1) Message boards : Number crunching : Initial Replication (Message 17721)
Posted 5 Aug 2007 by Bob Guy
Post:
How's your blood pressure? Not too high, I hope.

I am not persuaded by arguments that resort to yelling and name calling.
2) Message boards : Number crunching : Initial Replication (Message 17706)
Posted 4 Aug 2007 by Bob Guy
Post:
If you want to be too literal:

"At least three" might be construed to mean "not less than three", but it does not mean "not more than three".

So five is OK, gives a saftey margin, provides more work from a limited supply, ensures that a quorum is met sooner rather than later and allows for evaluation of the possible AMD not equal to Intel issue.

The issue of wasting resources can be carried to extremes. If I wanted to be a dictator I might order that only recent AMD CPUs and C2Ds and C2Qs be used in a project because all the others are wasteful of resources due to operating inefficiency. That's not going to happen but it might be a reason for an individual to voluntarily retire their own old computer.
3) Message boards : Number crunching : Initial Replication (Message 17667)
Posted 1 Aug 2007 by Bob Guy
Post:
Your observation is absolutely true.

Not efficient? Probably true.

Why we do it the way we're doing it? Probably easier to implement.

Are you saying that it's normal for you to doubt? (A deliberate misconstruction by me. I'm just teasing you!)
4) Message boards : Number crunching : Ghost WUs (Message 17664)
Posted 1 Aug 2007 by Bob Guy
Post:
WU:1695756
rID:8763478

My computer never received this WU. It was the first WU (to be) sent to me in the recent batch of work. The following may be the reason I never received it:

7/30/2007 1:00:14 AM|lhcathome|Sending scheduler request: To fetch work
7/30/2007 1:00:14 AM|lhcathome|Requesting 67403 seconds of new work
7/30/2007 1:05:22 AM||Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site
7/30/2007 1:05:24 AM|lhcathome|Scheduler request failed: a timeout was reached
7/30/2007 1:05:24 AM|lhcathome|Deferring communication for 1 min 0 sec
7/30/2007 1:05:24 AM|lhcathome|Reason: scheduler request failed
5) Message boards : Number crunching : Initial Replication (Message 17661)
Posted 1 Aug 2007 by Bob Guy
Post:
I think there is some concern that the AMD results don't match or might not match the Intel results. That's still a valid reason to get as many WUs run that have both AMD and Intel results represented for a single WU.
6) Message boards : Number crunching : Initial Replication (Message 17655)
Posted 1 Aug 2007 by Bob Guy
Post:
No one yet has mentioned an interesting coincidental phenomenon (or I've missed it).

The WUs will meet quorum (of 3) faster on average if the initial replication is 5. There is a much higher probability that 3 fast machines will get a particular WU (and complete it) when 5 rIDs are sent out.

Had the initial replication been 3, the probability is greater that one or two or all three of the computers would be slow ones thereby delaying the completion of quorum.

My conclusion is that the quorum is completed faster with 5 WUs than with 3 WUs.

It would be an improvement (in efficiency) if the server software could abort WUs whose results became redundant that hadn't already started on some of those slow computers. I'm also sure the owners of those computers might be distressed that some of their WUs were aborted and they lost the credit - this only being a problem with so little work available. The 5.10.x Boinc client can do this (aborting WUs) but it also requires a server upgrade, and I'm not sure all the bugs are out of the 5.10.xx client.
7) Message boards : Number crunching : Initial Replication (Message 17583)
Posted 28 Jul 2007 by Bob Guy
Post:
I mean for this comment to be somewhat comical, so don't take it to be an attack on anyone's political or ecological beliefs.

My comment:

One of the largest single sources of greenhouse emmissions is cows, and they don't take kindly to corks!
8) Message boards : Number crunching : Stil a pending credit (Message 17548)
Posted 25 Jul 2007 by Bob Guy
Post:
Old pending credits:

This is an old (1 Feb 2007) WU that is over, this result was a success but I didn't get credit because of a server problem that day.
WU: 1122624 rID: 5793132

Following are all 0 claimed credit, there's no error - all the WUs finished very early. Just get rid of these please.
WU: 1629069
WU: 1629073
WU: 1629081
WU: 1629082
WU: 1632948
WU: 1632953
WU: 1632957
WU: 1632997
WU: 1633000
WU: 1644620
WU: 1644623
WU: 1644635
WU: 1644636
WU: 1644667
WU: 1644672
WU: 1644694
WU: 1675601
WU: 1675602
WU: 1675603
WU: 1675605

9) Message boards : Number crunching : Gone in a flash! (Message 16771)
Posted 30 Apr 2007 by Bob Guy
Post:
Pardon my ignorance, but where does one 'adjust the cache settings'?
Thanks, Joe

Go to your account, General preferences, Network usage.
Adjust your 'Connect to' time to whatever you think is appropriate. For this project my opinion is that 1 day or less is most appropriate. And I like peanuts! I'll wait awhile to get some.

As noted before large 'connect to' times can cause you to completely miss small distributions of work, but if you happen to ask for work at just the right time a large 'connect to' time will get you more WUs downloaded.

You cannot actually adjust your cache size as in number of WUs downloaded but you can set a 'connect to' time large enough so that more WUs will be downloaded when work is available. There are also ways to fake-out the server (to get more work than your settings would ordinarily allow) but I consider that to be unfair to the other people here who would also like to get some work.

Also note that setting your cache here is a global setting and will be applied in any other Boinc project that you are active in.
10) Message boards : Number crunching : Gone in a flash! (Message 16758)
Posted 29 Apr 2007 by Bob Guy
Post:
I got two- is there a particular setting to help this? My network usage/work cache is set to 1 day - is 5 better to encourage more WU's?

My cache setting is at 0.5 days, if that does anything good it just means that my computer might check more often for work. I was just lucky and my computer happened to check at the time when there were some WUs available. I think it also helps if you have a fast DSL or cable connection so the cache fills before the WUs are gone, they really do get gone fast.

I happened to be at my computer when this happened and I though about changing my cache settings to a much larger value, like 5 days, just to fill the cache, but I think that's just rude to the other people here. No, I was just lucky to get the few WUs I got.
11) Message boards : Number crunching : Gone in a flash! (Message 16748)
Posted 28 Apr 2007 by Bob Guy
Post:
I got 19 from this batch, and I thought that wasn't alot. They were all gone within an hour of when my computer began downloading the ones I got. I see in the results history that I've gotten a couple of others this month that I was completely unaware of.
12) Message boards : Number crunching : Fairer distribuiton of work(Flame Fest 2007) (Message 16309)
Posted 13 Feb 2007 by Bob Guy
Post:
About a half hour ago I managed to get 25 WUs but there were no more available by the time I got that many downloaded. Unfortunately I'm finishing them in about 6 minutes each.
13) Message boards : Number crunching : I think this cruncher has a problem (Message 15913)
Posted 25 Dec 2006 by Bob Guy
Post:
More interesting is that Boinc can get borked up and still validate.
http://lhcathome.cern.ch/workunit.php?wuid=1562764
(result id 8082119)

My guess it that it's just the stderr out that's messed up, it could be a Windows or harddisk file system problem. I've had my stderr out file (and other Boinc files) fill up with garbage that doesn't even belong to any Boinc project. I've never been able to determine why that happens, I blame it on Windows. The result is probably OK if it validates.
14) Message boards : Number crunching : New computer database entry created on each connect (Message 15671)
Posted 25 Nov 2006 by Bob Guy
Post:
I am not having this multiple host problem, I've looked at my client_state.xml and the host ID is the same one I've always had. What's interesting is the messages Boinc Manager gave when connecting today to get work. I'm using the Boinc 5.7.5 Manager and the messages are slightly different.

On Boinc startup:
11/24/2006 3:24:41 AM||General prefs: from SETI@home (last modified 2006-11-18 12:40:14)
11/24/2006 3:24:41 AM||Host location: none
11/24/2006 3:24:41 AM||General prefs: using your defaults
11/24/2006 3:24:44 AM||Running CPU benchmarks

And much later when I discovered work was available at LHC:
11/25/2006 12:02:28 PM|lhcathome|Fetching scheduler list
11/25/2006 12:02:34 PM|lhcathome|Master file download succeeded
11/25/2006 12:02:39 PM|lhcathome|Sending scheduler request: Requested by user
11/25/2006 12:02:39 PM|lhcathome|Requesting 12332 seconds of new work
11/25/2006 12:02:44 PM|lhcathome|Scheduler RPC succeeded [server version 502]
11/25/2006 12:02:44 PM|lhcathome|New host venue: 0
11/25/2006 12:02:44 PM|lhcathome|Deferring scheduler requests for 7 seconds
11/25/2006 12:02:46 PM|lhcathome|Started download of file
... <downloads - I deleted these lines>
11/25/2006 12:05:59 PM|lhcathome|Sending scheduler request: Requested by user
11/25/2006 12:05:59 PM|lhcathome|(not requesting new work or reporting completed tasks)
11/25/2006 12:06:04 PM|lhcathome|Scheduler RPC succeeded [server version 502]
11/25/2006 12:06:04 PM||General prefs: from lhcathome (last modified 2006-11-25 12:05:49)
11/25/2006 12:06:04 PM||Host location: 0
11/25/2006 12:06:04 PM||General prefs: no separate prefs for 0; using your defaults
11/25/2006 12:06:04 PM|lhcathome|Deferring scheduler requests for 7 seconds
11/25/2006 12:06:14 PM|lhcathome|Sending scheduler request: To fetch work
11/25/2006 12:06:14 PM|lhcathome|Requesting 94930 seconds of new work
11/25/2006 12:06:19 PM|lhcathome|Scheduler RPC succeeded [server version 502]
11/25/2006 12:06:19 PM|lhcathome|Deferring scheduler requests for 7 seconds
... <more downloads>

Note the Host is listed as 'none' at startup and when connecting to LHC it is 0, I haven't seen this message before in the official Boinc Manager, I guess the message is something added to the 5.7.5 Manager. It did not however change the Host ID in the client_state.xml file, I've still got the same one I always did. I've also never used an account manager.

This might better be reported to the Boinc Manager beta forum but I thought it might be relevant here. It has caused no problem for me to solve and I don't know if it's even helpful here, I just thought I'd report that it happened.
15) Message boards : Number crunching : LHC@home server being reconfigured today !! (Message 14810)
Posted 21 Sep 2006 by Bob Guy
Post:
I think you get the Checksum-or-signature-error because the file didn't completely download - the server dropped your connection and you got only a partial file. Same with the core app. I'm sure they'll fix that problem eventually. It may just be the sudden demand for files is overwhelming the server and after a while it will settle down.
16) Message boards : Number crunching : Download Problem (Message 14734)
Posted 20 Sep 2006 by Bob Guy
Post:
I believe the error 404 is a server-side error so they have to fix it, you don't have anything wrong on your side. I was lucky, I had the core app and .tga files left over from the last crunching session so I didn't have to re-download them.

My first WU crunched successfully for 51 min, the next didn't crash but finished with 0 min runtime, and I have one running now that appears good.

Files aren't uploading, that's also a server-side error, nothing to do but wait until they fix it.
17) Message boards : Number crunching : I think we should restrict work units (Message 14334)
Posted 15 Jul 2006 by Bob Guy
Post:
I do not appreciate your personal attack!

Perhaps I misunderstood your post. My response was not a personal attack but merely a comment on the practice of deliberately manipulating the Boinc client so as to obtain an unusually large cache of WUs. My comment remains the same, I've said what 'heard' when I read your post and my opinion has not changed - I am allowed to disagree with what you've said. Persuade me that I'm wrong.

1. It costs me money to crunch the workunits

Irrelevant.

2. There is wear and tear on my computer components

Irrelevant.

3. I am not even close to any of the top crunchers on this project or any other seeing that I only have 1 four year old computer.

Irrelevant.

4. I have not broken any rules nor have I maliciously prevented anyone from getting workunits.

I did not suggest that you did.

WE ALL HAVE THE SAME CRUNCHING OPPORTUNITY. NO ONE CAN ARGUE THIS POINT!

This remark is too vague - perhaps you'll tell us what your idea of 'same opportunity' is. I'd tell you what I think it is but I'm sure you'll assume I'm attacking you again. I can argue anything I like without your permission and even if I'm in the wrong or ill-informed. Who are you? - the formum police?

5. Just like the oil companies, it is a case of supply and demand. If you don't like the system, live in another country that uses other economic controls.

This last remark (bold) is simply insulting, rude, un-called for and irrelevant.

The issue here is not about sharing equitably as you claim. The issue is about a shortage of workunits. Anyone on any project can cache workunits. What sets this project apart is the fact that there is not always work.

My remark specifically addresses the 'grab as many as you can while they're available' attitude. Clearly there is no problem when WUs are in abundance.


I NEVER said I have a right to any workunits.

Sorry, that was just my impression of what you wrote. Perhaps I am wrong.
18) Message boards : Number crunching : I think we should restrict work units (Message 14281)
Posted 10 Jul 2006 by Bob Guy
Post:
Just because the project doesn't equitably distribute work and permits the large caches of WUs does not mean that it is right or fair.


(1) What does it mean then?

Regarding equitable distribution: The project is interested in getting their WUs crunched. Who crunches them is not important, at least to the project developers, it seems. They are not the WU police, which is probably as it should be. They have better things to do than to be paying attention to the fighting children.

(2) How can you know whether anyone uses a large cache or not?

It's been quite obviously stated so by more than one participant here. I assume they're not lying. It's also easy enough to look at the WU history of any particular computer/user in this project. I really don't have a complaint when a user has a dial-up - I do understand that they're just trying to get the best use of their equipment.

(3) How is it unfair to you?

As participants in this community we all have an obligation to be fair, and equitable, to each other. This is the moral and ethical obligation of a civilized society. It can only be fair if all participants are given an equal opportunity to contribute to the project. I understand, and I am sad that this is unlikely to happen.

And just as a comment, your clever questions are the kind lawyers use to obscure the truth.
19) Message boards : Number crunching : I think we should restrict work units (Message 14274)
Posted 9 Jul 2006 by Bob Guy
Post:
I am glad to see that there are people around that are just as stubborn as I am.

There is another name for this attitude, it is called greed.

This is what I hear when I read your post:

I want more.
Give me more.
I have a right to get more.

Just because the project doesn't equitably distribute work and permits the large caches of WUs does not mean that it is right or fair.
20) Message boards : Number crunching : dual core chips and BOINC (Message 13866)
Posted 3 Jun 2006 by Bob Guy
Post:
Wait till the July release (hopefully) of the Intel 'Conroe' chipsets. They beat the pants off any other processor on the market.


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