Limited WU's ???

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Profile John S. (Low IFR) Jenkins

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Message 1233334 - Posted: 19 May 2012, 9:39:52 UTC

I have "10 Days & 10 more" entered in my Prefs but get no more than a couple of days worth of WU's. Am I missing something ?
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Message 1233339 - Posted: 19 May 2012, 10:01:50 UTC - in response to Message 1233334.  
Last modified: 19 May 2012, 10:02:42 UTC

I have "10 Days & 10 more" entered in my Prefs but get no more than a couple of days worth of WU's. Am I missing something ?

With those preferences you're saying you're going to be offline for 10 days, this means any work has to be done 10 days before deadline, the server will likely not send you a lot of work because you won't be able to do it before deadline,

The other reason is you're running Boinc 7, the scheduler has changed for Boinc 7, now it uses a low and a high water mark, you should change your preferences to something like 6 + 0.01
See Ageless's post from the Boinc Forum:

Yes, in general, for others reading here. Do know, that the scheduling code has been rewritten from the ground up. It will not go and fetch work, or schedule which projects to run, as previous versions did.

So rather than just run it for an hour, run it for 2 weeks, try to learn what it does differently. See how the new work fetch methods are now based on a low water mark and a high water mark. Find how BOINC won't immediately after uploading & reporting work ask for new work, but will only do so when it's past the low water mark.

E.g. if you wanted at least a day's worth of work:
In 6.12 and before, you'd set connect to interval to 0.01 and additional work to 1.0

In 7.0 you set minimum work buffer to 1.0 and max additional work buffer to 0.01


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Message 1233504 - Posted: 19 May 2012, 16:45:49 UTC - in response to Message 1233339.  

I have "10 Days & 10 more" entered in my Prefs but get no more than a couple of days worth of WU's. Am I missing something ?

With those preferences you're saying you're going to be offline for 10 days, this means any work has to be done 10 days before deadline, the server will likely not send you a lot of work because you won't be able to do it before deadline.


I don't think anyone would have come up with that interpretation for 10 & 10 without prior knowledge from the the way it is written under "Computing preferences/Network Usage". If 10 & 10 were entered there it would read.


Maintain enough tasks to keep busy for at least 10 days
(max 10 days)
.... and up to an additional 10 days


I like, John S., would take that to be 10 days plus an "additional" 10 for a total of 20 days. Should that section of the "Computing preferences" page be rewritten to be less misleading?

Does answering "No" to "Disconnect when done?" help? That implies you are always connected a lot more than saying you want an "additional 10 days" of work says you only connect every 10 days. Asking for an additional 10 days could be for a lot of other reasons including the possibility of a power outage ;-).

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Message 1233514 - Posted: 19 May 2012, 17:01:07 UTC - in response to Message 1233504.  

I have "10 Days & 10 more" entered in my Prefs but get no more than a couple of days worth of WU's. Am I missing something ?

With those preferences you're saying you're going to be offline for 10 days, this means any work has to be done 10 days before deadline, the server will likely not send you a lot of work because you won't be able to do it before deadline.


I don't think anyone would have come up with that interpretation for 10 & 10 without prior knowledge from the the way it is written under "Computing preferences/Network Usage". If 10 & 10 were entered there it would read.


Maintain enough tasks to keep busy for at least 10 days
(max 10 days)
.... and up to an additional 10 days


I like, John S., would take that to be 10 days plus an "additional" 10 for a total of 20 days. Should that section of the "Computing preferences" page be rewritten to be less misleading?

Does answering "No" to "Disconnect when done?" help? That implies you are always connected a lot more than saying you want an "additional 10 days" of work says you only connect every 10 days. Asking for an additional 10 days could be for a lot of other reasons including the possibility of a power outage ;-).


Because of the deadlines for VHAR tasks, then no matter what system is used you cannot have 20 days work. Because the manager will recognise it has to go into panic mode as soon as a short deadline task is received which effectively stops d/loads.

If you need 20 days of work then Seti is not the project to be crunching, you need a project with 30 day deadlines minimum.
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Message 1233594 - Posted: 19 May 2012, 20:43:51 UTC

Try SeventeenOrBust tasks on PrimeGrid - 23 DAYS per unit on a few-year-old CPU ;).
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Message 1233599 - Posted: 19 May 2012, 20:56:33 UTC - in response to Message 1233514.  
Last modified: 19 May 2012, 20:58:32 UTC


Because of the deadlines for VHAR tasks, then no matter what system is used you cannot have 20 days work. Because the manager will recognise it has to go into panic mode as soon as a short deadline task is received which effectively stops d/loads.

If you need 20 days of work then Seti is not the project to be crunching, you need a project with 30 day deadlines minimum.



First I really do not think it is about need or even want, at least for me. I picked 10 & 10 because that was what was mentioned in the first post. It could have just as easily been 1 & 1. I was only trying to determine why the page says "additional" if it doesn't mean additional, and if it is a cryptic way of asking how often do you connect, why don't they fix the question so it actually asks that? For instance ask "How often do you connect in days?" where "0" indicates always connected. Is it a case of older versions of BOINC actually recognizing that value as additional days and now it is something different and the page has never been modified to correct that?

Second, I do not think I have ever seen a panic situation. I am curious how I would recognize such an event on my Linux server. As near as I can tell all my tasks in the past have seemed to proceed in an orderly fashion more or less based on the the order they arrived. Is there something special that would indicate a task is being processed in panic mode or would you only know it after the fact when it is posted as complete and it appears out sequence considering the others in the queue. Thanks.
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Message 1233657 - Posted: 19 May 2012, 22:26:55 UTC - in response to Message 1233599.  

I was only trying to determine why the page says "additional" if it doesn't mean additional,

It does mean additional, and it will be additional if the minimum return time for a WU is more than 20 days (ie 10+10). As mentioned, if you get a WU that needs to be returned in less time than 20 days, it will be processed first & no new work downloaded untill that work has been processed.


and if it is a cryptic way of asking how often do you connect, why don't they fix the question so it actually asks that? For instance ask "How often do you connect in days?" where "0" indicates always connected. Is it a case of older versions of BOINC actually recognizing that value as additional days and now it is something different and the page has never been modified to correct that?

Actually the page has been recently changed to match the behaviour of the new client.
It used to be (roughly) BOINC can connect every x days, maintain enough work for x days.

With the older clients you need to enter values of say .1 & 4 to get a 4 day cache. For the latest (V7) clients you need to enter values of 4 & .1


Second, I do not think I have ever seen a panic situation. I am curious how I would recognize such an event on my Linux server.

You'd see a (or some) WUs have been paused & another (or other) WUs would be running in High Priority mode in order to make sure they are completed before the deadline.
Grant
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Message 1233676 - Posted: 19 May 2012, 23:06:22 UTC - in response to Message 1233657.  

I was only trying to determine why the page says "additional" if it doesn't mean additional,

It does mean additional, and it will be additional if the minimum return time for a WU is more than 20 days (ie 10+10). As mentioned, if you get a WU that needs to be returned in less time than 20 days, it will be processed first & no new work downloaded untill that work has been processed.


and if it is a cryptic way of asking how often do you connect, why don't they fix the question so it actually asks that? For instance ask "How often do you connect in days?" where "0" indicates always connected. Is it a case of older versions of BOINC actually recognizing that value as additional days and now it is something different and the page has never been modified to correct that?

Actually the page has been recently changed to match the behaviour of the new client.
It used to be (roughly) BOINC can connect every x days, maintain enough work for x days.

With the older clients you need to enter values of say .1 & 4 to get a 4 day cache. For the latest (V7) clients you need to enter values of 4 & .1


Second, I do not think I have ever seen a panic situation. I am curious how I would recognize such an event on my Linux server.

You'd see a (or some) WUs have been paused & another (or other) WUs would be running in High Priority mode in order to make sure they are completed before the deadline.



Thanks for taking the time to reply and explain things. I appreciate it.
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Message boards : Number crunching : Limited WU's ???


 
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