LHC@home

If the server status is "Up, but no work" what is the typical wait before work is available again? Is this an hour or so, or days?

I'm new to this project, so I have no feel for how often this happens or how long the work outages last.

I would start another BOINC project, but the BOINC timeslicing thing is crap. It would be nicer to be able to designate priority project that will crunch unless it's out of work, then a fallback project kicks in.

>>what is the typical wait before work is available again?

Who knows - it's not happened before!

There are some issues with the servers - a new server is to be added this week. I'd guess that we'll see some work tomorrow, but that it will be the end of the week before the situation returns to 'normal', whatever that is!

Giskard - the first telepathic robot.

> I would start another BOINC project, but the BOINC timeslicing thing is crap.

What version of BOINC are you running? What's your OS? Are you connected to the internet 100% of the time?

I've found that the time slicing is way off when a project is first added but, after about a week, the %'s fall right in place. I do not connect to more that 2 projects on any on host though.

I am currently testing BOINC 4.11 alpha.

> > I would start another BOINC project, but the BOINC timeslicing thing is
> crap.
>
> What version of BOINC are you running? What's your OS? Are you connected to
> the internet 100% of the time?
>
> I've found that the time slicing is way off when a project is first added but,
> after about a week, the %'s fall right in place. I do not connect to more
> that 2 projects on any on host though.
>
> I am currently testing BOINC 4.11 alpha.
>
BOINC Version 4.05

No matter how you tweak the sharing %, it will stop work on one project to work on the other for a while.

I want it to work on one project 100% of the time, UNLESS it's out of work or otherwise indisposed, then drop to a backup project.

Change to BOINC 4.09. It's latest public release.
Time sharing is much better than in 4.05

> Change to BOINC 4.09. It's latest public release.
> Time sharing is much better than in 4.05
>
How? I can't find a DL for it on the BOINC site...

> > Change to BOINC 4.09. It's latest public release.
> > Time sharing is much better than in 4.05
> >
> How? I can't find a DL for it on the BOINC site...
>
http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/

> No matter how you tweak the sharing %, it will stop work on one project to
> work on the other for a while.
>
> I want it to work on one project 100% of the time, UNLESS it's out of work or
> otherwise indisposed, then drop to a backup project.

Well, you can get it to be 99% :)

Well, you can get it to be 99% :)
==========

Actually you can get it to 99.99% to 00.01% between 2 Projects by setting them to 10000 to 1, I've set projects up like that a few times and it works. The 00.01% Project won't start unless the 99.99% Project runs out of work that way... :)

To the LHC@home administrators: Please advise how long you anticipate there will be no new work units available for the project. That is, what is the date and time the project will be back up with new work?

I crunch numbers for other, non-BOINC projects, and I will switch to these projects until LHC@home is back with work.

Thank you for your consideration. :)

To the LHC@home administrators: Please advise how long you anticipate there will be no new work units available for the project. That is, what is the date and time the project will be back up with new work?
==========

I'm trying to figure out how they are going to supply WU's to 50,000 Clients with Multiple Computers in many cases when they can't Supply less than 5,000 Clients at the moment ... ???

I must admit that we are not sure ourselves. There was a problem with our internal job submission system (which delivers work from physicist to the server) and it's being modified.

Server is in better shape now that it was before (database cleanup helped a lot). Tomorrow we should get a new server , but it's to be seen how long it takes to set it up.

Please note that this is not probably the last time we get out of work for a longer time. That's because the work we give out is composed of many seperate studies. And some studies cannot be started before old ones are analyzed. Of course we could give out dummy work or repeat old studies, but it wouldn't be very meaningful. Fortunately, a feature of the BOINC system is that users can participate to many projects at the same time, and if one project has no work the other projects will get more work done.

In any case, new work should be available Wednesday or Thursday.




Markku Degerholm
LHC@home Admin

> I must admit that we are not sure ourselves. There was a problem with our
> internal job submission system (which delivers work from physicist to the
> server) and it's being modified.
>
> Server is in better shape now that it was before (database cleanup helped a
> lot). Tomorrow we should get a new server , but it's to be seen how long it
> takes to set it up.
>
> Please note that this is not probably the last time we get out of work for a
> longer time. That's because the work we give out is composed of many seperate
> studies. And some studies cannot be started before old ones are analyzed. Of
> course we could give out dummy work or repeat old studies, but it wouldn't be
> very meaningful. Fortunately, a feature of the BOINC system is that users can
> participate to many projects at the same time, and if one project has no work
> the other projects will get more work done.
>
> In any case, new work should be available Wednesday or Thursday.
>
>
>
>
> Markku Degerholm
> LHC@home Admin
>


Thanks for your prompt response! I appreciate being "in the loop" with regards to your anticipated work schedule and related scheduling issues. :) It is always nice to be provided with sufficient information on which to base future expectations!

Thanks again. Appreciate all your dedicated and hard work! :)

Thanks Markku for FAST answer ;-)


http://www.guidowaldenmeier.de

Its not a good idea to give one project 99.99% and another 00.01% as BOINC will normally make sure it has at least 1 WU for each project, and the one with 00.01% share will probably expire before you finish it, holding up the project and preventing the other people given that WU from getting credit until its sent out again and someone else processes it.
One of the features people would like to see, and which will eventually end up in BOINC will be the ability to set proper backup projects, for which a WU will only be downloaded if the primiary projects have no work. These need to be projects with small WUs, as once a WU is started it aught to be finished. Large projects like CPDN wouldnt make a good backup as you would miss the deadline, and CPDN would have to wait another year before getting the result in.

KF

> Server is in better shape now that it was before (database cleanup helped a
> lot).

In good enough shape to give us an update on the XML files perhaps??? Pretty please? The Knights Who Say Ni! are in a heated battle with the Ministry of Silly Walks and I want to be able to see graphically on my stats site that we have passed them again :)

Ni!


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

> I must admit that we are not sure ourselves. There was a problem with our
[...]
> In any case, new work should be available Wednesday or Thursday.

Thanx a lot for this info, but, is it possible that you make a link in the front page (news) pointing this thread and all the others, where you give such important information ? I haven't always the time to scan all newsgroups and missing such info is a shame ;-/ So without loosing time for you to rewrite the same things two times, to make a link in one or two words pointing the threads seems to me a good idea... no ?

Yes yes yes!!! O:-)


---

> Its not a good idea to give one project 99.99% and another 00.01% as BOINC
> will normally make sure it has at least 1 WU for each project, and the one
> with 00.01% share will probably expire before you finish it, holding up the
> project and preventing the other people given that WU from getting credit
> until its sent out again and someone else processes it.
> One of the features people would like to see, and which will eventually end up
> in BOINC will be the ability to set proper backup projects, for which a WU
> will only be downloaded if the primiary projects have no work. These need to
> be projects with small WUs, as once a WU is started it aught to be finished.
> Large projects like CPDN wouldnt make a good backup as you would miss the
> deadline, and CPDN would have to wait another year before getting the result
> in.
>
> KF
>
>

I have proposed a CPU scheduling algorythym to the BOINC development team that is somewhat simpler and somewhat more comprehensive than having backup projects. Have the current debt be counted always. Do not allow projects with negative debt to download work (unless a CPU is starved in which case the project with the highest debt that has work DLs one WU). If a WU is in danger of being late (greater than 80% of wall clock time till deadline needed to finish this WU or less than 6 hours left to the deadline) that WU gets all of the CPU time until it either has either completed, or the WU no longer meets the criteria needed to trigger this. A low priority project will complete one WU, and then be in huge negative debt, and then not DL a WU for a long time by itself unless higher share projects run out of work.

> Its not a good idea to give one project 99.99% and another 00.01% as BOINC
> will normally make sure it has at least 1 WU for each project, and the one
> with 00.01% share will probably expire before you finish it, holding up the
> project and preventing the other people given that WU from getting credit
> until its sent out again and someone else processes it.

That is only true if the primary project does not have a lot of "out of work" time. This project explicitly states that the goal is to run out of work units as fast as possible. So, I would assume that there would be work units for a few days and then wait a week till the next set of work units.

> Its not a good idea to give one project 99.99% and another 00.01% as BOINC
> will normally make sure it has at least 1 WU for each project, and the one
> with 00.01% share will probably expire before you finish it, holding up the
> project and preventing the other people given that WU from getting credit
> until its sent out again and someone else processes it.
==========

I don't really advocate anybody get this radical with their settings between 2 Projects unless they are going to carefully monitor the Deadline Dates of the Project set at 1 ... I just pointed it out as a setting that will allow your primary Project to run 100% of the time with no interference from the 2'nd Project...

Also the only Project I would set to 1 would be CPDN where you have almost 1 year to get the WU finished...With the Projects running out of work and Server Downtime that we have been seeing you shouldn't have any problem still getting the WU finished and your not keeping anybody other than yourself from getting any Credits either ...

You have to realize also that at some point and time you may have to increase the Resource Share for CPDN if there hasn't been enough work shortage or server downtime in order to get the CPDN WU done ...

It works for me anyway ... :)