41) Message boards : LHC@home Science : About the science (Message 23313)
Posted 2 Oct 2011 by Profile Krunchin-Keith [USA]
Post:
Someone has been working hard behind the scenes.

See the link on the front page: SixTrack project.

There now are several pages with explanations, photos and annimations of SixTrack and accelerators.
42) Message boards : Number crunching : Too low credits granted in LHC (Message 23306)
Posted 1 Oct 2011 by Profile Krunchin-Keith [USA]
Post:
Is there some specific server setting to actually active CreditNew, I can ask them to double check and see ?

I couldn't find one in config.xml (the server's project configuration file). But when I see talk to one of the developers, I'll ask.

I got cut off before, was at work and had to cut my post short.

I tried to find the PM but I must have deleted it.

I remember Igor telling me though that they used the validator example with the new download they did for the project back here at the LHC, that it was rewriiten using that sample and thet is calls some function, like credit_dev (? not sure on that name) so to me it sounded like they use some default boinc mechanism and not any formula they dreamed up here.

---

Anyway whatever formula is used, there will always be some that are happy with it and some that are not. We can change it again and different people will speak up as being unhappy. Do away with and and the same, another group of unhappy people. No matter what is tired/used there never will be 100% that accept it.
43) Message boards : Number crunching : Too low credits granted in LHC (Message 23294)
Posted 30 Sep 2011 by Profile Krunchin-Keith [USA]
Post:
It's called "Credit system as of 5/2010" in BOINC software development.

You can also check out CreditProposal, which has a lot more possibilities, which not necessarily will be added.

Seeing how this project is running SSV22168, it has CreditNew (22168 is 9 August 2010). Whether or not it's activated, that's another thing.

Igor tells me it is. They installed a new version, whatever was at the time of the downloading, and only imported only the database for users from the old project, so no code was copied from old project. Also to it is a different server and different o/s than what was at QMC/UK, hence some of the problems that have appeared as alomsot everything is new, except us old users. Learning curve too as everyone behind the scenes has to learn also how this all works.

Igor also said the validator was rewritten using the sample validator that came with that latest download, so i'm pretty sure everything is fresh stuff, and not some (unknown) artifact that may have been on the project when it was hosted at QMC/UK or the original 7 year old project code.

I kind of just assumed if they installed the latest, CreditNew was by default in use. Is there some specific server setting to actually active CreditNew, I can ask them to double check and see ?
44) Message boards : Number crunching : Too low credits granted in LHC (Message 23291)
Posted 29 Sep 2011 by Profile Krunchin-Keith [USA]
Post:
Here are some points from the documentation, I can't find "CreditNew" exactly as other people are refering to, but there is a secion called "The third New credit system", I assume this is it.

Keith, surf to http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/CreditNew. :-)

Thanks, but that is where I got the info from, I didn't see that the only place it says "CreditNew" is in the url. Kinda lame if you ask me, which you didn't.
45) Message boards : Number crunching : Profile creation not working (Message 23278)
Posted 27 Sep 2011 by Profile Krunchin-Keith [USA]
Post:
Have tried a few time to create a profile - no luck. Just hangs up .
Could someone please look into this?
Thanks

That is on the list, see the broken website features thread.

You can create a profile now without a picture and it will accept the text only.
46) Message boards : Cafe LHC : LHC History (Message 23275)
Posted 27 Sep 2011 by Profile Krunchin-Keith [USA]
Post:
Anyone who participates, past or present is a participant.

Participant:
One that participates, shares, or takes part in something.

See the Statistics page and click the Top Participants link.

The database here will only show 10,000 and I could not find a list with users with credit avove 0.

And yes the boincstats active has some kind of period and i don't know what it is either. For instance it always shows in the 1100's for my team, yet the last day contributors is between 750 and 800, so even the active number is not acurate as some may have tried it only once in that period and are not currently active.


But back in 2004 I think the registered were more active. If I remember that 2000 limit had been raised from only 1000 about a week or less before. It didin't take long for that many to sign up. Then I think they reached the 5000 within a short time, less than a month and at that time active participation was very high, like 75% so they were more active.

There were only 4 projects back then.
47) Message boards : Cafe LHC : LHC History (Message 23272)
Posted 26 Sep 2011 by Profile Krunchin-Keith [USA]
Post:
I was reading some of my teams' old news posts and came across this.

Posted Sep 28th 2004 wrote:
Limit is up to 5,000 now from 2,000.


This must have been during the inital beta.

7 years later there are a few more than 2,000 or 5,000 that PARTICIPATED (Past or Present).

Boincstats says 90,654.
48) Message boards : Number crunching : Broken website features. (Message 23255)
Posted 25 Sep 2011 by Profile Krunchin-Keith [USA]
Post:
A couple of these issues have been fixed.
Server_status, now the page is cached and refreshes every 15 minutes
Link to statistics on front page for top teams, etc.

The other problemss i'm told will be fixed, they are not top priority but are on the list. There is a limited amount of human power to go around, so please be patient.

As for stats, for a technical reason this is not fixed yet. Please be patient and when they are ready they will release stats.
49) Message boards : Number crunching : Daily quota (Message 23252)
Posted 25 Sep 2011 by Profile Krunchin-Keith [USA]
Post:
Please keep the discussion friendly.
=
Read the forum posting rules (to the left) before posting.
50) Message boards : Number crunching : Too low credits granted in LHC (Message 23250)
Posted 25 Sep 2011 by Profile Krunchin-Keith [USA]
Post:
we are on boinc version 6.11.0 with validator for sixtrack rewritten from
the sample_bitwise_validator. The credit is calculated by returning the
function stddev_credit from the compute_granted_credit in the validator.

I believe we don't calculate any credit in sixtrack (will verify with Eric McIntosh). Therefore, the average is based on the client software claimed credit.

I've been trying to read the documentation and understand this myself.
_
I cound not find this exactly.


But to me, if you used the latest version and sample supplied with that, that is good enough for me.


===

Here are some points from the documentation, I can't find "CreditNew" exactly as other people are refering to, but there is a secion called "The third New credit system", I assume this is it.

From the documentation:

BOINC estimates the peak FLOPS of each processor. For CPUs, this is the Whetstone benchmark score

Application performance depends on other factors as well, such as the speed of the host's memory system. So a given job might take the same amount of CPU time on 1 GFLOPS and 10 GFLOPS hosts. The efficiency of an application running on a given host is the ratio of actual FLOPS to peak FLOPS

However, application efficiency is typically lower, 50% for CPUs.
==To me the above lines say that if credit is low, that the application is inefficient.

Goals of the new (third) credit system
•Completely automated - projects don't have to change code, settings, etc.
•Device neutrality
•Limited project neutrality: different projects should grant about the same amount of credit per host-hour, averaged over hosts. [I snipped out the GPU stuff]

Point 3 is only good if other projects are using this new method, so users should encourage projects to stop whatever process they use and use the same process (ie CreditNew), this is the only way credit will be on a level playing field. It will also end these discussions, as it leaves the credit granted all to the same formula and leaves it out of the hands of the project (as it say project neutrality), ie they stop granting whatever non-related number they want.
51) Message boards : Number crunching : Too low credits granted in LHC (Message 23243)
Posted 24 Sep 2011 by Profile Krunchin-Keith [USA]
Post:
Igor wrote:
It is kind of important. Who regulates what should be second of compute worth?

I have changed the algotithm of assignment to take the average of all the
valid contributions. For the rest, the default boinc assignments are kept.
The actual valuation could also be dependent on boinc version.

I don't mind to multiply the calcuated figure by a factor. If admins on the
other projects do the same we will end up in an escalating situation which
makes no sense.

Proper advice is needed.

My question is are you using CreditNew or some function that was imported from the old site ?
52) Message boards : Number crunching : Question about GPU (Message 23226)
Posted 23 Sep 2011 by Profile Krunchin-Keith [USA]
Post:
See the first post in thread [url]
http://lhcathomeclassic.cern.ch/sixtrack/forum_thread.php?id=3357[/url]
53) Message boards : Number crunching : Daily quota (Message 23223)
Posted 23 Sep 2011 by Profile Krunchin-Keith [USA]
Post:
Igor wrote:
Right now the limits are as follows:

<daily_result_quota> 80 </daily_result_quota>
<one_result_per_user_per_wu> 1 </one_result_per_user_per_wu>
<max_wus_to_send> 2 </max_wus_to_send>
<max_wus_in_progress> 1 </max_wus_in_progress>

Please, monitor and see how this works.


I've commented from the boinc documentation what each of these do, so everyone understands all choices.

<one_result_per_user_per_wu/>
If set, send at most one instance of a given job to a given user. This increases the effectiveness of replication-based validation by making it more difficult for hackers to get all the instances of a given job.

<max_wus_in_progress> N </max_wus_in_progress>
Limit the number of jobs in progress on a given host (and thus limit average turnaround time), in this case, the max CPU jobs in progress is N*NCPUS

<max_wus_to_send> N </max_wus_to_send>
Maximum jobs returned per scheduler RPC is N*NCPUS

<daily_result_quota> N </daily_result_quota>
Each host has a field MRD in the interval [1 .. daily_result_quota]; it's initially daily_result_quota, and is adjusted as the host sends good or bad results. The maximum number of jobs sent to a given host in a 24-hour period is MRD*NCPUS. You can use this to limit the impact of faulty hosts.

@T.J, the option you mention is built in and the above option, it is already in effect.

So I think based on Igor's previous selection and user comments here, we should try this:

<daily_result_quota> 80 </daily_result_quota>
<one_result_per_user_per_wu/>
<max_wus_to_send> 2 </max_wus_to_send>
<max_wus_in_progress> 3 </max_wus_in_progress>

Additional note to Igor:
There is a section in the documentation called "Accelerating retries"
I think you should read this section and use this method also. Basically what it does, if a host returns bad results that host is marked unrelaible. Hosts that return good results are marked relaible. A bad host can become relaiable after if it stops turning in bad work and keeps on returning good work. When a result is returned bad, it's priority gets increased. This option resends those higher priority results to know reliable hosts. It does two things, rewards relaible hosts with more avaialble work chance and reduces turn around by not constanlty sending results to other bad hosts. It only affect work needining resend, ie a third, forth or more tyr after the initial 2 have a go at it. You can also mark work in advance as a higher priority and it gets sent only to these relaible hosts, like if you had some small study you need quick turnaround on.
54) Message boards : Number crunching : minor issues with websites (Message 23222)
Posted 23 Sep 2011 by Profile Krunchin-Keith [USA]
Post:
Community preferences.
It is impossible to upload avatar (file type - jpg, size - 3.5 kB, 100x100 pixels).

This has been reported in my website issues thread. I'm assured these problems will be looked at, however these are minor problems and some more pressing issues need to be solved first.

There also is another planned change that it might be wise to wait until that is complete.

---

@T.J.
As for F5 refresh, that sounds like a local problem on your end ?
I've not seen this and i'v tried on multiple computers to reproduce, here at work and at home.
Are you using the correct url ?
Maybe try to flush your dns cache ?
I really don't know any other suggestions on this.

Can anyone else reproduce this ?
55) Message boards : Number crunching : Daily quota (Message 23215)
Posted 23 Sep 2011 by Profile Krunchin-Keith [USA]
Post:
i'm running 2 dual core machines at the moment and it's not possible to download WU's on's there are 2 WU on the machines, you wil recieve this notice form the server "23-9-2011 12:56:24 LHC@home 1.0 (reached limit of 2 tasks in progress)" instead of WU's.
Ore i'm understanding you incorrectly.

Yes, there is a misunderstanding here as that is based on this setting:
<max_wus_in_progress> 1 </max_wus_in_progress>

Yes, This may be a problem and was set too low. Igor needs to re-examin this choice. It will be hard to get 80*2=160 in a day with a limit of 2 sent at a time and running, waiting to be returned before 2 more can be received, of course if you get long running tasks it may not be such a big deal, the key is to finding a balance here.

I think at least the previous 3 setting should be tried. That would give 1 running, 1 complete and 1 waiting per core and at lest a chance for boinc to refresh before the third is run, but maybe 5 is better so there is more waiting. ??


Remember also Igor, not all participants have instant on conenctions, some may still be on dial-up, this will cause excessive connections for that type of system.
56) Message boards : Number crunching : Daily quota (Message 23213)
Posted 23 Sep 2011 by Profile Krunchin-Keith [USA]
Post:
On a Dual core CPU only running LHC@home 1.0 the machine wil recieve 2 WU's, after 1 will be completed the core will be unoccupied until a other WU has been download this will slow down crunching and will not keep both cores fully occupied. This is especialy the case with the work untis that only take a few seconds to complete.
I would like to see the <max_wus_to_send> 2 </max_wus_to_send> changed to reflect 2 times the aviable cores of the machine(4 WU for dual core machines, 8 for a quadcore, etc), this way you have every core occupied and 1 WU per core avaialble for starting.

You are forgetting that these numbers are per core, so 2 is 2 * N cores, so it already is set as you just asked. So it sends 2, 4, ... 16, 24, not just 2. This is also per RPC request, it will get more on the next request.

From boinc documentation:
<max_wus_to_send> N </max_wus_to_send>
Maximum jobs returned per scheduler RPC is N*(NCPUS + GM*NGPUS)
57) Message boards : Number crunching : Daily quota (Message 23197)
Posted 22 Sep 2011 by Profile Krunchin-Keith [USA]
Post:


Well so far you haven't even understood what I propose so whatever you've thought doesn't apply. But that's OK because it's the admins that decide, not you, and I know they'll understand even if you can't understand.

Frankly, I don't understand how you can get 60 WU when the following change was made to the Server.

---
> <max_wus_to_send> 10 </max_wus_to_send> NEW
> <max_wus_in_progress> 10 </max_wus_in_progress> NEW


Or am I missing something here?

This change was made after I suggested that the number of Tasks be increased (from what appeared to be 3) because the Server was developing a significant backlog.

Most limits are per CPU. If you have 6 cores, multiply all numbers by 6.

<max_wus_to_send> N </max_wus_to_send>
Maximum jobs returned per scheduler RPC is N*(NCPUS + GM*NGPUS).

<max_wus_in_progress> N </max_wus_in_progress>
Limit the number of jobs in progress on a given host (and thus limit average turnaround time). Starting with 6.8, the BOINC client report the resources used by in-progress jobs; in this case, the max CPU jobs in progress is N*NCPUS

There is a limit on how frequent RPC's can be, which could be used to prevent 6 requests in a row, forcing them to be spaced farther apart.

<daily_result_quota> N </daily_result_quota>
Each host has a field MRD in the interval [1 .. daily_result_quota]; it's initially daily_result_quota, and is adjusted as the host sends good or bad results. The maximum number of jobs sent to a given host in a 24-hour period is MRD*(NCPUS + GM*NGPUS). You can use this to limit the impact of faulty hosts.

The point of the limits is to prevent faulty hosts from grabbing all the work, erroring it out and then forcing too many errors marking the work unit as too many errors and not sending more tasks for that work unit.

Limits are also used so that everyone attached can get thier fair share of work.

As for the quick runs, maybe there is a way they could grant another one to be sent every time one is validated with credit between 0.99 and 0.01. This would not be counted against the quota, but i'm not sure exactly how this could be done. Just a thought.


See this page http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/ProjectOptions#Schedulingoptionsandparameters and there are some more advanced methods they can use also.
58) Message boards : Number crunching : Credit awarded calculation (Message 23173)
Posted 21 Sep 2011 by Profile Krunchin-Keith [USA]
Post:
I have to ask what method is being used ? Is this the creditnew system ?

I did a comparision, using malariacontrol for an example, becuase over the years they get asked a lot to raise credit, and insist they use the boinc supplied formula. Point being everyone thinks they are low.

This is a rough estimate, but i compared the last 20 results i turned in there and here. I divided the credit granted by the cpu time in seconds

malariacontrol average for 20 results is .008771 credit per second

LHC average for 20 results is .004244 credit per second

I have to agree that credit here is very low.
59) Message boards : Number crunching : Server unavailable Tuesday 20/9 13:30 CET (Message 23170)
Posted 21 Sep 2011 by Profile Krunchin-Keith [USA]
Post:
Try the following URL in your browser and see what you get:
http://lhcathomeclassic.cern.ch/sixtrack_cgi/file_upload_handler
I get: 
<data_server_reply>
    <status>1</status>
    <message>no command</message>
</data_server_reply>

I get the same, but several (NOT ALL) hosts can not upload!
I see connect() failed again and again.
Panic mode is on.

Which hosts are ok and which have trouble by client version, is it a particular version client with the error ?
60) Message boards : Number crunching : 14 cores available and no work (Message 23157)
Posted 20 Sep 2011 by Profile Krunchin-Keith [USA]
Post:
I have fourteen cores available on four fast machines, all with credit, but none with any work in the history, so nothing in the past 30 days.

Have you done the detach - reattaach as told on the front page, also see the sticky thread FAQs.


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