staffed.....giggle chuckle...
Someone.....hehehe

Matt Lebofsky is THE person who does this. It's not like there's a dozen employees available. And if you'll forgive me, I've seen Matt, Rom, David A working all hours of the nights and on weekends. I can show you copies of emails exchanged while troubleshooting at 11PM Pacific, on Sundays, Saturdays, and at all manner of strange hours.

I think Jeff, Court and Bob would be slightly offended by your comment.

We don't see a lot of them, and they don't post here, but that doesn't mean that they aren't staff, or that they don't do useful things.

For that matter, "staff" can be one person.

Yes, we do see signs of these people working all hours of the day or night, the fact that they do shows dedication -- it doesn't show that they're paid to be working at 11:00pm on a Sunday.

Matt Lebofsky doesn't make alot and has a second job to make ends meet.

If you are referring to Matt's music career, I think that is more of a passion than a critical source of income. For that matter, from reading his blog, I suspect his work with SETI@Home is more of a passion. He could probably make a whole lot more in a more "corporate" job, if that was his only motivation.

I used to work in corporate america. I'm much happier now.

---

Erroring Out = A malfunction generated from the Science App rather than one from the BOINC client itself (like the message you are getting about the HTTP error when downloading).

Just to be pedantic:

For this case for s@h, isn't that http error actually from libcurl and initiated by Boinc. Also, does not the s@h application use Boinc for all the communications?

Hmmm, technically I suppose that's correct. However since libcurl is a BOINC dependancy, in the interest of simplicity it may be easier to think of it as part of BOINC in this context.

For the second part, that's correct. As I was reminded recently, internal comm traffic between the app and the client is via shared memory, and all external comm traffic is handled by the BOINC client itself via TCP/IP (including between GUI frontends and the client).

Alinator

Erroring Out = A malfunction generated from the Science App rather than one from the BOINC client itself (like the message you are getting about the HTTP error when downloading).

Just to be pedantic:

For this case for s@h, isn't that http error actually from libcurl and initiated by Boinc. Also, does not the s@h application use Boinc for all the communications?

What I meant was you could workaround not being able to get the "official" apps from SAH, by manually installing one of the optimized science apps from Simons site. Generally it's pretty easy to do, but it is possible to mess things up more if you aren't that comfortable playing with the "nuts and bolts" of the BOINC system.

Excellent idea!

If you can carefully copy files into place, it is well worth doing. Now is a good time while your system has no work in any case. Just follow The Chicken's instructions.

Good luck,

Happy crunchin'
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Alienator: Any pun on Alien8 from long ago?
[/edit]

Nah, Alinator is a nickname I got in a Dart League many years ago when I was having one of those amazing win streaks. :-)

Alinator

<edit> Add to glossary:

HTH = Hope That Helps

;-)

Sorry Alinator,...

Don't worry, he's just one of those alien-like geeks!

FWIW:
For What It's Worth

DL'ing:
DownLoad-ing, as in downloading data from s@h Berkeley to your own machine.

Erroring out:
Stopping work due to some error. Note that not all 'errors' are actually fatal. Boinc is very good at trying again later.


Is there a glosary for all this somewhere?! On the Boinc Help?

Happy crunchin',
Martin

[edit] Addendum:

LOL:
Loads/Lots Of Laughs

Alienator: Any pun on Alien8 from long ago?
[/edit]

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Sorry Alinator, but I have no idea what all that means! I did try and reset at one stage as it was suggested to me in one of these threads. As for most of everything else you said "FWIW" "DL'ing", "Erroring out" ect dosen't mean a great deal to me.

I like to be involved in these things and have quite a bit of computer experience but as far as Techinical terms, abbreviations and general Tech talk, I'm lost!!!! Thhus my previous post suggesting that some of us need simple explainations.

I really do appreciate your help though and thank you for the time you took to try and help me out

Regards
Andrew

LOL, no problemo.

FWIW = For What Its Worth

DL = Downloading

Erroring Out = A malfunction generated from the Science App rather than one from the BOINC client itself (like the message you are getting about the HTTP error when downloading).

What I meant was you could workaround not being able to get the "official" apps from SAH, by manually installing one of the optimized science apps from Simons site. Generally it's pretty easy to do, but it is possible to mess things up more if you aren't that comfortable playing with the "nuts and bolts" of the BOINC system.

HTH,

Alinator

Sorry Alinator, but I have no idea what all that means! I did try and reset at one stage as it was suggested to me in one of these threads. As for most of everything else you said "FWIW" "DL'ing", "Erroring out" ect dosen't mean a great deal to me.

I like to be involved in these things and have quite a bit of computer experience but as far as Techinical terms, abbreviations and general Tech talk, I'm lost!!!! Thhus my previous post suggesting that some of us need simple explainations.

I really do appreciate your help though and thank you for the time you took to try and help me out

Regards
Andrew

---

Thanks very much for that Martin, It is crystal clear now. I really didnt want to be waiting around if it was my problem so knowing the situation is great! I hate falling behind in my team as I am only just starting to crawl my way up the ladder but I know the amqzing pressure the techs must be under so I will let my computer work on the other units.

Thanks again
Regards
Andrew

FWIW, it looks like you're bogging down here trying to DL the Science App files again, which implies you did a project reset (or something similiar) to try and get around the original DL server problem.

Generally speaking, a reset is the last thing you want to do when the problem is related to DL'ing work, as long as you were crunching results successfully before the problem started. Erroring out the results (assuming everyone else runs them OK) once you get them is a different story though. ;-)

Here's a link which can help you decide where the problem is when this happens:

SSL Cogent Pipe

Alinator

<edit> It occurred to me a quick workaround might be to give one of Simon's "Chicken" apps (the optimized ones) a try. This would avoid having to wait until you get the "stock" app files from SAH.

Thanks very much for that Martin, It is crystal clear now. I really didnt want to be waiting around if it was my problem so knowing the situation is great! I hate falling behind in my team as I am only just starting to crawl my way up the ladder but I know the amqzing pressure the techs must be under so I will let my computer work on the other units.

Thanks again
Regards
Andrew

---

1. Has seti@home not been sending work units for a couple of days now

Simple answer: yes.

More complete: There's been a networking problem internal to s@h that has interrupted WU communications (due to losing NFS mounts). See the chart here for their data link. The blue line shows output traffic. (You can also look back for the week, month, year.)

2. This thread seems to be saying it is fixed now, is that correct

Simple answer: yes but you need to leave it a few hours yet for it to become fully fixed.

More complete: It's fixed but there's millions of us worldwide all desperate for WU's all at the same time. Sorry, but you've got to wait in the queue until the mad rush is cleared.

3. If it is fixed, why is it that I keep getting this message

?!

Thanks heaps for your help!!!!!

You're welcome.

15/11/2006 9:34:32 PM|SETI@home|Started download of file setiathome_5.15_windows_intelx86.exe
15/11/2006 9:34:33 PM||Access to reference site succeeded - project servers may be temporarily down.
15/11/2006 9:34:54 PM||Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site
15/11/2006 9:34:54 PM|SETI@home|Temporarily failed download of setiathome_5.15_windows_intelx86.exe: http error
15/11/2006 9:34:54 PM|SETI@home|Backing off 43 minutes and 13 seconds on download of file setiathome_5.15_windows_intelx86.exe
15/11/2006 9:34:55 PM||Access to reference site succeeded - project servers may be temporarily down.
15/11/2006 9:35:26 PM|SETI@home|Started download of file setiathome_5.15_AUTHORS
15/11/2006 9:35:48 PM||Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site
15/11/2006 9:35:48 PM|SETI@home|Temporarily failed download of setiathome_5.15_AUTHORS: http error
15/11/2006 9:35:48 PM|SETI@home|Backing off 7 minutes and 12 seconds on download of file setiathome_5.15_AUTHORS
15/11/2006 9:35:50 PM||Access to reference site succeeded - project servers may be temporarily down.

The last line there says it all!

Likely, your connection into s@h in Berkeley is timing out while their servers are swamped by everyone else's connection attempts. Berkeley may even still have internal network problems.

Wait for the chaos to subside and check again tomorrow. Meanwhile, let Boinc run some work for another favoured project.

Happy crunchin',
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

I hope this dosen't seem rude but reading these message boards has always been hard work for me, there is so much repetative talk that it all get sto hard to follow.
Can someone please answer a couple of easy questions with yes or no answers. I know that is not always possible but please give it a go

1. Has seti@home not been sending work units for a couple of days now
2. This thread seems to be saying it is fixed now, is that correct
3. If it is fixed, why is it that I keep getting this message

Thanks heaps for your help!!!!!

15/11/2006 9:34:32 PM|SETI@home|Started download of file setiathome_5.15_windows_intelx86.exe
15/11/2006 9:34:33 PM||Access to reference site succeeded - project servers may be temporarily down.
15/11/2006 9:34:54 PM||Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site
15/11/2006 9:34:54 PM|SETI@home|Temporarily failed download of setiathome_5.15_windows_intelx86.exe: http error
15/11/2006 9:34:54 PM|SETI@home|Backing off 43 minutes and 13 seconds on download of file setiathome_5.15_windows_intelx86.exe
15/11/2006 9:34:55 PM||Access to reference site succeeded - project servers may be temporarily down.
15/11/2006 9:35:26 PM|SETI@home|Started download of file setiathome_5.15_AUTHORS
15/11/2006 9:35:48 PM||Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site
15/11/2006 9:35:48 PM|SETI@home|Temporarily failed download of setiathome_5.15_AUTHORS: http error
15/11/2006 9:35:48 PM|SETI@home|Backing off 7 minutes and 12 seconds on download of file setiathome_5.15_AUTHORS
15/11/2006 9:35:50 PM||Access to reference site succeeded - project servers may be temporarily down.

---

Shamelessly stolen from another thread:

Posted from Here.

November 14, 2006 - 23:45 UTC
So the download server stopped sending out work yesterday afternoon, and it didn't get caught and fixed until this morning. We are in the process of major network upgrades (stay tuned for news on that). A configuration change made for testing the new plumbing tickled a creeping problem where long, cryptic symbolic link chains break unexpectedly. In other words: oops.

So, a simple ooops indeed! (And very easily done.)

No big issue here folks,
now just keep crunching along...

(And all within the normal Boinc design parameters.)

Happy crunchin',
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Holeyman, the only one being disrespectful here is you.

The folks who maintain SETI are hard-working and dedicated. When they've needed to put in the hours to get things working again, they've done it.

Don't you find it just a little odd that of the hundreds of thousands of
users who were "inconvenienced", YOU are the only one whining and bitching
about how undedicated the SETI staff are?

[...]

So - why all the angst?

Chill out, relax, get your box crunching again.

Then come back and apologize to the SETI staff.

I'll add my agreement to that.

And as for the supposed lack of communication... Well, for those familiar with the project, a few good guesses can fill in the blanks until Matt has a chance to say what happened.

Also note that he does have to eat and sleep or even go out for a beer sometimes! Boinc has been carefully designed so that he can be IT administrator for a million or so participants and still be able to sleep easy.


It's also good to see the very reasonable tone of all the threads rather than the competitive angst of days long ago over racing and hustling the credits. No cheerleading needed! :-)


Normal operation will be resumed sometime. (Whatever normal might be!)

Happy crunchin',
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Holeyman, the only one being disrespectful here is you.

The folks who maintain SETI are hard-working and dedicated. When they've needed to put in the hours to get things working again, they've done it.

Don't you find it just a little odd that of the hundreds of thousands of
users who were "inconvenienced", YOU are the only one whining and bitching
about how undedicated the SETI staff are?

If you've just GOT to complain, can't you at least get your facts clear before shouting from the rooftops? As has already been pointed out, there are NOT "millions" of users - not even millions of boxes. There are "only" 553,000 active users and about 1.2 million active boxes.

The vast majority of those users and boxes were not inconvenienced at all; many because they keep a reasonable size cache of work to carry them through small hiccups (or even medium outtages); many were not inconvenienced because they aren't compulsive crunch-watchers and aren't bothered by a few hours of idle CPU (or have alternate projects to work on).

So you had to wait a few hours to get your overclocked box to do some work?

So what?

How were you harmed by waiting a few hundred extra minutes?

What have YOU done to improve SETI? Have you donated money? Have you donated expertise to improve the system? When's the last time you dropped by the shop and helped fixed a broken system?

You've been a member since 1999, and you've crunched a fair number of SETI credits - and your ONLY posts to this board seem to be the whining in this thread.

Looking at your team rankings, it's obvious that missing a day of crunchig won't even affact your standings at all - even if you were the only one without units to crunch.

So - why all the angst?

Chill out, relax, get your box crunching again.

Then come back and apologize to the SETI staff.

Roy

While the lack of information flowing from the administrators down to us, the crunchers, is frustrating there is nothing we can do about it. This situation has existed from the very early day's of Seti with no improvement in sight. Seems that nothing is going to change this.

As I stated in another posting they have been known to come into the server closet on weekends and even federal holiday's to kick the boxes. That they don't come in to kick things on each and every failure is not surprising. Boinc is well designed to recover from network failures and does so. Running a cache of several day's or a backup project is also an option to bridge the outages. It is permisible for the project administrators to have a life outside of the server closet. Boinc/Seti is NOT a critical level endeavor. Nothing is lost during a short outage.

In short.....why worry about things that you have no direct control over? Worry about those things you DO have direct control over. Life, family and health.

---

Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....

I vote that all the folks at UCB that run the SETI@HOME project have to give up all their personal lives and sleep in the server closet waiting for it to break down so they can jump at our every whim and fix it immediately apon being notified.

If that's how you feel, vote the way you see fit. :D

It was a sarcastic reply to the outragous requests your demanding on the boards.

---

I vote that all the folks at UCB that run the SETI@HOME project have to give up all their personal lives and sleep in the server closet waiting for it to break down so they can jump at our every whim and fix it immediately apon being notified.

If that's how you feel, vote the way you see fit. :D

---

I vote that all the folks at UCB that run the SETI@HOME project have to give up all their personal lives and sleep in the server closet waiting for it to break down so they can jump at our every whim and fix it immediately apon being notified.

---

It's possible but I think not. While it is volunteer we don't get paid to crunch either. If they want us to do their work, they should be bending over backwards to make sure we have workunits to crunch. If *I* were begging for CPU cycles I darn sure wouldn't keep my 200,000 volunteers with their 350,000 hosts waiting because I was too lazy to fix it right away. *I* would have fixed it at 5 pm, when it went down, or drove my rear BACK to Berkeley to fix it that night instead. IMO, since they don't respect us enough to do that, it shows how important we are, to them.

I don't see it that way. I don't think they should be "bending over backwards" for us. They do what they can. They're not begging for workunits, only making themselves known. Is advertising considered begging?

It's great that you feel you would have fixed it, but that would have been of your own volition. But since you're not working at Berkeley and you didn't fix it, then why worry about it? Why hold them to such high standards when it's all volunteer anyway?

I'm sorry, but I don't feel it's a lack of respect. I think you're reading way too much into the issue. They had an issue with the servers. They didn't fix it right away, for their own reasons that we can only speculate. It doesn't really affect your life in a major way, so why insist you're feeling neglected over it? You weren't hurt in any way; your CPU simply went idle for a while. It picked right back up when they did fix it. The data will eventually get crunched.

I don't think it's a very big deal at all, and I'm having problems understanding why people make such a large, personal issue out of it.

I meant "begging" figuratively not literally. We all know they're not on their knees pleading but they do ask that we donate our cpu cycles for free. In return we shouldn't have to wait for them to provide the workunits they want us to crunch.

As I've said, if *I* had a project that required donated cpu cycles, I'd be more respectful of my volunteers. I'd care. That seti doesn't feel the same way, to me, shows a lack of respect.

Some of us have more self-respect than others. *shrug*

There's a 4th option: uninstall boinc and stop helping seti since they seem not to care.

Complaining does serve a purpose, it's lets the "powers that be" know the natives are restless. You don't expect nothing but "yay good job" posts, do you? Are you trying to stiffle any debate over the lack of service and respect for us crunchers? Are we not allowed to complain here?

Oh, geez.

Anything can follow from a false premise.

SETI is staffed 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. That's what the money will pay for -- SETI is historically cash-strapped.

Because the SETI staff does care, they are often checking the servers from home during the night (for those who tend to be night-owls) and in the morning (for those who tend to be early risers) so SETI is only on autopilot about 5 hours per day.

Somebody agreed to keep the network and servers up, no matter what they get paid, if at all. To me, as an IT professional, that means keeping things working, even if I have to stay a little late or get out of bed at 2 am, so my 200,000 volunteers and their 350,000 hosts can keep on keeping on. Nobody put a gun to the admins heads, they took the responsibility and then, imo, let us crunchers wait becaues we weren't important enough to do something different.

Matt Lebofsky is THE person who does this. It's not like there's a dozen employees available. And if you'll forgive me, I've seen Matt, Rom, David A working all hours of the nights and on weekends. I can show you copies of emails exchanged while troubleshooting at 11PM Pacific, on Sundays, Saturdays, and at all manner of strange hours.

Matt Lebofsky doesn't make alot and has a second job to make ends meet. Since the start of boinc/seti I've witness outages lasting 3 weeks, 2 weeks, one week and even some short ones lasting 3 days. A 20 hour outage is not even a hiccup. If the participants would make use of the tools given (connect to setting) they wouldn't even be affected by this.

They have something like 7 employees and that includes the boinc employees. I know of one Post grad (or equiv) working at seti/beta/astropulse. Given this small number Boinc AND Seti rely on the volunteer community to give support and to fill in the empty spots. Places like manning the Q@A boards, helping users in these fora, There are a few Volunteer Developers who write the code, even the Boinc.php is maintained by a volunteer.

As I said above, they took the job and the responsibility no matter how little, if at all, they're paid so that means nothing to me.

Regardless of settings, mine was set to 7 days, the 20+ hour outage affected a whole boat load of clients. Most users don't know enough to change settings so most clients are set to default. Eventhough mine was set to 7 days it still affected me because of reasons already stated. It would have shown appreciation had he/they fixed it right away as you've admitted they sometimes do. In this case they blew US off to do whatever it was they did from the time it went down until they got back in the office.

Maybe it's too much to expect that network and server admins do their jobs and keep things running smoothly for us volunteers without waiting nearly a whole day, but again, I think not. I'm not saying *everyone* has to feel the same way that I do but I feel I'm right in my expecations. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

---

staffed.....giggle chuckle...
Someone.....hehehe

Matt Lebofsky is THE person who does this. It's not like there's a dozen employees available. And if you'll forgive me, I've seen Matt, Rom, David A working all hours of the nights and on weekends. I can show you copies of emails exchanged while troubleshooting at 11PM Pacific, on Sundays, Saturdays, and at all manner of strange hours.

Matt Lebofsky doesn't make alot and has a second job to make ends meet. Since the start of boinc/seti I've witness outages lasting 3 weeks, 2 weeks, one week and even some short ones lasting 3 days. A 20 hour outage is not even a hiccup. If the participants would make use of the tools given (connect to setting) they wouldn't even be affected by this.

There aren't ANY scientists waiting for your result to finish their work. It (your result) is stored in the MSDB (master science database) until their ready to study them. So, whether it sits on their servers or your computer makes little difference.

Seti has never been good at posting up notices like "hey it's broke, we're working on it", but guess what???? The very minute a problem is detected by those best suited to be the first to know (that's US), there will be atleast ONE thread about it, if not 1/2 a dozen as witnessed here the last day. So, If you just look at the first 3 threads in the NC forum, you'll have the latest head up.

They have something like 7 employees and that includes the boinc employees. I know of one Post grad (or equiv) working at seti/beta/astropulse. Given this small number Boinc AND Seti rely on the volunteer community to give support and to fill in the empty spots. Places like manning the Q@A boards, helping users in these fora, There are a few Volunteer Developers who write the code, even the Boinc.php is maintained by a volunteer.