Have you given any thought to allowing active members download more than one or two work units at a time. Although it's not my main reason for participating in SETI, my statistics and placement among other SETI participants are a part of what keeps me interested. The recent database crash resulting from an unscheduled power outage has caused my average credits to plumit over 500 points. If you would allow me to have 20 or 30 work units in my queue, it would mitigate this to some extent. Also, I'm sure you've thought about a UPS to mitigate the risk associated with unscheduled outages. I'd like to here your thoughts.

Thanks you,

Tony

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Hereby I allow you to get at least 30 wu's in your cache. The only thing you have to do is to set "Connect to network about every" to 3 day's in your general preferences.

The splitters (which create work) are still catching up from the high demand after the extended outage. While they are generating just barely enough work to send out to users, they are unable to create a large queue of backlogged work to send to participants who request large numbers of workunits at a time. So this isn't a policy decision - this is a supply/demand issue. If we are flush with work to send out, we give people what they ask for. [edit - and as stated below in another response - you can configure your settings to try and get more work].

The master science database isn't on UPS because we don't have a spare UPS at the moment for it. Most of our UPS's are in the server closet, and the master sci db is not currently in the closet - as up until very recently there wasn't any room for it. Plus we don't have the cash to buy a UPS if we don't need it. Why the cavalier attitude about the master science database? We back it up to tape regularly, it's on robust RAID, informix has proven itself quite able at recovering from sudden outages, and we currently can't afford an extra UPS for this power-hungry system, especially when in the near future we won't need it. And data lost is recoverable - we can always resplit tapes that got corrupted - but so far we haven't had to resort to that. This is policy, as is the fact that we don't "hide" outages from our users anymore like we did in Classic by sending out redundant work. Joining other projects is strongly encouraged.

- Matt

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-- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person
-- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude

Like Zap de Ridder says,

Go to "YOUR ACCOUNTS" at the top of the page. Click on the blue "View or edit general preferences". At the bottom of the page click on the "Edit preferences". That will allow you to increase the spot that says "Connect to network about every". That will increase the amount of work that you will have on your machine ready to run. Maybe try one day or something small at first. You want it small enough that you get the work returned on time but big enough to get through an outage. I've heard that it is best to keep it on the low side for multiple projects.

To get it to take effect immediately you need to update the project under the BOINC managers "Project" tab.

P.S. The servers are still having trouble creating enough work in time to send out and fill everyones cache. You can see that here at http://bluenorthernsoftware.com/scarecrow/sahstats/month.html

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P.S. The servers are still having trouble creating enough work in time to send out and fill everyones cache. You can see that here at http://bluenorthernsoftware.com/scarecrow/sahstats/month.html

Also, throughout the various outages over the last few months, the amount of work available has dropped to marginal levels only a couple times. (see the archived graphs for Sept. 05 and Jan. 06).
If there's a bit of a surplus there when things go down, the recovery time isn't as long when the lights come back on. If the cupboard is pretty bare to start with, those poor splitters are sweating bullets trying to keep up, especially now with even more hosts calling in to order a large cache with extra cheese.

<snip>
If there's a bit of a surplus there when things go down, the recovery time isn't as long when the lights come back on. If the cupboard is pretty bare to start with, those poor splitters are sweating bullets trying to keep up, especially now with even more hosts calling in to order a large cache with extra cheese.

LOL, Scarecrow you are a hoot!!

Although I prefer my cache with extra pickles and onions on the side. :-)

Alinator

Well. I've allways said " Just wait till they get the problem fixed and give it a day or so to catch up"
This time however, I have yet to get even a single unit to crunch from SETI and Einstein has taken over completely on one host and SIMAP on the other.
I will admit to being a little dissapointed that I got NONE at all so far.
Despite setting the other projects to "No New Work" since Friday.
I'm gonna let SIMAP and Einstein run out of results to crunch and see if
that helps. It'll take a few more days for them to run dry though.
S

Edited for Grammar ( Some anyway )

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That most likely won't make any difference, since the problem is there hasn't been any results to give you when you contact the project. Telling BOINC not to get more work for the others won't change that, and once the LTD builds up enough for SAH BOINC will start getting results one at a time for them until it does hit SAH and then run it primarily until the LTD is worked off.

<edit> Can't tell for sure since yours are hidden, but if you are always online and/or connecting regularly sooner or later you will get some.

I will admit that at this point it seems odd everyone hasn't gotten at least one.

HTH,

Alinator

The results in progress has increased from around 1.1 million to over 2 million, so someone is getting them!

Live long and crunch (if you can get 'em).

---

Paul
(S@H1 8888)
And proud of it!

Update !
Well as I explained, I usually just let BOINC take care of things and
don't pay all that much attention to the messages.
I recall that after the last outage, I posted about not feeling right about
abandoning the Einsteins that I by virtue of accepting them in the first place
committed to crunching.
This time and with the mind tweak RE: LTD I just took a look at the messages.
SETI was requesting 0 seconds of work !
I have no idea why seeing as the Einstein units have been working themselves down for a rew days.
So........ I did what I didn't really feel comfortable doing.
I reset Einstein ( Guilt mode on ).
Now.....
3/6/2006 7:57:21 PM|SETI@home|Requesting 1728000 seconds of work, returning 0 results
I suspect that in 10 min. (RPC RETRY TIME) I will get a result or two.
Counting down.....

With remorse....
Steve

Well... Just got 11 Results to crunch for SETI
It's now requesting 0 again.
Yet that's still odd. I usually get 60 or so after a while.

I guess I'm just not understanding this BOINC thing.
Thought I did.....

Well another day of SETI Crunching anyway.

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Well, don't feel too bad about the reset. They'll get over it. :-)

Although I'm not quite sure why you had built up such a whopping debt for SAH to be requesting almost 2Msecs of work!!

FWIW, you can get around things like this by zeroing the debts manually (with BOINC shutdown of course) or using one of the third party tools around.

<edit to your update> Cause ya sucked em dry when you finally hit them with a request.

<edit to my edit> I was grappling with a BOINC problem of my own, and neglected to register the fact you said it was requesting zero secs. work again. Of course this doesn't change the reason why you only got 11 on the last connection.

Can you check and see what your debt values are now? Also, what version of BOINC are you running?

Alinator

<snip message from "god" ;-)>
- Matt

Thanks for popping in with a few more morsels for us to ruminate on.

I hadn't checked out your online stuff or profile in while.

Have to admit I love the name of your team....

You just need a fuse! :-)

Alinator

If there's a bit of a surplus there when things go down, the recovery time isn't as long when the lights come back on. If the cupboard is pretty bare to start with, those poor splitters are sweating bullets trying to keep up, especially now with even more hosts calling in to order a large cache with extra cheese.

I like ordering from the BOINC buffet, so if they're out of pepperoni I can get the garden salad. 8-)

MJ

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Umm I have to confess, its me snapping up all the WU's. LOL
All my machines have full 2 day caches of WU's and are happily crunching away.
With the outage, I fell from 2000 RAC to almost 1600RAC,, but I am rebounding nicely. Just hang in there, the WU's will come. My machines where slow to recover WU's at first. I think its more luck of the draw on getting them right now.

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Umm I have to confess, its me snapping up all the WU's. LOL
All my machines have full 2 day caches of WU's and are happily crunching away.
With the outage, I fell from 2000 RAC to almost 1600RAC,, but I am rebounding nicely. Just hang in there, the WU's will come. My machines where slow to recover WU's at first. I think its more luck of the draw on getting them right now.

Hey, congrats on getting your cache full! So it's you that's been hoggimg them all to yourself!!! Haha!

Seriously, I agree with you on "luck of the draw". Some people have full caches, some have received only a few wu's and some haven't received any at all. I really feel sorry for someone on a dial up line that can't connect very often. They will most likely just have to give up on getting anything until all this is over unless they are *very* lucky! If one of them gets a full cache right now, I want to take him/her to the nearest casino, quick!
Jim

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Jim

Some people plan their life out and look back at the wealth they've had.
Others live life day by day and look back at the wealth of experiences and enjoyment they've had.

Hmm, got 11 projects, 8 projects giving out work, never ran dry, and always seem to be getting SETI WU's. I don't think I've ever ran out of SETI. :-) Gotta love other projects. :-) I know I do. Hehe.

@Matt, thanks for coming in and giving that excellent explaination.

Jeremy

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LHC started sending out work at about the start of the outage, so no problem here just set LHC to use a higher % of the time. On one system I suspended the SETI project and NNW on the other. LHC is out now so I can get back to SETI and I have 5 WU's on the maching with it running. These systems each have 3 or 4 projects running on each so they always have work. BATA got some extra time also but not as much as if LHC did not start up again.