I read in the release notes of Boinc 6.10.56 that you can now setup a backup project by setting its resource share to 0. I did this with DNETC, but it as soon as I resume it, BOINC suspends MW and starts DNETC. Could it be that I still have a unfinished WU in DNETC, which is causing this? Anyone got this feature to work?

edit: I read in here: http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/forum_thread.php?id=1681#38673 that it seems to be a problem of DNETC being too greedy?
so could you suggest me another project as backup for a 5850 besides Collatz (I just dont see the point of testing big numbers if they work with the Conjecture .. but thats another discussion)

I have only tested with collatz which is able to handle this option.
In your preferences DNETC are you able to set to 0% the ressources shares?

It seems to me that not only Boinc need to propose this option but also the project itself.
I have tried with BAM which overwrites inside .xml project the ressource share to use, then with ressources shares % on my collatz account preferences.

I set it to 0 on the DNETC website and it also shows at 0 in the BOINC Manager.

(I just dont see the point of testing big numbers if they work with the Conjecture .. but thats another discussion)

Hi,
yes, this is absolut true. I can't remember where, but a couple of days ago i found a remark, that a lot of projects are actually working on ATI-solutions, because nvidia generates a lot of problems (read discussions at GPUGRID about cards, which will work, which MAY work and which don't work and they have no idea why) and is (related to ATI) relativly slow and compared by granted credit expensive and too much power consuming.
Seti has Astropulse wu's, using STREAM, but they do not distribute many wu's, you can be happy to get 5 wu's in a month.
It is very, very necessary to get more projects for ATI-cards.

I read in the release notes of Boinc 6.10.56 that you can now setup a backup project by setting its resource share to 0.

OK let me understand this. If I want my ATI cards to only run Milkyway when there is work, then switch to Collatz when there isn't any work, all I have to do is set Collatz to zero resource share?

How will Boinc know that Milkyway now has work again, and switch back once the last Collatz workunit has been finished, and not to download any more?

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Don't drink water, that's the stuff that rusts pipes

I read in the release notes of Boinc 6.10.56 that you can now setup a backup project by setting its resource share to 0.

OK let me understand this. If I want my ATI cards to only run Milkyway when there is work, then switch to Collatz when there isn't any work, all I have to do is set Collatz to zero resource share?

How will Boinc know that Milkyway now has work again, and switch back once the last Collatz workunit has been finished, and not to download any more?

It doesn't stop asking for Milkyway while it is crunching Collatz - so when it gets some new MW then it stops asking for Collatz. That's my interpretation, anyway...

F.

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If you already have COllatz work on hand it will be all run off before you will start to run MW tasks ... but, with Collatz set to 0 share it will be there if and when MW run out of tasks ...

So, you have to clear out the on hand work ...

Because I wanted to get the two projects back into balance I went to this a week or so ago and now am doing almost all MW ... but, when MW had an outage I started up on Collatz but now am back to MW work on all machines ...

If UCB would get rid of the Strict FIFO rule for GPU work you would have seen MW work being done immediately after the change to RS until the Collatz work was in deadline peril at which point BOINC would have switched back to run off the work on hand so as to not blow deadlines ... sadly ... it does not look like the FIFO rule is going away anytime soon ... (it causes other problems as well)...

Thanks Fred & Paul, Appreciated.

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Don't drink water, that's the stuff that rusts pipes

Thanks Fred & Paul, Appreciated.

NP...

{edit}
Looking at my post... I did not explain that with RS of 0 at Collatz this all happened automagically with no user intervention on my part ... so, it works ...

It doesn't work completely correctly for me. When MW was down yesterday, I had a long period where 2 out of 3 machines had no GPU work. I have Collatz set to a 0 share, MW 100. Using 6.10.56 on the 2 that this didn't work on, using 6.10.43 on the other machine where it DID work promptly. To make matters worse, after a couple of hours of no work, I updated Collatz at the 2 idle machines and the messages tab showed "user requested update, not reporting tasks, not requesting new work". I left them alone after that and by this morning they all had work at Collatz, but I have no idea why they didn't get any sooner.

-Dave

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It doesn't work completely correctly for me. When MW was down yesterday, I had a long period where 2 out of 3 machines had no GPU work. I have Collatz set to a 0 share, MW 100. Using 6.10.56 on the 2 that this didn't work on, using 6.10.43 on the other machine where it DID work promptly. To make matters worse, after a couple of hours of no work, I updated Collatz at the 2 idle machines and the messages tab showed "user requested update, not reporting tasks, not requesting new work". I left them alone after that and by this morning they all had work at Collatz, but I have no idea why they didn't get any sooner.

-Dave

Ok, so it works sorta ... :)

UCB shows little appetite for working on the resource scheduler "trio" of modules that governs all of this Resource Scheduler, RR SIm, and Work Fetch)... and so we have longstanding and lingering problems ... An alternative problem is that I have seen where BOINC will get a slew of MW work, run it all off before it asks for more, then it will run off the new batch and repeat endlessly ... meaning that about every 20-30 minutes or so I get two idle GPUs for as much as 30 seconds while BOINC goes and gets new work ...

sadly, one of the only "cures" for this is project reset or reset of debts (set flag in CC Config and a full BOINC restart) ...

It works OK for me...except when MW has its short 5 or 10 minute outrages when a new work stream is being set up and MW has no work. It then promptly goes ahead and gets a full cache of Collatz - which takes an hour or so to get through, whereas MW is back up and running long before the Collatz cache is worked through. I just wish the backup project would just get work for say 15 minutes. And no I'm not going to drop my cache preferences to be 15 minutes.

But in saying that it worked a treat during the last MW outrage.

Any of you guys happen to try this with projects other than Collatz?

I myself tried it with Einstein and when I set 0 resource share on their site it tells me it saved it, but it's still set at 100. (I'm currently using a NVidia GPU).

Any suggestions on a way to override it perhaps?

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Collatz had some intermittent connection problems yesterday - I had the same thing happen to me and I have had Collatz as a backup for over 3 weeks and it runs flawlessly.

I think the holiday weekend messed with more than humans.......

Any of you guys happen to try this with projects other than Collatz?

I myself tried it with Einstein and when I set 0 resource share on their site it tells me it saved it, but it's still set at 100. (I'm currently using a NVidia GPU).

Any suggestions on a way to override it perhaps?

This change requires a server side update ... I don't think EaH has made the changes yet. Based on the report above I can almost assure you that they have not ... at the moment there are only a few projects using the newest and capable server software that will allow this ... SaH, Collatz are two I know ... DNETC just indicated that they have updated the server software but I have not tried to see if this is possible there ...

One of the problems with BOINC is that when projects customize the software for their own needs and UCB throws in something like this, well, it causes problems because they do not have sufficient isolation in some of the parts ... so ...

Ah, thanks Paul.

I may try going through BAM again to override the settings there, or turning the cache back on so I have some stored up WU's for those times where MW and Seti are having issues.

Been getting a lot of project has no work when requesting GPU tasks from both of em in the past 5 days or so.

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Ah, thanks Paul.

I may try going through BAM again to override the settings there, or turning the cache back on so I have some stored up WU's for those times where MW and Seti are having issues.

Been getting a lot of project has no work when requesting GPU tasks from both of em in the past 5 days or so.

Sadly BOIC does not actually fare well running for long periods of time on the server side... UCB has also shown no interest in finding out why this problem set exists as well ... though many of us are pretty familiar with some of the symptoms ... one of the more common ones is loss of connection to the database ...

Three day weekends seems to be a particular hazard. At least a half a dozen projects flipped out ... including Einstein which is one of the most reliable ones going ... I was just glad I was able to keep all the GPUs running most of the days, on one project if not another ... because I did a lot of Collatz instead of DNETC or MW my daily total this morning stunk big time ... but, likely I will get it back tomorrow and the next day as I turn back to mostly MW now (assuming I can get the work) ...

This change requires a server side update ... I don't think EaH has made the changes yet. Based on the report above I can almost assure you that they have not ... at the moment there are only a few projects using the newest and capable server software that will allow this ... SaH, Collatz are two I know ... DNETC just indicated that they have updated the server software but I have not tried to see if this is possible there ...

One of the problems with BOINC is that when projects customize the software for their own needs and UCB throws in something like this, well, it causes problems because they do not have sufficient isolation in some of the parts ... so ...

As far as I am concerned, DNETC works just fine as backup project (as long as the server is up). BOINC switches to DNETC when there is no work on MW and switches back when there is work.

Hello,

i want to use collatz as a backup project
i set bam resourses to 0 for collatz and the rest here
unfortunately collatz has downloaded loads of work units ( more than 24 hours worth ) and now that MW is sending out work it's still doing the collatz wu

and when it finishes each collatz wu its downloading another so looks like it has no intention of starting mw up again

i'm running 6.10.18 and not 6.10.56 is that whats making this trick not work ?

best regards
Ian

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....Please Join team Scotland HERE

This is a feature which was introduced after 6.0.18, so you should have to upgrade ..