Getting:

10/9/2011 3:24:06 PM|Milkyway@home|Message from server: Project is temporarily shut down for maintenance

Just wondering if - in the future - the number of tasks/WUs a person can have cached can be increased, so we can keep working while the project is down? As it is, I have been without work for about 3 days now. Thanks.

Getting:

10/9/2011 3:24:06 PM|Milkyway@home|Message from server: Project is temporarily shut down for maintenance

Also the Server & Task page don't want to load. Related I'm sure.

Looks like I'm going to have to drop the result and workunit tables to get the database working again. Feel free to cancel any workunits you have in progress. I apologize for this but it's looking like it's the only way to get the project back on it's feet in any reasonable amount of time.

Looks like I'm going to have to drop the result and workunit tables to get the database working again. Feel free to cancel any workunits you have in progress. I apologize for this but it's looking like it's the only way to get the project back on it's feet in any reasonable amount of time.

I have a full set of work units which are at "Ready to Report" status. Does this mean I am not going to get credit for them?

I only have 11 in the ready to report stage, of course you cannot abort those as they have already completed.
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Just wondering if - in the future - the number of tasks/WUs a person can have cached can be increased, so we can keep working while the project is down? As it is, I have been without work for about 3 days now. Thanks.

What time limit are you going to try?
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Doesn't expecting the unexpected make the unexpected the expected?
If it makes sense, DON'T do it.

Just wondering if - in the future - the number of tasks/WUs a person can have cached can be increased, so we can keep working while the project is down? As it is, I have been without work for about 3 days now. Thanks.

Don't you have a backup project?

You could try world community grid. They have a bunch of projects such as searching for a drug for a certain tropical disease (sorry it's a pain to recall the spelling) that infects several million people a year mostly children (no vaccine) existing treatments can be fatal or with serious side effects.

Others are to find organic substances that can be used to make solar cells with 20% efficiency thereby making solar power incredibly cheap and environmentally friendly in addition to providing a lot more power.

You can use the boinc manager to add the World Community Grid to your tasks and do both milkyway at home and world community grid tasks at the same time.

If we increase the cache, then this type of database crash would happen significantly more often. We just don't have a powerful enough server to increase the size of the workunit and result tables that much.

So, what's the status on getting things flowing again?
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Seems like I have done a ton of work for this project only to have my results say that the result is being checked,or some such thing,and no credit is given. Happens WAY too much

We should donate something to geta new server for MW. This project stable would be good any days O.o
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DSKAG Austria Research Team: http://www.research.dskag.at

If you are looking for another Astro project, consider Einstein (assuming you are running CPU projects). If you are running an ATI GPU configuration, there are a few options - but not astro oriented -- Collatz -- excellent stability there though the credit payout is lower than MW (for what its worth), or Moowrapper or Dnet. Those projects also work with CUDA GPU's as well (and all three of them do NOT require double precision GPU's).

I originally started with SETI and stayed with them for many years. However, about 18 months ago, their application kept locking up and I started doing MW as my backup...then I quit SETI altogether due to the probs. I thought I had found a good project with MW ... Guess I'm going to have to look around and see what else I can find to give this machine something to do.

(snip)... We just don't have a powerful enough server to increase the size of the workunit and result tables that much.

This is frustrating

The only reasonable solution is to increase either the WU size so it takes hours to finish along with the credit , Or to increase the number of WUs so users could have enough load to crunch.

As I understood, you need bigger server to achieve that… how much will it cost ?
I've 6970 and it works with very few projects beside MW which I love, but the frequent crashing drives me crazy. I think I am going to get rid of my card and get a Nvidia as it runs with a lot more projects.


Note: still no WUs is sent to my machine so I guess the server is down.

DC has a big problem. Volunteer computers have increasing capabilities (faster multicore CPU's and faster GPU's), project hardware was designed for lower traffic and less wu throughput.

MW is down, Seti is down, DNA has no wu's, Orbit has no wu's, Spinhendge has a pause for three months, LHC has currently no wu's and I'm shure that other projects have similar problems.
In many cases it's a hardware problem, in all cases it's a manpower problem and in some cases it's a management problem. And in every case it's a cash-problem.

We, the volunteers, cannot help with manpower (like Gipsel did two years ago), the only things we can do is transport ideas from other projects to increase performance or donate for new hardware.

A new server: I mean, a dual CPU MB with two 8-core CPU's, 12-16GB RAM, 6 SSD-Drives, Case and Power Supply should do the job for the next 2 years. If one does not buy the cheapest available parts, 5k$ should be ok.
So ten guys like Toni could keep the ball rolling ...

Other projects for ATI GPU's: GPUGRID is working on a OpenCL-App for ATI-Cards, should be available in a couple of days, let's say as backup project.

Or: take some time for maintenance - remove the dust from your cards, check the fans and enjoy the silence.

Transporting ideas: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=65455

Last but not least: we could try not to further increase the frustration of the admins, I'm shure, they are not happy with the situation as well.

Well I don't know anything about the topologie of the MW - WU so it is just a quess. If an increase of the WU count is not possible. Maybe it's possible to increase the Size of the WU's.
Maybe it's possible to launche an extra application (only for GPU's) with large WU's. So that 1 WU last 1 or 2 hours on a HD5870?

Well I don't know anything about the topologie of the MW - WU so it is just a quess. If an increase of the WU count is not possible. Maybe it's possible to increase the Size of the WU's.
Maybe it's possible to launche an extra application (only for GPU's) with large WU's. So that 1 WU last 1 or 2 hours on a HD5870?

MW is down, Seti is down, DNA has no wu's, Orbit has no wu's, Spinhendge has a pause for three months, LHC has currently no wu's and I'm shure that other projects have similar problems.
In many cases it's a hardware problem, in all cases it's a manpower problem and in some cases it's a management problem. And in every case it's a cash-problem.

DNETC and Moo Wrapper are running OK for ATI cards. Useful when MW is down.

DNETC and Moo Wrapper are running OK for ATI cards. Useful when MW is down.

hm? why? how do you mean that? I have dnetc as backup backup backup emergency energywasting project when SETI Backup offers no Astropulse on the MW Machine. Normaly over BOINC Manager..
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DSKAG Austria Research Team: http://www.research.dskag.at

...

good point.
Collatz gives you the choice to select 'Collatz' or 'Mini Collatz'.
But with larger wu's a checkpointing must be implemented.

10/10/2011 2:38:27 AM | Milkyway@home | Restarting task ps_separation_82_2s_mix0_1_3396869_0 using milkyway version 88
10/10/2011 4:01:47 AM | Milkyway@home | Computation for task ps_separation_82_2s_mix0_1_3396869_0 finished
10/10/2011 4:01:48 AM | Milkyway@home | Sending scheduler request: To report completed tasks.
10/10/2011 4:01:48 AM | Milkyway@home | Reporting 1 completed tasks, not requesting new tasks
10/10/2011 4:01:51 AM | Milkyway@home | Scheduler request completed


I finished a WU last night and it went out. Didn't see any changes so THEN I read this post. Am I to understand that task is LOST?

hm? why? how do you mean that? I have dnetc as backup backup backup emergency energywasting project when SETI Backup offers no Astropulse on the MW Machine. Normaly over BOINC Manager..

I for one would also be in favor of _much_ bigger workunits for GPUs (I would say roughly 100x bigger). As it is now, the turnaround time is ridiculously short: around every 1 - 2 min the server needs to be contacted for a new WU. And that is for a single GPU. No wonder your server cannot keep up. A side effect is that MW gets completely bullied by the backup projects. I get a maximum of roughly 25 - 35 min of work in my cache. So every time the server is unresponsive for that amount of time (and that happens quite often) my backup project immediately dumps 20 hours of work on me. If that would happen once every day (we are not very far off), I would be running 20 hours of backup project and only 4 hours of MW per day. I too have an ATI GPU, so the choices for backup projects are very limited and I find them all more or less useless, so I really don't want to be running these backup projects at all...

So every time the server is unresponsive for that amount of time (and that happens quite often) my backup project immediately dumps 20 hours of work on me.

hm? why? how do you mean that? I have dnetc as backup backup backup emergency energywasting project when SETI Backup offers no Astropulse on the MW Machine. Normaly over BOINC Manager..

You can't just attach to DNETC and Moo Wrapper via BOINC manager.

I second longer WU, but one problem is the mix of CPU and GPU for crunching. Increase the WU-length could make it impossible for CPU to crunch for M@W in a reasonable time. So the decision have to be made, if M@W is going to be a GPU-project only.

And I don´t know, if the project leaders want to go this step...

Nowi
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If collatz is your backup project, you can set the resource share to 0. This means, only one wu / gpu will be picked up. When that one finishes, the next one (again a single wu) is downloaded.

Increase the WU-length could make it impossible for CPU to crunch for M@W in a reasonable time.

hm? why? how do you mean that? I have dnetc as backup backup backup emergency energywasting project when SETI Backup offers no Astropulse on the MW Machine. Normaly over BOINC Manager..

You can't just attach to DNETC and Moo Wrapper via BOINC manager.

Increase the WU-length could make it impossible for CPU to crunch for M@W in a reasonable time.

Is it strictly necessary that GPU and CPU WUs do the same amount of work? If so, then you will always have a problem since GPUs are so much faster... But I am not convinced that they need to be of the same size...

I have Primegrid as my backup, it is the only backup project that runs on an ATI and I consider to be at least vaguely useful... If you set the resource share to zero, it only makes the project the backup. It does not limit the number of WUs that are downloaded once the backup kicks in. I think backup projects should work the way you describe, but they don't. I checked on the BOINC site. There is no way to force BOINC to only download a single WU at a time.

I finished a WU last night and it went out. Didn't see any changes so THEN I read this post. Am I to understand that task is LOST?

If we increase the cache, then this type of database crash would happen significantly more often. We just don't have a powerful enough server to increase the size of the workunit and result tables that much.

I have Primegrid as my backup, it is the only backup project that runs on an ATI and I consider to be at least vaguely useful... If you set the resource share to zero, it only makes the project the backup. It does not limit the number of WUs that are downloaded once the backup kicks in. I think backup projects should work the way you describe, but they don't. I checked on the BOINC site. There is no way to force BOINC to only download a single WU at a time.

Sorry, no. I use collatz as backup, I use ATI-Cards, and it's always only one wu that is downloaded.
It depends on the projects server version, but at collatz this feature works perfect.

hm? why? how do you mean that? I have dnetc as backup backup backup emergency energywasting project when SETI Backup offers no Astropulse on the MW Machine. Normaly over BOINC Manager..

You can't just attach to DNETC and Moo Wrapper via BOINC manager.

Then plz explain it to me how i done it with DNETC when you know it that exactly ... ;)

Much Projects are not listend in there. Thats nothing new ;) Try DNETC.org (or .net) as projectURL. One of them work.
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DSKAG Austria Research Team: http://www.research.dskag.at

It isn't listed there (that might be a developer choice at BOINC central), but you can attach by this sequence in the BOINC client.

1) Tools
2) Attach to project or account manager
3) Attach to project
4) Type in the project URL:

For Dnet that would be http://dnetc.net/
For Moowraper that would be http://moowrap.net/

I don't know that you can do this via the BOINC account manager side of things though as I attach to projects via the attach to project option.

Then plz explain it to me how i done it with DNETC when you know it that exactly ... ;)

I was following this discussion yesterday, since I completed a nice unit and it went out to you, only to discover belatedly that you were down.

I see the "big" contributors are asking for larger work units. I don't support that at all. I understand computers always have glitches and I'm not mad about no credit, but I'm certainly not interested in using up a lot of time for nothing again. Just saying.

nevermind.
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Doesn't expecting the unexpected make the unexpected the expected?
If it makes sense, DON'T do it.

Travis, we had problems in the past then you came with the idea to clear the database very quick, so most of us could not see the results page.
Then there where no more outages, unless airco problem RPI, not your fault.

A few weeks ago you increased the results pages (36 for me some times) this is off course a heavy load on the database and server. If you reduce this again, wouldn't it help?


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Greetings from,
TJ

Travis, we had problems in the past then you came with the idea to clear the database very quick, so most of us could not see the results page.
Then there where no more outages, unless airco problem RPI, not your fault.

A few weeks ago you increased the results pages (36 for me some times) this is off course a heavy load on the database and server. If you reduce this again, wouldn't it help?

I'm going to have to lower the time workunits are kept in teh database, I think the number was too high and that's what caused the result table to get too large, corrupt and then crash the whole project.