Posts by alephnull

1) Message boards : Number crunching : Panic Mode On (76) Server Problems? (Message 1273270)
Posted 20 Aug 2012 by alephnull
Post:
Uploads okay here. Scheduler requests okay when I'm on NNT. When I request work, 3 of 4 time out, then I get lost tasks when I do connect.

+1

although ive had two or three occasions where the scheduler requests hung with nnt as well.

lowered cache settings to 2 days but didnt seem to help.

ive noticed these issues only on the machines with gpu work. all my machines with only cpu work schedule fine.

uploads ok with the occasional timeout/retry.

downloads are pretty good depending on the dl server per request (as already known).

rob
2) Message boards : Number crunching : slow downloads? (Message 1250512)
Posted 23 Jun 2012 by alephnull
Post:
ok, ill just wait a couple of days and see if the work buffer fills up eventually. thanks for the info.
3) Message boards : Number crunching : slow downloads? (Message 1250498)
Posted 23 Jun 2012 by alephnull
Post:
sorry for the bother but i was wondering if others may be having issues with slow downloads recently? when i was running boinc version 6.10.58, the issues were not as bad as they seem now. after experimenting with versions 6.10.58, 6.12.34, 7.0.25 and currently 7.0.28 (test version), i was finally able to at least get some work for seti on this host. it took a little playing around because that particular host has quite a lot of einstein work so the scheduler would not send anything for seti.

currently for that host, i have 118 wu downloading and 4 ready to start (for seti).

for the work units downloading, the download will start, hover around 0.4 - 2 Kbs, then backoff. in the past 30 minutes or so ive probably been able to complete about 10 or so seti wu downloads.

just wondering if anyone else experiencing really slow downloads currently? sorry to ask a question thats been asked millions of times. just seems bad in the past couple of days. i would like to have the machine mentioned above a dedicated gpu seti cruncher but i cant get the work it seems, let alone build a sufficient work buffer (hence the einstein work).

currently running boinc 7.0.28. any info/comments are appreciated.
4) Message boards : Number crunching : Suggestion for Number Crunching format (Message 1075122)
Posted 7 Feb 2011 by alephnull
Post:
I try to read this board every day if time permits but don't post much because there are many more knowledgeable people here then myself. Needless to say, I have gained much useful information here as a result of some discussions possibly getting side-tracked. Typically it appears most discussions stay on point and the main issues are addressed. As for the few discussion that may spin out of control at times: wouldn't it be unfortunate to negate all quasi-relevant (and interesting) discussions for the sake of strictness? Maybe the degree by which some appreciate (or disapprove) of this flexibility varies more greatly than expected. If it turns out a stricter technical area is started, I'll just try to keep up with both then. In any event, thanks to all for the good information and advice posted here.
5) Message boards : Number crunching : BOINC doesn't get new work properly??? (Message 915500)
Posted 7 Jul 2009 by alephnull
Post:
Wasn't it Arthur C. Clarke who said any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature?


I wish he had, then we could all go home every day knowing we all somehow added some new features to the world.
6) Message boards : Number crunching : BOINC doesn't get new work properly??? (Message 915455)
Posted 7 Jul 2009 by alephnull
Post:
Thank you all for your help and suggestions (even snarky Ned).

What it all boils down to is that "that's the way it is" and that's that. Too bad (that's why it's called Software ENGINEERING - you make incremental changes as time goes on to correct (IMO) bugs - or unintended features).

I've only been a programmer since 1964 or so - so what do I know? But I will tell you that ego shouldn't be involved in programming decisions. ("That's the way it is" isn't a fact, just ego sticking out).

But I certainly understand BOINC better now for this thread, so, again, thanks.


It doesn't sound to me like any of the items mentioned here are bugs or unintended features. If I understand all this correctly, BOINC is working as intended, its more a matter of temporary short-term imbalance due to insufficient work from one (or possibly several) projects and will even out as time goes on.

If all projects were sending out work in a perfect world, then the time allocation per project would be right-on I would imagine. Is this the case? If so, then this is a matter of some difficulties with one project (SETI in particular in this case) and will be resolved once those issues are fixed; therefore, this is not a bug nor is it an unintended feature. In so far as my computer is currently doing work, I can reasonably expect that SETI will "catch-up" later when all is well right? If so, I'm happy with all that.
7) Message boards : Number crunching : CPU cache not reporting properly? (Message 907911)
Posted 15 Jun 2009 by alephnull
Post:
Pappa,

The link you provided was exactly what I used to install the optimized app on all the machines. I used the "Win32 Lunatics' Unified Installer FINAL BETA" and it did all the calculations and configurations for the app_info.xml file that I previously had to do manually. Thats a nice nice install tool they made.

As for running both CPU and CUDA SETI WUs on the Q6600 machine, it never seems to download the CPU WUs as the E2200 machine does. I will be testing out some alternate configurations tonight to see if I can get it to work.

perryjay,

As you and Pappa have mentioned, that 8400 card doesn't seem to do to bad. It more or less seems to be like an extra core as you mentioned which is nice.


Once I can figure out how to get the Q6600 to crunch both CUDA and SETI WUs, I will probably get the Q9550 to the same config as well but the Q9550 lost a HDD last night so I'm gonna wait for the replacement before I do the final reconfiguration on it.

What started out as a cache question seems to be spawning into more of a BOINC Manager configuration discussion. I hope going a little off topic here is OK. Again, I really appreciate all the information and insight from everyone. Thanks.
8) Message boards : Number crunching : CPU cache not reporting properly? (Message 907857)
Posted 15 Jun 2009 by alephnull
Post:
Joe,

Thanks for that explanation about the way BOINC resolves the cache value on Windows machines. I now know that everything is good and well thanks to the good information provided here.

Again, thanks all for the information and assistance.

9) Message boards : Number crunching : CPU cache not reporting properly? (Message 907806)
Posted 15 Jun 2009 by alephnull
Post:
Ian,

Thanks for the information. I guess from what you are saying that things are OK then. My machine with the Q6600 in it is running other BOINC projects as it never downloads any SETI work other than the CUDA WUs. Same goes for the Q9550 machine. Both these machines have the optimized apps installed. From what I originally understood, the machine would only run CUDA or CPU WUs but not both (as indicated in Q 5 here http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/cuda_faq.php) so I'm not too sure what's going on there. Maybe there is a setting I may have missed. Anyway, I was thinking they would eventually start getting normal CPU units but nothing yet but as long as they are doing something useful for the project, I'm OK with that. I was just thinking maybe there was a way to get these machines to do more work but it seems all is well. Incidentally, that Q6600 machine only does 3700 RAC across all projects but this might not mean much as all the projects calculate RAC and credits differently.

As for the E2200 with the 8400 card, I just threw that in there so it could maybe do a little more work on the GPU. That is a backup server and I don't think I'm going to get a better graphics card for a machine I rarely log into. I will probably change the configuration of that machine (E2200) to the SETI project only though. I was thinking about doing that for the Q6600 but changed my mind when I saw it wasn't downloading any CPU SETI WUs. At that point, I attached it to other projects so that the CPU wouldn't be idle. If there is a way to change that so that it will crunch both CUDA and CPU WUs for SETI, I would make that a dedicated SETI box as well.

I have read a lot of information about the AP WUs and look forward to when they come online again. Nice to have steady WUs like those as well.

When time permits, I will keep up to date with possible ways I can change the configurations so that I can dedicate more machines to SETI only.

Again, thanks for your time and the good information.
10) Message boards : Number crunching : CPU cache not reporting properly? (Message 907773)
Posted 15 Jun 2009 by alephnull
Post:
Hi all,

Just a quick question related to CPU cache. Recently I have searching the forums and trying to learn how to get my computers to run a little faster. I figure the more my computers can do the better. After looking at many threads and comparing my computers to other similar computers, I have found my computers are probably not running as efficiently as they could. I guess I have several questions related to this:

1. I read that CPU cache is pretty important for running SETI but since the three computers in question are running CUDA WUs and wont use the CPU, how important is this?

2. The following computers are the ones I wonder about:

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=4941154

in cpuz the cache is reported as 1024 KBytes but 488.28 KB for SETI

-----

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=4911647

in cpuz the cache is reported as 2x6144 KBytes but 244.14 KB for SETI

-----

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=4907209

in cpuz the cache is reported as 2x4096 KBytes but 244.14 KB for SETI


Why is SETI not reporting the cache sizes as reflected in cpuz? Does this impact the amount of work these computers are doing even though they are doing CUDA WUs? All three of these computers are using 32bit Windows OS, does that make a difference?


I have seen other computers with similar configurations using a Q6600 CPUs and see they are producing RACS of 10k+ while mine (host 4907209) is around 1,780. I figure even if those hosts are overclocking and do other tweaks, is it really possible they are getting 4x performance? Or is there something I can do to make these systems perform better?

I started am using the optimized applications recently thinking this may help increase the performance a bit.

If there is any information I need to provide, please let me know. I am using the the 6.6.36 BOINC client on all these systems.

As a side note, I saw in the readme about CUDA that a host using CUDA would not run both CPU and CUDA WUs. My one host (4941154) does. Don't know why, just thought I'd mention it.

Thanks.

11) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Car Racing 2009 (Message 904593)
Posted 7 Jun 2009 by alephnull
Post:
Vettel is on pole for tomorrows race in istanbul.
In front of both brawnies Button and Barichello.


Won't really matter, everyone knows Raikkonen is gonna win!

Seriously though, I'm glad to see Ferrari and the other teams are becoming more competitive as the season progresses. The Brawn dominance this year is quite surprising. I still maintain Button is overrated but he did win Monaco so I may have to change my tune a bit.

It would be great to see Vettel win the Turkey GP.

As a side note, am I in the minority by thinking that the new qualifying format they started a few of years ago is not as good as it was previously? I mean, before qualifying was about running individually to see which car had the best setup and which driver could do a "perfect" lap to prove this - those results were then used to set the starting grid. The new format introduces too many variables to make this sort of determination. Why race three mini-races to determine the grid? The purity is lost for me; it was the one aspect of the sport where car and driver and team were put to the test in a more controlled environment for comparison purposes. Just curious about what others think about this...
12) Questions and Answers : Wish list : Selective GPU usage (Message 900721)
Posted 28 May 2009 by alephnull
Post:
In addition to this feature, it would be nice to be able to schedule down time as well for the CUDA WUs. I have had some issues with overheating on my video card and have decided to turn it off from crunching CUDA WUs on one of my systems. I am still testing this to see if I can find a balance but if BOINC had some sort of periodic scheduler, I would be able to use the GPU more often than not. For example, allow to run for 30 minutes, 10 minute cooldown, run again 30 minutes, 10 minute cooldown, etc...

Of course I would imagine people would want the ability to customize all this; for me something that would allow me to define a periodic cooldown would be sufficient.

Thanks for the consideration...





 
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