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Posts by Odysseus

1) Questions and Answers : Macintosh : No Work? (Message 76632)
Posted 22 Nov 2023 by Odysseus
Post:
I hadn’t been paying attention for a while—seems my iMac hasn’t done any work since June. Is there any point to remaining attached to this project, or is it the end of the road?
2) Message boards : News : New Nbody Version 1.50 (Message 63623)
Posted 21 May 2015 by Odysseus
Post:
The task in question finished much sooner than projected (2.3 h* instead of about 10), and is now awaiting validation. Computer is back to normal, crunching (for other projects) on both CPUs.

* Comparing the reported run time of 2:17 to the CPU time of 2:23:35 seems to imply an efficiency of 52.5%, or that only 5% of the second CPU‘s capacity was used.
3) Message boards : News : New Nbody Version 1.50 (Message 63622)
Posted 21 May 2015 by Odysseus
Post:
I’m seeing similar behaviour on my MacBook Pro as has been reported on other platforms: Nbody claims to be using both CPUs, so my other tasks are Waiting, but Activity Monitor shows much less CPU usage than typical. I actually noticed this from abnormally low temperatures: I keep a close eye on this system because it has a dodgy fan, and it’s reading in the high 50s C instead of the usual low 60s. Progress so far—still pretty early—is consistent with CPU times.
4) Message boards : News : New Nbody version 1.48 (Message 63216)
Posted 12 Mar 2015 by Odysseus
Post:
My next WU seemed to run fine, but can’t validate—looks like the bugs in 1.46 are still biting …
5) Message boards : MilkyWay@home Science : Survey finds nine dwarfs (Message 63212)
Posted 11 Mar 2015 by Odysseus
Post:
From the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy: New dwarf galaxies discovered in orbit around the Milky Way

“A team of astronomers from the University of Cambridge have identified nine new dwarf satellites orbiting the Milky Way, the largest number ever discovered at once. The findings, from newly-released imaging data taken from the Dark Energy Survey, may help unravel the mysteries behind dark matter, the invisible substance holding galaxies together.

“The new results also mark the first discovery of dwarf galaxies – small celestial objects that orbit larger galaxies – in a decade, after dozens were found in 2005 and 2006 in the skies above the northern hemisphere. The new satellites were found in the southern hemisphere near the Large and Small Magellanic Cloud …”

Thanks to WinterKnight for drawing attention to this article at S@h.
6) Message boards : Number crunching : Lost my Data on BOINC (Message 63211)
Posted 11 Mar 2015 by Odysseus
Post:
You can also copy your old BOINC folder over the new one, to restore the previous projects and settings, but you‘ll have to reinstall BOINC afterwards to fix the special permissions it uses.
7) Message boards : News : New Nbody version 1.48 (Message 63209)
Posted 9 Mar 2015 by Odysseus
Post:
Well, I gave up (after 20:45 CPU time) to give my cached task a chance of getting done before deadline (and my other projects some time as well). We’ll see how this one goes …
8) Message boards : News : New Nbody version 1.48 (Message 63208)
Posted 8 Mar 2015 by Odysseus
Post:
Update: The E@H task is now complete, uploaded, and validated. Nothing seems to have changed with the MW@h task (except that it’s showing 18 h CPU time. No other project’s task has been resumed on the other CPU, but I don’t think MW@h is fully using both of them either (despite still saying so), because my “CPU Proximity” temperature reads about 5 C° below normal.
9) Message boards : News : New Nbody version 1.48 (Message 63207)
Posted 8 Mar 2015 by Odysseus
Post:
What I see in Apple’s Activity Monitor, which I gather is just a GUI for Unix’s top command, is consistent with one app running on each core, but it doesn‘t explicitly tell me what threads are running where.

I’ve always kept applications in memory. I had been running this machine at 50% on a single core until recently; after a v1.46 WU (now removed from the database) held up other projects until I aborted it, I changed the setting to 25% on both cores. Since I allow BOINC to run while the computer‘s in use, the interruptions are frequent but always brief.
10) Message boards : News : New Nbody version 1.48 (Message 63205)
Posted 8 Mar 2015 by Odysseus
Post:
I’ve got a troublesome 1.48 task on my MacBook Pro. (In case it’s relevant, BOINC is “throttled” to 25% usage on this machine, which has cooling issues including a bad fan.) Around 0h local time on Friday it showed 99.75% done after ~3 h “Running (2 CPUs)”, 30 s to go. The next morning it had reached 99.998% in ~5.7 h; the remaining estimate was down to 0 s.

Here’s where it gets weird. Late that afternoon the log shows Einstein@Home starting a task. I observed at about 18h that the progress was showing 100% complete, ~7.5 h time, 0 s to go—still claiming to use both CPUs despite obviously being down to one. It continued without change (aside from incrementing CPU time) until late this afternoon, when I noticed that the “00:00:00“ in the time-remaining column had changed to “---”, after about 13 h of CPU time. (Meanwhile the E@h task seems to be progressing normally.) I’m considering aborting this one if it doesn’t finish pretty soon.
11) Message boards : News : New Nbody version 1.46 (Message 62889)
Posted 26 Dec 2014 by Odysseus
Post:
Well, it finished pretty quickly … but with a computation error: “15 (0xf) Unknown error number”. I have two other tasks on board that were downloaded at the same time; the first of them has been progressing normally so far.
12) Message boards : News : New Nbody version 1.46 (Message 62886)
Posted 26 Dec 2014 by Odysseus
Post:
I have a task on my MacBook Pro that was causing me concern, de_nbody_12_19_orphan_sim_1_1413455402_1431667, which was paused (superseded) showing more than 7000 hours to go (and a very small % complete) after 4.5 h of computation. But now that it’s resumed, I see the progress has reached 70% done with just 2 h to go from 5.2 h of CPU time. So it may be that there’s an initial period during which little progress is registered, causing BOINC to overestimate the time that will be required. Hoping so, anyway …
13) Message boards : Number crunching : Errors in N-Body Simulation (Message 54949)
Posted 30 Jun 2012 by Odysseus
Post:
Nothing seems to have changed for this system since the update: N-Body tasks all still failing within a few seconds of starting; MilkyWay tasks all completing fine.
14) Message boards : Number crunching : Errors in N-Body Simulation (Message 54560)
Posted 1 Jun 2012 by Odysseus
Post:
<bump>
15) Message boards : Number crunching : Cross Project Question? (Message 54506)
Posted 24 May 2012 by Odysseus
Post:
It usually takes a few days for the statistics sites to correlate results from different projects. As long as you have at least one host in common among your projects, you shouldn’t have to do anything special for your cross-project identity to be established.
16) Message boards : Number crunching : Errors in N-Body Simulation (Message 54505)
Posted 24 May 2012 by Odysseus
Post:
My iMac has been getting a lot of computation errors—“process exited with code 193 (0xc1, -63)”—running MilkyWay@Home N-Body Simulation v0.84, just a few seconds into each task, but it seems to be doing fine with MilkyWay@Home v1.01 (and various other projects). Any suggestions as to the cause or a fix?
17) Message boards : Number crunching : Project communication failed (Message 48514)
Posted 7 May 2011 by Odysseus
Post:
Thank you much—that did the trick: quitting BOINC, typing

lookupd -flushcache

in the Terminal, and relaunching. I even got credit for my late result, because the replacement task hasn’t been reported yet. W00t!
18) Message boards : Number crunching : Project communication failed (Message 48498)
Posted 6 May 2011 by Odysseus
Post:
Thanks for the reply. I don’t like to reboot this machine, but we’ll see what happens after the next time it’s shut down for cleaning—it’ll be due in a few weeks.
19) Message boards : Number crunching : Project communication failed (Message 48477)
Posted 5 May 2011 by Odysseus
Post:
I’ve been getting this message for some time now, with 24-hour deferrals. I have a completed task that’s been “ready to report” for several days—’way past its deadline at this point. Other BOINC projects are communicating normally. I don’t see any postings of similar problems here … is it just me? Any suggestions?

Wed  4 May 21:57:33 2011	Milkyway@home	update requested by user
Wed  4 May 21:57:38 2011	Milkyway@home	Fetching scheduler list
Wed  4 May 21:58:55 2011		Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site
Wed  4 May 21:58:57 2011		Internet access OK - project servers may be temporarily down.


P.S. Server status is showing all green at the moment.
20) Message boards : MilkyWay@home Science : Newfound Exoplanet Likely Came from Another Galaxy (Message 44872)
Posted 10 Dec 2010 by Odysseus
Post:
I just came across a Scientific American article that I thought participants here might find interesting:

“[…] HIP 13044 b is the first verifiable exoplanet of extragalactic origin. […] HIP 13044 belongs to the Helmi stream, a population of stars that stretches through the Milky Way with similar, unusual orbits and compositions. The Helmi stream was determined in 1999 to have originated in a small galaxy, similar to the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, that was cannibalized by the larger Milky Way. Later work found that the ingested galaxy must have been devoured six billion to nine billion years ago.”


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