The strangest thing happened when I added a background picture URL to my preferences to see if it worked.

I had about 20 WU to process and after the update they all appeared "Ready to report" as if they had already been processed and uploaded, while in the "Messages" area the client was aparently trying to download the background file.

When I tried to select the "Tranfers" tab to see what was happening to the download, suddenly the client crashed and when I ran it again all my WU were gone and the program was still crashing everytime I tried to access the "Tranfers" tab.

I was only able to resolve the situation by installing BOINC all over.

Has anyone seen the same situation happening?

Background picture to your preferences?
S@h Berkeley's Staff Friends Club ©

Have seen this happen when I move seti to another directory. Did you move the location? I found you can only make changes to program on inital install as further changes later cause the program to not see the units. Reinstalling is the only way to fix this.

Nope. I only updated my SETI@home preferences, adding the picture URL and forced a manual update in the BOINC client, nothing else.

And now the plot thickens with a little more bugs.

After I reinstalled BOINC and after a few manual updates I received 16 WU and the client started downloading them and the EXE and PDB files also, but an error occurred while downloading the PDB file:

SETI@home - 2004-08-31 01:12:41 - Giving up on download of setiathome_4.03_windows_intelx86.pdb: File downloaded was not the correct file or was garbage from bad URL

Now I have 16 ready to process WU but without the PDB the program won't start processing them.

I tried another manual update to see if the client would download the PDB file only, but no such luck. I only get the message "No work from project".

Guys at devel, you should get a workaround to this kind of situation.

For now I'll just wait a while to see if the PDB is requested again, if not I'll have to reset the project once more.

I'm getting practiced at this though. A few more times and I'll be able to do it with my eyes closed :) Just kidding...

Guys sort out the bugs, please.

> And now the plot thickens with a little more bugs.
>
> After I reinstalled BOINC and after a few manual updates I received 16 WU and
> the client started downloading them and the EXE and PDB files also, but an
> error occurred while downloading the PDB file:
>
> SETI@home - 2004-08-31 01:12:41 - Giving up on download of
> setiathome_4.03_windows_intelx86.pdb: File downloaded was not the correct file
> or was garbage from bad URL
>
> Now I have 16 ready to process WU but without the PDB the program won't start
> processing them.
>
> I tried another manual update to see if the client would download the PDB file
> only, but no such luck. I only get the message "No work from project".
>
> Guys at devel, you should get a workaround to this kind of situation.
>
> For now I'll just wait a while to see if the PDB is requested again, if not
> I'll have to reset the project once more.
>
> I'm getting practiced at this though. A few more times and I'll be able to do
> it with my eyes closed :) Just kidding...
>
> Guys sort out the bugs, please.
>
>
If something goes wrong with the download of one of the executable files (of which the PDB counts as one) the project has to be reset to get that file to download.

It is a known issue, and if you want to try to fix it, you may download the code, create a fix and submit it for approval.

I stand correct.

The server just added another 19 WU to my list but still no PDB file.

I now have 35 WU to go but no grinder to crunch them with.

This is very amusing.

Okay could you go ahead and manually download the PDB from:

http://setiboincdata.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah/download_fanout/setiathome_4.03_windows_intelx86.pdb

and drop it in the setiathome.berkeley.edu project folder?

Does BOINC start to do its thing after restarting the client?

----- Rom
BOINC Development Team, U.C. Berkeley

I keep getting an error of "Page cannot be displayed" in the browser and in a download manager like Reget i get "Could not get file information".

Couldn't you have added a line in the client code for the file to be downloaded again if it failed? It's a perfectly controlable situation isn't it?

Thanx for the try though!

> I keep getting an error of "Page cannot be displayed" in the browser and in a
> download manager like Reget i get "Could not get file information".
>
> Couldn't you have added a line in the client code for the file to be
> downloaded again if it failed? It's a perfectly controlable situation isn't
> it?
>
> Thanx for the try though!

Actually we did, if the MD5 cecksum is different than what was given by the server the client is supposed to attempt to download it again.

I just deleted my PDB file and restarted the client and it in fact redownloaded the PDB file. Although, it did error out the existing S@H workunits it was crunching.

Since you haven't started crunching anything, can you just delete the existing PDB file and restart the client. I'm curious what it'll do.

----- Rom
BOINC Development Team, U.C. Berkeley

Despite of the download error, I got the PDB file from one of my other PC's and restarted the client but it had no effect whatsoever.

Rom, I forgot a little fact.

All the workunits are complete in the folder, with 354Kb but the "Status" of all of them in the Work area is "Downloading".

> Rom, I forgot a little fact.
>
> All the workunits are complete in the folder, with 354Kb but the "Status" of
> all of them in the Work area is "Downloading".

Doah, I think that'll require a project reset.

----- Rom
BOINC Development Team, U.C. Berkeley

Rom, I deleted the EXE and the better_banner.jpg out of the project's folder to see if it would download everything again including the PDB but to my surprise, it only downloaded the EXE and the JPG again.

How do you control the need to download to PDB file?

Just RESET !

> Just RESET !
>

Man, I'm not concerned with the 35 WU. I have another 550 or so in my other PC's.

I was just trying to get more info for them to identify the possible problem so it would be resolved in future updates to the program.

> Rom, I deleted the EXE and the better_banner.jpg out of the project's folder
> to see if it would download everything again including the PDB but to my
> surprise, it only downloaded the EXE and the JPG again.
>
> How do you control the need to download to PDB file?

It sounds as though your app version record in your client_state.xml file is corrupted. Searching for the PDB file in the client_state.xml should yield some interesting information.

Could you go ahead and email me your client_state.xml file?

----- Rom
BOINC Development Team, U.C. Berkeley

> Okay could you go ahead and manually download the PDB from:
> http://setiboincdata.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah/download_fanout/setiathome_4.03_windows_intelx86.pdb
>
> and drop it in the setiathome.berkeley.edu project folder?
>
> Does BOINC start to do its thing after restarting the client?
>
> ----- Rom
> BOINC Development Team, U.C. Berkeley


I had this problem also. The client started download of the .pdb file and never finished after 12 hours.It got the other two files (banner file,Seti 4.03 .exe).
I dropped another .pdb file in from another cruncher here and it would not start processing units. Tried restarting client, updating, had to reinstall client to get it to work. All is well now.

> > Rom, I deleted the EXE and the better_banner.jpg out of the project's
> folder
> > to see if it would download everything again including the PDB but to my
> > surprise, it only downloaded the EXE and the JPG again.
> >
> > How do you control the need to download to PDB file?
>
> It sounds as though your app version record in your client_state.xml file is
> corrupted. Searching for the PDB file in the client_state.xml should yield
> some interesting information.
>
> Could you go ahead and email me your client_state.xml file?
>
> ----- Rom
> BOINC Development Team, U.C. Berkeley
> <a> href="http://www.boinc.dk/index.php?page=user_statistics&project=sah&userid=85465">
>

Sorry Rom, after I put the PDB file from another machine snd it didn't work I started comparing the client_state.xml from both machines and changed the state of the PDB control lines status from -168 (i think) to 0. After restarting the client, it started downloading the PDB file but with no information about the file's total size. After downloading the file it gave a MD5 error and cleaned the information about the WU out of the client_state.xml file leaving it with only 4Kb and containing only what seems to be info that precedes the files and WU info.

It also physically deleted the WU from the project's folder.

Next time it happens i'll try to get you the file for you to check.

Sorry :(

Rom, I remembered what may have probably triggered the initial problem reported in this post.

I think I may have forced a manual update while the client was downloading the PDB file and the WU, and it may have been a coincidence but I think it was on that moment that the client gave the error about the PDB file and left the program in the state I described earlier.

Maybe that will help you to find out the potential bug.