LHC@home

Can you please explain the details of the daily quota system.

Not an admin - sorry, but here's your answer:

The quota system limits the number of WUs that can be downloaded per computer per day. It serves two main purposes:

1) It stops one malicious user from downloading thousands of WUs and doing no processing on them, thereby bringing the project to an effective halt.

2) It guards against a faulty CPU or corrupted executable processing large numbers of WUs to completion quickly and returning erroneous results. This would have much the same effect as above.

The exact value is arbitrary, and can be set by the system administrators. The value set will depend on the expected run time of the WU, the number of WUs available, numer of hosts running them, etc., etc.

With LHC@Home the WUs can sometimes complete correctly in a very short period. This makes it difficult to estimate a suitable value for the daily quota. Early in Beta the quota was set at 20, and proved to be far too low, so it has been raised - I think it's now set at 50. This may not be enough for a fast multi-processor system when the WUs complete quickly, but raising it may result in too many WUs being sent to slower computers with no real prospect of them being completed by the deadline.

Can anyone add anything to this?




Giskard - the first telepathic robot.

> Not an admin - sorry, but here's your answer:
>
> The quota system limits the number of WUs that can be downloaded per computer
> per day. It serves two main purposes:
>
> 1) It stops one malicious user from downloading thousands of WUs and doing no
> processing on them, thereby bringing the project to an effective halt.
>
> 2) It guards against a faulty CPU or corrupted executable processing large
> numbers of WUs to completion quickly and returning erroneous results. This
> would have much the same effect as above.
>
> The exact value is arbitrary, and can be set by the system administrators. The
> value set will depend on the expected run time of the WU, the number of WUs
> available, numer of hosts running them, etc., etc.
>
> With LHC@Home the WUs can sometimes complete correctly in a very short period.
> This makes it difficult to estimate a suitable value for the daily quota.
> Early in Beta the quota was set at 20, and proved to be far too low, so it has
> been raised - I think it's now set at 50. This may not be enough for a fast
> multi-processor system when the WUs complete quickly, but raising it may
> result in too many WUs being sent to slower computers with no real prospect of
> them being completed by the deadline.
>
> Can anyone add anything to this?
>
>
>
>
> Giskard - the first telepathic robot.

>
>
Good explanation. I thought the limit at LHC was 100 though.

John Keck -- BOINCing since 2002/12/08 --

Good explanation. I thought the limit at LHC was 100 though.
==========

No, it's 50 as far as I know at all the Projects. Althought I think they need to raise it a some Projects like LHC that sends out a lot of 1-2 min WU's...IMO

> No, it's 50 as far as I know at all the Projects. Althought I think they need
> to raise it a some Projects like LHC that sends out a lot of 1-2 min
> WU's...IMO

I don't really see any reason to do so. All their work is obviously being processed (we are out). The only thing this would change is that the first people to connect to the scheduler after new work had been submitted would get more work while more people would get none. This in turn would cause work units to be stuck in bigger caches and not returned as quickly as if they are spread out to more hosts. This in turn delays creation of more work because according to the FAQ, old results must often be analyzed before new work can be created. Just attach to another BOINC project and let LHC do its thing :)


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

>>Good explanation. I thought the limit at LHC was 100 though

Last comment I can find on this is from Markku

"I'll raise the quota to 100 results for a while..." in this thread

I'm not sure if it's still set at that now. Before that it was 50, and it started out at 20.


Giskard - the first telepathic robot.

Just attach to another BOINC project and let LHC do its thing :)
===========

hahahahahahaha .... Attach to another Project, why sure, why not... Lets see what our choices are ...

Predictor@Home ... Down...Lord only knows if it will ever be back up
Pirates@Home ..... Get 1 WU a day if your Lucky...Real Lucky that is
Seti@Home ........ Totally Borked at the moment, Rejecting Uploads, Not giving out work, Validators Down...
CPDN ............. Spend between 3 weeks to 2 months or longer running 1 WU

So Actually we have a Choice of running 2 min WU's at LHC or 2 Month WU's at CPDN...

PS: Thanks for informing me that there are other Projects though, I would have never figured that out on my own ... ;)

"I'll raise the quota to 100 results for a while..." in this thread

I'm not sure if it's still set at that now. Before that it was 50, and it started out at 20.
==========

Your probably right Mike because I know I downloaded close to 100 yesterday on each of my PC's, but I'll be out of WU's on most of them by late tonight or tommorow morning at the latest ...

>
> No, it's 50 as far as I know at all the Projects. Althought I think they need
> to raise it a some Projects like LHC that sends out a lot of 1-2 min
> WU's...IMO
>
>

50 in seti, currently 100 in LHC, 4 in CPDN. So it's project-specific. ;)

Thanks to all who replied. I would still like a definitive answer from the Admins. I'm finding that some of my computers get very little work while others get a larger share (none really get enough to keep them busy for to long), especially if one host starts downloading earlier than the others. It appears that WU�s may be disbursed by user, not by host.

Daily result quota per host is 100, and it is reset at midnight server time.


Markku Degerholm
LHC@home Admin

Daily result quota per host is 100, and it is reset at midnight server time.

Markku Degerholm
LHC@home Admin
============

Well that may be the way it is supposed to work but as far as I can tell from my PC's it simply doesn't work that way...

I have yet to be able to keep any of my faster PC's running LHC WU's for more than a day, mainly because out of the 100 supposedly WU's downloaded 10-20 of them will fail to download and the server still figures them as downloaded to me I guess..

And then out of the 100 maybe 20-40 of them will be nothing but 4 second to 2 minute WU's, thus between both the failed downloads and short WU's you end up effectively receiving about 50 WU's that are going to take any amount of time at all to run...And on my faster PC's that only amounts to about 2/3 to 3/4 of a day...

Another anomaly I've noticed is when the server resets the daily Quota again...It seems that once I download the supposedly 100 WU's when there is WU's available I can't download any more until at least 24 hours have passed, all I get is "No Work Available" or I've "Exceeded My Daily Quota".

If the server resets the Quota at Midnight then I figure if it's Noon or 6:00 PM here in Michigan the next day & I haven't downloaded any new WU's that day then I shouldn't be getting that Message if the server is showing Work Available ... IMO

> I have yet to be able to keep any of my faster PC's running LHC WU's for more
> than a day, mainly because out of the 100 supposedly WU's downloaded 10-20 of
> them will fail to download and the server still figures them as downloaded to
> me I guess..

One purpose of the daily result quota is to limit failed downloads too. Some broken clients could otherwise try to download 1000 results a day, all failing.

However, there are currently too much download errors... It's actually an old problem but clearly needs to be addressed more aggressively.

> And then out of the 100 maybe 20-40 of them will be nothing but 4 second to 2
> minute WU's, thus between both the failed downloads and short WU's you end up
> effectively receiving about 50 WU's that are going to take any amount of time
> at all to run...And on my faster PC's that only amounts to about 2/3 to 3/4 of
> a day...

I see your point. But it might not be a good idea to increase quota, the server is out of the work most of the time anyway.

> Another anomaly I've noticed is when the server resets the daily Quota
> again...It seems that once I download the supposedly 100 WU's when there is
> WU's available I can't download any more until at least 24 hours have passed,
> all I get is "No Work Available" or I've "Exceeded My Daily Quota".
>
> If the server resets the Quota at Midnight then I figure if it's Noon or 6:00
> PM here in Michigan the next day & I haven't downloaded any new WU's that
> day then I shouldn't be getting that Message if the server is showing Work
> Available ... IMO

This is strange. I checked the scheduler source code and it is pretty clear about this, quota is reset next ney after last download. Does anybody else have similiar experiences?


Markku Degerholm
LHC@home Admin

> Another anomaly I've noticed is when the server resets the daily Quota
> again...It seems that once I download the supposedly 100 WU's when there is
> WU's available I can't download any more until at least 24 hours have passed,
> all I get is "No Work Available" or I've "Exceeded My Daily Quota".
>
> If the server resets the Quota at Midnight then I figure if it's Noon or 6:00
> PM here in Michigan the next day & I haven't downloaded any new WU's that
> day then I shouldn't be getting that Message if the server is showing Work
> Available ... IMO

This is strange. I checked the scheduler source code and it is pretty clear about this, quota is reset next ney after last download. Does anybody else have similiar experiences?

Markku Degerholm
LHC@home Admin
==============

Thank you Markku for addressing my Post, I know for sure this is what is happening to me on the Download issue...I downloaded my 100 WU's at approximately 7:00PM on the 11th and the server simply wouldn't give me any more WU's until 7:15PM on the 12th, I checked the times the WU's were downloaded when I came home from work...

Even though my faster PC's had run out of work already it's seems the Server makes me wait 24 hrs before it will give me any more work, it's doing the same thing to me right now, telling me I've Exceeded My Daily Quota or No Work Available when the Server shows work available...

I just installed the new version 4.12 & still get the same replys from the server so I don't know what to make of it other than thats the way it is...PoorBoy

With LHC@Home the WUs can sometimes complete correctly in a very short period.
> This makes it difficult to estimate a suitable value for the daily quota.
> Early in Beta the quota was set at 20, and proved to be far too low, so it has
> been raised - I think it's now set at 50. This may not be enough for a fast
> multi-processor system when the WUs complete quickly, but raising it may
> result in too many WUs being sent to slower computers with no real prospect of
> them being completed by the deadline.
==========

Tell me about it, I checked my PIII 850 PC yesterday and there were 180 WU's waiting to be run on it, I was like WTF, my faster PC's can't get any work and my slowest PC downloads them like their going out of style...I did some calculating and I will be able to run them all before the deadlines hit but I disabled Network Access until I get some of them run out before the server figures the 850 PIII needs more work...hehe

Markku,

>
> This is strange. I checked the scheduler source code and it is pretty clear
> about this, quota is reset next ney after last download. Does anybody else have
> similiar experiences?
>

I've noticed a similar behavior, but it has not been sufficiently annoying for me to spend any effort tracking it in detail. I have a sufficiency of WU's, and there have been other BOINC problems of more importance, and more impact, with which to be concerned.

Cheers,

Stephen
<a> [/url]

I have a sufficiency of WU's
==========

On my slower PC's it's no problem because they can't run the WU's fast enough to worry about running out for a few days anyway.

But on my faster PC's it is a problem because they can run out of work in less than a day. So it's frustrating to see work available but unable to get any of it for them until the 24 hr's elapse, and by then a lot of times the work units are gone & none are left to get ... It's not that big a deal though I just go crunch some more CPDN then, but if work is available at LHC I would like to be able to get it if I need some more WU's...

I need a little help understanding something....

How can our applications be set up to download more than one or two WU at a time? I always get 1, maybe 2 WUs at a time when my comp. connects to the site.

Thanks,
-- Kunal

> I need a little help understanding something....
>
> How can our applications be set up to download more than one or two WU at a
> time? I always get 1, maybe 2 WUs at a time when my comp. connects to the
> site.
>
> Thanks,
> -- Kunal

This value can be changed in your account->profile->global..

look here into your global profile

and change the values for each desired "sub Profiles"
(default,school,work,home)

I was able to get more than 1 or 2 WUs at a time by adjusting the "Connect to the Network" setting in General Preferences. The default was 0.10 Days and I increased it to 2.00 Days and started to get about 10 WUs at a time.