Hello! Let's suppose that someone decides to install BOINC on the computer, connects to the server, downloads some work, and after (let's say) half an hour, that person decides to uninstall BOINC. Or, for example, that person does not start the computer (or BOINC) during a long period of time.

What does happen with that tasks which have already been assigned? Do they get lost forever or get assigned to someone else?

Hello! Let's suppose that someone decides to install BOINC on the computer, connects to the server, downloads some work, and after (let's say) half an hour, that person decides to uninstall BOINC. Or, for example, that person does not start the computer (or BOINC) during a long period of time.

What does happen with that tasks which have already been assigned? Do they get lost forever or get assigned to someone else?

That is what the deadline is for. If for any reason, a task is not returned by the deadline, a new task from the same WU will be generated and some time later (possibly as little as a microsecond) it is assigned to another computer that belongs to a different user. This catches all sorts of cases: Loss of interest, Hardware failing, slow hardware that is almost never on, Network difficulties, ...

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BOINC WIKI

I was curious about this too,
I have very little CPU time to spare so I'm worried about meeting deadlines ... Is there a way to request chunks that are smaller in size and not the 416 hours : 58 minuet WU that expires in like 25 days?

I probably have about 5 hours running time a month so its a shame to waste CPU power and energy if I only get 20% through a task and its discarded because of the deadline.

1-2 hour chunks would be ideal.

If you really have so little time, you should disable AstroPulse tasks - that are the long-running ones - in your SETI@home preferences. Make sure to also disable accepting work from other applications if no work for the selected applications is available.

If you decide to let the already downloaded AP task finish, you might see that it doesn't need as much time to completion as estimated. BOINC needs to learn about new hosts first.

You should also check if the CUDA tasks are started at all, since your Quadro FX 570M only has 255 MiB memory, which is pretty near the margin. If they don't run, disable the use of your nVIDIA GPU too (same preference page, at the top).

Gruß,
Gundolf

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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