I have seen that my units are not getting validated and checked the server status. Validators all off. It's a software issue, I guess?
Hope that "they" will start those soon...

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I wouldn't expect anyone at Berkeley to drop their week-end plans, so it'll probably get fixed monday morning.
Unless the problem is a symptom of something more serious, the validators are fairly unimportant in the short term.

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I just hope that is nothing more severe... or it is just another experiment :) ?

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I wouldn't expect anyone at Berkeley to drop their week-end plans, so it'll probably get fixed monday morning.

I wouldn't expect them to even notice a problem and, so far, it looks like they haven't. Even if they had, I wouldn't expect them to have the decency to let folks know what is happening. :(

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Be lucky

Neil

Come on guys, we have experienced this many times. Soon the people at Berkeley will sort things out and credit will be flowing again. So relax, tune your BOINC settings to a convenient amount of wus to crunch and don't complain.

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In the past, the problem has been worked on (and sometimes fixed) before news about the problem is posted. That they set fixing the problem as their first priority and reproting it second, is all right with me.

In the past, the problem has been worked on (and sometimes fixed) before news about the problem is posted. That they set fixing the problem as their first priority and reproting it second, is all right with me.

No problem with fixing being the first priority -- not clear that reporting the problem (especially one that has been going on for a couple of days already) requires the same resource though.

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there is a brief explanation of the current situation posted on "technical news" on the home page.


General update: There were some brief semi-outages over the weekend, all having to do with BOINC server software development. We added two fields to the hosts table that enable us to better calculate how much work to send to users (and prevent sending too much work that cannot possibly get finished before particular deadlines). Some server processes had to be recompiled/reinstalled to accommodate these new fields.

Currently the validate processes are all failing. This is probably a separate issue that was noticed on Sunday and is currently being diagnosed/debugged. While not a show-stopper by any means, the validation queue will grow until this is fixed (resulting only in a delay of granting credit, not a loss in credit), and then the queue should quickly drain.

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PROUD TO BE TFFE!

there is a brief explanation of the current situation posted on "technical news" on the home page.

Yup -- I saw that -- it was posted about 2 hours ago (4PM PDT) -- answers my questions well enough for sure.

Thanks for pointing it out though -- I tend to look there myself and didn't see anything earlier when I was posting my own 'angst'.

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there is a brief explanation of the current situation posted on "technical news" on the home page.

Yup -- I saw that -- it was posted about 2 hours ago (4PM PDT) -- answers my questions well enough for sure.

Thanks for pointing it out though -- I tend to look there myself and didn't see anything earlier when I was posting my own 'angst'.

understood...i was getting restless myself...thankfully they finally posted something.

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PROUD TO BE TFFE!

I have to agree, this goes with the Long List of a project problems, which has been in the works for Over a Year... Many of the pre-production problems plague users and we witness the same complaints in the forums... One has to ask why do the people in charge continue to ignore the problems? How many weekends have the users asked what is happening over the last two months to Not see anything in the Tech News or the Main Page about problems... Yes someone is working but Managers are "sitting there" whom could format a message that would prevent some of this. Or at least an apology. IF pagers are Not going off and being ignored it just demonstrates how they feel about "users" who are only donating time!

OOps I forgot Users=You

The project is only being upheld/supported by Users, You are what matters. Boinc needs to get its act in order! Other projects using the Boinc Foundation do not suffer the same problems, or at least the frequency...

I wouldn't expect anyone at Berkeley to drop their week-end plans, so it'll probably get fixed monday morning.

I wouldn't expect them to even notice a problem and, so far, it looks like they haven't. Even if they had, I wouldn't expect them to have the decency to let folks know what is happening. :(

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Please consider a Donation to the Seti Project.

I have to agree, this goes with the Long List of a project problems, which has been in the works for Over a Year... Many of the pre-production problems plague users and we witness the same complaints in the forums... One has to ask why do the people in charge continue to ignore the problems? How many weekends have the users asked what is happening over the last two months to Not see anything in the Tech News or the Main Page about problems... Yes someone is working but Managers are "sitting there" whom could format a message that would prevent some of this. Or at least an apology. IF pagers are Not going off and being ignored it just demonstrates how they feel about "users" who are only donating time!

OOps I forgot Users=You

The project is only being upheld/supported by Users, You are what matters. Boinc needs to get its act in order! Other projects using the Boinc Foundation do not suffer the same problems, or at least the frequency...

Just how large do you think the staff is? Managers? I believe that the entire staff can be counted on the fingers of one hand with some fingers left over.

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BOINC WIKI

Honestly, the size of the staff is not the issue. They get the job done! Problems are to be expected. This problem with the validators started on Friday and that is obvious from the credit reported. If there was only 1 person on staff it would not have been a big issue to post what was happening. There was certainly interest in what the problem was. I myself find it a bit frustrating that nothing was mentioned all day. I had no doubt that I would get credit for work I had done. I just wanted to know what was going on. So please lets not say something as useless as:
"Just how large do you think the staff is? Managers? I believe that the entire staff can be counted on the fingers of one hand with some fingers left over."

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Honestly, the size of the staff is not the issue. They get the job done! Problems are to be expected. This problem with the validators started on Friday and that is obvious from the credit reported. If there was only 1 person on staff it would not have been a big issue to post what was happening. There was certainly interest in what the problem was. I myself find it a bit frustrating that nothing was mentioned all day. I had no doubt that I would get credit for work I had done. I just wanted to know what was going on. So please lets not say something as useless as:
"Just how large do you think the staff is? Managers? I believe that the entire staff can be counted on the fingers of one hand with some fingers left over."

Strongly agree with this opinion. It doesn't matter how many people are staff members. Writing five lines of a text like "guys there is an issue with the validators, caused by ... We are working on it. Be patient." doesn't take too much time. It can be done while having a cup of coffee, takes 5 minutes maximum. It's just to let the people know, that they have realized, that there is an issue and are adressing it. Full explanation can wait a little longer.
Geetings
uba34

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There's no denying more information would be better. I try my best to add things to the tech news and message boards when I have a moment. Same for the other people on the team, and it's not going to get much better in the near future as there's a lot on our plates right now.

Anyway, I should add text to top of the server status page that says: If you see red boxes, or numbers that seem out of the ordinary, so do the staff. In fact, they have access to much more server status information than you could possibly imagine. And they are continually checking in on off hours. Even on weekends. Almost 24 hours a day, as some are morning people, and others are night owls. They actually do care. Everything is under control. We know what we're doing. Things break unexpectedly all the time and then they get fixed. Don't panic.

- Matt

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-- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person
-- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude

Things break unexpectedly all the time and then they get fixed. Don't panic.

Who's panicking? I'm not panicking! This twitching you see is the effect of abruptly halting my meteoric rise through the ranks and the crack-like effect it is having on a portion of my ego.

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There's no denying more information would be better. I try my best to add things to the tech news and message boards when I have a moment. Same for the other people on the team, and it's not going to get much better in the near future as there's a lot on our plates right now.

- Matt

Thanks for dropping on in the noise zone Matt (smile).

That being said do you folks have a handle on this validator thing? Are we talking one more day, one more week?

I'm noticing some problems getting downloads and wondering if that is because of a backlog on the validation side..

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Anyway, I should add text to top of the server status page that says: If you see red boxes, or numbers that seem out of the ordinary, so do the staff. In fact, they have access to much more server status information than you could possibly imagine. And they are continually checking in on off hours. Even on weekends. Almost 24 hours a day, as some are morning people, and others are night owls. They actually do care. Everything is under control. We know what we're doing. Things break unexpectedly all the time and then they get fixed. Don't panic.

- Matt

Matt,
you got me wrong, perhaps due to my limited English. What I meant to say is that people know that it will be fixed sooner or later, but they want to be informed about the issue. It is just like a delayed flight at the airport. Passengers can see for themselves that the plane isn't there and they can not board. Nevertheless, the air line will inform the passengers that the plane is delayed and will eventually announce an adjusted departure time. And that is, in my opinion, what people want from you guys. A short announcment. Threads in the forums complain more about lack of information than about that things broke again. We all work with computers and know that these boxes have a tendency to do just that.
Regarding seti staff members: This information used to be on the classic web page. May be, you can add this to the new page too.

Best regards
uba34

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There's no denying more information would be better. I try my best to add things to the tech news and message boards when I have a moment. Same for the other people on the team, and it's not going to get much better in the near future as there's a lot on our plates right now.

Anyway, I should add text to top of the server status page that says: If you see red boxes, or numbers that seem out of the ordinary, so do the staff. In fact, they have access to much more server status information than you could possibly imagine. And they are continually checking in on off hours. Even on weekends. Almost 24 hours a day, as some are morning people, and others are night owls. They actually do care. Everything is under control. We know what we're doing. Things break unexpectedly all the time and then they get fixed. Don't panic.

This sounds promising, that you guys know what you're doing ;-) and I (we) appreciate the update!
However - I would prefer to see this kind of comments on the front page instead of finding it in a thread! It is a huge possibility that a lot of people will miss that particular piece of information they’re waiting for!

I think many people do as I do, just drop by the message boards and eyeball the “headlines”, look at the server status (if something seams to be wrong) and look at the “News” at the front page – and off we go.

Many thanks for the update!

Happy crunching

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Happy crunching

It is just like a delayed flight at the airport. Passengers can see for themselves that the plane isn't there and they can not board. Nevertheless, the air line will inform the passengers that the plane is delayed and will eventually announce an adjusted departure time.

Not really.
Delays at airports cause problems.

If a hiccup here causes people problems, they need to get a better grip on reality & realise it's not a big deal.
Seriously, it's not.

Honestly.

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Grant
Darwin NT