The host page for my computer says 6 tasks have been abandoned, but 5 of them are still on the computer and being crunched.

Any explanations?

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/results.php?hostid=7006214

At moment I have suspended comms.

Looks as if the server had a hick and sent your task out without it being needed.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

No This task appears to have been needed but was canceled enmasse.

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

This is a server side bug that occurs every now and then. The abandoned tasks have been truly abandoned by the project, so what you should do is reset the project on your host, from Boinc manager. Then your host will junk the abandoned tasks and get new, legit work.

This problem has been around for at least a year, and unfortunately doesn't seem to be going away.

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I've discovered the culprit, Steam. Just abandoned 100 tasks.

That´s instersting, why you say steam is the culprit? COuld you give us more info about?

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I have Steam installed on my machine and have not seen anything like that here.

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The only programs running on my computer, at about 12:10 UTC, were steam with Civ5 and BOINC/Seti, I stopped Civ5, sent message to son, 300 miles away, using the steam friends messaging service.

I then looked at BOINC client incl message log. without completeing any tasks the last two groups of msg's were request for work, denied as cache is at limit.
5 mins later another request and 3 tasks downloaded at 12:15:52.

This caused me to look at my account page/tasks and error abandoned is 107 tasks, 100 today 7 from previous.

I have Steam installed on my machine and have not seen anything like that here.

Steam can be extremely tetchy with the slightest voltage droop on the CPU. No idea why that should be so, but have seen it here.

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

I have Steam installed on my machine and have not seen anything like that here.

Steam can be extremely tetchy with the slightest voltage droop on the CPU. No idea why that should be so, but have seen it here.

Of course, I also stop BOINC from crunching when I am playing a game on Steam.

I play Skyrim mostly, which uses a lot of GPU power and most of the memory as well.

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I'm almost certain, when looking at the times the error occurred, that it was nothing to do with playing the game, but when using the message system.

So could the comms systems be interfering with each other, Seti usually calls home every 5 mins, due to the restrictions on number of tasks in cache.

Additional info, I have had a few instances recently when the steam comms window has been open, it has reported loss of comms then almost immediately they are restored.

I'm almost certain, when looking at the times the error occurred, that it was nothing to do with playing the game, but when using the message system.

So could the comms systems be interfering with each other, Seti usually calls home every 5 mins, due to the restrictions on number of tasks in cache.

Additional info, I have had a few instances recently when the steam comms window has been open, it has reported loss of comms then almost immediately they are restored.

Since I never use that part of Steam....

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I don't know if this is related but. My grandson has loaded Steam on one of my computers that I do not use for SETI. That computer occasionally will overload my entire system both wired and wifi. That computer is wired to the router. Anyway the only way I can recover control of my network is to turn off that computer and disconnect the network cable. Just turning it off is not enough, the network cable needs to be unplugged.

I don't know what Steam does or is supposed to do but I consider it malware in the extreme.

That machine is off when my grandson is not here and still has done the same thing on a number of occasions.

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Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....

I don't know if this is related but. My grandson has loaded Steam on one of my computers that I do not use for SETI. That computer occasionally will overload my entire system both wired and wifi. That computer is wired to the router. Anyway the only way I can recover control of my network is to turn off that computer and disconnect the network cable. Just turning it off is not enough, the network cable needs to be unplugged.

I don't know what Steam does or is supposed to do but I consider it malware in the extreme.

That machine is off when my grandson is not here and still has done the same thing on a number of occasions.

BY default Steam puts itself in the start up box so loads at boot time, it definitely slows the boot sequence.

I've stopped that and only use it when it is required.

I don't even play Civ5 that much still think Civ3 is a better game.

I don't know if this is related but. My grandson has loaded Steam on one of my computers that I do not use for SETI. That computer occasionally will overload my entire system both wired and wifi. That computer is wired to the router. Anyway the only way I can recover control of my network is to turn off that computer and disconnect the network cable. Just turning it off is not enough, the network cable needs to be unplugged.

I don't know what Steam does or is supposed to do but I consider it malware in the extreme.

That machine is off when my grandson is not here and still has done the same thing on a number of occasions.

I have Steam on 3 of my machines that all crunch 24/7 for years now. I have never had a problem that I could blame on Steam. I of course have all the games as "Exclusive Applications" in Boinc so I never play and crunch at the same time.

Your problem sounds like REAL Malware. Steam is definately NOT.

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the chat system in Steam is nothing much more than an IRC chat. Unless you or BOINC have problems with IRC I doubt that is the problem

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