In last time I receive tasks which take very large "time to completion"- more then 200hours. I don’t know to whom I may turn because this is problem I think.

Atanas Atanassov

At_M_Atanassov@yahoo.com

These are most likely Astropulse scans which your computer has been sent to process. They take significantly longer to process than the standard multibeam scans however they are much more accurate and therefore are more likely to find things.
If you do not wish to recieve these scans, you can disable them from your Seti@home preferences under your account settings on the website by unticking the box. To speed to processing time you can run an optimized application to process them however this is only advicable if you are a competant BOINC user as it will not automatically update itself when new versions are released.

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Hi Atanas,
You might want to let one of those run as Boinc Manager tends to overestimate the To Completion time on those. I didn't take a look at your computers but most good computers can run them at under one hundred hours even running just the stock application.

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PROUD MEMBER OF Team Starfire World BOINC

I do not agree with most comments from Seti pseudo "experts" about AstroPulse.
It could be far better than standard Seti at analizing data, but the software implementation is very crapped. I had twice to abandon a work unit as it was already over it's deadline for reporting, and it had been working for over 350 hours and still around 80% of completion.
What really makes me angry with it, is NOT the loss of credits (I am not on a competition), but the waste of power and resources that could have been used for better tasks or saved for our environment!
It underestimates time ? Well, this is a good indicator of a poorly written algorithm!
Another problem is that i have 4 computers running Boinc-Seti:
one takes about 70 to 80 hours to complete an Astropulse unit, and that is ok.
two computers take 280 to 400 hours.
one luckily never downloaded an Astropulse workunit (it is 7 years old, the poor thing).
The problem is with the two computers that Seti keeps loading with absurdely heavy tasks that can hardly be completed on time. Those are both laptops that are on no more than 10 hours a day and sometimes are not used for several days.
I know that I can disable Astropulse from my settings, but this would apply to all the computers, including the one that can run Astropulse.
Again I say that the whole Astropulse thing, can be the best scientifically, but is very poorly implemented!
Franzmaximilian

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Energia Nucleare ???
No, Grappa !!!

There is a work around for your problems.
In you settings, change the location of the 1 PC that can successfully run AP scans to a different one to the other 2, such as "home" if the other 2 are set to "default". Then, this allows you to set up seperate preferences for each of the sets of computers, those that can run AP and those that can't.

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There is a work around for your problems.
In you settings, change the location of the 1 PC that can successfully run AP scans to a different one to the other 2, such as "home" if the other 2 are set to "default". Then, this allows you to set up seperate preferences for each of the sets of computers, those that can run AP and those that can't.

Thankyou for your suggestion ! I will look into this.

Problem is that if one needs "workarounds", it means that there is something wrong in the system!
I am a chemist, not a physicist, an astronomer or a computer scientist. I offered computing power to a cause and this has been wasted. I simply hate this! Free offers should be treated with more respect by the recipients.
Franzmaximilian

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Energia Nucleare ???
No, Grappa !!!

There is a work around for your problems.
In you settings, change the location of the 1 PC that can successfully run AP scans to a different one to the other 2, such as "home" if the other 2 are set to "default". Then, this allows you to set up seperate preferences for each of the sets of computers, those that can run AP and those that can't.

Thankyou for your suggestion ! I will look into this.

Problem is that if one needs "workarounds", it means that there is something wrong in the system!
I am a chemist, not a physicist, an astronomer or a computer scientist. I offered computing power to a cause and this has been wasted. I simply hate this! Free offers should be treated with more respect by the recipients.
Franzmaximilian

You are in control of your account. If you dont want Astropulse then simply head to your account page and make sure only hte multibeam is checked. Also Seti gives ample time to complete tasks individual use of pc is included in calculation return times. 3rd party optimized apps can decrease you crunching time by 50% or more depending on the age of your CPU and other factors. It's very easy to make a blanket statement that things are FUBAR when you clearly arent aware of the effort that is put into this project.

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

You are in control of your account. If you dont want Astropulse then simply head to your account page and make sure only hte multibeam is checked. Also Seti gives ample time to complete tasks individual use of pc is included in calculation return times. 3rd party optimized apps can decrease you crunching time by 50% or more depending on the age of your CPU and other factors. It's very easy to make a blanket statement that things are FUBAR when you clearly arent aware of the effort that is put into this project.

I am sorry, but after your reply I must confirm what I wrote.
Can you find the word "multibeam" in the preferences ? NO! What does it mean ? Ok, i will google for it.... Done! It means I need to check the Seti@home Enhanced. You talk a language for adepts to adepts. That is also poor respect.
Also, my command of english is not bad, but it is not my mothertongue and you use a word (clearly an acronym) that i never heard of: "FUBAR". Google again... Found it.
Erm... I haven't used such a rude language, though you are now tempting me!
A third work unit of Astropulse is going to be aborted, and you confirm that "Seti gives ample time to complete tasks individual use of pc is included in calculation return times"? Well, I'd suggest the Seti Team to review the calculation parameters for return times, as they are simply wrong!
I am sure that a tremendous effort has been put into the science that is behind Seti@home. Surely not the same has been put into the user interface.
I repeat that I am not crying for lost credits. I don't care for credits, I am not in a competition! Credits don't make me more handsome and don't give me better sexual performances. I only hate to see that time and power I have offered have been wasted carelessly. That's all.

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Energia Nucleare ???
No, Grappa !!!

Many times, even if you return a workunit late, you can still get credit for it. The deadlines aren't so strict in that once it passes you've wasted all your time and effort. All you need to do is return it before the new quorum partner returns their result and you will get credit for it.

I'm sorry that you feel the project is wasting your electricity, but a solution has been offered as a workaround. The workaround is necessary because of a problem with the BOINC software - that which SETI has no control over. BOINC is not the same thing as SETI and SETI has no direct control over the direction of BOINC. BOINC is far from perfect, and its being worked on a daily basis trying to improve upon each version, and sometimes workarounds are the only solution that can be offered until the problem is fixed (and in the BOINC world, solutions can take as long as six months or more in some severe cases!).

I can only hope that you can see that SETI is simply trying to gather scientific data, and that a good portion of PCs are able to finish AstroPulse within the time allotted (all of mine that I allow AstroPulse to work on completes them just fine), and that there is no malicious intent to waste user's electricity or resources, and that you can be more understanding that there will always be issues that need to be worked on, just like in all aspects of life.

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Mine is doing the same, ie long time to completion. However on mine it has two project units being worked on at the same time. How do I reduce it to one only?

btw I'm only working for SETI and nothing else, what I mean is that there are two work units being processed.

Go to your account and change the preference:

On multiprocessors, use at most
(Enforced by version 6.1+) 100 % of the processors

to 50% (since 50% of a dual core system is 1 processor).

Or if using BOINC earlier than version 5.10:

On multiprocessors, use at most
(Enforced by version 5.10 and earlier) 4 processors

to 1 processor.

Save your preferencs. Then, open BOINC Manager on your computer, click on the Projects tab, select SETI@Home, then click the Update button.

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btw I'm only working for SETI and nothing else, what I mean is that there are two work units being processed.

There are two tasks running because your computer has two processors.

If you want that BOINC only uses one of them, go to your Computing preferences and set

On multiprocessors, use at most 50 % of the processors 
Enforced by version 6.1+

Gruß,
Gundolf

[edit] late again :-) (but he's on 6.4.7)[/edit]

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Computer sind nicht alles im Leben. (Kleiner Scherz)

SETI@home classic workunits 3,758
SETI@home classic CPU time 66,520 hours

Thank you OzzFan for your comments and explanations. Those are quite useful and finally made me understand which is the real issue with Astropulse and Boinc.
Your moderator collegue before, was just arrogant, rude and unhelpful.
From my side the incidend is closed.
Best regards,
Franzmaximilian

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Energia Nucleare ???
No, Grappa !!!

Thank you OzzFan for your comments and explanations. Those are quite useful and finally made me understand which is the real issue with Astropulse and Boinc.
Your moderator collegue before, was just arrogant, rude and unhelpful.
From my side the incidend is closed.
Best regards,
Franzmaximilian

please note that I have a link in my sig. Click on it. if it says anything about astropulse or working on other projects unclick it. This isn't rocket science. We are here to help you but we also expect you to actually look at what you signed up for. As I stated before, you created the account. You need to look at everything that account entails. If you were to go to primegrid or Yoyo@home you'd be expected to pick the applications you want to run. Seti has chosen to have you choose to turn off what you dont want. Again read everything on your account pages. I'll say it again. It's your account page read everything on it.

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

Hi Guys, new here so maybe not best place to post. My BOINC Manager is running for the first time, the app is Astropulsev5, with 486 hours remaining. Is this time normal for this? Has to be finished by 16th June im wondering if this is enough time. I normally have the pc on for 16 hrs a day anyway.

Thanks in advance,

Trisha

Hi Trisha, The time to completion is usually overestimated at first. It needs time to figure out how your computer runs. You should see it drop fairly quickly as you work the task.

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PROUD MEMBER OF Team Starfire World BOINC

Hi Guys, new here so maybe not best place to post. My BOINC Manager is running for the first time, the app is Astropulsev5, with 486 hours remaining. Is this time normal for this? Has to be finished by 16th June im wondering if this is enough time. I normally have the pc on for 16 hrs a day anyway.

Thanks in advance,

Trisha

It's normal for the first work unit (WU) completion time to be overestimated. The time is set by the project for a theoretical computer. As you complete work, Boinc then adjust the time given by the project with a duration correction factor (DCF) which is used to provide a better estimate in the future. The more work you complete the more accurate the estimates becomes.

Since your computer is faster then this 'standard' system, you should notice that the estimate will go down over time. For your system I would expect an actual completion time of under 150 hrs. Note that the due date for the work to be completed is 30 days.

Should you find that you don't run your system enough to complete the Astropulse work on time, there are options in your account Seti preferences to request that only the shorter Seti Enhanced WU be assigned. These do a different kind of data analysis.

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Boinc V7.2.42
Win7 i5 3.33G 4GB, GTX470

Thanks for the replys guys.

Trisha

I'm not angry about computing an astropulse v5. But I'm afraid, I will never finish a task with 680h.
Therefore my question. Should I switch off these astropulse things?
( I'm not interested in any credits, I only want to help )

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