Posts by ChertseyAl

1) Message boards : Number crunching : Faster application (links inside) (Message 5722) Posted 31 Oct 2008 by ChertseyAl Post: Just the note. I already posted the exact email i received. We are out of line with the "general guideline" of 1:1 credit match with SETI. I do not have much personal experience with David Anderson, so I can't say anything in favor or against him. Maybe you could ask him exactly where this "general guideline" is published so that we can all decide if we wish to continue with this project or any other BOINC project? I'm really struggling to see why Kredit Konsiderations are actively blocking real work being done. I don't give a Monkey's Toss about "Kredit", I just want to get some useful work done. DC is the way to go for sure. BOINC is now a Totalitarian State. Al.
2) Message boards : Number crunching : Credit limits apparently exist ... (Message 5719) Posted 31 Oct 2008 by ChertseyAl Post: Quote via Dave from DA in another thread: And I got a note from Dave Anderson yesterday saying that we're already over the limit on credits and we should lower them Crikey. Never mind the science, just make sure that SETI gets the benefit. Speechless. Plently of pure DC projects out there folks, I think BOINC is now just a political exercise rather than a mechanism for actually getting things done. Unbelievable. Al.
3) Message boards : Number crunching : Faster application (links inside) (Message 5718) Posted 31 Oct 2008 by ChertseyAl Post: And I got a note from Dave Anderson yesterday saying that we're already over the limit on credits and we should lower them What limits are these? I know DA wants us all to crunch SETI and nothing else, but I'm unaware of any published 'limits'. Please enlighten. Al.
4) Message boards : Number crunching : Home page (Message 5492) Posted 16 Oct 2008 by ChertseyAl Post: ...because David Anderson was too busy making up the next chapter of "Credit Wars: BOINC Strikes Back" to do proper testing... I like the cut of your jib Sir! Welcome aboard Ye Goode Shippe "No More Krazy Kredit Kops" :) Cripes. Project admins that don't know how/why their site changed. Words fail me. I really, really like the underlying sceince of this project, but I can't help but feel that it really needs some help. I've said it before ... Maybe MurkyWay needs to abandon BOINC and go DC. BOINC is now just a waste of time/effort/crunching/bandwidth. I'm utterly sick of BOINC to be honest. I will not crunch SETI, and I will not kiss DA's ar$e. Random musings: Funny how every project that gets 'optimised' drops dead within a few weeks. Why? Nothing to do with the optimisers, for who we are all grateful, but it's down to those Krazy Kredit Kops. DC is the way to do. Dump BOINC. It's pants. Al.
5) Message boards : Number crunching : I've had enough !!! (Message 4855) Posted 20 Aug 2008 by ChertseyAl Post: I've tried to stay out of this discussion, but I'm afraid I feel the need to comment now :( There are two problems: 1. We haven't tested his app to make sure the results are correct. Then ban the user. Don't send work, don't accept results. You are admitting that you are accepting results that you don't trust. Not very scientific is it? 2. He was getting something along the lines of 200+ credit for around 3-4 minutes of work. I'm failing to see why this is a problem. The Kredit Kops might see it as a problem, but in real life who cares? Is he going to buy a Ferrari by doing this? and if you don't think the second has anything fishy about it... well i don't know i can say to convince you otherwise This is a very fishy statement. Is your problem that the Kredit Kops don't like high RACs, or is your problem that you don't like the official code made to look like it was written by a grad school code monkey? For the avoidance of doubt, I am not suggesting that the latter is the case, it's just a wild guess. I'll (partially) show my hand here. I (actually, the company that I own) used to make serious money from optimising real-time embedded software. I'd generally think that a 20-times speed improvement was the minimum that we could deliver to a customer for the outrageous fees that we charged. Sometimes we could do 50-times. The fact is that a lot of progammers just convert a formula or algorithm into code. They transliterate, and no more. Experts are the guys that take something basic and make it something special. Or in many cases take something useless and make it into a product. Personally, I think that's way more credit than any project should be awarding For me, that's a killer blow to the project. You are not DA (bow down before him mere mortals). Maybe you are DA. I just think that's a crazy statement and once you start down that particular route you will end up like Cosmo. I've avoided looking at the code of any project, or indeed the BOINC code itself, as I've retired now, and don't want to be sucked into working 24 hour days to get code running faster. Been there, done that, got the Ferrari ;) I'm thinking that I should detach from this project, based on your post (and another which you made which appears to be full of cr4p), but I'm really keen on the science. But if I suspect that you are holding it back (and, frankly, that's what it sounds like to me), I'll use my CPU cycles elsewhere. Well, that was a jolly good rant. A waste of time as nobody will read it, but there you go. Al.
6) Message boards : Number crunching : 8 Workunit limit (Message 4730) Posted 15 Aug 2008 by ChertseyAl Post: ok i've changed the deadline to 2 days. Arrrggghhh! Now the new WUS are hijacking the ones I'm currently running because they kicked the host into panic mode :( It might have been better to wait until WUs with the old deadline had reported back before changing anything. Oh well. Not as bad as CosNob though ... ;) Al.
7) Message boards : Number crunching : Clearing results from database quickly? (Message 4728) Posted 15 Aug 2008 by ChertseyAl Post: shh. school starts back up in 3 weeks or so. Hey, what did you do with Dave? Last seen making lightbulbs in Pennsylvania I believe. I know he liked Swedish neo-classical heavy metal, but even so, that's no excuse to dump him ;) Al.
8) Message boards : Number crunching : 8 Workunit limit (Message 4718) Posted 15 Aug 2008 by ChertseyAl Post: Really old WUs really don't have very much benefit to what we're doing and would just be wasting cycles, it's just the nature of the project. Would it be possible to send cancellation messages for workunits that haven't begun crunching and aren't needed because they are 'stale'? That would of course rely on the hosts doing an update (at least with 5.x.x managers I guess). Are WUs that sneak in 1 second before the deadline actually useful? You imply that 1 day is 'good' for you, so are we just wasting resources once a WU is more than a day old? Maybe if you could guarantee (yeah, right!) that work was always available we could go for a 0.05 day cache and provided there were no really short WUs and that BOINC manager requested works frequently enough, work would be pushed through quickly and always be 'fresh'. I can't help but feel that this project doesn't really quite suit BOINC, as parameters have to be set to force the behaviour that you need. Maybe a standalone DC app would work better. Anyway, I have no axe to grind - I'm happy to crunch anything that useful to the project, and if my hardware isn't up to it I can crunch plenty of other projects. Or I can buy new hardware ;) Al.
9) Message boards : Number crunching : 8 Workunit limit (Message 4712) Posted 15 Aug 2008 by ChertseyAl Post: ok i've changed the deadline to 2 days. That makes things workable on my old P4's. But ... Do you know when you will settle down to one WU length? The mixture of 371/2/3 WUs that I'm getting makes it impossible for BOINC manager to know how much work to get. I end up with a 372 running near to completion and maybe 2 371s ready to go with estimated run times based on 372s - As a result it 'appears' that my 1 day cache is full when in reality it will be dry in 40 minutes :( It would be nice if you were only running singe WU lengths :) Al.
10) Message boards : Number crunching : New WU Length? (Message 4678) Posted 11 Aug 2008 by ChertseyAl Post: Eh Matey....Nate said the 373 type length only ...after the 371 & 372 finish their search there should be no more. Sadly I'm only getting BFO WUs and Ickle Tiny WUs. My clients don't know what the estimated runtimes are so I end up starving out other projects because a couple of 371s are getting 13 hour estimates :( I could be mean and keep deleting the BFOs and tiddlers and hope I get the nice comfy 373s, but that doesn't seem right somehow ;) Al.
11) Message boards : Number crunching : New WU Length? (Message 4617) Posted 2 Aug 2008 by ChertseyAl Post: No they have not been extended again. The 3720282 and 3721282 are the long WUs from when I first increased it, but after that they have only been shortened. The 3730382 and 3731382 should run between half and a quarter of the time of those above. Is the plan to only run with the 373's from now on? I've been getting a mixture of flavours, but less 371s and 372s - Are these just reissued WUs or are they still being generated? I only ask because my slowest host really isn't suitable for the long WUs and could be more usefully utilised on another project. The medium WUs are OK by me - Longer than I usually like, but I can live with it at the moment :) Al.
12) Message boards : Number crunching : So, what's the state of play (Message 4609) Posted 1 Aug 2008 by ChertseyAl Post: So, how long does a WU typically take to run on a slow machine (say 2.8 P4), and what credit gets granted? Replying to myself ... Thanks for the feedback folks :) Finished a 'big' WU today. Looked to be taking 18 hours, but sure enough it got to 50% and sped up, ending in 9 hours. Got a nice big 260 credit for it, and given that the host was a 'banger' that's very, very good. The Kredit Kops would be furious ;) Especially as that's more credit than the short WUs used to 'pay' ;) I've just opened all of my hosts to MW again and filled their caches. It will be interesting to see the mix of WU lengths and credit. I don't generally crunch any project with WUs that take longer than 2.4 hours (having thrown away many KWh of electricity on 'loser' projects in the past!), but I'll give it a go :) Al.
13) Message boards : Number crunching : So, what's the state of play (Message 4550) Posted 30 Jul 2008 by ChertseyAl Post: I temporarily dropped MW when the big WUS came in, but would like to start running the project again. But ... I can't find out how long the WUs run because everyones completed WUs get purged before I can look at their run times and credit :( So, how long does a WU typically take to run on a slow machine (say 2.8 P4), and what credit gets granted? It would be nice if the WUs didn't get purged so quickly so that I could look at my own progress and that of others. Seems a bit heavy-handed at the moment :( Cheers, Al.
14) Message boards : Number crunching : Hopefully... (Message 4072) Posted 14 Jul 2008 by ChertseyAl Post: It's possible that I made it too dramatic and increased the runtime by too much, so please let me know what completion times you are getting so I can adjust the next searches accordingly. I've got a new WU running on a slow P4. Usual completion time is around 11 minutes for that machine. Looks like the new WU is going to run for 21 hours! I'll let it run to completion and get a proper run time (assuming that it checkpoints nicely, if not I'll have to kill it). I hope the credit is more than the 260 quoted eleswhere in this thread, as that's going to be a bit mean compared to a lot of other projects ;) Al.
15) Message boards : Number crunching : No new WU (Message 4049) Posted 13 Jul 2008 by ChertseyAl Post: I'm new to Milky Way and didn't realize they are so cynical. They're not. One of the best run BOINC projects available. Travis and Dave do a great job. The forums are quite lively, and frustration sometimes is expressed in an unexpectedly forthright manner ... Translation: A lot of posts can safely be ignored. Also, you seemed to miss the 'smile' at the end of the post that you replied to :) Al.
16) Message boards : Number crunching : Ghost in the Machine !!!! (Message 3906) Posted 21 Jun 2008 by ChertseyAl Post: It seems some of my systems have a life of their own, 2 of them managed to replicate themselves in my account. Luckily, I was able to "delete" one of them but the other still lives on. Split CPID? Have you tried merging hosts? Better option than deleting. Al.
17) Message boards : Number crunching : Could We Get a Paper On This? (Message 3581) Posted 29 May 2008 by ChertseyAl Post: clusterf#@K Excellent rant! ;) A couple of points (and bear in mind that I'm not crunching MW ATM, so am slightly out of touch): The project is still in Alpha - As another project said on it's front page "Be Not Surprised". I've lost plenty of credit on other aplha projects, and just lost half a day yesterday on one humble host on what I regarded as a stable application. Stuff happens. I think Travis and Dave have done a great job on this project, and have always been responsive to problems, despite limitations in the amount of IT support that they receive, they are always polite and helpful, and to be honest this project is certainly in the top 3 of projects with good admin. It would be a great loss to the project if you quit now: 2.75M credit and a 48K RAC? Impressive stats. Seems to have worked for you pretty well up until now, so give it another chance. I quit Cosmo ages ago when the problems became too much to justify the electricity costs on it. It came back to being a reasonable project though. I currently run a bunch of pre-alpha projects that don't even export stats. Really frustrating when 'schoolboy errors' trash hours or days of crunching, but I like the fun aspect of trying something new and, well, 'dangerous' ;) MW is a very interesting project, and it's going to get even more interesting once the 'real stuff' starts getting crunched. If nothing else, enjoy the decent credit rate and put the odd few thousand lost credits down to experience. But then you knew all of above already - Just thought I'd chip in to support Travis and Dave :) Al.
18) Message boards : Number crunching : Process got signal 11 (Message 3070) Posted 8 Apr 2008 by ChertseyAl Post: eek...taking a walk on the wild side with the alpha of the new suse huh. that's actually my favorite linux os. well. a signal 11 is thrown when the disk is read incorrectly and is usually related to an i/o error i believe. i recommend that you use your package manager to rebuild your boinc client and then reset the project. other than that, i don't know what to tell you. Okay, thank you, Dave. Maybe it helps. Did you read this old thread: http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/forum_thread.php?id=272 Al.
19) Message boards : Number crunching : Computer 'sploded (Message 3062) Posted 7 Apr 2008 by ChertseyAl Post: You ought to be using a UPS Wow, that's serious BOINCing ;) Random machine/power failures are why I now only crunch short WUs, or marginally longer ones with proper checkpointing. Had a power failure this weekend. Probably lost an hour of science at worst across 3 hosts. Also revealed a weird characteristic of SIMAP - Sadly cannot prove my conjecture as I'm dry on that project ATM. Al.
20) Message boards : Number crunching : Have not received any W/U in over a month..... (Message 2977) Posted 3 Apr 2008 by ChertseyAl Post: In the BOINC Manager, under the projects tab, i click update for MilkyWay. Then i go and check the messages tab and when it connects to the MilkyWay servers, it is requesting 0 (zero) seconds of work, aand i dont get any W/U. Whereas my husbands computers are asking for a specific amount of seconds of work and he gets about 20 W/U's at a time Well, you're asking for no work, and getting it ;) Your husband's machine is getting the maximum allowed at a time, i.e. 20 units. To get some work, make sure your cache is set to a reasonable length, say 1 day. Then suspend all projects apart from MW and make sure MW is set for 'allow new tasks'. It should automatically go get some work. If not, try pressing 'update'. Have a look at the BOINC manager config on your husband's machine and match it if this doesn't work. If it's still not asking for work, despite being 'dry', it could be another project gone critical or high priority. Most servers don't worry about this on suspended projects, I don't know about MW though. I've only ever had this happen on the RS project when a CPDN unit had gone past it's deadline (it had been suspended for a year!) and RS wouldn't send work. I just aborted the CPDN WU and all was well. Like I say, never seen this on any other project. My guess is that you're overcommitted on other projects. Let us know how you get on :) Al.

Next 20