LHC@home

Hello there,

I would like to start by stating that this is my 3^rd account in 3 consecutive days with the same username and e-mail > something already sounds broken!

31/10/18: first account; created a thread reporting an issue with LHC@home project on BOINC
01/11/18: wanted to check for an update on my thread, but it was gone and my e-mail address was not recognised as an existing account; created second account and a thread asking what happened - I remember reading a reply from a Moderator saying that he was able to find my first account registration, but something was corrupted and not deleted on purpose
02/11/18: wanted to reply to the message above, but again, my thread and account have completely vanished; created third account (this one) and posting this thread

Therefore, this experience is telling me that something in your community / website is broken, unless a member of staff is "having fun" deleting accounts and corrupting the database… Could you please look into this?

Thank you for your time. :-)

Not sure if they still do it but it was always set up so you couldn't post on the threads here until you actually ran a certain amount of Valid tasks and I see you haven't done that yet so maybe you should run some Theory tasks just to get started.

Thank you for your reply. I will copy & paste below a fragment that I wrote on 31/10/18, which might clarify your concern, but it will take me back to problem number one (account deletion is number two).

The issue that I am having seems fit for the Platform-specific problems > Windows section, but I am getting the following message over there - “To create a new thread in Windows you must have a certain level of average credit. This is to protect against abuse of the system.” - okay...
Not long ago I started to receive LHC@home tasks (from Science United) and I noticed a problem - 2 out of 3 failed after they reached 90+%, and the 3^rd one is kind of stuck at 99+% since a few hours, a few days and over a week or so.

In other words, I cannot complete any tasks, and even if I would, the score would probably be stored on my Science United account.

I also wrote this on the day, which might not be relevant to the actual account deletion problem mentioned in this thread.

Additionally, is there a way to link my Science United generated LHC@home account to this one?

Additionally, is there a way to link my Science United generated LHC@home account to this one?

The Science United users get a random user account here with a random password (no one knows), so those users cannot login/post with those accounts.

So linking to your named account is not possible.
If you want to see the tasks/results of your Science United machine you have to dig between those users, what could be yours.

https://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/user_search.php?action=search&search_string=Science+United+user&country=any&profile=either&team=either&search_type=date&action=Search

Thank you for your reply, now it makes much more sense and I understand how it works.

Leaving all that aside for a moment, I suppose that I would still need an account with you over here in order to join the project and get tasks (assuming that I remove the one from Science United). Therefore, how could I do that if my account keeps getting deleted?

BOINC has a bit of a problem with spammers. Climate Prediction for instance just removed over 1,4 million !! spam accounts. There is really no way for a human to clean up those so an automated solution is needed and used. Your account doesn't have credits and doesn't have any computers added. If that's not enough throw in a post with a link or two and you will look like a spammer.

To prevent your latest account from being deleted add a computer to it and if possible get some credits. You may need to temporarily leave Science United, remove LHC and re-add LHC but with the account you now have. If you then want to go back to Science United you'll probably need to remove LHC first so that SU can then manage it again.

As for taking over the SU created account. Open account_lhcathome.cern.ch_lhcathome.xml in BOINC's data directory and tell me what kind of authenticator is there. Is it like

<authenticator>123abc</authenticator>

or like

<authenticator>456_123abc</authenticator>

Don't copy it here!

Not sure if they still do it but it was always set up so you couldn't post on the threads here until you actually ran a certain amount of Valid tasks

Made up nonsense. Fact is anybody can post in *this* section even those without credit. Think about it... newbie joins and can't get tasks to validate and they leave him with no way to post a question seeking help? Yeah right.

I'm a newbie. I have no credits yet I can post to this thread. I can't post in other sections but I can post here.

@Juha
1,4 million seems crazy?! Why, what for… Why would anyone bother, why is it worth it... sigh

In my first thread from 31/10/18 I had 2 images inserted into my post with BOINC Manager and Science United account, and a reply containing this link yesterday (I kept my posts saved offline). If there is an automated tool doing this deletion, I understand it by all means, however, it should be working in a different way or have certain limits on new accounts - imagine how frustrating it was for me to create 3 accounts in 3 consecutive days. First to ask for some help, then ask what happened with my account and now this. If I have to create a 4^th one tomorrow, it would actually become hilarious.

I will take your advice and try to add my computer over here in a few minutes, after removing the project from Science United. My authenticator has the same pattern as this one (all characters changed):

<authenticator>uhr43kref02d342f3424rgw25o4q42n</authenticator>

*Update: I have 'excluded' LHC@home from my Science United account via their website, performed a 'reset project' on BOINC Manager, 'synchronised' the client with SC and the project disappeared. Then added LHC@home separately and currently it is running an ATLAS simulation - and I can see my computer attached to this account! Now I can only hope that I will still have this account active tomorrow… :-)
*Update 2: As I feared, the task ran into "Postponed: VM job unmanageable, restart later." again… I think that I will create another thread about this tomorrow, hmm.

@bronco
Exactly! That is the main reason I joined this community, trying to sort out a problem…

@Sam Slack
Happy to see that I am not the only newbie around!

My authenticator has the same pattern as this one (all characters changed):

<authenticator>uhr43kref02d342f3424rgw25o4q42n</authenticator>

Excellent. The form with a number and an underscore in front is a weak authenticator and can't be used to log in to the website. But the kind of authenticator you have can be used to do that.

For projects that use the basic website code:

Set cookie with name=auth and value=your_authenticator. The name must be exactly auth.
Opera: Menu -> Developer -> Developer tools -> Application tab -> left side Storage -> Cookies -> domain. Double click on empty row and fill Name and Value.
Firefox: Hamburger menu -> Web Developer -> Storage Inspector -> left side Cookies -> domain. Click plus and fill Name and Value.

Or go to project_url/login_auth.php and fill in Authenticator.

For projects that use Drupal website code (Einstein):

Go to Login -> Request new password -> authenticator-based login (project_url/user/login/auth) and fill in Log in with authenticator.

If those don't work or have been taken away:
Go to project_url/account_finish.php?auth=your_authenticator .


Once you have logged in to the SU managed account you could try changing email and password to what you like. SU will use authenticator to manage the account and you can't change authenticator. I don't know what happens if you decide to leave SU for good and delete the SU account. Will SU then delete all the accounts it created or does it just forget about them.

The accounts SU creates are supposed to be sort of anonymous. The concept of anonymous accounts is not yet well defined and implemented but the idea is that those accounts won't store anything that GDPR regulates. I haven't got the foggiest idea what happens when you log in to an anonymous account and then make it less anonymous. You might need to set an email and password, log out and back in with the email and password so that you can accept terms of use to make the account non-anonymous. It's also possible that it doesn't work quite right.

Totally unsupported all of this. Break something and you own all the pieces. If somebody asks I didn't tell you anything.

Not sure if they still do it but it was always set up so you couldn't post on the threads here until you actually ran a certain amount of Valid tasks

Made up nonsense. Fact is anybody can post in *this* section even those without credit. Think about it... newbie joins and can't get tasks to validate and they leave him with no way to post a question seeking help? Yeah right.

You have always had a problem reading the English language.
You used "this" and I said "the" AND that rule was made because of clowns like you and you know it,
Nobody else in Boinc history has been banned as many time as you and your immature ID's "bronco"
Not to mention I don't even have to read any of your drivel unless I take you off the "ignore" list so I rarely see any of your space wasting posts.
But have fun Kimberly.

Thank you for your reply, now it makes much more sense and I understand how it works.

Leaving all that aside for a moment, I suppose that I would still need an account with you over here in order to join the project and get tasks (assuming that I remove the one from Science United). Therefore, how could I do that if my account keeps getting deleted?

I see you have an Atlas tasks running since yesterday so maybe some time today you will have a Valid finished task edwetamas

https://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/results.php?hostid=10570211 and you have plenty of Ram but then I don't know what setting you are using as far as CPU cores per task on your 8-core.

I do see that another member that ran that same task got a computing Error https://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/workunit.php?wuid=102509040

But you may not have that same result but good luck and maybe we will see a Valid here for you later today.

Not sure if they still do it but it was always set up so you couldn't post on the threads here until you actually ran a certain amount of Valid tasks

Made up nonsense. Fact is anybody can post in *this* section even those without credit. Think about it... newbie joins and can't get tasks to validate and they leave him with no way to post a question seeking help? Yeah right.

You have always had a problem reading the English language.
You used "this" and I said "the"

Right. You said 'the" which is a general term meaning ALL the threads. So... question for you... if he can't post in any of the threads then what were you doing there replying to him? Hmmmmm?

ROFLMAO at your immature little insults.

Not to mention I don't even have to read any of your drivel unless I take you off the "ignore" list so I rarely see any of your space wasting posts.
But have fun Kimberly.

Nobody's interested in hearing about why you do what you claim you don't have to do.

Yey, my account and thread still exist! I guess that the 3^rd time was luckiest one.

@Juha
Oh, I see what you are doing over there - had no idea that it might that simple, given that you know what you are doing! I will definitely give all that a try when I get some spare time to play around and break stuff (hopefully not!). But as you mentioned, you did not tell me anything! Thank you anyway, haha.

@MAGIC Quantum Mechanic
Yes, I am trying to get that ATLAS task finished and validated, however, it seems that I am still having the issue that made me join this forum 4 days ago. I mentioned above the following:

*Update 2: As I feared, the task ran into "Postponed: VM job unmanageable, restart later." again… I think that I will create another thread about this tomorrow, hmm.

> will do that in a few minutes.

Regarding my CPU, I do not think that I use any special setting apart from TThrottle v7.72 software which keeps my CPU usage at 95% and my GPU at 63 °C. I have a feeling that I will end up like the other user with ‘computing error’, because that is what happened with my first 2 ATLAS tasks from Science United the other day - that will follow in my new thread.