Every 3 days or so a work unit will seem to get very confused. After working for 20 hours, it will say that my "time to completion" is still between 500 and 1500 hours!!!! The normal average time for my machine is 6-10 hours. If I reboot my computer, these aforementioned files disappear. What is happening? Any ideas? Is this a problem with my system, some of the work units, or what?

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Some people have reported this before.

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I've been trying to keep an eye on my machines for these. I've been aborting anything that is looking a little long or odd.

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Yea, I've seen those work units before. Basically, they start off with some random completion time, and after some certain point, the estimated completion time will just rise instead of decreasing. But the actual Progress does not appear to go up.

When you see these, just go to Activity, then Suspend to suspend all activity in the BOINC Manger. Go to File - Exit in the BOINC Manager to exit out of it. Then finally, rerun the BOINC Manager client and go to Activity, and then check Run Always. The work unit should finish up in less than a minute or two and most likely report an error.

The error is fine and all, but for all the time you placed to have your computer work on that work unit, you will NOT get any credit for it. That's probably the real upsetting part of it all.

A computer reboot works as well...

And speaking of Very Long Completion Times... here's one that I've got going on.
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/workunit.php?wuid=79900335

After 13 and half hours, I still have another hour to completion at 92.620%. I do believe that's that LONGEST completion time I've ever gotten. There better be a fairly large credit for it. No one else have even completed their's.
If the Progress percentage were not moving up, that work unit would have errored out with a reboot or a BOINC application restart.

Thanks for the responses!! My recent average credit has dropped from 350ish before the new seti_enhanced to 150 with the new seti_enhanced. Doesn't seem to be enhancing my total credit very much. I don't really know what's going on.

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Make sure you are running the latest BOINC Client.
I was having the same problem for weeks before
I finally stumbled across the fact that the long run times
ending in computational errors was in part the result of
running an older client.
It only effected my intel P4 HT Dual machine and not
all results ended badly. Lots did though.
It only takes a few min to upgrade to the latest ver.
And the problem went away.
Had a few runtime errors early on. But all seems ok now.
My Mobile Pentium M Never had a problem at all.
Althought today it's behaving strangely ( Long estimates - Seperate thread )

Good luck and happy crunching

Steve

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Same problem for me. It started a few days ago on all of my machines. After a whole night of computation i'm still only at 1%. No idea what is going on. Tried restarting but no difference.

Worth mentioning that it's the sam on both my macs and my win machines.

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Yea, I've seen those work units before. Basically, they start off with some random completion time, and after some certain point, the estimated completion time will just rise instead of decreasing. But the actual Progress does not appear to go up.

When you see these, just go to Activity, then Suspend to suspend all activity in the BOINC Manger. Go to File - Exit in the BOINC Manager to exit out of it. Then finally, rerun the BOINC Manager client and go to Activity, and then check Run Always. The work unit should finish up in less than a minute or two and most likely report an error.

The error is fine and all, but for all the time you placed to have your computer work on that work unit, you will NOT get any credit for it. That's probably the real upsetting part of it all.

A computer reboot works as well...

And speaking of Very Long Completion Times... here's one that I've got going on.
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/workunit.php?wuid=79900335

After 13 and half hours, I still have another hour to completion at 92.620%. I do believe that's that LONGEST completion time I've ever gotten. There better be a fairly large credit for it. No one else have even completed their's.
If the Progress percentage were not moving up, that work unit would have errored out with a reboot or a BOINC application restart.

I have actually found a WU that continues going even after my steps mentioned above! (A FIRST! One that stays up long and hard for a natural failure. In the end, an abortion is needed because it just won't stop.)

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/result.php?resultid=334570453

For things like those, let's just give it up for a failing work unit and bid a fairwell, while highlighting it and clicking "Abort".

My final thoughts on this thread are as follows:

1. I'm a little surprised that there isn't a "hot topics" link on the seti page for things like these long computation times, informing us that we should be running on the newest client.

2. "We put a man on the moon 36 years ago" is what I say when I see technology get us farther behind. The newer client, or is it "seti enhanced", who knows, who cares, but suddently I have to babysit boinc, turning boinc manager off/on to finish a workunit that has run for 40 hours and still have 200 hours to go. and in some cases, cancel computation. Hopefully there will be a fix for this.

3. Not related to this, but what ever happened to the guy that updated the tech notes on the seti webpage? We used to get updated every day or so, and now nothing since April 11th.

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Matt's on tour with his band, and should be back soon (or maybe not if he's been keeping an eye on what's been going on here lately). :-)

Alinator

-I’ am pissed behave of Crunch3r's good work not getting the credit he supposed to.
Next week all my seti computers (20) are on NO NEW WORK , until he gets a APOLOGY from all people on this forum that got him pissed of and seti administrators.
-A second reason is I got 5 work units yesterday, about 45 hours work/units on my AMD Opteron 165 computer. I have got only 5/20 optimized computers. Sucks.
-Until we get back our 4 hour Crunch units!

cya2 : Turku, Finland
Comments to: thomas.bymark@pp.inet.fi

http://www.boincstats.com/ :

SETI@HomeCredit/day 2,833
Position based on Total Credit 1484, and going down next week (seti).

Until we meet again................... ( SETI@home enhanced, sucks, as now)

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Matt's on tour with his band, and should be back soon (or maybe not if he's been keeping an eye on what's been going on here lately). :-)

Alinator

Just what I was thinking :o)

Regards Hans

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I just found a new observed sample.... A work unit that kept on going forever and the completion time kept on rising. When activity simply suspended, then resumed to Run Always, the work unit completed almost instantly. However, after it uploaded and reported, the reported work time was about 1/9th of the actual AND there was actually granted credit this time for the 1/9th fraction of work time reported.

The granted credit is good for a change, but the core problem of oddball work units taking forever still exists. :-( yah... Booooooo!

I just found a new observed sample.... A work unit that kept on going forever and the completion time kept on rising. When activity simply suspended, then resumed to Run Always, the work unit completed almost instantly. However, after it uploaded and reported, the reported work time was about 1/9th of the actual AND there was actually granted credit this time for the 1/9th fraction of work time reported.

The granted credit is good for a change, but the core problem of oddball work units taking forever still exists. :-( yah... Booooooo!

This result?

If so, it doesn't seem to be the splitter problem coming back. I found a sibling WU and checked that the thresholds were good.

                                                    Joe

I just found a new observed sample.... A work unit that kept on going forever and the completion time kept on rising. When activity simply suspended, then resumed to Run Always, the work unit completed almost instantly. However, after it uploaded and reported, the reported work time was about 1/9th of the actual AND there was actually granted credit this time for the 1/9th fraction of work time reported.

The granted credit is good for a change, but the core problem of oddball work units taking forever still exists. :-( yah... Booooooo!

This result?

If so, it doesn't seem to be the splitter problem coming back. I found a sibling WU and checked that the thresholds were good.

                                                    Joe

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/workunit.php?wuid=81167160

close error

@+

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SETI@Home Informational message -9 result_overflow
with a general handicap of 80% and it makes much d' efforts for the community and s' expimer, thank you d' to be understanding.

The granted credit is good for a change, but the core problem of oddball work units taking forever still exists. :-( yah... Booooooo!

Could you tell me what your "switch between applications" setting is? I assume you are set either to run continuously, or to suspend to memory?

Eric

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@SETIEric@qoto.org (Mastodon)

The granted credit is good for a change, but the core problem of oddball work units taking forever still exists. :-( yah... Booooooo!

Could you tell me what your "switch between applications" setting is? I assume you are set either to run continuously, or to suspend to memory?

Eric

---------------------------------------------------------
Processor usage
Do work while computer is running on batteries?
(matters only for portable computers) yes

Do work while computer is in use? yes

Do work only between the hours of (no restriction)
Leave applications in memory while preempted?
(suspended applications will consume swap space if 'yes') yes

Switch between applications every
(recommended: 60 minutes) 60 minutes

On multiprocessors, use at most 2 processors
---------------------------------------------------------
Disk and memory usage
Use no more than 100 GB disk space

Leave at least
(Values smaller than 0.001 are ignored) 0.1 GB disk space free

Use no more than 50% of total disk space

Write to disk at most every 300 seconds

Use no more than 75% of total virtual memory
---------------------------------------------------------
Network usage
Connect to network about every
(determines size of work cache; maximum 10 days) 0.0417 days

Confirm before connecting to Internet?
(matters only if you have a modem, ISDN or VPN connection) no

Disconnect when done?
(matters only if you have a modem, ISDN or VPN connection) no

Maximum download rate: 3072 KB/s

Maximum upload rate: 1024 KB/s

Use network only between the hours of
Enforced by versions 4.46 and greater (no restriction)

Skip image file verification?
Check this ONLY if your Internet provider modifies image files (UMTS does this, for example).
Skipping verification reduces the security of BOINC. no
---------------------------------------------------------

I just found a new observed sample.... A work unit that kept on going forever and the completion time kept on rising. When activity simply suspended, then resumed to Run Always, the work unit completed almost instantly. However, after it uploaded and reported, the reported work time was about 1/9th of the actual AND there was actually granted credit this time for the 1/9th fraction of work time reported.

The granted credit is good for a change, but the core problem of oddball work units taking forever still exists. :-( yah... Booooooo!

This result?

If so, it doesn't seem to be the splitter problem coming back. I found a sibling WU and checked that the thresholds were good.

                                                    Joe

Yea, that result looks like the one with other client errors reported and mine on top, reporting successfuly. I forgot to copy and post the link at the time... many appologies. :(

Thanks, that helps...

Eric

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@SETIEric@qoto.org (Mastodon)