I'm not sure if this is a BOINC issue or a SETI one:

Now that I have reduced my SETI processing to a small fraction of its previous value (in response to the vastly increased processing times with the 4.05 client), my outstanding work units are starting to miss their deadlines.

I had expected that incomplete workunits would simply be discarded by BOINC once the deadline had passed (perhaps with some notification to the server). That didn't happen. So then I assumed that the SETI client would itself discard the work unit when it was next scheduled to run. This didn't happen either; it just continued processing!

So is the designed behaviour that an overdue work unit will continue to process to completion, only to be rejected by the server when the result is uploaded? This seems rather silly. Or does it simply become ineligible for credit (the work unit having presumably been re-issued to some more deserving computer in the meantime)?

Can anyone point me to documentation about this?

---

As you've correctly noticed, neither Boinc nor seti seem to realise you're going to miss the deadline and they just crunch them regardless. The validator just ignores them saying they were overdue and sends the unit out again.

I would suggest you just reduce your cache to ensure you return all units within the alloted 2 week time frame.

Ned

---

*** My Guide to Compiling Optimised BOINC and SETI Clients ***
*** Download Optimised BOINC and SETI Clients for Linux Here ***

This is a BOINC issue since it is BOINC that decides what to run when. It currently ignores the report deadline. I'm hoping that will be one improvement in version 4.5. The ideal solution would be for BOINC to see that the deadlines are approaching and process those work units first but not download any more. Even if this is not planned for 4.5, it DOES have a feature that will allow you to manually 'cancel' a work unit so you could do that if you knew they were going to be overdue.

---

A member of The Knights Who Say NI!
For rankings, history graphs and more, check out:
My BOINC stats site

As stated by other this is on the list of "things to do", but with work concentrating on the cross-platform GUI this is not going to be done "soon", as in the next few weeks. It is likely going to be a feature in the cross-platform GUI when it first comes out. Remember, we are a "work-in-progress" still.

> Can anyone point me to documentation about this?

There is documentation ... It is a little behind all the new features, but it does talk to most of the issues and with only 298 pages of material it will only take you a couple of minutes to ignore most of it ... :)

So, good reading to me ... read the bold text that follows ...

---