Well, I initially just tried to start a free discussion on the issue. Then I was accused of cheating, then I was told that I had to "rethink my motivation" for being here, and that it wouldn't matter if I left, because I'm a "credit monger", so I DID. I rethought my motivation. And I decided that since my "science" isn't GOOD ENOUGH for all you altruists out there, that fine. I'll just leave. If I'm not wanted or needed by this project, then so be it. I'll wait until I can no longer get 4.18 work, and then I'll be gone. The problem for you, is that quite a few other top crunchers have stated that they too will be leaving, and thus the Exodus begins.

Regards, Daniel.

Yes, but who was it that accused you of cheating... not the actual official scientists and administrators of the Seti@Home Project. Very few of the actual Project "People" post here, Eric being one of them. Note that I'm intentionally not including the Volunteer Testers or the Volunteer Developers. Why? Because they do NOT speak for the Seti@Home project officially, nor do they speak for the Berkeley team. They make great contributions, but they do not determine what is "Good Science" or not. You are free to do as you please, but I doubt it's fair in the other direction to hold the Seti@Home administrators and scientists accountable for the opinions (however valid or invalid) of members of this Message Board.

---

Well, I initially just tried to start a free discussion on the issue. Then I was accused of cheating, then I was told that I had to "rethink my motivation" for being here, and that it wouldn't matter if I left, because I'm a "credit monger", so I DID. I rethought my motivation. And I decided that since my "science" isn't GOOD ENOUGH for all you altruists out there, that fine. I'll just leave. If I'm not wanted or needed by this project, then so be it. I'll wait until I can no longer get 4.18 work, and then I'll be gone. The problem for you, is that quite a few other top crunchers have stated that they too will be leaving, and thus the Exodus begins.

Regards, Daniel.

Yes, but who was it that accused you of cheating... not the actual official scientists and administrators of the Seti@Home Project. Very few of the actual Project "People" post here, Eric being one of them. Note that I'm intentionally not including the Volunteer Testers or the Volunteer Developers. Why? Because they do NOT speak for the Seti@Home project officially, nor do they speak for the Berkeley team. They make great contributions, but they do not determine what is "Good Science" or not. You are free to do as you please, but I doubt it's fair in the other direction to hold the Seti@Home administrators and scientists accountable for the opinions (however valid or invalid) of members of this Message Board.

Well, one of them needs to step in here before those who do NOT speak officially for the project manage to run off a large portion of the power crunchers.

---

Have you noticed that after crunching just a few Enhanced WU's on a machine that has been using the Crunch3r optimized application and Trux's calibrating client, that the Duration Correction Factor gets driven up so fast by just a few Enhanced WU's, that even Trux's calibrating client is only able to claim such a low credit for older WU's, that it is hardly worth crunching them and you are better off living with just doing the Enhanced WU's and not trying to mix them on a system. Nice feature to force you to switch completely. This rapid adjustment of the Duration Correction Factor by long running WU has been complained about in the past with little response, so I have to assume the developers and Seti management like it that way, as it discourages use of optimized applications and clients. This and the sometimes No Work on machines still running just the old optimized application has caused me to raise my old 0.8 DAYS queue to near 3.0 DAYS on them, to make sure I don't run out of work.

Jack

Both Andy and I pointed out there were issues running Trux's Optimized Core Client with Enhanced... I loaded it on a couple of machine for testing during Beta...

You can get around that by turning "calibration = off" for Seti and still use it for other projects... I also stated that as I am moving optimized in and optimzed out that there were three instances where it caused issues shutting down and restarting... No there was nothing that I could directly put my finger on other that BOINC Manager with trux's client was shutdown... First suspend work and when everything shows "suspended" exit BOINC Manager...

So while Trux may be busy, I am sure that he would be looking at the various mailing lists... I suspect that he is waiting for things to stablize...

Have you noticed that after crunching just a few Enhanced WU's on a machine that has been using the Crunch3r optimized application and Trux's calibrating client, that the Duration Correction Factor gets driven up so fast by just a few Enhanced WU's, that even Trux's calibrating client is only able to claim such a low credit for older WU's, that it is hardly worth crunching them and you are better off living with just doing the Enhanced WU's and not trying to mix them on a system. Nice feature to force you to switch completely. This rapid adjustment of the Duration Correction Factor by long running WU has been complained about in the past with little response, so I have to assume the developers and Seti management like it that way, as it discourages use of optimized applications and clients. This and the sometimes No Work on machines still running just the old optimized application has caused me to raise my old 0.8 DAYS queue to near 3.0 DAYS on them, to make sure I don't run out of work.

---

Please consider a Donation to the Seti Project.

Daniel,
You have the "volunteer tester" tag -- did you not help with the Beta? Did you not comment on the crunching time or granted credit?

Obviously the whole relase of 5.12 came out of nowhere. It was a surprise to me and i think to Daniel too that while knowning this app is to buggy to be released.

It is of course your decision: no one asked you to build 23 machines just for SETI (or any other BOINC project).

And noone asked for fpop counting...

It just seems silly to get so upset over credits with effectively zero value.

Well if i look at your RAC or one of the other guys who only ... and look at Daniels RAC then ...

Well Said Crunc3r! - it seems that those that have not spent the time nor energy on the project are the ones that don't care. That is appropriate, but for those of us that have spent a lot of cash, time and energy are the ones that are consistently being criticized for being credit whores..so be it.
And yes, to respond to a previous post, there was a lot of talk about fpop counting and such over on the beta site. And proper credit for proper work was a concern for the developers, I am not privy to why they chose the course of action they did, but here we are.
We are still better off than what we had during classic, in classic, who would have dreamed of being able to crunch for even 1000 credits a day! Let alone 10,000 or 20,000 a day. It took me several years to get the 6,000 that I ended up with.

---

Daniel et al

I have been avoiding the Forum's with reason, I have not been helping the transition... Competition is fine... Some of the Fun has been lost...

No one, really wants to see anyone leave... Right now we are all in the middle of a debate and a transition... As I shifted machines running Beta over to Seti BOINC SANS optimization at Eric's request for a credit analysis... That is still a work in progress, besides the Win9.x issue... This does not mention the long hard fought what happens with VLAR's and VHAR's...

One of my statements in Seti Beta is to ease the transition, give the users the credit... So currently we have a full blown debate about credit... Currently some feel it is too low (I have to include myself there). We have not even completed the transition to allow for "before and after" studies... That table is still incomplete... I am guilty of running my small number of computers in a "mixed" (optimized and no optimized state)... Overall, a recompile and credits are adjusted unless you have an app_info.xml...

So if everyohe can step back and take breath and remember we are here for the Science...

Edit
BTW? did anyone notice that the weekly outage cleared in less than an hour as Seti Enhanced is working? I did, my laptop that travels and is set for No New Work, uploaded and reported...

Well, I initially just tried to start a free discussion on the issue. Then I was accused of cheating, then I was told that I had to "rethink my motivation" for being here, and that it wouldn't matter if I left, because I'm a "credit monger", so I DID. I rethought my motivation. And I decided that since my "science" isn't GOOD ENOUGH for all you altruists out there, that fine. I'll just leave. If I'm not wanted or needed by this project, then so be it. I'll wait until I can no longer get 4.18 work, and then I'll be gone. The problem for you, is that quite a few other top crunchers have stated that they too will be leaving, and thus the Exodus begins.

Regards, Daniel.

Regards

Al
aka Pappa

---

Please consider a Donation to the Seti Project.

Ahm...The weekly outage is not until TOMORROW. Sorry, Al...

I will wait to make my final decision until there has been some kind of response from project management regarding this fiasco. Then, we'll see what happens.

Regards, Daniel.

You can get around that by turning "calibration = off" for Seti and still use it for other projects... I also stated that as I am moving optimized in and optimized out that there were three instances where it caused issues shutting down and restarting... No there was nothing that I could directly put my finger on other that BOINC Manager with trux's client was shutdown...

I know, and have ran into those problems too. It acts like the client is not correctly updating its open files before closing them, or worse not even closing all of them. I have watched BOINC set there running in memory for as long as five minutes after telling it to exit. Or hanging the shutdown process if it is not manually exited first. Sounds like you are telling me all those old problems have not been addressed in the new versions of the Client. An Exit, disable startup, wait and then reboot is the only safe way, and I will be doing system updates and cleanup at the same time anyway and don't want Seti running during that process.

I have been too busy with other things to bother with Seti much the past three weeks, and finally was forced to take a break by heavy rains here in South Florida today. I will be taking the easy way out. Have downloaded and setup diskettes and CD-R with what all that I need right now. Just shutdown and convert one machine at a time as I have time and after the servers stop sending it any more old WU's. Remove the old optimized application and only run Crunch3r's Seti Enhanced 5.12 (or better). Turn optimization off and keep Trux's client only for its Return_Results_Immediately option.

Will worry about the new Client much later, hopefully after Trux has had time to update his with stable code for Windows 98/ME systems. All I need it for is the Return_Results_Immediately option now, which is sort of ridiculous that the standard client does not do it automatically. Four older system I picked up recently (P3) to use for Setiathome will instead be scrapped for a few parts, not worth the electric bill now. As someone else said, its starting to get hot down here now. Not sure if I will even bother to convert my slowest system any times soon, that I use for personal software development and testing. At least not until I find a link that explains in detail what the "Timer Problem" is all about, and can make sure there is no confict with a program I am writing and testing.

Yet again, Dr. Andersons only reply to Eric about credit was:


David Anderson to Eric, BOINC
More options Mar 5

Given the goals of
1) minimizing variance of claimed credit for a given result, and
2) parity between projects (on average)
it seems like the most practical solution is to use FLOP counts,
but scale them as needed for 2).


-- David

- Show quoted text -

and to show you Eric did think this through, here's the question:

Eric J Korpela to BOINC
More options Mar 4

SETI@home enhanced is coming up on release and it's getting to the
point where I need to decide what to do about credit calculation. The
big problem is the disparity between calculating credit based upon CPU
time and calculating credit based upon work actually performed (i.e.
FLOPS).

If you go to boincstats.com and look at the total recent credit you'll
see something that looks like 2000 TFLOP/s. That number is about a
factor of 10 higher than the total number of FLOPS actually begin
done. It's actually the theoretical maximum performance of BOINC
rather than an actual performance. (And people writing papers about
BOINC should be aware of that lest they provide incorrect
information.)

If I calculate the actual number of FLOPS performed by S@H enhanced
and compare it to the run times, the average ratio between theoretical
(i.e. the benchmarks) and actual performance is about 4. The ratio is
strongly dependent upon processor speed with 2 GFLOP processors having
a larger ratio than a 1 GFLOP processor. That's not really surprising
since a memory bandwidth limited process should scale with the FSB
speed, not with the processor speed. (See
http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/beta/forum_thread.php?id=111 for some
plots)

So the dilemma I face is how to grant credit in a way that's fair.
Within a project, granting by "work done" is OK, but when we're
talking about multiple projects it gets more complicated. I've
already got people predicting a mass exodus from SETI@home when people
with "fast" (high benchmarking) machines realize they will get more
"credits" from projects that grant by CPU time rather than by work
done.

In the S@H beta project, I've temporarily resolved the problem by
granting 9X the number of FLOPs. Yet I still get complaints from
people whose machine have high benchmark scores. (As can be seen from
many other threads in the beta forums).

If granting by actual work becomes a problem, the two resolutions that
I can see are to either go back to CPU time for credit and discard the
idea of measuring work done, or to modify how BOINC calculates scores
when using the CPU time method, so as to more accurately show
performance.

One possibility would be to change the cpu_time derived credit to be:

credit=cpu_time/(4/memory_bandwidth+1/FLOPS+1/IOPS)*constant

If any of the number (bandwidth/4, flops, iops) is significantly lower
than the others, it would then become the dominant term in the
calculation... I suppose it would be possible to use the memory
bandwidth in combination with cache size/bandwidth and working set
size to come up with a better measurement.

Other ideas?

Eric

Daniel

Right now many are saying things that go outside what we would normally do/say... I am also guilty...

Yes tommorows outage as long as UCB Staff remembers to to turn everything "on" will be interesting...

Ahm...The weekly outage is not until TOMORROW. Sorry, Al...

I will wait to make my final decision until there has been some kind of response from project management regarding this fiasco. Then, we'll see what happens.

Regards, Daniel.

I suspect that they are hoping it blows over... When everyone is done getting things off their chest then things go back to normal. Users have problems, Users help Users...

Regards
Al

---

Please consider a Donation to the Seti Project.

@Jack Gulley,

Just out of interest why do you need the return immediately option?

And please don't say its because you run old hardware, I run a p2 300 on Beta.

Andy

@Jack Gulley,

Just out of interest why do you need the return immediately option?

And please don't say its because you run old hardware, I run a p2 300 on Beta.

Andy

It's extremely useful, you can spot failed hosts immediately because they fall back in your hosts list.

Regards Hans

P.S: With seti enhanced, no answer in 12hrs just means you got yourself a really tough WU :o)

---

Why not use a number that kept the granted credit at or very near the current credit per hour level rather than reducing it?

As has been posted many times before- they did.
But it was based on the official client, not the optimised ones.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

Ahm...The weekly outage is not until TOMORROW. Sorry, Al...
Regards, Daniel.

Ho, hum.....

2006-05-16 06:04:57 [SETI@home] Started upload of 22fe99aa.24201.1074.436076.3.173_3_0
2006-05-16 06:05:00 [SETI@home] Temporarily failed upload of 22fe99aa.24201.1074.436076.3.173_3_0: error 403
2006-05-16 06:05:00 [SETI@home] Backing off 3 minutes and 41 seconds on upload of file 22fe99aa.24201.1074.436076.3.173_3_0
2006-05-16 06:08:42 [SETI@home] Started upload of 22fe99aa.24201.1074.436076.3.173_3_0
2006-05-16 06:08:44 [SETI@home] Temporarily failed upload of 22fe99aa.24201.1074.436076.3.173_3_0: error 403
2006-05-16 06:08:44 [SETI@home] Backing off 7 minutes and 19 seconds on upload of file 22fe99aa.24201.1074.436076.3.173_3_0
2006-05-16 06:14:11 [SETI@home] Started upload of 22fe99aa.24201.1074.436076.3.177_1_0
2006-05-16 06:14:15 [SETI@home] Temporarily failed upload of 22fe99aa.24201.1074.436076.3.177_1_0: error 403
2006-05-16 06:14:15 [SETI@home] Backing off 29 minutes and 31 seconds on upload of file 22fe99aa.24201.1074.436076.3.177_1_0
2006-05-16 06:16:04 [SETI@home] Started upload of 22fe99aa.24201.1074.436076.3.173_3_0
2006-05-16 06:16:07 [SETI@home] Temporarily failed upload of 22fe99aa.24201.1074.436076.3.173_3_0: error 403
2006-05-16 06:16:07 [SETI@home] Backing off 17 minutes and 5 seconds on upload of file 22fe99aa.24201.1074.436076.3.173_3_0

---

@Jack Gulley,

Just out of interest why do you need the return immediately option?

And please don't say its because you run old hardware, I run a p2 300 on Beta.

Andy

It's extremely useful, you can spot failed hosts immediately because they fall back in your hosts list.

Regards Hans

P.S: With seti enhanced, no answer in 12hrs just means you got yourself a really tough WU :o)

But, even on that computer my results have returned before others crunching the same unit, so yes, it is returned ok but I don't conclusively know until it has been validated. And except for a couple of timer errors, which occured before it was given different hard disk and clean install, I trust it enough by just checking ocassionally that it is crunching and not stalled. Actually had more problems, on Beta with my Pent M but thats probably because it has crunched many more units.

Andy

Ahm...The weekly outage is not until TOMORROW. Sorry, Al...
Regards, Daniel.

Ho, hum.....

2006-05-16 06:04:57 [SETI@home] Started upload of 22fe99aa.24201.1074.436076.3.173_3_0
2006-05-16 06:05:00 [SETI@home] Temporarily failed upload of 22fe99aa.24201.1074.436076.3.173_3_0: error 403
...

Might be worth checking things at your end.
No problems here, Server traffic looks Ok & status page is still green.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

I can still post, so at least my internet connection is working...
What's the name of the upload host again?

Regards Hans

---

What's the name of the upload host again?

setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu is the scheduler. Don't know about the upload/download server(s).

---

Grant
Darwin NT

Hmmm... Strange

POST /sah_cgi/file_upload_handler HTTP/1.1

User-Agent: BOINC client (i686-pc-linux-gnu 5.3.12)

Host: setiboincdata.ssl.berkeley.edu

Accept: */*

Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

Content-Length: 288

Expect: 100-continue



HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden

Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 04:42:29 GMT

Server: Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) mod_fastcgi/2.4.2

Connection: close

Transfer-Encoding: chunked

Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1



138

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<TITLE>403 Forbidden</TITLE>
</HEAD><BODY>
<H1>Forbidden</H1>
You don't have permission to access /sah_cgi/file_upload_handler
on this server.<P>
<HR>
<ADDRESS>Apache/1.3.33 Server at setiboincdata.ssl.berkeley.edu Port 80</ADDRESS>
</BODY></HTML>


0

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