Posts by Stick

1) Message boards : Number crunching : Stalled computation (Message 73953) Posted 3 Jul 2022 by Stick Post: A preventative workaround fix is to set the CPU time usage to 100% in the computing preferences, if set lower than that. After doing this none of the n-body tasks that I have run have stalled on the PC's that previously did stall, which all have Intel i7 CPU's. As noted in my earlier post If an n-body task has already stalled the only fix I know is to exit BOINC and restart. Note setting CPU time usage to the maximum 100% will likely increase the CPU temperature. I was able to bring it down by eliminating overclocking and setting performance options to maximize stability and save energy. I changed to 100% CPU time usage after seeing the above post and haven't had the problem since doing so - probably around 100 N-Body units completed flawlessly. Was having the problem on 30% to 50% of N-Body units previously. Well done corysmath! Now, if we can only get the N-Body developers to read this and think about a program fix. (But I'm not holding my breath.)
2) Message boards : Number crunching : Stalled computation (Message 73821) Posted 12 Jun 2022 by Stick Post: This problem with N-body has been around for a long, long time - as documented in the thread I have cited here: https://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/forum_thread.php?id=4295#67559 And it's amazing to me that the project has virtually ignored all the reporting on it. But your post regarding 100% CPU usage has convinced me to allow N-body tasks again to test it out. Hopefully, it's a game changer.
3) Message boards : Number crunching : New team member lots of pendings or invalids. (Message 71088) Posted 2 Sep 2021 by Stick Post: Your computers are hidden - so we can't see any of your results. Need to unhide them so people can see what is going on with your invalids. But inconclusives are just this project's strange way of classifying completed tasks waiting on a confirming result from another computer - most other projects would just say classify them as pending.
4) Message boards : Number crunching : problem with de_nbody tasks never finishing (Message 71074) Posted 28 Aug 2021 by Stick Post: I've has several cases where the longer it "runs" (with no CPU resources being used) the longer it will take. What happens if you exit BOINC and then restart it?
5) Message boards : Number crunching : N-Body Simulation MT (Message 71070) Posted 27 Aug 2021 by Stick Post: Sounds like you had the problem reported here. Next time before aborting try restarting BOINC.
6) Message boards : Number crunching : problem with de_nbody tasks never finishing (Message 71069) Posted 27 Aug 2021 by Stick Post: Just wanted to say that Nbody V1.80 has the same Hang-Up problem that I first reported on this thread about 3 years ago with V1.68 and then later with V1.76. As always exiting BOINC and then restarting it gets things going again. Recently tried Nbody V1.82 and confirmed that the hang-up problem is still not fixed - wasted about 6 days of CPU time before discovering the hangs ups and restarting BOINC.
7) Message boards : Number crunching : Multiple Errors (Message 70830) Posted 23 May 2021 by Stick Post: Guessing your problem is this one. Try resetting the project.\ EDIT: Corrected link to Nbody 1.80 errors thread.
8) Message boards : Number crunching : All short milkyway n-body tasks crash (Message 70814) Posted 21 May 2021 by Stick Post: Resetting the project will fix this problem.
9) Message boards : Number crunching : problem with de_nbody tasks never finishing (Message 70813) Posted 21 May 2021 by Stick Post: Just wanted to say that Nbody V1.80 has the same Hang-Up problem that I first reported on this thread about 3 years ago with V1.68 and then later with V1.76. As always exiting BOINC and then restarting it gets things going again. Unrelated issue to the hangup problem but some people are reporting immediate task failures with V1.80 because it is not compatible with older Nbody WU's. If you are having that problem, RESETing the project will fix it.
10) Message boards : Number crunching : Nbody 1.80 errors (Message 70812) Posted 20 May 2021 by Stick Post: Resetting the project will correct this problem.
11) Message boards : Number crunching : problem with de_nbody tasks never finishing (Message 70742) Posted 15 Apr 2021 by Stick Post: IMHO it's worth trying every once in awhile just to see if they work, if they don't no problem just abort them and move on, if they do enjoy the progress the Project has made. Mikey, Thank you for your help and suggestions on this issue. I truly appreciate the efforts you and Jim1348 made in responding to my posts. If my last post sounded a little cynical, please know my cynicism is directed at the project hierachy and not to you. In the roughly 3 years since I first reported the problem, Tom Donlon's post on 9 Apr 2021 was the project's first response to this thread. I would also note that the problem existed w/Nbody v1.68 and was not fixed when the current v1.76 came out.. I can only conclude that the project developers are not concerned with user reported issues. But, to your point, if and when, a newer version of Nbody is released, I will try it. Stick
12) Message boards : Number crunching : problem with de_nbody tasks never finishing (Message 70736) Posted 14 Apr 2021 by Stick Post: Instead of exiting Boinc try suspending it and then restarting the crunching after a slow 10 count. I was pretty sure I had tried that before I first reported the problem a couple of years ago. But, just to make sure, I waited for another hang-up to occur and checked again. Suspeneding a hung up task and later resumng has no effect. The other problem could be memory, if your laptops don't have enough memory to handle the tasks they will slow to a crawl, Don't think this is the problem either. Never seen the slow down symtoms. But I have seen BOINC automatically handle a memory issue related to Einstein. And that always works seamlessly you might try running 1 less task at a time and see if it helps Obviously, you don't remember or understand how the Nbody task works. It will take over any spare cores available. The n-body workunits don't work for everyone, they work for alot of them but not everyone and it's a work in progress to keep up with all the new features and cpu's that come out all the time. I suggest just running the standard units, you can run 11 of them at a time if you also use your gpu for crunching. This is a quote from your 4 Jun 2018 post on this thread. In retrospect, I should have taken the advice and switched to running standard units only. Instead, I bought into the work in progress theory and did my part to report issues - assuming there might be efforts to fix them. But I was wrong in that assumption.
13) Message boards : Number crunching : problem with de_nbody tasks never finishing (Message 70730) Posted 13 Apr 2021 by Stick Post: But you seem to be running mobile CPUs I run my machines 24/7, since they are dedicated. It could be one of the power-down tricks that Intel or Microsoft uses that causes the problem. I set my power options to "high performance" mode.. Thanks again for the reply.. You are right. Both my multi-core computers are laptops. They are older and the batteries are shot. I run them plugged into the charger, pretty much 24/7 for BOINC. I run several different BOINC projects and it's only the 3 CPUs Nbody tasks that have any problems. Are the work units being suspended? BOINC does not show the hung-up tasks as suspended. They are shown as Running with Elapsed time counting up but Progress is frozen. Most Nbody tasks take 20 tp 25 minutes to finish up - so when I see one with a longer elapsed time, I restart BOINC. When BOINC restarts the hung-up task starts running again, but its Elapsed time has been reset to a much earlier time (less than 20 minutes) Guessing that only around 10% of tasks hang-up. Some tasks hang up multiple times.
14) Message boards : Number crunching : problem with de_nbody tasks never finishing (Message 70727) Posted 10 Apr 2021 by Stick Post: After switching to MS Defender it didn't take long for a Milkyway@home N-Body Simulation 1.76 (3 CPUs) hangup to occur. But I had forgotten to exclude the BOINC folders. Restarting BOINC now with folders excluded.
15) Message boards : Number crunching : problem with de_nbody tasks never finishing (Message 70726) Posted 10 Apr 2021 by Stick Post: Jim. Thank uou for the suggestion. I will change to Microsoft Defender (from Avast) on one of my computers to see if it makes a difference. Stick
16) Message boards : Number crunching : problem with de_nbody tasks never finishing (Message 70724) Posted 10 Apr 2021 by Stick Post: Tom, Thanks for the reply! And it's good to know somebody is watching. If you read my earlier posts on the subject you know that the problem is easily gotten around by restarting BOINC. And, right now I am restarting BOINC 2 or 3 times a day. If there is anything you would like me to do before restarting, please let me know. Stick
17) Message boards : Number crunching : problem with de_nbody tasks never finishing (Message 70722) Posted 9 Apr 2021 by Stick Post: Deleted accidental double post.
18) Message boards : Number crunching : problem with de_nbody tasks never finishing (Message 70721) Posted 9 Apr 2021 by Stick Post: This problem has existed for roughly 3 years and, as far as I can tell, no project administrators or moderators have ever responded to this thread. I first reported the problem on 2 Jun 2018 in this post.. Then, on 13 May 2020, i reported it again in this post. To be clear, there is a problem with N-Body Simulation (mt) (3 CPUs) tasks hanging up. The problem existed with V1.68 and continues with V1.76.. And over the last 3 years it has continued to crop up under all versions of BOINC and under all versions of Windows that I have used - on 3 different computers
19) Message boards : Number crunching : problem with de_nbody tasks never finishing (Message 69808) Posted 13 May 2020 by Stick Post: I almost started a new thread for my problem but then I realized that I am encountering essentially the same issue as others who have posted here. That is, tasks running the Milkyway@home N-Body Simulation v1.76 (mt) windows_x86_64 app are often hanging up for hours at a time until discovered by me. And, restarting BOINC always get them going again. I used to think that the problem might be related to incompatibility with other programs I might be running.but I have since convinced myself that other programs are irrelevant. The problem seems to occur just as often when other programs are not running as when they are running. Conversely, I sometimes run other programs and then check BOINC to find that N-Body tasks are still running OK. However, I do think that the problem is somehow related to the characteristics of specific tasks. That is, some tasks require relatively few (0-2) restarts while others may need restarting 8+ times. Although I have been a MilkyWay contributor for 10+ years, my participation rate has recently increased substantially (due to the SETI hibernation). And as a result, this issue has become very annoying. I am also getting older and my memory isn't what it used to be. Case in point, I had completely forgotten that I had posted this message a little over 2 years ago - essentially reporting this exact same issue. The only difference being updated versions of the N-Body app, BOINC, and Windows, as well as the addition of a new computer.
20) Message boards : Number crunching : problem with de_nbody tasks never finishing (Message 67561) Posted 4 Jun 2018 by Stick Post: I started this thread a few days ago and it looks like we're having the same problem. In my case, it is only occasional and restarting BOINC gets the tasks working again. Also, I first noticed the problem after updating BOINC to v7.10.2. (So, you might want to try v7.8.3.) If there are any moderators out there, it's OK with me if you would like to combine our 2 threads. And, retitling would probably be a good idea, as well - maybe something like "3-CPU Nbody Task hang-ups"

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