LHC@home

....than helping the project get work done as soon as possible. ....

maybe that means you take less then a day to complete/report your workunit.

They would have run the Sixtrack program on a bank of computers.

When doing an initial design, you don't need to run a million cycles to pick out how big of a magnet you need to bend a particle beam around a huge circle.
Running a million cycles lets you fiddle with the controls under a variety of conditions.

In the old days, they just built the cyclotron, and then fiddled with the controls.

I've started another thread asking if there is any way to view the WUs.

Why do I get the feeling that you'd like to see the wu's, so that you can try and associate them with a user whom you may believe can be pressured into returning them faster?

I smell a witchhunt brewing. :(

I no longer micromanage my systems, I rely on the infrastructure to work as designed. Granted, in the early days under certain conditions (quite a few actually :) the infrastructure failed to work properly. Those days are pretty much history, rendering micromanaging unnecessary.

The system has worked well enough to date. If the project team thought there was a flaw, or the scientists were clammering for answers earlier, they may be inclined to address a perceived "problem".

IMHO, impatient users are not a problem and the system doesn't look broke...Does it really need fixing?

The way I see it, there's a way to "exploit" the system to make sure you get a lions share of the work. However, this wasn't kept a secret, so if anyone wants to they can - hence there's no secret advantage being used against people.

As someone said, if LHC want's results returned faster, they can modify the BOINC server settings, so no worries there.

I think the motive for doing it is stupid (e.g. "it's more important for me to score points than for the work to be shared and completed faster") but now that the secret is out, the best way to get back at the originators is to do the same yourself. Then they won't be getting a tactical advantage. And if the problem gets severe enough, LHC will do something about it, and we'll all be back on the level playing field.

I don't know of any built-in system function that allows viewing of all currently unfinished work units.

... but maybe I'm wrong...

That makes as much sense as anything.

Because it definitely is wrong. My switch time is 120 mins and my LTD are bigger than +-7200. I think Steve mixed LTD and STD. LTD has no influence in how much work is asked for but only in the decision if work is asked for. And to keep track of "long term debt" it must keep bigger values.

Norbert

If you force it to get more work and cause boinc to go into EDF, yes it can go beyond the the values that I stated. But if you leave it alone then what i said is true.

...
its painful to watch the servers wait for a timeout for less than 30 workunits to be returned...

...handles Long Term debt, it actually and continually shrinks the effective Cache of all machines....

Can someone explain the rationale behind this Cache shrinkage due to long term debt?

The description in the Wiki is confusing, at best. This is how I understand it. I could be wrong.

First, there really is no such thing as a cache setting. BOINC loads enough work to keep the machine busy until the next "Connect Interval". A long "connect interval" will, of course, mean more work is loaded at one time. There really is no "load x days work" setting.

Long term debt determines what program is queried for work. When Boinc needs to download (Download OK mode), it tries to get work from projects with a high LTD. It won't try to get work from projects with low LTD. Later, it decides that it must get work from somewhere because it is going to run out of work (Download required mode), it will get work from anyplace that has work, regardless of LTD.

So, I think in the case when LHC is out of work, it typically will have a relatively large LTD. As a result, BOINC won't download work until the scheduler goes into "Download Required".

...handles Long Term debt, it actually and continually shrinks the effective Cache of all machines....

how do you know that the "hoarders" didn't have a "proper" reason such as a slow modem or dial up line?

or an older machine, or one that doesn't crunch 24/7?

That's possible, sure, and I don't think people would complain much if people have a legitimate reason for using a large cache. One way to check this would be to find some work units that are still pending, then look at the computer's details. Some of the information there must give you an idea what the computer is like in terms of age, speed, percent of the time BOINC runs, network connectivity, etc. That should help you decide if the person is keeping a large cache for a legitimate reason or not. The on and off work status of LHC is new to me, so it's tough for me to understand exactly what's going on, why, and how to solve the problems. I do know that it's disappointing to see so many work units in progress, waiting to be done, while my computer has been sitting dry for over 1 week. I think many others share this feeling, and that's one of the reasons for the complaints. We suspect that not everybody has a proper reason for maintaining a huge cache of work, and the people who don't have a proper reason are just being greedy, taking work from others for themselves and preventing work from being done promptly.

As I post this (23.00 hrs UK time) the front page of the LHC site shows that there are still 340 WUs out there somewhere, still unprocessed. This is days after I (and I'm sure many other people!) had returned the final WU unit from the last batch of WUs to be issued.

So those 340 WUs are being held in the cache of some irresponsible crunchers who 'hoard' work. This must ultimately slow down the whole LHC project!

Jeez - when will some people learn that we are working for LHC, not LHC working for our egos.....

I suppose then if your browser did not handle the web pages well then you would care. Perhaps your browser isn't handleing the code well and you don't know it. Of course, it is more likely that those that are blind and would like to help can't because of the non-compliance. That is what W3C is about, well that and a few other things. So, you don't care if handycapped people ever help the differant projects of BOINC? You don't care if people that have to use text to speach browsers can't access LHC or Seti or what-have-you. I am sure that those that require help to use the internet don't care about you either. So, enjoy your non-caring life and don't complain about IE.

Tatheg

Thanks to your clear explanation, I raised my cach for .01 to 10 days.
And yup,
As soon as there was work to do, I was able to get a bunch of it to work on.

Please, don't do that.

Engouraging people to keep that kind of a cache without a proper reason on fast computers will bring only a problems. As we have seen servers at Cern (or where ever they are) won't stand the excessive amount of downloads what around 80 computers downloading WUs for ten days cause.

So don't come here whining when server is down and you wan't download work. You know the reason exactly.