Why bother?

Questions and Answers : Windows : Why bother?
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reg@home

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Message 577909 - Posted: 29 May 2007, 13:43:41 UTC

After taking an absence of several months from participating in Seti, mainly due to frustrations over the fact my computer sat doing nothing because the Seti servers either didn't issue work or were down or some other reason, I received an email asking me to come back. So I did. And it's the same old, same old. My computer sits doing nothing because you're servers are so inconsistent. It's no wonder peple like ask "Why bother?" or why leave my computer running 24/7 for no reason. While my computer is quite capable of pushing through a ton of results a day, I can count on one hand the number of results returned in the past few weeks. So I think I will save hydro and be switching off again.
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Message 577915 - Posted: 29 May 2007, 13:59:29 UTC

Well, it's your choice.

It seems that every time they send out an email, Murphy's Law intervenes and ensures that there is problems immediately afterward, which certain gives the wrong impression to the masses.

Of course, there was a server failure recently, and getting a replacement costs money - money which the project relies on public and private donations from companies and users like you and me.

In light of it all, the answer for me to the question "why bother" is that this is the world's biggest science experiment. It has made no claims to being 100% stable or having 100% uptime (which would be nearly impossible). Nothing like this has ever been done before, so there's a learning curve on their end as well as ours. Problems are bound to happen and I'm willing to roll with the punches just to be a part of this great experiment.

Others may not be so forgiving. It's their right to be that way. But in my eyes, it's truly their loss when we find "the signal" and they weren't a part of it.
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Message 577991 - Posted: 29 May 2007, 16:17:35 UTC

SETI from my experience is the largest project for work out put an members crunching I think and I believe are doing a great job keeping the servers up and running. There are many projects to crunch and most are worthwhile scientifically and some are not, but the choice is still yours. I am running SETI on my 64 bit PC and will swing over some more in due course.



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Stanley Harris

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Message 578604 - Posted: 30 May 2007, 18:56:53 UTC

Have you ever considered making your work unit cache larger so that you will have work on hand if the servers hiccup? I have mine set for eight days and had work to crunch during the entire last outage...my computers never lost a second of compute time.
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Message 578778 - Posted: 30 May 2007, 23:05:33 UTC - in response to Message 578604.  

Have you ever considered making your work unit cache larger so that you will have work on hand if the servers hiccup? I have mine set for eight days and had work to crunch during the entire last outage...my computers never lost a second of compute time.

An 8 day cache with 4.5 day deadlines??


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Message 578784 - Posted: 30 May 2007, 23:16:30 UTC
Last modified: 30 May 2007, 23:16:59 UTC

Also keep in mind that for projects like SAH, where they initially replicate more results for a WU than is required for the science quorum, you can easily set the cache large enough that all but the fastest hosts end up wasting most of their time and your money by running 'trailers' (the third result back). The slower your host is the more likely it isn't really doing a whole lot of useful science and is just crunching for credits.

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Message 578967 - Posted: 31 May 2007, 5:03:17 UTC - in response to Message 578778.  
Last modified: 31 May 2007, 5:04:03 UTC

Have you ever considered making your work unit cache larger so that you will have work on hand if the servers hiccup? I have mine set for eight days and had work to crunch during the entire last outage...my computers never lost a second of compute time.

An 8 day cache with 4.5 day deadlines??


Absolutely! I have had this particular preference set to this value since BOINC went public. I have only once been without work and have not had any work returned late except when one machine went haywire (unrelated to BOINC or SETI@home). The program does a marvelous job of scheduling work if the user leaves it alone.

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Message 579985 - Posted: 1 Jun 2007, 23:57:47 UTC - in response to Message 578604.  

Have you ever considered making your work unit cache larger so that you will have work on hand if the servers hiccup? I have mine set for eight days and had work to crunch during the entire last outage...my computers never lost a second of compute time.



I have mine set to 5 days cache and currently it only downloads one task at a time for some reason even though I think it can complete several in a day.


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Message 580001 - Posted: 2 Jun 2007, 0:55:03 UTC - in response to Message 579985.  

Have you ever considered making your work unit cache larger so that you will have work on hand if the servers hiccup? I have mine set for eight days and had work to crunch during the entire last outage...my computers never lost a second of compute time.



I have mine set to 5 days cache and currently it only downloads one task at a time for some reason even though I think it can complete several in a day.


Which cache setting are you using? The "Connect to network about every X" or "Maintain enough work for an additional X"? The former is the one you want to use because the latter will only work with the upcoming release of BOINC v5.10.
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Message 580044 - Posted: 2 Jun 2007, 2:30:56 UTC - in response to Message 580001.  

Have you ever considered making your work unit cache larger so that you will have work on hand if the servers hiccup? I have mine set for eight days and had work to crunch during the entire last outage...my computers never lost a second of compute time.



I have mine set to 5 days cache and currently it only downloads one task at a time for some reason even though I think it can complete several in a day.


Which cache setting are you using? The "Connect to network about every X" or "Maintain enough work for an additional X"? The former is the one you want to use because the latter will only work with the upcoming release of BOINC v5.10.

However, setting connect every X to be greater than 1 will cause the work fetch to stop fetching work if you have tasks with deadlines of 4.5 days - which S@H does sometimes


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Questions and Answers : Windows : Why bother?


 
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