BOINC status

[SkyHook]

Getting this message. Is this just a passing phase? If so, how often should I retry?

Thanks

Harvey

Currently that is a very common message coming from the BOINC Scheduling Server. There has over the past couple of days been periods of time when WUs have been available and were passed out, so my best advice would be allow the the client to continue to try and connect and also during the times that the client is setting idle and counting down to the next attempt you can try manually updating, you may very well get lucky and hit one of those moments when they WUs to give.

SkyHook

 

[hallen]

You have not switched over to bonic yet? I figured you would be one of the first.

No. I've been concentrating on Seti I. Trying to stay in the top 1000.

I figured I had a little Celeron left over so I would give BOINC a try.

I'll keep trying to get a wu. Right now it says it will retry in 1 hour.

Harvey

 

[hallen]

SETI@home - 2004-07-05 18:47:07 - Started download of 01ja04aa.29586.21552.628392.249
SETI@home - 2004-07-05 18:48:56 - Finished download of 01ja04aa.29586.21552.628392.249
SETI@home - 2004-07-05 18:48:56 - Approximate throughput 3312.208765 bytes/sec

Got downloaded on third hourly retry. Nice. It remembers to retry after I had shut down.

I like the "Show Graphics" feature. It would be nicer if they made the text a little clearer.

 

[SkyHook]

Got downloaded on third hourly retry. Nice. It remembers to retry after I had shut down.

I like the "Show Graphics" feature. It would be nicer if they made the text a little clearer.

Once their website is back up and accessible, go to your account page, the select the SETI preferences area. In there if I'm not mistaken there are some settings you can play with that have control over that graphics display. I believe if you choose "custom" instead of one of their predefined selections it gives you even more control over the display. I haven't used it personally but did stumble across it a time or two while exploring things up there.

SkyHook

 

[TBW]

... but remember that the days when you could use SETI performance as a reliable gauge of how your systems were performing compared to other systems is pretty much a dead issue.

How is Seti II any worse than Seti for gauging system performance against other users? You can still come up with comparisons like credit per day. Seti II is based on how your system performs compared directly to others instead of how long it took to process a WU. Remember not all WU's are created equally. My system could take anywhere from .5 to 4.5 hours to complete 2 (Hyperthreading enabled). If I have a good day I could get 17 or so through, on a slow day 11 or 12. Now I will have a new measure, something like 100 credits per day. The only problem is that they will be delayed a few days but in the end it will all average out.

Now if the complaint is about the seti results data and WU's not being accesible I am 100% with you on that for the time being. I just joined Predictor@home for when I run out of Seti data to crunch later this afternoon.

 

[SunRedRX7]

If your going to try running some predictor units for when your SETI units run dry, we do have a Predictor team now. Just choose join team I think, and search for Overclockers.com and thats our team, we have about 10 members now and are 24th.
http://predictor.scripps.edu/top_teams.php

 

[SkyHook]

How is Seti II any worse than Seti for gauging system performance against other users? You can still come up with comparisons like credit per day. Seti II is based on how your system performs compared directly to others instead of how long it took to process a WU. Remember not all WU's are created equally. My system could take anywhere from .5 to 4.5 hours to complete 2 (Hyperthreading enabled). If I have a good day I could get 17 or so through, on a slow day 11 or 12. Now I will have a new measure, something like 100 credits per day. The only problem is that they will be delayed a few days but in the end it will all average out.

Now if the complaint is about the seti results data and WU's not being accesible I am 100% with you on that for the time being. I just joined Predictor@home for when I run out of Seti data to crunch later this afternoon.

My statement you referred to is based entirely on the fact that I know my systems and their performance with SETI Classic extremely well. At any moment of the day I could look at the progress of any of my machines and determine the health of it. I am not ignorant of the fact that WUs have a variability based on AR and that some WUs complete extremely early because of excess noise, but even with that factored in it was possible to see an overall trend to the performance of any given machine. What I was actually articulating with my statement was that it is no longer going to be possible to povide the Team with the sort of Daily Stats that they have grown accustomed to, simply because the credits system is entirely reliant on others getting their data on a WU returned as timely as you do. As an extreme but very valid example that happened to me, I had accumulated almost 300 WUs in my "Pending Credits" totaling in excess of 10,000 credits. During this period I was seeing my "Granted Credits" grow by 100 to 200 per day, then suddenly last Thursday or Friday I made a jump of over 6000 granted credits in one 24 hour period. Since any Team Stats I am able to work with have to be generated from Berkeley files that only deal with "Granted" credits you can see what a nightmare any kind of statistical presentation would be. People would be shooting up and down the team standings like a yo-yo.
I'm not saying BOINC is good or bad, simply that this new system of credits is going to make stuff like the team races and such highly unlikely.

SkyHook

 

[hallen]

SETI@home - 2004-07-06 14:37:40 - Deferring communication with project for 5 minutes and 14 seconds

Forcing transmission with the "retry now" option. Seti still empty but unfortunately I hit Predictor a couple of times and it loaded me up with another dozen units each time.

edit: Hmmn. I'm getting more Predictor units. I wonder if retry now is for both Projects? Anyway I detached from Predictor and it ate all it's units. Time to try again.

 

[Cúchulainn]

Well I finally had the time to tweak the boinc/seti client compilation for my FreeBSD amd64 machine. Since there wasn't a seti classic client for it I figured I'd get it running seti2. Not a big addition to the team (being a server that really isn't oc'ed much) but another machine at least.

 

[Dk Jedi Allianc]

Maybe we should make a tread - so we can have a wiew of how many have made the switch??

 

[Dk Jedi Allianc]

Current at # 14 with almost 450000 point up to # 1


LET`S GO TO WORK!

 

[Dk Jedi Allianc]

WE NEED MORE POWER.

Come on people. We are #11 with 92 active members with almost 2 mill points up to the top3

 

[sir_LOIN]

Many are shy to use Boinc with all the problems it had even it's working fine now...But you are right, we're not many people. I thought we'd be alot more by now considering how big our team is.

 

[texasfit]

It would really give us a big boost if a couple of our Top produces would switch some of their systems over to Boinc.

Calling Overclockers.com Seti Team helpers
Out of the Top 11 Classic Movers and Shakers only one is crunching any for Boinc
M Sako
The Two Norsemen
jamng
Joe Rhodes
David Yoder
bd
Fibreoptic/Markodude
eaglescouter
Dan LaRoche
KenCo
racecar12

 

[eaglescouter]

Confessions of a top 10 Team Cruncher.

1. Yes I am crunching Boinc and Classic Seti.
2. Boinc is only running on one of my machines.
3. The majority of my horsepower is still running Clasic Seti.

Reasons:

1. Unitil recently Boinc was not reliable and my machine was frequently without work to crunch. This problem has not been seen in the past two weeks. I believe that this stability trend will cause more of our team members to make the switch.
2. The cobblestone credit system is not attractive to me. It does not provide a reliable measurement of the performance of my farm animals due to the delays between completion of work and crediting of units.
3. I found installing Boinc and getting Boinc fully functional was a lengthy process which was unnecessarily complicated by a 300 character identifier that had to be loaded (and which I will never commit to memory). (number of characters is slightly exagerated).
4. Tracking statistics for Boinc were not available. Thankfully statistics sites are becoming more and more available, and some are quite good.
5. I started with Classic and will support Classic with at least one machine till Classic SETI dies.

Are any of these reasons valid or appropriate? Not really. But I'm happy to do my part for the science behind SETI anyway.

 

[Dk Jedi Allianc]

I for one can understand really good. But does this mean that you will switch more power over to BOINC? (if it stays on the path)

 

[eaglescouter]

I have not yet decided how much power I will switch to Boinc in the short term, however, when classic ends all of my farm will go to Boinc.

In the short term an easier installation/configuration process would make conversion to Boinc more likely. Something like the zip file that the team built for CLC Classic Seti.

I have really enjoyed the team spirit of Classic Seti and dealing with my OC Team mates has been a truely wonderful experience. I'm not ready to give up on that team and project yet.

So I guess I'm saying that I'll be primarily Classic until the leaders of our team reccomend a whole team switch.

 

[Cy]

I'm still in the process of switching all my machines over to BOINC. I've just over half the horsepower running now and hope to get most of the rest in the next couple of weeks.

I'm no longer top ten material but I'll give'r all she's got capt'n!

Cy

 

[Xtc4u]

If you are having to set more than 1 machine up can't you just copy the account xml file from one machine to another? That way you don't have to enter the project urls and member numbers everytime. Set it up once then if you look in the BOINC folder theres a file called account_setiathome.berkeley.edu It has the project url and your user account info on it. Just copy it, throw it on a floppy or in a shared network folder and you're set. WHen I had my MP rig crash and require a low level format without recovering data thats all I did to get BOINC going again on it.

 

[Cy]

You can do that but I have so many different machines OS wise that I just have not bothered to do that. Its not that there are so many as in hundreds just that I have not had time to deal with the all yet. Its really only about 13 or so.

EDIT: I have stuff running XP, 2K, NT4, Win98 and various Linux distros/versions.

Cy