates of 2/25 on all so they have take over 4 of my CPUs and are happily crunching away.

This could be what I'm noticing then, but in reverse. The server status page is showing over 1,000 tasks, but the client isn't getting. I was wondering if it might have been just tasks for another platform available or something, maybe not...

To understand why that happens you need to understand a fact that is repeated over and over and over in these threads and the threads from most other BOINC projects. I'm surprised you haven't heard this fact before since you've been with this project since 2005. OK, ready? Here it is...

The "tasks ready to send" number you see on the server status page is not accurate. Why? Because the server does not count the number of tasks waiting whenever you click the server status link. The server counts the tasks ready to send every 15 minutes or so and remembers that number and displays that number to everybody who clicks the server status link before the nexst time the tasks ready to send are counted. Read that again. Make sure you understand what that means.

Now here's an example to illustrate....

Let's say the server counts the tasks every 15 minutes and let's say the last count was at 10:00 AM and there were 1500 tasks. The next count won't be until 10:15 AM. Now suppose you click the server status link at 10:14 AM. How many ready to send tasks will you see? You'll see 1,500 because that's how many the server found when it counted at 10:00 AM.

So here's the million dollar question.....

If its says 1500 tasks ready to send then why can't you get any? The answer is simple. The answer is because there are no tasks ready to send. But, but, but doesn't the server say 1,500? Yes but that was 14 minutes ago at 10:00 AM when the server last counted. Between 10:00 AM and 10:14 AM several thousand computers requested work and were given some. In fact they gobbled up ALLnthe tasks before your computer requested tasks. So when the server counts the available tasks again at 10:15 it will say 0 tasks ready to send.

Still don't understand? Then read it again because it's really quite simple and I've explained it top to bottom, nothing left out, as simple an explanation of this mystery as you will get anywhere.

Now the 10 million dollar question....

If there were no tasks ready to send then why was Tom able to get some? The answer is that some of the 1000 sent crashed and needed to be resent. They were gobbled up so quickly by the many thousands of computers requesting work they were not counted by the server.