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Martin P.

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Message 4737 - Posted: 15 Aug 2008, 23:52:18 UTC

Due to the extremely short deadlines all my computers run Milkyway@Home WUs at "High-priority" level all the time. All other projects do not receive any CPU time anymore. Therefore I will suspend Milkyway@Home until this issue gets resolved.

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Message 4738 - Posted: 16 Aug 2008, 0:17:09 UTC

Try setting your Resource Share for the Project Lower, that way you would get less work from the project & your other Projects would run more. It may take a few days to straighten itself out but eventually it would ...
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Odysseus

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Message 4739 - Posted: 16 Aug 2008, 1:03:40 UTC

If you don’t want to change your resource shares, BOINC will still try to honour them and, given enough time, usually succeeds. Although MW@h tasks may seem to be ‘hogging’ your CPU, it’s just because BOINC had underestimated the necessary time to complete them—the recent jump in WU size here threw a lot of hosts off for a while. Apparently the server-supplied estimates weren’t adjusted to match; such is life in a test project … BOINC adapts to events like this over time, by adjusting the host’s Duration Correction Factor for the project, and its averages are biased to avoid downloading more work than it can handle.

Anyway, your BOINC client will be taking note of the extra CPU-time MW@h is using, and once it gets through the work it’s downloaded it will refrain from asking for more until the other projects have caught up. This behaviour is managed with Long Term Debt, which you can read from the client_state.xml file or monitor with a BOINC add-on.
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Message 4741 - Posted: 16 Aug 2008, 4:08:31 UTC

In other words...

Short answer: When the tasks you have finish, you won't download any more work until your other projects have been given their fair share.

I'm going to guess that you had your work cache set for several days or this wouldn't have happened. (Only because I've not had a similar problem happen on any of mine, but it doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to figure out how)
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Martin P.

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Message 4884 - Posted: 21 Aug 2008, 8:06:14 UTC - in response to Message 4741.  

In other words...

Short answer: When the tasks you have finish, you won't download any more work until your other projects have been given their fair share.

I'm going to guess that you had your work cache set for several days or this wouldn't have happened. (Only because I've not had a similar problem happen on any of mine, but it doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to figure out how)


Still the same problem. I let it run without intervention for a week now, but on my slower computers (G5 Dual 2.7GHz) it still downloads 2 WUs and runs them in "High priority" mode. My work cache is set to 3 days so that I can compensate for the frequent server problems on most BOINC projects (presently there are quite a few problems with SETI@Home, no work for Cosmology@Home and Pirates@Home, new science cruncher for Einstein@Home, etc).
I have suspended Milkyway on my slower machines and wait until they figured out how to handle this problem.

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Alinator

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Message 4890 - Posted: 21 Aug 2008, 14:05:20 UTC - in response to Message 4884.  
Last modified: 21 Aug 2008, 14:08:05 UTC

Still the same problem. I let it run without intervention for a week now, but on my slower computers (G5 Dual 2.7GHz) it still downloads 2 WUs and runs them in "High priority" mode. My work cache is set to 3 days so that I can compensate for the frequent server problems on most BOINC projects (presently there are quite a few problems with SETI@Home, no work for Cosmology@Home and Pirates@Home, new science cruncher for Einstein@Home, etc).
I have suspended Milkyway on my slower machines and wait until they figured out how to handle this problem.


Well, with a 3 day cache and carrying a tight deadline project like MW, this is not too surprising.

The 'problem' is, if you recall way back when, folks were complaining they were not being allowed to carry a full compliment of work in their cache at all times, even if LTD said some projects were overworked and shouldn't get more unless there was absolutely no other choice.

So John finally got tired of the grief he was getting and changed the work fetch algorithm so that the CC would always grab work from somewhere and in such quantities as to fill the cache 'full', even if this means it makes virtually impossible to comply with the resource share over time unless all the attached projects have 100% uptime reliability and work availability.

So in practice what happens is the lower you make the resource share and the higher you set the cache to, the worse the problem gets in some cases.

For example, my G3 has exactly the opposite problem. Even though MW has a 99.01% RS and SAH is the only other project it runs, CI is set to 0.01 days and has a cache setting of 1.25 days, any time it gets turned away for new work here, it will pull one from SAH (when it doesn't have one onboard already, that is) even though (LTD * RS) says it should not draw another task on share for the next 642.26 days currently.

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Bethard E. Bailey III

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Message 4899 - Posted: 21 Aug 2008, 16:10:38 UTC

I'm not complaining mind you, but I've run into an issue with them uping the WU's again, the 8 was okay, cause it would be able to complete them in the deadline, but, unfortunately, I've now got more units downloaded and working hi-priority than I have time before the deadline, what should I do with the ones that won't finish in time?

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Bethard E. Bailey III

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Message 4900 - Posted: 21 Aug 2008, 16:12:15 UTC
Last modified: 21 Aug 2008, 16:12:55 UTC

Got doubled up and couldn't delete the post, but I could delete what it said LOL
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Alinator

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Message 4903 - Posted: 21 Aug 2008, 16:28:41 UTC - in response to Message 4899.  

I'm not complaining mind you, but I've run into an issue with them uping the WU's again, the 8 was okay, cause it would be able to complete them in the deadline, but, unfortunately, I've now got more units downloaded and working hi-priority than I have time before the deadline, what should I do with the ones that won't finish in time?



LOL...

Don't worry about the double, we all have had that happen! ;-)

Regarding the overfetching, what are you running for your Network Connection setting (CI) and your work cache setting?

Alinator
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Bethard E. Bailey III

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Message 4982 - Posted: 22 Aug 2008, 13:42:10 UTC

well now that's a good question, I tried to find what your talking about but I can't find those statments on the manager settings, unless I'm being really really dense in my looking?
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Message 4986 - Posted: 22 Aug 2008, 14:02:25 UTC
Last modified: 22 Aug 2008, 14:09:09 UTC

Go to your Account Page & then select "When and how BOINC uses your computer/Computing preferences" then select "Computer is connected to the Internet about every x.xxx days" see what it says there...

You can increase this up to 10 days or go as low as 0.0001 (Maybe Lower but I've never tried lower) days if you want to, the Higher Number you use the more Work is Downloaded from a Project and if to high & your attached to lots of Projects you may not be able to finish them all on time.

0.1 is a setting lots of people use if attached to 3-5 Projects or more, that way you don't get to much from any 1 Project ...

To Change your Settings click on Edit Preferences at the bottom of the page, then make your change or changes & then click Update Preferences at the Bottom of the Page again and you should be good to go ... :)

My Setting for Connection look like this:

Computer is connected to the Internet about every 0.001 days
(Leave blank or 0 if always connected.

BOINC will try to maintain at least this much work.) 1 days
Maintain enough work for an additional
Enforced by version 5.10+
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Message 4992 - Posted: 22 Aug 2008, 18:46:37 UTC

I just noticed that you only have 1 Computer so it may be easier to do what I outlined below right from the BOINC Manager & whats called Local Settings.

Just open up the BOINC Manager and click on Advanced @ the top of the Manager, then click on Preferences & a BOINC Manager Window should open up. Under the Network usage Tab there should be e entries that say Connect about every x.xxxx days & Additional work Buffer x.xxxx ...

Those 2 entries take the place of what would be in your Account page at the Project, set them accordingly & make sure the other settings under all 3 Tabs look okay & then click on OK at the bottom of the Page.

If you every want to go back to using the settings @ your Project Account Page just click Clear @ the Top of the Page and your settings will be controlled at your Project Account Page once again.

The good about using Local Settings is that you can set each individual Host to whatever setting you want & it doesn't propagate to the other Hosts you have like Project Settings will ...
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Ricky@SETI.USA

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Message 4993 - Posted: 22 Aug 2008, 20:43:34 UTC

I have run into problems where the short deadline causes BOINC to run Milkyway almost 100% of the time and then when the other project has to run to meet their deadline BOINC can't keep up.

Milkyway seems to want to hog the computer.

I just lost alot of WU's because of that.

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Message 4994 - Posted: 22 Aug 2008, 21:11:00 UTC
Last modified: 22 Aug 2008, 21:16:18 UTC

You'll have to cut your Resource Share to the Milky Way Project down to avoid that if you want to run other Projects. Even then it may take a few days to straighten out the Debt Share ...

The Project needs a short Deadline on the Wu's for them to be useful so everybody is just going to have to adjust their Resource Share & live with it if they want to run the Project ...
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Ricky@SETI.USA

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Message 5000 - Posted: 22 Aug 2008, 22:44:19 UTC

I run 4 projects per/PC which gives each 25% and I get a message that seem to try and make me feel bad because it tells me that the PC is on X % and BOINC runs X% of the time and this project (Milkyway) only gets 25% of that.

Also it seems that BOINC does not know how to adjust how many WU's it can do when the CPU useage is set to anything other than 100%.

I have a Dell Laptop that overheats if I go over 80% of CPU use.

However, BOINC will request WU as if it uses 100%.

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Message 5002 - Posted: 22 Aug 2008, 22:59:11 UTC - in response to Message 5000.  

I run 4 projects per/PC which gives each 25% and I get a message that seem to try and make me feel bad because it tells me that the PC is on X % and BOINC runs X% of the time and this project (Milkyway) only gets 25% of that.

Also it seems that BOINC does not know how to adjust how many WU's it can do when the CPU useage is set to anything other than 100%.

I have a Dell Laptop that overheats if I go over 80% of CPU use.

However, BOINC will request WU as if it uses 100%.


Hmmmmm, a dilemma for sure, I have 2 Laptops but they run @ 100% 24/7 without a problem of over heating so I haven't run into the problem your having yet.

Try posting your problem/question here in the Questions and problems Forum. Somebody there should be able to help you out.
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Ricky@SETI.USA

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Message 5009 - Posted: 23 Aug 2008, 11:03:13 UTC - in response to Message 5002.  

I run 4 projects per/PC which gives each 25% and I get a message that seem to try and make me feel bad because it tells me that the PC is on X % and BOINC runs X% of the time and this project (Milkyway) only gets 25% of that.

Also it seems that BOINC does not know how to adjust how many WU's it can do when the CPU useage is set to anything other than 100%.

I have a Dell Laptop that overheats if I go over 80% of CPU use.

However, BOINC will request WU as if it uses 100%.


Hmmmmm, a dilemma for sure, I have 2 Laptops but they run @ 100% 24/7 without a problem of over heating so I haven't run into the problem your having yet.

Try posting your problem/question here in the Questions and problems Forum. Somebody there should be able to help you out.


From what I learned over on the BOINC MB it takes BOINC a month to "learn" that it can't download but so many WU's because of the CPU useage. It seems that it is not part of the "get more work" section. The only to fix this is to lower the amount of days.

However I had 2 other laptops that lost WU's because BOINC had to stop running Milkyway in order to meet the deadline of other projects.

Even with just 2 projects Milkyway gets upset because it "only get 50%" of the computer time!

To come down to it Milkyway needs to learn to play nice with others and stop thinking it's the ONLY project worth running!

If you are going to place high demands on user that want to help in this project you should make a statement on your home page informing folks that this project very short deadlines and hould be the only project on any PC... or something like that.


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Message 5010 - Posted: 23 Aug 2008, 11:21:43 UTC - in response to Message 5009.  
Last modified: 23 Aug 2008, 11:27:57 UTC

If you are going to place high demands on user that want to help in this project you should make a statement on your home page informing folks that this project very short deadlines and hould be the only project on any PC... or something like that.


This was posted on the Front Page on August 16, 2008, so it should have been enough warning that the Project has/had short deadlines ...

August 16, 2008 More Deadline Changes
The deadline has been increased to 3 days (up from 2), mainly for computers that need to go offline for weekends. Hopefully this should work well for everyone.


PS: I'm only running 2 Projects at the moment on xx amount of Quad Cores & everyone of them run 2 Wu's each from each Project so it works for me but may not for some people depending on the Projects there running I guess. Either that or they don't give BOINC a long enough time to figure things out so each Project Plays Nice ...
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Buster Gunn

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Message 5038 - Posted: 25 Aug 2008, 23:40:29 UTC
Last modified: 25 Aug 2008, 23:43:02 UTC

This messing with the deadlines and queues is doing nothing except confusing the BoincMgr. I am currently running MW on 6 Quads with various numbers of days of queues. They all wind up running MW at high priority. I even have a machine with 10 days of queue and it still finds it necessary to run at "High Priority". I think the solution is to lengthen the deadlines. If it is necessary to lower the queue size, so be it, but give BoincMGR at least a fighting chance. I would suggest at least 5 or 6 days. If this is not possible, then I will have to reconsider my participation here. There has to be a happy median. Please take into consideration that we run other projects along with MW. 2 or 3 days deadline is just too restrictive.
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Message 5039 - Posted: 26 Aug 2008, 0:38:29 UTC - in response to Message 5038.  

This messing with the deadlines and queues is doing nothing except confusing the BoincMgr. I am currently running MW on 6 Quads with various numbers of days of queues. They all wind up running MW at high priority. I even have a machine with 10 days of queue and it still finds it necessary to run at "High Priority". I think the solution is to lengthen the deadlines. If it is necessary to lower the queue size, so be it, but give BoincMGR at least a fighting chance. I would suggest at least 5 or 6 days. If this is not possible, then I will have to reconsider my participation here. There has to be a happy median. Please take into consideration that we run other projects along with MW. 2 or 3 days deadline is just too restrictive.


This is a Quote from Travis who is a Project Administrator & Developer basically stating that if it takes 5 days to return a Wu it probably won't be useful to the Project anyway.The deadline was changed to 3 days because of this shortly after the post was made ...

AFAIK, the deadline right now is 5 days (at least thats what's being set on the workunit). which should be more than enough time. in fact if a WU takes 5 days to get back to us theres a high probability it wont be very useful at all. While increasing the deadline might be nice for some peoples credit, for the most part it's probably just wasted CPU cycles.

____________
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