Why classic SETI@home is closing down and other facts of life.

Would it be possible for someone to make this a sticky thread & put it right at the top of the list?
____________
Grant
Darwin NT.

Very good suggestion Grant. Done.

Hi Matt.

I'm a former database programmer, that knows about endless hours of thankless work.

Thank you for the updated information. Good idea posting it.

I know the problems will be fixed in time, thats fine.

Thanks again.
____________

What makes this whole thing extremely frustrating to where I'd like to use language here that I won't is that I wanted to hit 20k seti classic units before they closed on the 15th. I'm at 19,071 and haven't been able to process any of those or any boinc units since around December 1st? I think I'll just stick with crunching numbers for united devices til sometime next year.
____________

May I add two pennyworth from the UK?

So, in the short term, wouldn't it be better if everyone voluntarily chose to 'suspend network activity' for the time being?

Instead of suspending all network activity, when you have multiple projects on a computer, you can suspend SETI. While this won't shut off timed unit upload attempts, it will stop the number of uploads from increasing and will stop any download requests as it stops the 'need more work' downloads.

The other thing I've done as well is reduce the resource share for SETI compared to the two other projects I have set up (Climate and Einstein). Those projects have significantly less downtime -- I suspect for two reasons -- one the much smaller user base (less than 1/4 to 1/5 of the computers supported), two, I suspect they have a better funding base relative to the load they support. Also, with Climate, they implemented a client approach which reduces the load as they have long range 'units' (measured hours per unit being something like 30 to 40 times a current SETI unit), and have a staged upload 'trickle' of interim status -- that reduces the download activity a lot. The Einstein units are about double the size of the current SETI unit, so I suspect that also helps that project.

The only thing I'd take exception to in Matt's EXCELLENT summary, is relative downtime -- at least over the past 6 months, and probably since SETI BOINC started. But that is something of an 'apples/oranges' comparison -- perhaps Matt was comparing the first 18 months of SETI classic to the first 18 months of SETI BOINC. But users make the apples/oranges comparison because that is what they 'see' over the last 18 months.

The sad thing here is the current problems with SETI BOINC are resulting in 'opt out' for SETI Classic expatriates, instead of moving over to SETI BOINC (AND the other worthy projects as well). So in a sense the current project problem is reducing ramp up effects over in the other projects as SETI classic expatriates are not all that likely to simply jump from Classic to Einstein or Climate -- they try over hear, see a currently non-functioning environment (at least for the past week) and go away.

This was suggested before in other threads, but many of the BOINC Community run multiple projects. So, disabling BOINC's network access will cut off all BOINC subscribed projects.

Actually, suspending network activity is not necessary. BOINC by design avoids creating its own DDS in times like this. Each client backs off a random amount of time before trying to send each result after a failure to connect. Even Seti Classic backed off for an hour. (Unlike some of the the add-on software.) But the requests have always been spread out.

As far as network (Internet) traffic goes, from the looks of the graphs, Seti Classic's 20Mbps share of the load has dropped down to about 15Mbps during the past week. So it looks like about 25% of the active Classic crunchers have already been shut down. But that has never been part of BOINC's problem.

The current problems with the BOINC/Seti upload/download servers is not a network (Internet) bandwidth problem. From Ethereal traces my client has had no trouble quickly establishing a connection, every time. And as I see it, that may be part of the current problem. The server may be trying to handle to many connections at the same time. Only in the past day have I seen the server start to refuse the initial connection attempt and tell it to go away, which the client does not seem to handle well because it still takes a long time to time out.

And as has been pointed out, if everyone backs off and things start working, how will they know if the next change corrects the problem(s). Right now they have a very good stress test of their system going.

As I understand the recent posts, Matt has moved the results download over to a different server, and that part of the process still has some problems getting results out, indicating the real problems are farther back in the "plumbing".

I dont really know what the problem is but all my machines have a steady flow of work,The only problem I see is that I cant send the finished work back so when they get caught up mine will get sent and I will get credit.
I should have enough hard drive space on most of them that can go for atleast another week or so.

Good luck with what ever you do,Scott
____________
""

I still think that the fact that the back-off is per result, rather than per project, is a design weakness in BOINC which is contributing to 'too many connections'.

[quote]I keep seeing in these forum threads various valid complaints. Here are some reasons off the top of my head that SETI@home Classic is shutting down, and other facts of life that may very well address your particular concern:
[quote]

Just so there isn't any miscommunication/misrepresentation I thought I'd take the time to at least post my reply to this thread that was pasted on the "Classic" boards.

And now let's see.... We're so busy that we couldn't even come to the Classic
boards (where the majority of original volunteers are) and tell us!!!!

I've been here for almost 6 1/2 years. I've been through all the problems and
stuff we've had to deal with and always stuck it out because that's the kind of
guy I am. I was dedicated to helping with what to me was an important area of
science and that alone was my main reason for suffering through it all with all
the rest of us old timers.

We all knew that the project was only a 3 or 4 year deal and that maybe
something was going to replace it, but pardon us for our ignorance in assuming
that when that day was to come along that it was going to be a smooth
transition and all our efforts were going to be appreciated. Instead we are
treated like a POS, an afterthought and told what we were/are doing here at the
end is a waste of time. Maybe I'm old fashioned or something but I was kind of
expecting a lot of joy and celebrations both at Berkley and amoung the
volunteers for a job well done and a lot of pats on the back, maybe even a
special certificate we could download. Instead we're being dismissed because ...

I'll hang around at BOINK until they eventually update our stats from Classic
and print out my certificate and then "that's all folks". I won't bother doing
any work for BOINK since apparently that'll also be a waste of time.

I've been willing to give the guys at seti@home the benefit of doubt and at
least give them the same chances that we ALL gave them during the troubled
times we've had over the past 6 1/2 years. However, all doubts have now been
removed and its time to move on. What I once looked on with "PRIDE" I now feel
abused.

To the many people/friends I've made over the years I say THANK YOU for all the
help, companionship. You all have helped me learn so much more about so many
things I never would have undertaken on my own that I don't how to repay any of
you except with THE BIGGEST THANK YOU I can muster up from my heart.

Arion

PS.... Matt my response is not directed specifically to you as you have been our fearless leader through so many troubled times. I know things have been difficult here at the end for everyone, however maybe you could at least pass some of these thoughts along to those in a position to maybe attempt to understand why so many people got involved in the first place and maybe make a few changes that could bring the real heart of the project back to so many of us that feel that it was abondoned for whatever reasons.

Arion
____________

Hi Matt,

while I do have to accept some of your comments as facts, I can't agree with some others.

5. The current crises are just par for the course in the history of our SETI project and public resource computing. Things break, deep breaths are taken, and they get fixed eventually. This isn't good for making our participants happy of course, but we do our best with what we got and so far our user base has stuck with us through the painful periods (thank you!!!).

8. Though I don't have any accurate numbers to back this up, I personally feel that so far SETI@home/BOINC has had more uptime on average than Classic. We had science database crashes every week at times back in the day, several whole weeks when we were down for database recovery or because somebody stole a cable, network bandwidth issues that brought us down for months. And these were just the public-facing downtime events (among but a few).

Now I'm off to bed. Going to LA tomorrow. Be back Sunday night.

- Matt

Does this statement Matt made on 12/10/05 really ring true? I think not!


8. Though I don't have any accurate numbers to back this up, I personally feel that so far SETI@home/BOINC has had more uptime on average than Classic. We had science database crashes every week at times back in the day, several whole weeks when we were down for database recovery or because somebody stole a cable, network bandwidth issues that brought us down for months. And these were just the public-facing downtime events (among but a few).
____________

Does this statement Matt made on 12/10/05 really ring true? I think not!

A good thing about the shutdown of Classic will be that there won't be anymore excuses of how Classic was using hardware and resources for other projects. If the problem was with the backend part of Classic, why wasn't there an effort to fix that problem? Most new programs all the way around do not build on previous successes and failures. It is apparent that the learning curve at least for the new program is STILL VERY steep, considering all of the problems I've seen over the past few months.

Since what I am doing at this time is redundant on Classic and is not supporting science, all I crunch until 15 December is for personal satisfaction to show my dedication and commitment to Classic. After the deadline when results will not be accepted, I'll shut down my small farm and go on to other things. At least I will not be causing problems for all of you running BOINK.

I'm personally proud that my small contribution to SAH has helped bring distributed computing to fruition. Now I'm not only crunching basically useless SETI data (the sensitivity of the main instrument is a joke..we need a big array on the far side of the moon) but I'm also helping design the new LHC and crunching Gravity Antenna data.
Other important projects are receiving the resources they need. It's time to retire classic SAH like a worn out car which is fine. The new one has a CD player and a DVD in the back for the kids. :)
Problems with the system will always exist with ever underfunded basic research. Set up another project and crunch needed data for somebody else while they fix it.


____________

I'm also proud of what my computers donated to the program too. I also learned a lot from the other crunchers at classic the last 2yrs. And I'm no computer whizz. Almost from the beginning, people were talking about the new seti coming. When I hit 10,000 w/u in May I started moving computers here. Except for one major outage, it runs okay...yeah, not 100%, some minor problems, the credit thing, cobblestones is it(???), hey it's new. Changes will occur, especially this new program, but, so what. I'm looking at the other programs, maybe this gravity thing...or???? It will work out. Dan Myers
____________

Oh, Arion & teddi-
This would have been a more appropriate thread for your posts.

I'm a long-time SETI user, but a short-time BOINCer.

And I'm new to these fora.

But I'd like to respectfully suggest that Matt's answer be re-posted at the top of the board with a big "BOINC SPEAKS" or somesuch.

I haven't been here long enough to know who KNOWS and who THINKS they know, but it sounds like Matt knows his stuff.

We are all frustrated by the lack of concrete information, especially given that SETI Classic has been ripped out of our "cold dead hands" and subsituted with something somewhat flawed at the moment.

Firm information from people who know would be very welcomed.


____________
"We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

Thanks for the info Matt.

One thing I think that needs to be addressed is the "exponential back off" thing.
Once the number of files waiting to be uploaded/downloaded (by a host) reaches a critical limit, there always will be a file trying to up/down load.

My 2 pcs have reached this point.
The max back off seems to be about 4 hours, and one file will try for 3+ minutes before it backs off.
It's clear (to me, at least) that once you have a certain number of files trying to upload, that while one file tries & fails, another will come to the end of its back-off time, and be ready.

I do 21 a day across 2 pc's.
That's one upload every 1.1 hours.
Now that I have 80+ waiting to upload, there is always at least one file trying to upload. I have gone from hitting the server less than once an hour, to hitting it constantly.
The size of the user-base, coupled with the speed of modern machines suggest to me that the back-off time needs to be increased by an order of magnitude, and to take into account the WU's deadline.
None of my work will go overdue (I know, the deadlines have been scrapped for the mo, but Boinc does not know this) till the 17th. Boinc could take this into account, and back off the upload of these results for 3-5 days not hours.

In the same vein, some (of my) results have 12 days to go. But Boinc hammers these at the server, regardless of the fact I have 12 days left to upload them.
Back these off 10 days, and then in 10 days time the problems should be fixed, and they will go through without problems.

my worth.

{edit:typos}
____________

Foamy is "Lord and Master".
(Oh, + some Classic WUs too.)

Looks like you're looking at this from a very blinkered and very personal point of view. With such a negative and highly expectant initial viewpoint, you cannot help but be bitterly disappointed.

Note that Boinc and Boinc-s@h are an experiment and that we are volunteers and guinea-pigs in that experiment. No one has done this type of project before. Also, the "game rules" have changed since s@h-classic. The caching "restrictions" are all part of making for a fairer and more fun and more useful game.

Note especially that this project is not run for you.

If you are enthused that the science is worthwhile and that the game rules are acceptable, then good and please join the game.

Have fun,
Martin

None of my work will go overdue (I know, the deadlines have been scrapped for the mo, but Boinc does not know this) till the 17th. Boinc could take this into account, and back off the upload of these results for 3-5 days not hours.

In the same vein, some (of my) results have 12 days to go. But Boinc hammers these at the server, regardless of the fact I have 12 days left to upload them.
Back these off 10 days, and then in 10 days time the problems should be fixed, and they will go through without problems.

Thanks for the info Matt.

One thing I think that needs to be addressed is the "exponential back off" thing.
Once the number of files waiting to be uploaded/downloaded (by a host) reaches a critical limit, there always will be a file trying to up/down load.

My 2 pcs have reached this point.
The max back off seems to be about 4 hours, and one file will try for 3+ minutes before it backs off.
It's clear (to me, at least) that once you have a certain number of files trying to upload, that while one file tries & fails, another will come to the end of its back-off time, and be ready.

I do 21 a day across 2 pc's.
That's one upload every 1.1 hours.
Now that I have 80+ waiting to upload, there is always at least one file trying to upload. I have gone from hitting the server less than once an hour, to hitting it constantly.
The size of the user-base, coupled with the speed of modern machines suggest to me that the back-off time needs to be increased by an order of magnitude, and to take into account the WU's deadline.
None of my work will go overdue (I know, the deadlines have been scrapped for the mo, but Boinc does not know this) till the 17th. Boinc could take this into account, and back off the upload of these results for 3-5 days not hours.

In the same vein, some (of my) results have 12 days to go. But Boinc hammers these at the server, regardless of the fact I have 12 days left to upload them.
Back these off 10 days, and then in 10 days time the problems should be fixed, and they will go through without problems.

{edit:typos}

This is for all of you BOINC cheerleaders - If there is one thing in a message remotely critical of BOINC, some butt heads over here give the message a negative rating. Really nice and friendly over here.

I asked a question and stated my feelings. I'll take equipment off of SETI at the end of Classic and will not have anything to do with projects using BOINC.

**Added after original submission** I've already got a -1 rating. Just goes to show....

Been haveing the same problems as everyone else. Seti was working fine, changed to Bionic and it worked great until last weekend and have not been able to upload or download since then. Think I'll do what I used to do with Seti, take it offline for a while until they get this mess cleaned up then try again. Its like too many people trying to talk at once.

Ahunn
____________

Yep, has been an interesting time for the last ~6 years for me as well.

I'll be headed off to the other Projects (and I have come to like BOINC), mostly due to the way people are being treated (in all respects, be it information updates or inside this Forum).

Many people came along to state that "We are one community (SETI)", but the way I see it, in the last 1.5 years that community was effectively split in two.

A new, uprising and future-oriented part (which is good) that got all the Updates and Support possible (which, if viewed alone would be excellent), but unfortunately :
also the Oldschool Classic, which was quickly labeled as "naysayers", "obsolete", "whiners" and alike. Their science done was "uninteresting" and "redundant".
These folks got almost Zero support or information updates despite being the overwhelming majority by all means for the longest of times.

Seeing Matt's posting here (which basically is the wrong place, it should be placed here : http://setiathome2.ssl.berkeley.edu/bb/bb3/index.cgi) is something that happened very often, leaving some 250k people wondering what might be going on.

To make a long story short :
As soon as the "old clunker" (orig. quote Matt) is shutdown, I'm off and I'll leave behind a Community and Staff that probably doesn't even realize or care why (and think of me as a whiner, rate this posting Negative or whatever). Maybe I'm too oldschool with my mindset...
____________
Scientific Network : 57700 MHz - 102400 MB - 2650 GB

BOINC WORKING REALLY WELL!
OR IS IT?

I have not uploaded of downloaded for over 2 days!
uploads of blocks are still waiting.
perhaps xmas & new year hols have started early for BOINC team?

old seti classic never had any probs!
and worked over holidays with no probs.

but perhaps i'm the only one??
____________

I personally have over 100,000 hours in computer time being donated under the seti classic project and after reading this set of “Here are some reasons off the top of my head that SETI@home Classic is shutting down” I feel a response is necessary to some of your points of perpetual misinformation, this all too typical of the computing environment.

From paragraph 1:
“Therefore, putting SETI@home on BOINC has given it at least some life in the past two years, and is really the only chance for any kind of future.”  This is understandable. I have no difficulty changing software after approximately a decade. However, on my machine at this point I have over 40 completed uploads presently setting and this after upgrading to the current 5.2.13 version having re-started with the 5.2.12. The process did run correctly for 5 days then failed with the following messages typical:

12/11/2005 11:10:58 AM||Couldn't connect to hostname [setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu]
12/11/2005 11:11:01 AM|SETI@home|Scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi failed with a return value of -106
12/11/2005 11:11:01 AM|SETI@home|No schedulers responded
12/11/2005 11:12:01 AM|SETI@home|Fetching master file
12/11/2005 11:12:06 AM|SETI@home|Temporarily failed upload of 15ap04aa.22158.29441.286056.229_1_0: error 500
12/11/2005 11:12:06 AM|SETI@home|Backing off 1 hours, 19 minutes, and 6 seconds on upload of file 15ap04aa.22158.29441.286056.229_1_0
12/11/2005 11:12:06 AM|SETI@home|Master file download succeeded
12/11/2005 11:12:11 AM|SETI@home|Sending scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi
12/11/2005 11:12:11 AM|SETI@home|Reason: Requested by user
12/11/2005 11:12:11 AM|SETI@home|Requesting 86400 seconds of new work, and reporting 8 results
12/11/2005 11:12:33 AM||Couldn't connect to hostname [setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu]
12/11/2005 11:12:36 AM|SETI@home|Scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi failed with a return value of -106
12/11/2005 11:12:36 AM|SETI@home|No schedulers responded

Please do not misunderstand, this is idle time on the hardware and I have no problem allowing a project to crank while the hardware is not being utilized, but it would be nice if it functioned as represented.

From paragraph 3:
“We collected more than enough data with the current instrument. We have a new data recorder close to finished and a new BOINC client will be in the works to analyze this data”  This appears to conflict with paragraph 1, “SETI@home Classic has no funding at this point. Hasn't had it for years now”.

Also: “The code is stale, and the build machines are ancient and painful to use (if they even exist anymore)”  Properly designed code does not go stale! Beer and wine goes stale, but not well designed code. There is machinery still operating after a quarter century on its code, which was accurately designed, developed and running under the CP/M and/or MP/M operating systems in some cases. It’s the innovations, improvements and undocumented changes/fixes/patches that are risky.

From paragraph 4:
“The SETI@home Classic backend is a tangled mess. There have been many problems over the years, most of which were invisible to the participants” and “but have resulted in an obnoxious web of ridiculous dependencies, confusing configurations, and unweildy databases.”  This is a result of poor design, planning, testing and documentation of the system(s), all too widespread in the methodologies of typical computer systems, operation and projects today. Plainly put, just poor project engineering and documentation.

From paragraph 5:
“The current crises are just par for the course in the history of our SETI project and public resource computing”  Again plainly put, just poor project security, engineering and documentation.

From paragraph 8:
“Though I don't have any accurate numbers to back this up, I personally feel that so far SETI@home/BOINC has had more uptime on average than Classic”.  Presently, the facts from this local host produce a 50% satisfactory operation level. After 12 days of operation, 6 have functioned. If this is “more uptime” you must be referring to the system power on time at the head end and not actual operative time?

From paragraph 10:
“Don't have the staff or the money to add the staff. And it's not so easy to add news items to the page. I can't be bothered to go into detail why. I leave this as an exercise for the reader to figure out why”  Again, just poor project planning, engineering and documentation, not difficult to understand!

From paragraph 12:
“No administrative staff, no tech writers. When it comes time to fill out a new grant proposal, we all drop everything and work on that, for example.” Totally understandable and typical of the present environments, don’t correct the problems; throw more band aids, innovations, changes, patches at it after the fact. Sure hardware fails and maintenance is a necessary with downtime as the resultant outcome.

That’s been the problem for over 20 years in the typical computing environment. Problems in coding errors were pointed out in the late 80’s still are plaguing systems today in the form of buffer overruns, stack errors/faults and pointer problems, these faults being present in many libraries currently used. But the assemblers, compliers and linkers were shipped nevertheless with the “known issues” present! Staff has moved on, documentation not completed or even existing at phase one, with patches upon patches upon patches.

Profit being made at the expense of users! It appears Academia still teaches these unfortunate techniques today, assuming students have any contact with this project and its hardware?

After over 30 years, where is the “Warranty of merchantability” in virtually any operating system. If my vehicles quit, would not travel in the direction wished, had to be restarted, and were as insecure as my operating system, well you get the drift.

Why should this be any different in a computing code project and/or process? Don’t give me this is so “much more complex” check out the amount of design, documentation, planning and reporting in a typical motor vehicle. Not to mention the regulatory necessities involved.

I hope the existing problems can be resolved in a reasonable time frame, for if the storage requirements become too great, I will dump the completed results to date and project in general.

Dennis





____________

if some people had migrated earlier as requested for months on the Classic site

Don't feel bad my BONIC has been nonfunctional for 4 days now. I have over 29 uploads qued up on this system alone, and probably the same amount on my other systems. Now it's quit downloading data for processing. I agree with the other people you shouldn't have switched to this system, the classic one NEVER had these problems it ALWAYS worked. Please get your act together, and fix the problems.
____________

Don't feel bad my BONIC has been nonfunctional for 4 days now. I have over 29 uploads qued up on this system alone, and probably the same amount on my other systems. Now it's quit downloading data for processing. I agree with the other people you shouldn't have switched to this system, the classic one NEVER had these problems it ALWAYS worked. Please get your act together, and fix the problems.

Hello
after 4 days awaiting that seti@home resolves by the appropriate way the problems related with your servers i'm displeased to announce that after a lot expending of power consumption and some money to acondicionate 7 servers to run properly the seti units processing i decide cancel my personal project due to deception that supose seti's best collaborative project i know ever, wasn't capable to preview the necessity of a High Availavility server or cluster that can't permit this bad moment and situation.

Good Bye

P.D.: I'm sorry for my and for my team. Thanks people.

I keep seeing in these forum threads various valid complaints. Here are some reasons off the top of my head that SETI@home Classic is shutting down, and other facts of life that may very well address your particular concern:

1. SETI@home Classic has no funding at this point. Hasn't had it for years now. Costs about $500,000/year at a minimum to run the thing. SETI@home as we know it now is coasting on fumes until (hopefully) more funding somehow appears. BOINC has funding. Therefore, putting SETI@home on BOINC has given it at least some life in the past two years, and is really the only chance for any kind of future.

2. SETI@home Classic was supposed to be a 3 or 4 year project to begin with. So it's well past it's proposed lifespan with no money added to keep it going.

3. The science in SETI@home Classic is basically over. We collected more than enough data with the current instrument. We have a new data recorder close to finished and a new BOINC client will be in the works to analyze this data. To keep Classic going would mean compiling a new Classic client to analyze this data. It's been a loooong time since a new Classic client has been built. The code is stale, and the build machines are ancient and painful to use (if they even exist anymore).

4. The SETI@home Classic backend is a tangled mess. There have been many problems over the years, most of which were invisible to the participants. None of these problems were fatal to the project or its science, but have resulted in an obnoxious web of ridiculous dependencies, confusing configurations, and unweildy databases. I am practically drooling dreaming of day when we get to turn all that stuff off and be done with it already. The BOINC backend is sooooo much easier to deal with.

5. The current crises are just par for the course in the history of our SETI project and public resource computing. Things break, deep breaths are taken, and they get fixed eventually. This isn't good for making our participants happy of course, but we do our best with what we got and so far our user base has stuck with us through the painful periods (thank you!!!).

6. BOINC was written so you can connect to other projects when there are server issues with a specific project. This is a good thing. SETI@home Classic has no such ability.

7. BOINC credit, while not perfect (though we're working on that), is much more fair in that it represents actual work done, and is valid between projects which do all kinds of different work. There is no way to translate Classic credit to BOINC credit, and so this will never happen. Classic credits will be noted in a separate field in a user profile (and will be eventually sync'ed up again after Classic shuts down).

8. Though I don't have any accurate numbers to back this up, I personally feel that so far SETI@home/BOINC has had more uptime on average than Classic. We had science database crashes every week at times back in the day, several whole weeks when we were down for database recovery or because somebody stole a cable, network bandwidth issues that brought us down for months. And these were just the public-facing downtime events (among but a few).

9. There is no tech support on staff. I end up with dozens of e-mails a day from people who figured out how to reach me. If I dealt with all these, that would occupy about 15-20% of my time. I don't have this time and neither does anybody else around here. Many of these e-mails go unaswered. Sad but true, and I personally find this painful but part of the big picture.

10. Yes, we can do better in the PR department. See #9 above. Don't have the staff or the money to add the staff. And it's not so easy to add news items to the page. I can't be bothered to go into detail why. I leave this as an exercise for the reader to figure out why.

11. The staff is small. Me and Jeff are continually up to our necks dealing with everything. We've both been here working on SETI long before SETI@home came around, so we both are well versed in every aspect of the "big picture" around here. Bob, the main database guy, actually only works half time. Court is busy dealing with various long term network/systems projects that Jeff and I can't handle since we're diagnosing, debugging, programming, or maybe actually getting science done. David and Rom (and other various programmers) strictly work on BOINC code. Eric works overtime on other non-SETI projects when he's not building the next SETI@home client. Dan, the project director, is spending a lot of time building spectrometers for other projects because that's where the money is. Outside of current academics (Kevin and Josh) working on other applications of SETI data, and students helping Dan build hardware that's it here at the lab. No administrative staff, no tech writers. When it comes time to fill out a new grant proposal, we all drop everything and work on that, for example.

12. If anybody complains elsewhere about any of the above, please be kind and point them to this post. People have the right to be upset with us since they are kindly donating their resources to us. However, there is a lot of misinformation or misunderstanding about this project and I hope I cleared some of it up.

Now I'm off to bed. Going to LA tomorrow. Be back Sunday night.

- Matt

Hello
after 4 days awaiting that seti@home resolves by the appropriate way the problems related with your servers i'm displeased to announce that after a lot expending of power consumption and some money to acondicionate 7 servers to run properly the seti units processing i decide cancel my personal project due to deception that supose seti's best collaborative project i know ever, wasn't capable to preview the necessity of a High Availavility server or cluster that can't permit this bad moment and situation.

Good Bye

P.D.: I'm sorry for my and for my team. Thanks people.

I am reading between the lines here.

And I think what it boils down to is the credits.

I've never used classic before. But if I was a classic user, the biggest incentive for me to move on over to BOINC is that I can be issued credit for work done on classic.

Then it would at least look like one big happy project.

There's also some bad timing for classic guys moving over to seti/Boinc right now, I've joined Seti@BOINC in March 2005. And I think we've got the longest outtage yet since that date. Problems began in Dec 6, but the front page says the problem began in Dec 8 or 9....

That's 6 days of downtime now and counting!! The longest I've seen prior to this was 3 or 4 days.


____________

> And I think we've got the longest outtage yet
> since that date. Problems began in Dec 6, but
> the front page says the problem began in Dec 8 or 9....

The most recent date of uploads on the setisynergy stats site is December 4.
____________

Why cant the updates be released in a torrent fashion? This would save the limited connectionspeed of the project.
Does anyone know? Atleast have it as an alternative.
____________

I'm in the same boat. Got the notice of Classic's total shut down. So I DL'd and had to "think" my way through getting BIONIC up and running properly. It went well including getting my old Classic work units posted into my account info on the web site. Sure, the graphics aren't as nice. But, I didn't run those any way to free up CPU time for the actual work.

Got in the "groove" with BIONIC and liked the idea of multiple work units being available so the computer didn't sit idle between Internet connections. All was running smoothly for about 10 days. THEN came the crash. Sad. Yup 15 WU's waiting for upload and out of WU's to process.

Comment:
Come on guys. SETI knew full good and well what the I/O load on the system would be with the switch to BIONIC. They've had months of semi-beta testing with a partial crew running BIONIC. They knew what the increase in load would be with the Classic shut down. Never should have had this situation happen.

Yup LONG time user: 33,000 hours since 1999. SETI Classic outages have been limited and when they did occur, the web site QUICKLY posted the 'fix' info and a time frame for resumption of service. Users were 'dumb and happy' to follow the program. This? This is silly and should never have happened.

Paul Allen is pumping millions into the new radio telescope site. SURELY he can come up with a couple of 10's of thousands to get proper servers and Internet conn's going. LOL
____________

If the nay-sayers really wanted to help the would put there money where there BIG mouths are if you look at who are complaining the most it's the folks who never give a dime to this or any project its all poor me I'm not getting the proper credit if they want mine they can have them I'm here for the long haul so get on board and send cash not complaints
____________
[FONT=president]Click Please Thank You[/FONT]

Yup LONG time user: 33,000 hours since 1999. SETI Classic outages have been limited and when they did occur, the web site QUICKLY posted the 'fix' info and a time frame for resumption of service.

May 22, 1999
Because of the unexpectedly large number of users, our server has become overloaded. Clients are unable to connect and get error messages. We're getting thousands of email messages every day about this.

July 1, 1999
Due to a burst steam pipe in the vicinity of the campus-wide Domain Name Server and routers, the entire Berkeley campus spent most of the day disconnected from the Internet. Sorry for any inconvenience.

August 27, 1999
A problem with our network connection to the UCB Campus has caused a high packet-loss rate, and hence a general performance problem, over the last day or two. The problem has new been fixed.

October 19, 1999
The server was down for a scheduled outage today to add memory. Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned.

October 25, 1999
Once again the server was down for a scheduled outage to add memory.

November 2, 1999
Yesterday an unnamed film crew plugged a gigawatt of lighting equipment into one of our uninterruptible power supplies. Not unexpectedly, it was interrupted, temporarily bringing down the user database machine.

November 28, 1999
There have been several periods of server connection problems this weekend for as yet unidentified reasons.

December 1, 1999
The science database server crashed at about 3 a.m. PDT.

December 11, 1999
The Data Server automatically rebooted because of SCSI errors

December 16, 1999
On Tuesday, 12/15, we came down for what we had thought would be a 3 hour outage to rebuild the science database.

December 28, 1999
Due to a screwup elsewhere on campus, there were a series of short power outages at the lab early this morning (starting around 7:00 AM PST). We waited until we were convinced that power was stable before getting all the machines back up and running (around 10:00 AM PST).

Yup LONG time user: 33,000 hours since 1999. SETI Classic outages have been limited and when they did occur, the web site QUICKLY posted the 'fix' info and a time frame for resumption of service.

Refreshing your memory on Classic in 1999. Go read some yourself.

May 22, 1999
Because of the unexpectedly large number of users, our server has become overloaded. Clients are unable to connect and get error messages. We're getting thousands of email messages every day about this.

July 1, 1999
Due to a burst steam pipe in the vicinity of the campus-wide Domain Name Server and routers, the entire Berkeley campus spent most of the day disconnected from the Internet. Sorry for any inconvenience.

August 27, 1999
A problem with our network connection to the UCB Campus has caused a high packet-loss rate, and hence a general performance problem, over the last day or two. The problem has new been fixed.

October 19, 1999
The server was down for a scheduled outage today to add memory. Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned.

October 25, 1999
Once again the server was down for a scheduled outage to add memory.

November 2, 1999
Yesterday an unnamed film crew plugged a gigawatt of lighting equipment into one of our uninterruptible power supplies. Not unexpectedly, it was interrupted, temporarily bringing down the user database machine.

November 28, 1999
There have been several periods of server connection problems this weekend for as yet unidentified reasons.

December 1, 1999
The science database server crashed at about 3 a.m. PDT.

December 11, 1999
The Data Server automatically rebooted because of SCSI errors

December 16, 1999
On Tuesday, 12/15, we came down for what we had thought would be a 3 hour outage to rebuild the science database.

December 28, 1999
Due to a screwup elsewhere on campus, there were a series of short power outages at the lab early this morning (starting around 7:00 AM PST). We waited until we were convinced that power was stable before getting all the machines back up and running (around 10:00 AM PST).

So, that was 1999 only... I didn't even add all of the outages. Go look up 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003 for logs. Use the link I gave and change 1999 for the next year of choice.

Then compare that to the outages here (and in the old news) and pray tell... What was limited in down time?

Perhaps the new download server will help. Here's a photo:

http://d116.com/spud/spud.jpg



____________

After running SETI for years and accumulating over 36,600 hours of computing time, I have a pretty dumb question.
If there is no bandwidth to upload and sownload actual work, then why is there plenty of bandwidth to post messages like this and make inquiries as to personal and overall SETI progress?
After all, bandwidth is bandwidth. If Boinc is bottled up, why can't SETI divert to its own servers? It is all well and good to use BOINC as its main distribution method, but having a backup seems like a wise thing to do. Just as important systems have emergency power backup for times when they may have a power failure,it would seem that SETI ought to be able to maintain an emergency alternate server path for when BINC gets swamped. After all, I am writing to a SETI server right this minute, which could easily be diverted to service uploads and downloads when this happens.
Perhaps I am looking at things in an overly simplistic fashion.
Just a thought.
____________

After running SETI for years and accumulating over 36,600 hours of computing time, I have a pretty dumb question.
If there is no bandwidth to upload and sownload actual work, then why is there plenty of bandwidth to post messages like this and make inquiries as to personal and overall SETI progress?
After all, bandwidth is bandwidth. If Boinc is bottled up, why can't SETI divert to its own servers? It is all well and good to use BOINC as its main distribution method, but having a backup seems like a wise thing to do. Just as important systems have emergency power backup for times when they may have a power failure,it would seem that SETI ought to be able to maintain an emergency alternate server path for when BINC gets swamped. After all, I am writing to a SETI server right this minute, which could easily be diverted to service uploads and downloads when this happens.
Perhaps I am looking at things in an overly simplistic fashion.
Just a thought.

"Refreshing your memory on Classic in 1999. Go read some yourself."

Ah, but the difference is that when we were doing SETI work in 1999, many of us had the equivalent of Model T Fords for computers so the outages you cited were hardly noticed, if they were noticed at all. I know that they were transparent to me since I just had SETI running in the background and didn't notice when it was waiting for an upload or download slot at all. Plus, now with BOINC, it is far more noticable since if you are running multiple applications and it backs up you see this list of pending up/down loads piling up. Also, even with multiple BOINC applications, if the distribution is bottled up you end up with a bunch of applications all waiting for some work to do. I know I am now running SETI, Rosetta, Climateprediction, Einstein and LHC and yet they are all idle waiting for some data to work on.
I'm debating about running Wold Community Grid as well since it has no distribution problems currently.
I hate having my two PC's sitting around rwiddling their thumbs when I am not using them. Such a waste of CPU time, and when I get the third machine working I will have even more idle time to donate.
____________

I'll say it again, enable another project. Our chances of actually hearing another civilizations signals, even with an improved receiver, using this ground based, under the atmosphere antenna are virtually nill. Besides which, we're KILLING the data..we have way more crunchers than needed.
Go over, help design the worlds most powerful particle collider, do gravity wave research, help the biologists (god knows they need all the help they can get :)


____________

Here's my view on SETI at this point in time:

I am not a participant in seti for the science. I am a participant because I believe there is life elsewhere in the universe and I would like to know of reproducible proof it exists. That there would be naysayers regardless of what is revealed matters none to me as I would personally feel a lifetime goal was realized. My best chance of helping with this bar none is via seti.

My first computer working with seti was a 33Mhz 386 and the results were slow to leave. Now my newest computer puts out roughly 30 classic WUs/day and in-between I have left my computer running 24/7/365 since I joined in 2000. As a result of this on time I have replaced five hard drives and my push to get the fastest computer I could arrange for was solely for the benefit on my participation in SETI.

I would be a liar to say that the earned credits were not a positive thing. I remember someone selling their unassigned credits on ebay so apparently some people were desperate for as many WUs in their numbers chase as possible. My credits went to the Amateur radio Operators team. So the end of this "chase" of numbers after such a long time is to me a sad thing, I looked forward to seeing how my 5 year game was progressing and looking forward to it for years to come.

It's like discovering from now on all official Golf games will consist of 23 holes and all old stats based on 18 holes are no longer of current value.

But again, I wasn't into it for the game of numbers, I want to know of that proof of extraterrestrial existence.

So now it's BOINC that is the venue to these possible findings and seti is experiencing growing pains as is BOINC. I've set seti to suspend and get no more work. I've got a few completed seti WUs awaiting transmission & when seti is running again I'll switch it back on and continue.

What will be lost is my exclusion to SETI for fickle me, I decided to jump ship during this down time & take on Rosetta & Climate prediction and will keep running them so when I resume SETI crunching, seti will be getting less WUs from me. But... thanks to BOINC my output of crunched data has remained constant only with different recipients getting the benefit of my electric bill & future hardware replacement so in this light of perpetuation of crunching I give BOINC high marks.

So to me the milestone of Classic closing and my finding it impossible to up/download SETI WUs at this moment is I suppose, more related to how no longer will seti be getting 100% of my spare cycles.

I think Matt's posting is probably more honest than most of us have come to be used to in this age of perpetual spin, politics & whine.

My only complaint is I would have liked to have been emailed earlier than I was regarding the end of Classic. I was one of those blissfully using setidriver and SetiSpy to keep track of my stats. I never gave Seti a second thought as long as the antenna in my toolbar was pointing up. the immediacy of Classic's closing was a shock to say the least considering the credits over the last 6 years were going to be stopped as "classic" was retired. I could have been emailed months ago with a heads up but a check of my email shows this was never done.

It's a small complaint but as a Doctor I have come to understand the importance of informing the patient well before my performing anything unexpected.

Back to my rock & I'll await the normal up/downloads when seti exits the recovery room.

Gary
____________

.

It's like discovering from now on all official Golf games will consist of 23 holes and all old stats based on 18 holes are no longer of current value.

Gary

Cheated? Yes, cheated is a nice word to use since they LIED about closing it on December 15th and they closed it on December 1ST. What a bunch of lying, worthless, contemptable, bottom of the toilet bowl scum suckers. I'll do united devices, I'm sure this won't affect their processing though since there's all the new HAPPY seti classic people processing on boinc. Good luck keeping those servers up.

... I DO feel more than somewhat cheated that 5+ years of work is now forgotten. ... they should have held out for some at least partial credit for us old timers.

No need to feel cheated or any loss. Your old time s@h-classic WUs count (credits) will be listed with your account. The final update for this will be done soon after s@h-classic is closed.

The new credits system is indeed different and to my mind it is fairer despite its imperfections.

Its also very good that everyone has the score-sheet cleaned so that the new kids online get a chance to give the old ones a good run for their old iron!!!

Enjoy the the race, and the science!

Happy crunchin',
Martin

Cheated? Yes, cheated is a nice word to use since they LIED about closing it on December 15th and they closed it on December 1ST. What a bunch of lying, worthless, contemptable, bottom of the toilet bowl scum suckers. I'll do united devices, I'm sure this won't affect their processing though since there's all the new HAPPY seti classic people processing on boinc. Good luck keeping those servers up.

Man, oh man. Am I ever tired of reading about this bitching. It started as an interesting topic then digressed. Let me re-group for myself:

As I understand it, there could be some resources dedicated to making this (s@h) project run smoothly.

1. Manpower, both kinds: paid and free.
2. Money, both kinds: free of strings and looking like a ball of twine.


Let me address the first item: As for manpower, I see that some of this load can be donated by the users whom are so interested in this project. It sounds like there's a need for someone to communicate 'news' to the group. Maybe a volunteer could periodically speak/email the direct 'working-on-it' members of s@h what would be important to the 'contributing-idle-cycles' members and then "Post This To The Web". This keeps a flood of 'what's going on from hitting only one person, as well as letting the 'contributing-idle-cycles' members know where their precious cycles are being used. Other volunteers might also be able to assist as well, remotely fixing servers, posting User requests and other general ADMIN duties. The stuff that takes a precious amount of time from the 'working-on-it' members of s@h. These tasks can be divided up so a group of people could handle the daily grind of work, if the task is so large maybe we'd need 5 user Admins to handle accounts A-E, F-J, ..., and then a Webmaster/News reporter/Updater. I'm not trying to solve the problem here, just giving the big-picture example of taking an overwhelming problem and applying distributed-computing over a group of people who are interested in it. That would take care of the Free manpower; the paid-manpower comes in the next section.

Addressing the second item, Money, takes only a bit of thought. If each member were asked to donate, I'm sure a sizeable number of the required donations would be met through the group. Maybe, an active campaign might help in keeping the hardware and software up-to-date? There's already links setup to handle our donations (both monetary and equipment), it sounds like getting organized to create a campaign to begin making these requests would be a great use of resources. I'm not trying to state that this is easy. It is "simple", but that doesn't mean it is "easy". We don't need to reinvent the wheel here, just a bit of a push to get the wheel rolling. And that leads me into the paying/funding aspect of the project.

It's always easier to ask for a grant from a single source than it is to try to get the same amount of funds from so many smaller sources. It involves more people, it takes more co-ordination, and is not the project for people who want to focus on science. Science people like to focus their talents on science rather than constantly spending their time with a bunch of other people who's main focus is NOT science, but who's main focus may be money, people connections and co-ordinating the work of other people. Please, I'm not trying to offend either group, if you find yourself in one of those camps. Just tou point out that different people like to do what the like and feel comfortable doing. I've liked this project when it wasn't called SETI@home, but just plain SETI. This was from the time I was in High School (1976) and read about SETI and the multi-radio-telescope project proposed by bushy eyed Carl Sagan. Back then I had to write for the big paper bound printing written about the project. This goes way back.

All I'm saying is let's work togather to fix these issues. Ask how we can help. Divide and conquer. It doesn't do the project any good if the help we're offering isn't finding a home either. Rotating assignments might help. This would give us all the opportunity to get involved and find those aliens!

Thanks,
Tracy

____________

I personally have over 100,000 hours in computer time being donated under the seti classic project and after reading this set of “Here are some reasons off the top of my head that SETI@home Classic is shutting down” I feel a response is necessary to some of your points of perpetual misinformation, this all too typical of the computing environment.


SNIP


I hope the existing problems can be resolved in a reasonable time frame, for if the storage requirements become too great, I will dump the completed results to date and project in general.

Dennis

Perhaps, if some people had migrated earlier as requested for months on the Classic site, instead of racking up cheap Credits, Boinc-Seti would have been able to absorb influx of people. Instead the daily increase in users went from 600 to 4000. Tell me of any business that can handle that kind of growth overnight.
I for one do not consider your criticism valid and definitely not welcomed from a Johnny come lately.

From your numbers and your registration date, one has to guess you have a small farm. And YOU don't think you're partly responsible for the current woes.

I'm sorry if that offend you, but I find your post offensive

[quote]

SNIP


I hope the existing problems can be resolved in a reasonable time frame, for if the storage requirements become too great, I will dump the completed results to date and project in general.

Dennis

Displayed window header:"setiathome_4.18_windows_intelx86.exe - Application error"


The instruction at "0x7c918fea" referenced memory at "0x00000010". The memory could not be "written".

Click on OK to terminate the program
Click on CANCEL to debug the program

GO FIGURE? Just suspended the seti! At least until the software is more stable. Has nothing to do with waiting! Just reality.

That error msg is a windows error not BOINC or Seti.

Go fix your computer.

I personally have over 100,000 hours in computer time being donated under the seti classic project and after reading this set of “Here are some reasons off the top of my head that SETI@home Classic is shutting down” I feel a response is necessary to some of your points of perpetual misinformation, this all too typical of the computing environment.


SNIP


I hope the existing problems can be resolved in a reasonable time frame, for if the storage requirements become too great, I will dump the completed results to date and project in general.

Dennis

Perhaps, if some people had migrated earlier as requested for months on the Classic site, instead of racking up cheap Credits, Boinc-Seti would have been able to absorb influx of people. Instead the daily increase in users went from 600 to 4000. Tell me of any business that can handle that kind of growth overnight.
I for one do not consider your criticism valid and definitely not welcomed from a Johnny come lately.

From your numbers and your registration date, one has to guess you have a small farm. And YOU don't think you're partly responsible for the current woes.

I'm sorry if that offend you, but I find your post offensive

You did not offend me and I am terribly sorry you cannot handle reality! Simple fact is as stated. Further during the overnight period, the following window was on the screen this very morning with a red circle with the white X and stated:

Displayed window header:"setiathome_4.18_windows_intelx86.exe - Application error"


The instruction at "0x7c918fea" referenced memory at "0x00000010". The memory could not be "written".

Click on OK to terminate the program
Click on CANCEL to debug the program

GO FIGURE? Just suspended the seti! At least until the software is more stable. Has nothing to do with waiting! Just reality.

That error msg is a windows error not BOINC or Seti.

Go fix your computer.

If I can remember correctly, my classic start date was May 1994.

SETI@Home opened to the public about May of 1999.

MJ

.........Computer is fine Andy, Software or install of that package, as this appeared during off hours, idle. Notebook P25-509 running virtually 24/7 for two years last month. No known BIOS updates no problems on other software in use.

If the fault of write address is correct at "0x00000010" that is interrupt table of the X86 chip design. Program should never access this area by Intel original design spec. from memory of design in the mid-70's.

You may be right, but from what I have personally found and what has been written in all the posts here, computers that have this problem and similar have in 99% of cases been tracked to wrongly configuration or drivers behaving badly.

The usual suspect in many cases is ATI graphics drivers and the associated Catalyst control centre. Sometimes updating the driver has worked and on my youngest sons machine removal of catalyst, which he says is total waste of space anyway, cured the problem.

Now I don't know if this applies to your computer, but it is a starting point.

...If there is one thing in a message remotely critical of BOINC, some butt heads over here give the message a negative rating. Really nice and friendly over here.
**Added after original submission** I've already got a -1 rating. Just goes to show....

Props to Matt.

I don't know why people think technology (especially computers)is perfect right out of the box. Guess they never had to return anything.

I'm just glad that some of the Seti tech payatention to these boards so the "Dee dee dee" can get some explination to help them untangle their panties!!
____________

mmciastro & ML1,

Thanks for your kind welcome.

The reason I never went to the seti home page over the last two years was because I expected anything I needed to know about (ET found, new client, alteration in DC functioning, etc.) would be emailed to me as I had allowed contacting me via email.

With SetiDriver, I chose to 100 WUs in stock in case of outage. SetiSpy was added to my computer's startup menu and ran 100% of the time. Because of these two programs, any question as to my team progress or WUs crunched was immediately accessable. As such I never felt the need to check the home page and knew the project was functioning.

That's prologue now & BOINC does seem to be doing its job nicely and the temporary hiccup seti@home was having is over.

I will... look at the home page... more frequently from now on.

:)

I do have to admit that I liked the simplicity of the old system but the new one is obviously working and offers many nice options.

Kudos to Matt et al,

Gary
____________

I personally have over 100,000 hours in computer time being donated under the seti classic project and after reading this set of “Here are some reasons off the top of my head that SETI@home Classic is shutting down” I feel a response is necessary to some of your points of perpetual misinformation, this all too typical of the computing environment.


SNIP


I hope the existing problems can be resolved in a reasonable time frame, for if the storage requirements become too great, I will dump the completed results to date and project in general.

Dennis

Perhaps, if some people had migrated earlier as requested for months on the Classic site, instead of racking up cheap Credits, Boinc-Seti would have been able to absorb influx of people. Instead the daily increase in users went from 600 to 4000. Tell me of any business that can handle that kind of growth overnight.
I for one do not consider your criticism valid and definitely not welcomed from a Johnny come lately.

From your numbers and your registration date, one has to guess you have a small farm. And YOU don't think you're partly responsible for the current woes.

I'm sorry if that offend you, but I find your post offensive

"I for one do not consider your criticism valid and definitely not welcomed from a Johnny come lately." --> Hardly a Johnny come lately as stated. That is the date of change over to the latest version on this notebook machine. If I can remember correctly, my classic start date was May 1994.

You did not offend me and I am terribly sorry you cannot handle reality!
Simple fact is as stated. Further during the overnight period, the following window was on the screen this very morning with a red circle with the white X, and stated:

Displayed window header:"setiathome_4.18_windows_intelx86.exe - Application error"


The instruction at "0x7c918fea" referenced memory at "0x00000010". The memory could not be "written".

Click on OK to terminate the program
Click on CANCEL to debug the program

GO FIGURE? Just suspended the seti! At least until the software is more stable. Has nothing to do with waiting! Just reality.

If the fault of write address is correct at "0x00000010" that is interrupt table of the X86 chip design. Program should never access this area by Intel original design spec. from memory of design in the mid-70's.

Actually on NT Based platforms, the first 64k(?) of a processes address space is nulled out and both read and write access is denied.

Which OS are you using?

Actually, Boinc is a part of the problem! The communication methodology that Boinc uses is definitely contributing to the bandwidth issues.

Let's slow down a minute. There are some of us out here that are somewhat crusty systems people. There is obviously an architecture problem that does not seem to be addressed. If anything, the combination of Seti and Boinc is clearly showing some of Boinc's limitations. It's a volume thing that the other projects have yet to experience.

I keep seeing in these forum threads various valid complaints. Here are some reasons off the top of my head that SETI@home Classic is shutting down, and other facts of life that may very well address your particular concern:

1. SETI@home Classic has no funding at this point. Hasn't had it for years now. Costs about $500,000/year at a minimum to run the thing. SETI@home as we know it now is coasting on fumes until (hopefully) more funding somehow appears. BOINC has funding. Therefore, putting SETI@home on BOINC has given it at least some life in the past two years, and is really the only chance for any kind of future.

2. SETI@home Classic was supposed to be a 3 or 4 year project to begin with. So it's well past it's proposed lifespan with no money added to keep it going.

3. The science in SETI@home Classic is basically over. We collected more than enough data with the current instrument. We have a new data recorder close to finished and a new BOINC client will be in the works to analyze this data. To keep Classic going would mean compiling a new Classic client to analyze this data. It's been a loooong time since a new Classic client has been built. The code is stale, and the build machines are ancient and painful to use (if they even exist anymore).

4. The SETI@home Classic backend is a tangled mess. There have been many problems over the years, most of which were invisible to the participants. None of these problems were fatal to the project or its science, but have resulted in an obnoxious web of ridiculous dependencies, confusing configurations, and unweildy databases. I am practically drooling dreaming of day when we get to turn all that stuff off and be done with it already. The BOINC backend is sooooo much easier to deal with.

5. The current crises are just par for the course in the history of our SETI project and public resource computing. Things break, deep breaths are taken, and they get fixed eventually. This isn't good for making our participants happy of course, but we do our best with what we got and so far our user base has stuck with us through the painful periods (thank you!!!).

6. BOINC was written so you can connect to other projects when there are server issues with a specific project. This is a good thing. SETI@home Classic has no such ability.

7. BOINC credit, while not perfect (though we're working on that), is much more fair in that it represents actual work done, and is valid between projects which do all kinds of different work. There is no way to translate Classic credit to BOINC credit, and so this will never happen. Classic credits will be noted in a separate field in a user profile (and will be eventually sync'ed up again after Classic shuts down).

8. Though I don't have any accurate numbers to back this up, I personally feel that so far SETI@home/BOINC has had more uptime on average than Classic. We had science database crashes every week at times back in the day, several whole weeks when we were down for database recovery or because somebody stole a cable, network bandwidth issues that brought us down for months. And these were just the public-facing downtime events (among but a few).

9. There is no tech support on staff. I end up with dozens of e-mails a day from people who figured out how to reach me. If I dealt with all these, that would occupy about 15-20% of my time. I don't have this time and neither does anybody else around here. Many of these e-mails go unaswered. Sad but true, and I personally find this painful but part of the big picture.

10. Yes, we can do better in the PR department. See #9 above. Don't have the staff or the money to add the staff. And it's not so easy to add news items to the page. I can't be bothered to go into detail why. I leave this as an exercise for the reader to figure out why.

11. The staff is small. Me and Jeff are continually up to our necks dealing with everything. We've both been here working on SETI long before SETI@home came around, so we both are well versed in every aspect of the "big picture" around here. Bob, the main database guy, actually only works half time. Court is busy dealing with various long term network/systems projects that Jeff and I can't handle since we're diagnosing, debugging, programming, or maybe actually getting science done. David and Rom (and other various programmers) strictly work on BOINC code. Eric works overtime on other non-SETI projects when he's not building the next SETI@home client. Dan, the project director, is spending a lot of time building spectrometers for other projects because that's where the money is. Outside of current academics (Kevin and Josh) working on other applications of SETI data, and students helping Dan build hardware that's it here at the lab. No administrative staff, no tech writers. When it comes time to fill out a new grant proposal, we all drop everything and work on that, for example.

12. If anybody complains elsewhere about any of the above, please be kind and point them to this post. People have the right to be upset with us since they are kindly donating their resources to us. However, there is a lot of misinformation or misunderstanding about this project and I hope I cleared some of it up.

Now I'm off to bed. Going to LA tomorrow. Be back Sunday night.

- Matt

To simply freeze everyone's credit to the classic SAH project is completely unfair to those who have been diligently processing WU's. Why would it not be possible to take the average credit received after processing say 100 or 1000 BOINC SAH WU's and simply multiply that by the classic number of WU's completed. I started out like everyone else in Classic crunching a single work unit. Over 6 years, I have added computers to my home network solely for the purpose of crunching numbers for SAH and to try to get as high in the ratings as possible. Now, all that work goes by the wayside and I have to restart from zero? If that's going to be the case, I'll be shutting down all computers as of 12/15. If that's all you care about the people who have made this project what it is, I'm finished with any distributed processing project ever offered by Berkeley.

Goodbye SAH Classic, and goodbye to BOINC!
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To simply freeze everyone's credit to the classic SAH project is completely unfair to those who have been diligently processing WU's. Why would it not be possible to take the average credit received after processing say 100 or 1000 BOINC SAH WU's and simply multiply that by the classic number of WU's completed. I started out like everyone else in Classic crunching a single work unit. Over 6 years, I have added computers to my home network solely for the purpose of crunching numbers for SAH and to try to get as high in the ratings as possible. Now, all that work goes by the wayside and I have to restart from zero? If that's going to be the case, I'll be shutting down all computers as of 12/15. If that's all you care about the people who have made this project what it is, I'm finished with any distributed processing project ever offered by Berkeley.

Goodbye SAH Classic, and goodbye to BOINC!

Let's see you are under staffed and over worked. I HAVE to say it this way, Welcome to the real world.
When your job is paid for by grants and donations. Over worked under staffed is a way of life. Been there did that will send you one of my extra T-shirts.
Printing on T-shirts
(A) We have done so much with so little for so long. We can do anything with nothing for ever.
(B) DO NOT lose your temper. It will be three days before I have the time to help you find it.
Down time for any reason. Some of you may work on/with systems that are almost never down. If this is you. The next time you go in, lay a big wet one right on the lips of the systems administer. Then give the hardrives a little pat as you walk by them to.
When you remove the down time that was beyond their control. Take into consideration the age of some of the boxes that are/were on hand. The type and load of work they do. They have a very good up/down time ratio. Good work. That is for both C and B Seti.
(IMO) you are hitting the HDS way to much to complete a WU. Cut them down. I know I maybe talking a new approach with new servers SW. But cut down on HD hits and watch overall performance jump by leaps and bounds This is one of the pat answer to improving systems performances. But it works
Luck life peace
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tests are made in the BOINC Alpha test project. However, that project does not do much of a job at testing load.

The problem is that stress testing is quite likely to test the wrong things, and hindsight is usually 20/20.

> Tapes in splitter queue: (none)

Uh oh...

Juhuuu! MATT! JUHUUU! MAAA-AATT! Time for diaper change again! The seven dwarfs are running out of mountain to hack! ;o)

But if it is done there cannot be a blanket 1 classic = xx BOINC credits it can only be done if the classic scientific data is still attached to the account, and can only then be done after verifying the 50+ million units, which will be when, 5 years, never, or maybe if a scientist wants all the data.

I will never understand why some average value could not be assigned to my SAH classic account to bring it into line with the new BOINC program.

I believe I may have found a solution about SETI credits which would please everyone. If I have turned in ANY work units under the old SAH Classic, why couldn't my BOINC credits also be added onto the old classic credits? I would still be starting with zero on BOINC, and one work unit on BOINC would be added to my Classic account every time I turn one in. That way my stats for Classic would still continue to accrue.

If this cannot be done, how do I go about removing BOINC from the one machine which I installed it on as a test platform?
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Nobody really cares about the cheaters. The cheaters know who they are and they know their statistics are all a sham. Like everyone else, I have crunched WU's in as little as 5 seconds, and long ago, when cpu speeds were a lot less, some WU's took a full 24 hours. Also, the seti program has been modified several times which makes crunching the numbers take more or less time. While my average time now shows as 4 hours, 57+ minutes, my actual average cpu time was down to somewhere around 2 hours.

No disrespect to the person who got on the bandwagon 1.5 years ago (and there is no way to backtrack and see how many WU's he's actually done) I got on the original SAH bandwagon well over 6 years ago so I really lose out. Too bad the people at Seti didn't think about this a little more before they implemented the new BOINC.

If everyone in the classic SAH decides NOT to support BOINC in its present format, BOINC will be the big loser.
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