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Technical News :
Continuing Onward (May 05 2008)
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Author | Message |
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Matt Lebofsky Send message Joined: 1 Mar 99 Posts: 1444 Credit: 957,058 RAC: 0 |
Typical weekend - a couple weird things but nothing tragic. For example the assimilator queue ballooned for a while, but then worked its way back down to zero on its own. There might have been mysql database load causing some general malaise like the above - no smoking guns have been found yet. Otherwise general progress. With the servers doing well I continue to send out reminder e-mails to users who haven't returned results in a while. We consistently fight a general downward trend as people buy new computers and forget to reinstall BOINC. Looking at the recent active user graphs out there I'd say about 10% of the reminder e-mails result in a returning user. Most of them bounce (or get spam filtered). Also a large fraction of these e-mails are currently going to users who haven't sent results back in years. So I imagine the success rate will increase over time, but on the other hand I imagine we won't be sending out such mails as often in the future (the number of people who could be deemed "ready to remind" is finite). Meanwhile I'm working on finally running the precess fixer (run into some embedded sql issues this afternoon), while Jeff is almost ready to throw the NTPCkr into beta. We actually discussed public data visualization of candidates at our general meeting this afternoon. And it sound like AstroPulse is pretty much ready for prime time as well. Woo-hoo! Happy Cinco de Mayo! - Matt -- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person -- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude |
Blurf Send message Joined: 2 Sep 06 Posts: 8962 Credit: 12,678,685 RAC: 0 |
This is really good news about NTPCkr, Matt!!! Bravo! |
Sirius B Send message Joined: 26 Dec 00 Posts: 24879 Credit: 3,081,182 RAC: 7 |
Thanks for the update Matt. Question (hope it's not a stupid one) - When NTPCkr is up & running, will it be seperate to the main seti servers or will it impinge them at any time? |
Dr. C.E.T.I. Send message Joined: 29 Feb 00 Posts: 16019 Credit: 794,685 RAC: 0 |
. . . Excellent News on NTPCkr Matt - Thank You and to All @ Berkeley - that goes for Each of You too . . . BOINC Wiki . . . Science Status Page . . . |
Fred J. Verster Send message Joined: 21 Apr 04 Posts: 3252 Credit: 31,903,643 RAC: 0 |
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Tom Philippart Send message Joined: 29 May 06 Posts: 23 Credit: 949,840 RAC: 0 |
great to hear the progress made on Astropulse and NTPCkr Here's the graph Lebofsky is talking about: click here |
Mike O Send message Joined: 1 Sep 07 Posts: 428 Credit: 6,670,998 RAC: 0 |
Far Out! I so can't wait! I wonder how many new 'strange' objects will start to show up. I'm hoping one is the signal we all seek, however... I'm sure with the amount of data that has built up, some very cool things are going to come out of this besides just finding an intellegent life off world. ( sometimes, when I look around at work, its hard to find 'intellegent life forms ;) ) Just wanted to add this. I think you guys are doing a great job at keeping us all up to speed. I ALWAYS come to the tech thread FIRST and look for a new post on where things are and how things have been. Mike |
Speedy Send message Joined: 26 Jun 04 Posts: 1643 Credit: 12,921,799 RAC: 89 |
This is good news. I thought that AstroPulse was a test project for new processing applications & futures before they come over here to the main project am I right in saying this? Please correct me if i'm wrong. With the current work load is it better to dedicate our pc's to this project or AstroPulse project or both? Both my pc's are crunching on this project at present. Thanks Speedy |
Matt Lebofsky Send message Joined: 1 Mar 99 Posts: 1444 Credit: 957,058 RAC: 0 |
Nothing really major happened today so I won't bother starting a new thread. Had the usual Tuesday outage today. No real news there. The problems we discovered with my precess fixer (see yesterday's) note resulted in some head scratching through the end of the day yesterday and some extreme debugging this morning. By "extreme debugging" I mean me and Jeff watching as Eric teases the most arcane bits of information out of gdb. Left to my own devices I'd be still putting fprintf(stderr,"HERE") statements all over the place. In any case we found the key problem and Eric is beating his head on it now. This precess fix isn't really holding anything up but we'd like to get it done already. Meanwhile Jeff continues beating on the NTPCkr, and last I checked in it was successfully running in daemon mode on beta. That is, a new set of results come in thus turning several sky pixels "hot" - meaning their scores need to be recalculated (better if we saw something, worse if we didn't). There's still some performance enhancements to make to ensure this runs in "near time" on the much larger public project, and the scoring algorithms have yet to be completed. Still, it's fun to see new pixels getting analyzed every few seconds, even with the output being just text to stdout. To answer one question: AstroPulse is real, not just a test project. Note that there are projects and there are applications. Right now the SETI@home Project has one application: SETI@home. Soon it will have another: AstroPulse. So if you signed up for the SETI@home Project, you will automatically be given both kinds of workunits. We have yet to determine the ratio of SETI@home to AstroPulse work we'll be sending out. - Matt -- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person -- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude |
KWSN THE Holy Hand Grenade! Send message Joined: 20 Dec 05 Posts: 3187 Credit: 57,163,290 RAC: 0 |
No, SETI beta is the site for both SETI's beta and the beta of Astropulse... AP (if I may shorten it...) will eventually be a production program over here, once the bugs are worked out on the Beta site. Beta has actually shut down SETI WU's for the moment so they can generate more AP WU's to actually get ready for production. The only problem I have with AP (I also crunch beta...) is the size of the WU... 8Mb, the length of the WU (~75 hours for my Opteron) and (although, I hope, this gets changed b4 it goes into production...) the deadlines for the WU's (short! - and this isn't the forum to discuss that...) . Hello, from Albany, CA!... |
1mp0£173 Send message Joined: 3 Apr 99 Posts: 8423 Credit: 356,897 RAC: 0 |
... and right now, Astropulse wants 3.4 gigabytes of free disk or it won't assign work. Does it really need 3.4 gigabytes? |
Bryan Wallace Send message Joined: 28 Jul 00 Posts: 22 Credit: 52,559,173 RAC: 0 |
Ok, so I know a little bit about astropulse now. What about ntpckr? How is that going to help us? |
Pappa Send message Joined: 9 Jan 00 Posts: 2562 Credit: 12,301,681 RAC: 0 |
Ned et al Things like splitters which control the requirements and other things are still being developed. Currently, Seti Beta Testing takes a lot of time and attention on the part of active volunteer testers... Telling what you saw when something went wrong is important. Then people go to work digging out reasons and information to fix the issues. One reason that Seti Enhanced and Seti MultiBeam were as painless as they were is because of the group of Dedicated Volunteer Testers. It is one of the two ways you can earn the "Volunteer tester" tag. Seti Beta and BOINC Alpha. So without an active recuitment drive for Testers: BOINC Alpha has published they are looking for a few good testers. 6.2.1 is about ready for prime time. Seti Beta is working to Astropluse ready for Seti main. There is room for more testers. *** The cautions are, it will take some of your time. Sometimes there is a large delay (if you are in it for credits) before a Result Validates or credit might be issued... Or it will blow up in the middle of the night. Or it will blow up on installation. Hmmmmmm choices... Regards Al
Please consider a Donation to the Seti Project. |
Pappa Send message Joined: 9 Jan 00 Posts: 2562 Credit: 12,301,681 RAC: 0 |
Bryan NTPCKR, is what is going to end up doing the reporting of the Science that we have been collecting for a long time. At points int time it has beeen done manually as Matt stated. It has grown to the point it becomes "which end of the elephant do you grab. Now how to flip it over..." Regards Al Ok, so I know a little bit about astropulse now. What about ntpckr? How is that going to help us? Please consider a Donation to the Seti Project. |
Henk Haneveld Send message Joined: 16 May 99 Posts: 154 Credit: 1,577,293 RAC: 1 |
Will automatic distribution of Astropulse take place when I am running a optimized SETI client using a app_info.xml file or do a need to make manueel changes. |
KWSN THE Holy Hand Grenade! Send message Joined: 20 Dec 05 Posts: 3187 Credit: 57,163,290 RAC: 0 |
Apparently it thinks it does... whether it really does is a question that should be asked on beta, not here . Hello, from Albany, CA!... |
1mp0£173 Send message Joined: 3 Apr 99 Posts: 8423 Credit: 356,897 RAC: 0 |
... and there is a thread on Beta, which, as far as I can tell, was full of questions and no answers. Since they won't fit here, I'm not testing Astropulse -- not because I'm unwilling but because it won't give me work without giving it more space. |
1mp0£173 Send message Joined: 3 Apr 99 Posts: 8423 Credit: 356,897 RAC: 0 |
... and I got my "tester" tag by participating in both. Unfortunately, I'm not testing Astropulse because of the space requirement, and I'm not testing BOINC 6.2.x because it won't run on any of my machines. |
OzzFan Send message Joined: 9 Apr 02 Posts: 15691 Credit: 84,761,841 RAC: 28 |
What's the typical RAM footprint of the AstroPulse application? |
Ingleside Send message Joined: 4 Feb 03 Posts: 1546 Credit: 15,832,022 RAC: 13 |
What's the typical RAM footprint of the AstroPulse application? It seems to use around 50 MB. "I make so many mistakes. But then just think of all the mistakes I don't make, although I might." |
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SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.