Boinc not switching away from Milkyway

I am running BOINC ver. 7.4.36 with SETI@ and MILKYWAY@ projects on a Mac OS Yosemite. BOINC switches from SETI to MW just fine after the prescribed 30 minutes as per the directive in preferences, but then does not switch back to SETI and stays crunching MW.

The only way I can force it to switch to SETI is to suspend MW, then SETI picks up, and the cycle repeats. Switches to MW after 30 minutes, and clings on to it indefinitely.

I tried all I can think of, but to no avail. Any ideas?

-mm-

You might look at the scheduling priorities of both projects (Project tab, Properties); if the SETI is closer to 0 than MW, it is trying to get SETI to "catch up". You can adjust the resource share on your project account pages to get those numbers equal, if you want equal time spent on each. It may take a while to balance out. Hope this helps.

I am running BOINC ver. 7.4.36 with SETI@ and MILKYWAY@ projects on a Mac OS Yosemite. BOINC switches from SETI to MW just fine after the prescribed 30 minutes as per the directive in preferences, but then does not switch back to SETI and stays crunching MW.

The only way I can force it to switch to SETI is to suspend MW, then SETI picks up, and the cycle repeats. Switches to MW after 30 minutes, and clings on to it indefinitely.

I tried all I can think of, but to no avail. Any ideas?

-mm-

Boinc uses Recent Average Credit to determine which project to run if they all have 100% set as their Resource Share, in your case Seti has a RAC of 3,094 while MW has a RAC of 114. It is trying to even them out, so no it won't switch back very often or until the workunit deadlines force it too switch. You can change the Resource Share on each projects webpage under Your Account, Preferences for this project, and then each venue has it's own setting, the default is 100%.

I am running BOINC ver. 7.4.36 with SETI@ and MILKYWAY@ projects on a Mac OS Yosemite. BOINC switches from SETI to MW just fine after the prescribed 30 minutes as per the directive in preferences, but then does not switch back to SETI and stays crunching MW.

The only way I can force it to switch to SETI is to suspend MW, then SETI picks up, and the cycle repeats. Switches to MW after 30 minutes, and clings on to it indefinitely.

I tried all I can think of, but to no avail. Any ideas?

-mm-

Boinc uses Recent Average Credit to determine which project to run if they all have 100% set as their Resource Share, in your case Seti has a RAC of 3,094 while MW has a RAC of 114. It is trying to even them out, so no it won't switch back very often or until the workunit deadlines force it too switch. You can change the Resource Share on each projects webpage under Your Account, Preferences for this project, and then each venue has it's own setting, the default is 100%.

It actually uses Recent Estimated Credit (REC), which is generated and stored internally, rather than the public RAC which you can see on these pages.

The principle is much the same, except that
1) REC follows the Cobblestone standard for all projects, so that over- and under-paying projects don't skew the resource share.
2) REC doesn't rely on validation, so late awards from tardy validations don't confuse the picture.

You can see the current state of play, including relative priority for work fetch, by enabling the <work_fetch_debug> logging flag for the local client. Be warned that this places very verbose data in the Event Log.

Thanks for the suggestion. Here is what the scheduling priorities for all my projects are as displayed in Project tab / Properties:

LHC@ = -0.00 (did not receive any tasks since I joined the project, as the project seems to be taking a short break).

POGS = -0.00 (did not receive any tasks since I joined the project, as the project seems to be taking a short break, same as LHC).

SETI@ = -3.77 (I joined this project first and processed probably 40K worth of credits on this host). Currently I process only for SETI@.

MILKYWAY@ = -0.00 (I joined this project second, and processed probably 1,800 worth of credits on this host. Currently I drained my queue and asked BOINC not to fetch any tasks until I figure out the problems with switching in between projects). I remember looking at the scheduling priority when MILKIWAY was doing work, and it was a non-zero, negative number, closer to zero than the -3.77 I have for SETI, but I do not remember exactly what it was.

Resouce share on all of the four projects the sites is set to 100 each, so in theory each project should get a 25% slice.

I do not understand how the scheduling priority works, neither I know where from to control it. Can you point me in an approximately right direction?

Thanks for your time.

-mm-

I first posted my last message (above) and then realized that there are more replies. After I read them, I am under the impression that what I was witnessing is a NORMAL behavior of BOINC trying to have MILKYWAY catch up with SETI.

If I understand it correctly it is possible that one can crunch for one project for years, accumulating a large credit, and then decides to join another project, and that basically puts the old project more or less on hold until the newly joined project catches up?

Can somebody confirm or deny?

Thanks.

-mm-

I do not understand how the scheduling priority works, neither I know where from to control it. Can you point me in an approximately right direction?

I don't think any of us claim to understand how it works, but some of us watch it in action and gain some ability to predict what it's going to do next. Similarly, you can't control the scheduling process, but you can influence it.

To your specific points:

LHC often doesn't have work, but just at the moment they're really busy and would appreciate your help. Make sure you're attached using the correct url - they did change it a while back.
http://lhcathomeclassic.cern.ch/sixtrack/

POGS - no personal knowledge.

Priority - Zero is the highest priority, any non-zero numbers will be negative and hence lower priority. Zero projects, or projects closest to zero, will be fetched first - unless there's some reason, stated lower down the event log, why the particular project can't be contacted at the moment.

The exact numbers are immaterial, and will change from minute to minute anyway. Only the relationship between the numbers - which is bigger, which smaller - matters.

The nearest thing there is to a specification is ClientSchedOctTen - the design specification as at October 2010. No, it hasn't been updated since then. You might want to note two comments in that document:

"This will tend to get large (max-min) clumps of work for a single project, and variety will be lower than the current policy."
"The recent estimated credit REC(P) of a project is maintained by the client, with an averaging half-life of, say, a month."

These two points are linked: I prefer to run with a REC half-life of 1 day, rather than the actual default of 10 days, and my clumps are smaller. REC half-life can be controlled by an option in client configuration

LHC often doesn't have work, but just at the moment they're really busy and would appreciate your help. Make sure you're attached using the correct url - they did change it a while back.
http://lhcathomeclassic.cern.ch/sixtrack/

I joined LHC three days ago, and did not receive anything to work on since. I used the correct URL, and it seems that project has work, I just did not receive anything yet. Hm...

-mm-

I joined LHC three days ago, and did not receive anything to work on since. I used the correct URL, and it seems that project has work, I just did not receive anything yet.

Sorry for asking about LHC on MW, but I am in an unpleasant catch-22: I did not process anything for LHC, because I did not get any work yet, so I don't have any credit, and I need credit to post on LHC's forums, so I can not ask there. LOL.

It seems from their status page that wotk is available: http://lhcathomeclassic.cern.ch/sixtrack/server_status.php

Actually, there is:

Tasks ready to send 553,650

at the moment of my typing this message. Yet, my BOINC client did not receive a thing since I signed up. It communicates with the project, and nada! I even tried to RESET and REMOVE/ADD LHC@HOME, and nothing.

Any ideas?

-mm-

If you highlight the LHC project in BOINC Manager, and click the 'Update' button, what sequence of messages (request and reply) do you get in the event log?

If you highlight the LHC project in BOINC Manager, and click the 'Update' button, what sequence of messages (request and reply) do you get in the event log?

1. Scheduler request pending, Requested by user.
2. Scheduler request in progress.
3. Communication pending (countdown 00:00:05)

and then:

4. Scheduler request pending. To fetch work, Scheduler request in progress

And nothing shows up from LHC among tasks when viewed "Tasks / Show all tasks". Only work from SETI and MW is there.

-mm-

EVENT LOG:

Sat Mar 28 16:29:35 2015 | LHC@home 1.0 | update requested by user
Sat Mar 28 16:29:40 2015 | LHC@home 1.0 | Sending scheduler request: Requested by user.
Sat Mar 28 16:29:40 2015 | LHC@home 1.0 | Requesting new tasks for CPU
Sat Mar 28 16:29:42 2015 | LHC@home 1.0 | Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks
Sat Mar 28 16:29:42 2015 | LHC@home 1.0 | No tasks sent
Sat Mar 28 16:29:52 2015 | LHC@home 1.0 | Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
Sat Mar 28 16:29:52 2015 | LHC@home 1.0 | Requesting new tasks for CPU
Sat Mar 28 16:29:54 2015 | LHC@home 1.0 | Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks
Sat Mar 28 16:29:54 2015 | LHC@home 1.0 | No tasks sent

You have not been getting work for the LHC - SixTrack project because they currently do not have an application that will run on Darwin / MAC.

Ah. My fault, should have checked. "Darwin 14.1.0". LHC doesn't have a current application for Macs.

You'll find that many BOINC people (including me) assume Windows far too readily. Best to state your allegiance loud and proud when you start a new thread. Now I check, you did say "Mac OS Yosemite", but I'd forgotten that by the time we got on to LHC. Sorry again.

You have not been getting work for the LHC - SixTrack project because they currently do not have an application that will run on Darwin / MAC.

Does that mean there is no LHC sub-project available for Darwin / MAC, or that SixTrack will not run on a MAC but some other sub-projects of LHC will?

-mm-

Ah. My fault, should have checked. "Darwin 14.1.0". LHC doesn't have a current application for Macs.

Oh, I see. So BOINC client lied to me, because it clearly displays a MAC OS logo under supported systems when trying to attach to LHC@home from BOINC manager.

Thanks for the info. It is a shame; a vast majority of scientists I have ran across (and their students, for that matter) use MACs. Something tells me folks at CERN are no exception. One would think they would make an effort to port the thing to OS X. It is based on BSD, after all.

Oh well...I can load Windows under VMFusion, I suppose, but this just seems as way too much hustle to maintain. A hobby should not be a chore, don't you think?

-mm-

I has some problem witn BOINC 7.4.42 on Windows 8.1. When I added MilkyWay project Collatz project became to receive no computer time. I started to receive errors "cancel by server" for Collatz project. http://boinc.thesonntags.com/collatz/results.php?userid=221356&offset=0&show_names=0&state=6&appid=
Collatz project worked only on GPU because MilkyWay not used Intel GPU.
Now I increase in settings recources for Collatz project from 100 to 300
snd decrease in settings recources for MilkyWay project from 100 to 30.