Posts by BMaytum

1) Message boards : Technical News : Moving on... (Apr 08 2013) (Message 1357629)
Posted 38 days ago by

BMaytum

The public one, if it runs, will generate waterfall plots. Humans eyeballs need to look at the waterfall plots to figure out if it is BS or ET. ...

isn't this what Seti Live is doing: http://setilive.org/

I'd guess that's what Seti Live is/was attempting to do. Admittedly I didn't spend much time there or at the(ir?) related http://setiquest.org/join-the-quest/software/readme website. Initially I thought I might grab SetiQuest's open source SonATA "waterfall image" software to try on one of my (non-Ubuntu) linux PCs. But I chose not to after inferring from some blogs there that the initial multi-hundreds or thousands of eyeballs looking at waterfalls starting in 2011(?) had declined exponentially since then. I also wondered how they had blown through the $100,000 TED funding already....

Anyway, right after the recent successful S@H colocation, I too thought: "Great, now the SSL scientists can get on with NTPCKR so we longtime crunchers can see some candidates". But in reading the most recent posts in this thread, I'm beginning to wonder what's really going to happen to digesting the millions of S@H results, and when?

2) Questions and Answers : Windows : Validation issue? (Message 1355321)
Posted 44 days ago by

BMaytum

What's to be done now?

Wait.

Well Grant, I was skeptical that waiting further beyond six weeks would help, but tonight I checked the status of the 4 work units I listed above, and I'm please they are now all validated! Maybe yesterday's outage did it ......?

Or it just took that long to get enough results returned to validate them.
... If you're unlucky it could take 4+ months before something will finally be validated.

I am aware of that potential long wait for wingmen. However, my posting pointed out that the 4 WUs I listed above were completed by BOTH me and my wingmen six weeks earlier (Feb 2x, 2013) and had been in "completed awaiting validation" status since that time - so I was questioning why they stayed in that status for so long. See this one for example http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/workunit.php?wuid=1175024737

I still don't know why the validation action took six weeks, but since they're now "completed and validated" my curiosity has abated somewhat.

3) Questions and Answers : Windows : Validation issue? (Message 1355208)
Posted 45 days ago by

BMaytum

What's to be done now?

Wait.

Well Grant, I was skeptical that waiting further beyond six weeks would help, but tonight I checked the status of the 4 work units I listed above, and I'm please they are now all validated! Maybe yesterday's outage did it ......?

For me, now SOLVED.

4) Message boards : Number crunching : Gripes and Kudos II (Message 1354416)
Posted 47 days ago by

BMaytum

Kudos: (1) to members & esp. Richard Haselgrove (his RegEdit methods) for the Windows TCP Fix prior to the more recent Colocation, and (2) to all who chose & implemented the Colocation move. I was at wits end about the WU Download choking & was ready to pull my plug from S@H Project prior to both of these kudo-worthy events.

Gripes: Only one ATM, see http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=71040&postid=1354413

5) Questions and Answers : Windows : Validation issue? (Message 1354413)
Posted 47 days ago by

BMaytum

I have several items a month old waiting on validation, seems like it is taking forever for validation on items.

I too have multiple "Completed, waiting for validation" MB work units that both I and my wingmen completed six weeks ago. For example, see these:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/workunit.php?wuid=1175029664
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/workunit.php?wuid=1175029658
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/workunit.php?wuid=1175024797
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/workunit.php?wuid=1175024737
and more.....

What's to be done now?

6) Message boards : Number crunching : Gripes and Kudos II (Message 1348737)
Posted 65 days ago by

BMaytum

Since some of you are complaining about the downloads of new tasks here is a solution that has worked for me and many others.

1) Download TCPOptimizer (sorry I don't have a link so maybe try google)
2) Run the program, at the bottom it says Choose Settings: Click on Optimal then click Custom and place a check mark next to "TimeStamps" then click Apply!
3) reboot and problem solved you should download nice and fast for every task.

Alternatively (rather than using TCPOptimizer) if you're running Windows, see Richard Haselgrove's two easy methods http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=71002&postid=1344153 that set a Registry parameter to relieve WU download congestion on your PC. (Other posters recently pointed out that thread here, but apparently some posters haven't yet understood). Check it out, the Registry setting completely relieved WU download congestion for my 3 PCs.[/url]

7) Message boards : Number crunching : Plz Update "Top GPU Models" page (Message 1348734)
Posted 65 days ago by

BMaytum

I don't know who maintains the "Top GPU Models" webpage:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/gpu_list.php
but it is rather out of date in that Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 and GTX 690 models are not currently included (even though the contemporary GTX670 is listed). Likewise the Quadro series GPUs are absent (and the new GeForce Titan <- I'm assuming Titan GPU crunches S@H).

I request the maintainer to update the subject page in their spare time.

Thanks!

8) Message boards : Number crunching : Panic Mode On (82) Server Problems? (Message 1340938)
Posted 88 days ago by

BMaytum

Well 9-10 days ago, the U/Ls, D/Ls & Reporting throughput was awesomely good, for example: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=70730&postid=1338911.

Then S@H had the weekend power maintenance outage, and in the 1-1/2 days since S@H came back up (2/24AM in Berkeley), the Downloads have just been AWFUL. The current D/L constipation is completely painful - WUs now sit in Download:active status (usually in & out between active and Retry in 5,30,45 minutes or more) for interminably long time periods. Exiting and restarting BOINC previously helped get stalled WU downloads moving, but now it rarely gets any WU D/L to budge.

Maybe Matt L. needs to re-install his (unspecified) tweaks that got everything flowing so well 10 days ago? Please apply that much needed ExLax!

9) Message boards : Number crunching : Panic Mode On (81) Server Problems? (Message 1338911)
Posted 97 days ago by

BMaytum

Bandwidth ... than useless server chatter with no results.

Yes, we need more bandwidth to fully sort comms difficulties, but Matt has proven that proper server configuration can also go a long ways toward fully utilizing what we now have.

Whatever tweaks or adjustments Matt applied recently have really IMPROVED the DL /UL /Report throughput (and now few stalls) for me, just over the hill from SSL. Prior to those tweaks, I seriously contemplated pulling my plug on SAH from so much communications frustration. Now greatly improved, I'll stick around to atleast reach my 14th SAH Anniversary in April.

Kudos MATT!

10) Message boards : Number crunching : Panic Mode On (76) Server Problems? (Message 1268921)
Posted 290 days ago by

BMaytum

Someone change the rules? I'm getting a lot of VLARS in the batch of 6.10 MB cuda tasks that I'm downloading. Thought that was a no-no???

Example:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/result.php?resultid=2555706532

There's a separate thread at present about VLARs being sent to Nvidia GPUs over here:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=68947

11) Message boards : Number crunching : .vlar WUs to NVIDIA GPUs (Problem Solved) (Message 1268919)
Posted 290 days ago by

BMaytum

Why not give it a try? Possibly it may be working out.

Checking it out, two of the .vlar tasks I had in my task list completed successfully using CUDA and was uploaded.

There may be some interesting things found at times in these type of tasks. If it could be done in a faster way, results possibly could be obtained.

But, of course, the error rate could be high and definitely success is not always guaranteed doing it this way.

I got some VLARS sent to my GPU too today (7Aug 2012) after the weekly scheduled outage. Two of them completed successfuly but took over 8,100 elapsed seconds; two of them terminated with Time Limit Exceeded at 10,161 seconds. Four more were in progress, with over 1hr:40mins elapsed and about 1h:05m estimated remaining but since Estimated remaining was continually Increasing (thus the elapsed + estimated would eventually exceed 10,161 sec ~2hr:48min), I manually aborted them. I'm running a GTX580 with v301.42 nVidia drivers, with count= 0.25 (thus GPU can process 4 concurrent workunits). Using BOINC v 7.0.28, and Lunatics optimized MB applications.

When I later got another cache-load of 11 WUs, I manually aborted the 4 GPU VLARs in that batch immediately, given my less-than stellar experince with the prior 6 VLARs on my GPU as noted just above.

12) Message boards : Number crunching : [error] No start tag in scheduler reply (Message 1239453)
Posted 358 days ago by

BMaytum

Well, whatever those [error] messages werabout earlier, I then git "no tasks available" for awhile, and now just got 12 new WUs to crunch so I'm happy.

Maybe the scheduler was just re-acting to the lousy US jobs report, plummeting Treasury yields, and bid drops in US & European stock indices this mornibg....

13) Message boards : Number crunching : [error] No start tag in scheduler reply (Message 1239433)
Posted 358 days ago by

BMaytum

14) Message boards : Number crunching : Boinc 7.0.27 win x64 (Message 1226901)
Posted 386 days ago by

BMaytum

And as I said to David on the boinc_alpha mailing list before this hit the ... streets,

"That's rather a brutal way of notifying people of the change, isn't it?"

Yes. Will it be effective though for people to understand / realize and then hand-edit? We'll just have to wait and see............ If the board gets swamped with "WTH?" inquiries on this subject, a Sticky thread with proper instructions may be needed.

15) Message boards : Number crunching : How to release orphaned MB WUs? (Message 1218329)
Posted 405 days ago by

BMaytum

You can abort them, I believe, in the Tasks tab.

jravin: Yes in theory, I "could" abort them IF my PC could connect to the project using it's OLD ID, BUT now my PC attaches to the S@H project using it's NEW ID (so it doesn't know anything about the OLD PC's orphaned Work Unit cache). Is there a temporary hack (eg an edit in some BOINC xml file(s)) to set the PC to use the OLD ID such that I could then abort the Old PC's WUs, and then "restore" the hacked file)s) back to the New PC ID?

I would think you would need to enter the old values into your client_state.xml for <host_cpid> & <hostid>, but there may be more requirements.

The merge system is very... wonky. Sometimes it lets me merge completely different machine and other time I can't merge the same machine when it spontaneously generates a new ID.

You're also got to edit the <rpc_seqno> number to a couple of figures higher than the 'Number of times client has contacted server' figure from your host details page, otherwise the server will generate a new host id,

Claggy

Thanks jravin and Claggy. I tried your suggestions to "trick" BOINC/ S@H project to think I was connecting with OLD Host ID 5185956, but the trick did NOT take:
- I first made a backup copy of my current/new host's client_state.xml file;
- I replaced that client_state.xml for my NEW host ID 5510858 with a copy of "client_state.old.xml" (dated 6/6/2010) which has the OLD host ID 5185956 and 22-month old <user_create_time>, <user_total_credit>, <host_create_time>, etc., which BTW has the SAME <host_cpid> value as the NEW host (and many other parameters are the same, e.g. <user_email_hash>, <user_create_date>, <cross_project_id>, etc.);
- as Claggy suggested, I also set <rpc_seqno> to 23202 = the project-reported figure for the old host ID 5185956 = 23,199 + 3.

After starting BOINC with this hacked client_state.xml, it connects to S@H BUT it doesn't list the 15 orphaned MB Work Units assigned to Old ID 5185956 (it lists 0 tasks in cache = that's what New ID 5510858 has assigned at the moment). Moreover, making that connection caused the hacked client_state.xml to be modified:
- e.g., the <cpid_time>, <user_total_credit>, <user_expavg_credit>, etc. were re-written to values for the New host;
- yet even so, oddly the <hostid>5185956</hostid> corresponding to the Old host ID was NOT changed.

So, do I need to "hack" some other XML file(s) so I can "trick" BOINC/ S@H to allow me to connect as the Old host 5185956 (if so, I'll crunch the orphaned WUs to avoid making Wingmen wait by having them re-sent upon due date expiration). Suggestions anyone??

16) Message boards : Number crunching : CLOSED* SETI/BOINC Milestones [ v2.0 ] - XXIV *CLOSED (Message 1217564)
Posted 407 days ago by

BMaytum

Well it took me 13 years and 8 days, and countless KWHrs, but I finally passed the 2,000,000 cobblestone milestone - Whew !!

17) Message boards : Number crunching : How to release orphaned MB WUs? (Message 1212330)
Posted 420 days ago by

BMaytum

You can abort them, I believe, in the Tasks tab.

jravin: Yes in theory, I "could" abort them IF my PC could connect to the project using it's OLD ID, BUT now my PC attaches to the S@H project using it's NEW ID (so it doesn't know anything about the OLD PC's orphaned Work Unit cache). Is there a temporary hack (eg an edit in some BOINC xml file(s)) to set the PC to use the OLD ID such that I could then abort the Old PC's WUs, and then "restore" the hacked file)s) back to the New PC ID?

18) Message boards : Number crunching : How to release orphaned MB WUs? (Message 1212152)
Posted 420 days ago by

BMaytum

Last week (or so) one of my systems suffered (yet another) crash while crunching MB WUs on C2Duo + GTX580 vid card (4 at a time, albeit with questionable 290.xx drivers). Anyway, on reboot and relaunch of BOINC Manager, the PC got assigned a new Seti machine ID for some odd reason, thus the 17 WUs in its cache are orphaned. I hate to let them just expire (not wanting to disservice my honorable wingmen), so is there a way I can "cancel" them for an immediate resend of the WUs?

Old PC w/ orphaned WUs here: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/results.php?hostid=5185956
"New" PC is here: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=5510858

I've tried to merge the old PC into the new PC's ID, trying both methods: by name; and manually. But the response is a message saying the "two" PCs are not the same -whoohaa! Is there another way (or some trick to force) the merge?
[/url]

19) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : IBM makes huge stride toward developing scalable quantum computer (Message 1202784)
Posted 445 days ago by

BMaytum

News of a recent IBM advancement in Quantum Computing
http://www.techspot.com/news/47598-ibm-makes-huge-stride-toward-developing-scalable-quantum-computer.html. Watch the IBM video there too.

I want one of those 10+ Qbit processors to use for crunching Seti work units (though the project servers at Berzerkeley probably couldn't feed WUs and assimilate results fast enough).

20) Message boards : Number crunching : Monday Morning Outage (Message 1202683)
Posted 445 days ago by

BMaytum

We in the San Francisco Bay area had a moderate earthquake this morning (05:33AM PST = 13:33 UTC), magnitude ~ 4.3, epicenter 2-4 miles north of Berzerkely. Hopefully those doing the electrical outage checks (outage scheduled to start about an hour from now) will see if the quake rattled anything loose at the Lab- unlikely any ill effects since S@H website is running just fine ATM.

Update 5March (12:50PM PST/ 10:50 UTC):Here's a local news website report http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Earthquake-Near-el-cerrito-41-141415823.html , with interesting links to USGS (US Geological Survey) website for this Magnitude 4.0 event http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqinthenews/2012/nc71746766/ and nearby recent seismic activity http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqscanv/FaultMaps/122-38.html

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