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Posts by Purple Rabbit

1) Message boards : News : User location visualization (Message 59007)
Posted 21 Jun 2013 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
I'm in that blue blob on the east coast of the USA and have been for quite some time. I used to be in a different blob...sigh. That was my birth blob. I've been away from my birth blob since I got smart-my diploma says I am. I went to a "better" blob after that for 40 years.

While I know my ISP doesn't resolve within police raiding distance, 30 miles is close enough for a project mapping a galaxy :)

Travis, it looks like you have a cluster of fans in the US and Europe, but the penguins on the ice down south clearly have no interest. Perhaps a few astronomy classes for the birds may be in order. One must always look for the "next" thing to accomplish :) In any event you've done well.
2) Message boards : Number crunching : "Missed" Status (Message 53580)
Posted 7 Mar 2012 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
Boinc Tasks gets its information by polling. This can range from seconds to minutes. You can set the rate, but the faster you choose the more computer resources Boinc Tasks uses. If the task completes and reports before Boinc Tasks asks for an update, then it was missed. It knows it was there, but it just didn't see it go. Most of my MW tasks are "missed".
3) Message boards : News : Separation updated to 1.00 (Message 53090)
Posted 11 Feb 2012 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
I said 2 days ago:
As a point of information my HD 4770 (11.6, BOINC 6.12.34, winXP32, AMD64 3800+) has been very unhappy with the change to OpenCL. Host 179083 ( http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/show_host_detail.php?hostid=179083 ) gets OpenCL work, but promptly errors out with -1073740777 (unknown error). I detached and tried again with the same result.

Upgrading from Cat 11.6 to Cat 12.1 made MW work without trashing anything. Of course Matt has made a number of changes in the meantime. Moo works too. I wasn't sure Cat 12.1 would support an (old) HD 4770 adequately. I guess it does.

Performance is very near what it was with the CAL app. I've seen a decrease of about 4 seconds from 192 seconds total time, but an increase of 3 seconds (from 6 to 9 seconds) of CPU time. I'd have never noticed if I wasn't looking.

An appropriate classic quote of wisdom:

"Thank god Mr. Spock, you've fixed it"
"There was no deity involved Mr. Scott. It was my cross circuiting from A to B that did it"
4) Message boards : News : Separation updated to 1.00 (Message 52991)
Posted 10 Feb 2012 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
Rick, from what I've seen, 12.1 doesn't break Moo, but it DOES break Collatz.

Thanks Barry. Because I run both Moo and Collatz on this host I'll stand pat for now. I'm 100% Moo at the moment, but I'll try something different when I see something change at MW.

I'm the kinda guy that likes to push the do-not-push button (retired engineer...sigh), but I guess that I'll wait for the dust to settle here. Is anyone settling the dust?

Rick
5) Message boards : News : Separation updated to 1.00 (Message 52973)
Posted 9 Feb 2012 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
As a point of information my HD 4770 (11.6, BOINC 6.12.34, winXP32, AMD64 3800+) has been very unhappy with the change to OpenCL. Host 179083 ( http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/show_host_detail.php?hostid=179083 ) gets OpenCL work, but promptly errors out with -1073740777 (unknown error). I detached and tried again with the same result.

I'm reluctant to install 12.1 as that may break Moo. It's my understanding that CAL support has been removed in this release. I'm open to suggestions.

Rick
6) Message boards : Number crunching : GPU Requirements (Message 50136)
Posted 17 Jul 2011 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
Martin, I have a HD 4770 and had similar problems when I updated the ATI drivers. I kept going back to 10.12 which worked consistently. I finally got 11.6 to work by first completely uninstalling the old drivers and rebooting before the new install.

This may or may not work for you, but it's worth a try if you didn't do this already.
7) Message boards : News : DOUBLE CREDITS Fundraiser - Request for Funding for MilkyWay@home (Message 50103)
Posted 15 Jul 2011 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
I'm a bit conflicted with the issue of pay something (from all of us) and get more credits (for all of us) if we all give enough. I'm sure Dr. Newberg has only the best of intentions, but this seems to run contrary to volunteerism on BOINC in my opinion. This just ain't right! It's like buying votes. I give her high marks for watching out for her students, but maybe there's a better (unspecified) way?

I have no problem donating to projects to keep them running. I'd even help to keep Matt around :) Bribes (implied or overt) are another thing however.

I know, I know, the offer was never intended to be interpreted this way, but it does seem to be a first for BOINC for a non-profit organization.

I would respectfully suggest that this offer be reconsidered. I will yield to the multitude should their opinions be different than mine.

Rick Goddard
Laurel MD USA
8) Message boards : News : ATI application updated to 0.60 (Message 47840)
Posted 14 Apr 2011 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
I have had no problems or errors (except the excess CPU usage which was fixed) for any of the updated GPU apps. I was quite amazed :) I only mention this in case it may help deciding what works and what doesn't.

AMD64 3800+
BOINC 6.12.18
ATI HD 4770
Cat 11.1
Win XP 32 bit
9) Message boards : Number crunching : Infinite GPU Task Time (Sometimes) (Message 46755)
Posted 27 Mar 2011 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
Thanks guys. I was guessing some kind of hardware problem, but the easy checking didn't find any. Why can't it just fail with a bang and a puff of smoke!? I could find that failure. There haven't been any task failures for 3 days. That's the best it's done since March 3. I think it's lonely in the basement and wants attention :)
10) Message boards : Number crunching : Infinite GPU Task Time (Sometimes) (Message 46727)
Posted 26 Mar 2011 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
I have been pulling my hair out (I don't have any to spare) since 3 March when Tomato (AMD64 3800+, Win XP (32 bit), HD 4770, Cat 11.1; it was Cat 10.8 when all this began) suddenly started making errors. I didn't do nothing-honest.

Tomato is running SIMAP (CPU) and MW (GPU). I had errors on both projects. I detached and reinstalled both projects, reinstalled the ATI drivers, defragged the HD, stood on my left foot, twirled my right index finger, and yelled various phrases that I can't (shouldn't) reproduce here.

All of my efforts made things better, but MW still has errors every day or so. The miscreant task either runs for 6 hours then locks up it or declares an error and proceeds to the next MW task. Occasionally it decides to give up at the beginning of the task. The error in all cases is an attempt to access a memory location it shouldn't.

I haven't been able to localize it to a particular WU type. The GPU isn't overclocked and the temperatures are within spec.

My current thought is that Tomato has become possessed by powers beyond knowing. A more likely reason is that I'm doing something stupid. Perhaps I have a hardware problem that I haven't found yet?

Has anyone else seen this or do I have to battle the dark powers alone?
11) Message boards : Number crunching : Stuck WU (Message 46546)
Posted 13 Mar 2011 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
This poor thing has been abandoned and forgotten since the middle of January by all except me. The server didn't trust what I sent (I tried really hard!) and hasn't sent a second task to anyone.

http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/workunit.php?wuid=220514174

I'm guessing there may be more from this time when the server went bonkers. Is there anyone with a broom to sweep these poor waifs toward the door? Actually I'm just desperate for the 213 credits! :)
12) Message boards : Number crunching : Download failed (Message 45677)
Posted 21 Jan 2011 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
Yup, same errors here, but I've been getting a few valid ones in between the much more numerous bad ones. I haven't run out yet, but it's a race to keep a valid queue going.
13) Message boards : Number crunching : Aaargh! Server out of new work! (Message 44078)
Posted 22 Nov 2010 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
The good news is that "something" is happening as opposed to having the server contemplating its navel :)


Well, we are not really sure anything is happening, other than the server is down. I haven't seen any posts from the admins about the problem.


Past downtimes have shown the entire server up and ready, but just not doing anything. Now part of the server is down and not doing anything. I'm guessing this is better :) I'm processing Collatz and DNETC one task at a time as a backup (resource share 0) until everything is copacetic again with MW.
14) Message boards : Number crunching : Aaargh! Server out of new work! (Message 44073)
Posted 22 Nov 2010 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
The good news is that "something" is happening as opposed to having the server contemplating its navel :)
15) Message boards : Number crunching : Simultaneously CPU & GPU (Message 40451)
Posted 16 Jun 2010 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
...<snip>
Your PC got MilkyWay CPU WUs in past?

I guess my 'problem' isn't seen often, because 99,9 % of the MilkyWay members crunch only on the GPU.. ;-)

I am running both CPU and (occasionally) GPU Milkyway tasks concurrently with an app_info file. On my Q6600/GTX-260 host I get both types of tasks. The CPU tasks can be few and far between however :)

I found on Collatz (where I do the same thing) that the CPU task fetch seemed to be inhibited by the number of other tasks (from other projects) I had going. One day, quite by accident, I reduced the number of other project tasks and suddenly I got new Collatz CPU tasks!

Milkyway seems to give me one CPU task for each CPU task I give it back. I tend to have only one CPU task at a time, but many GPU tasks. I think this is a BOINC "thing". We're supposed to like this?
16) Message boards : Number crunching : site redesign (Message 40293)
Posted 8 Jun 2010 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
Can you put the "Your account" link just under the "Message boards (forums)" link on the Home page. It'd be nice not to have to scroll down the page a little to get to it.

Yeah, what he said :)

Hopefully BOINC doesn't revert all the nice changes back to the default at the next update.
17) Message boards : Number crunching : Slower CPUs (Message 38696)
Posted 13 Apr 2010 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
For what it's worth I have two Linux Celeron 1.3 GHz computers running Spinhenge and Milkyway (optimized app) 24/7. Only two projects, but together. The computers complain if I add more. Neither project ever runs in high priority.

A Milkyway task completes in 2+ days running with Spinhenge. The non-optimized app won't even come close to making it. When the deadline was 3 days this was occasionally iffy. Now that's it's 8 days everything is fine. I usually have one MW task to start then about halfway through the first one I get another. Never more than two though. I usually have 5 or 6 Spinhenge tasks in the queue at the same time.

These venerable dinosaurs are rated (by BOINC benchmark) at about 4.85 credits/cobblestones/rocks/clams per hour. These guys/guyettes (I can't tell which) are a little ahead of the benchmark on MW. I figure they're getting the best they can.

Of course 2+ days for 213 credits/cobblestone/etc. compared to 2 minutes is a bit disconcerting, but the poor things are doing their best. At least they can do something successfully.

And no, I'm not wasting power. The squirrel works for peanuts, but he does look a bit ragged if I don't reboot often. He wants second and third shift squirrels, but I'm think of offering him walnuts instead.

If it lights up, I'll find something to do with it :)
18) Message boards : Number crunching : de_14_3s_free_5... shows no progress on 0.20 CPU client (Message 37318)
Posted 13 Mar 2010 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
I've had several de_14_*** tasks "successfully" complete (according to the BOINC Client) after 2 seconds. These are CPU tasks on multiple computers. The tasks were downloaded this morning and were first issue (_0 tasks). Needless to say they were invalid.

I've had many more of them over the past day or so. STD error shows nothing (as you might expect), just a really fast finish!
19) Message boards : News : Increased WU Deadline (Message 35689)
Posted 15 Jan 2010 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
Thank you for thinking of the children even if they're old and living in my basement :-) The 8 day deadline has made several of my slower processors VERY happy.

The three day deadline with the longer tasks made it too "iffy" for them to finish on time unless the stars were aligned just right (and the black holes kept their distance). Cabbage and Lettuce (I'm a wabbit!) are chortling in glee. They're 70 dog years old. I'm not sure what that is in "computer years" :-)
20) Message boards : Number crunching : Server Status shows 0 WUs ready to send (Message 29196)
Posted 10 Aug 2009 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
I'd like to mention that my hosts Cabbage and Lettuce (I'm a wabbit!) are server friendly. They're 1.3 GHz Celerons that are doing the best they can. They started (way back when) with the 1 hour tasks (everyone else was doing them in less than 10 minutes...sigh). The tasks went to 2 hours, then 5 and a half hours. Did they complain, no. They stood their ground and did their job. Their queues are always full most of the time, but then, they don't ask for much.

They are now chortling with glee with the shorter tasks. They know that some machines can now do the work in 30 seconds, but they're hanging in and doing the job.

Cabbage told me he was quite pleased with the job he's doing even though he's close to retirement. I rue the day when I have to take them to the backyard and shoot them to put them out of their misery. Cabbage and Lettuce are old friends.

Rick

PS: Yes, I have some real computers too. Unfortunately none of the real ones have an ATI card...sigh.



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