Quick note:

We never really did recover from the science database issues from a couple days ago due to DOS'ing ourselves with fast workunits. Whatever. We chose to let things naturally pass through the system. Kinda like kidney stones. Meanwhile, one of the assimilators is failing with a brand new error. If any of us have time we'll try to check into that over the coming days, but we may be out of luck until we're all in the lab doing "extreme debugging" together on Wednesday. Hang in there!

- 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

. . . been waiting / crunchin' for almost 8 Years - another day passes [c'est la vie] ;) - Thanks for the Post Matt

and Happy Holidays Sir . . .

richard

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BOINC Wiki . . .

Science Status Page . . .

Thanx Matt....
Very glad that you are keeping tabs on things, but do enjoy your holiday season.

Looks like tha 01ja07 series is getting closer to being finished, hope that the 02dc06 next up yields some larger WUs and gives the splitters and servers some time to catch up.

Merry Christmas!

Mark.

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

Just done a quick check on all WUs logged here.

530 out of 631 (83.99%) of all tasks issued after 12:00:00 UTC 22 Dec 2007 are shown as Angle Range 2.46 to 2.64

That compares with 399 out of 9766 (4.09%) of tasks issued in the previous four months.

Either something very odd about that data, or something very odd has happened to the splitters.

I think it's a very sensible decision to let it runs its course over the weekend, and I don't begrudge you your holiday break - Happy Christmas, and have a great time as far away from the lab as possible!

But when you come in for that "extreme debugging" session (as early as Wednesday? Shame on you!), please have a look for causes as well as coping strategies.

Just done a quick check on all WUs logged here.

530 out of 631 (83.99%) of all tasks issued after 12:00:00 UTC 22 Dec 2007 are shown as Angle Range 2.46 to 2.64

That compares with 399 out of 9766 (4.09%) of tasks issued in the previous four months.

Either something very odd about that data, or something very odd has happened to the splitters.

I think it's a very sensible decision to let it runs its course over the weekend, and I don't begrudge you your holiday break - Happy Christmas, and have a great time as far away from the lab as possible!

But when you come in for that "extreme debugging" session (as early as Wednesday? Shame on you!), please have a look for causes as well as coping strategies.

I have to wonder what is going on as well.....
The new 02dc06aa series also appears to be coming up with all shorties....something doesn't seem right.

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

Just done a quick check on all WUs logged here.

530 out of 631 (83.99%) of all tasks issued after 12:00:00 UTC 22 Dec 2007 are shown as Angle Range 2.46 to 2.64

That compares with 399 out of 9766 (4.09%) of tasks issued in the previous four months.

Either something very odd about that data, or something very odd has happened to the splitters.

I think it's a very sensible decision to let it runs its course over the weekend, and I don't begrudge you your holiday break - Happy Christmas, and have a great time as far away from the lab as possible!

But when you come in for that "extreme debugging" session (as early as Wednesday? Shame on you!), please have a look for causes as well as coping strategies.

I have to wonder what is going on as well.....
The new 02dc06aa series also appears to be coming up with all shorties....something doesn't seem right.

Allot of project server down messages of late. Spending more and more processor time on getting can't connect messages.

Allot of project server down messages of late. Spending more and more processor time on getting can't connect messages.

'S 'cuz the splitters cannot create enough WUs to keep up with the demand from the host computers.....
They are being crunched and reported as fast as they can be created....
And the kitties say....'Stay tuned for further developements.......'

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

Allot of project server down messages of late. Spending more and more processor time on getting can't connect messages.

'S 'cuz the splitters cannot create enough WUs to keep up with the demand from the host computers.....
They are being crunched and reported as fast as they can be created....
And the kitties say....'Stay tuned for further developements.......'

Lets hope the next tape is nearly all 80+ point WU's so that the splitters can create a new WU queue.

These 17 pointer ones are finishing in just over 20 minutes for me, that makes 2 units per 20 minutes on my C2D laptop, SETI would need to have 144 WU's ready per C2D level machine to keep this up, with a few million hosts running the app its obvious why the splitters can't keep up.

True to from just like on every long holiday no work! But the thing that made me really laugh this time was a letter asking for more folks to help with your program!! You can't keep the folks you hve now in work so you need more folks to leave there computers on to do nothing but use power and wear out parts!!! For 3 days now BOINC is Idle!! Keep up the good work guys don't let me down for Easter ot the 3 day in Feb I love to have my computers sucking up power and wearing out parts for nothing!!!

rev. Tim Olivera

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True to from just like on every long holiday no work! But the thing that made me really laugh this time was a letter asking for more folks to help with your program!! You can't keep the folks you hve now in work so you need more folks to leave there computers on to do nothing but use power and wear out parts!!! For 3 days now BOINC is Idle!! Keep up the good work guys don't let me down for Easter ot the 3 day in Feb I love to have my computers sucking up power and wearing out parts for nothing!!!

rev. Tim Olivera

If you want to keep your systems busy when SAH is out of work, then attach to a backup project.

S@H has specifically stated they WILL NOT always have work available and advises users to attach to a backup project for this exact situation.

True to from just like on every long holiday no work! But the thing that made me really laugh this time was a letter asking for more folks to help with your program!! You can't keep the folks you hve now in work so you need more folks to leave there computers on to do nothing but use power and wear out parts!!! For 3 days now BOINC is Idle!! Keep up the good work guys don't let me down for Easter ot the 3 day in Feb I love to have my computers sucking up power and wearing out parts for nothing!!!

rev. Tim Olivera

If you want to keep your systems busy when SAH is out of work, then attach to a backup project.

S@H has specifically stated they WILL NOT always have work available and advises users to attach to a backup project for this exact situation.

For once - just once - I think the Rev. Tim has a point. The "please help our project" letter doesn't say "please help our backup project". Co-ordination and timing, that's the thing: if you ask for help, it's only polite to be ready to accept it.

Instead of focussing and whining about the CPU cycle request letter sent arround, focus on the "WE NEED FUNDS" one that went arround recently too.

These guys are working severely underpaid for their skillevel, with maybe a quarter of the hardware, half the bandwidth and barely any of the cash they need to keep operating.

Am sure the guys get a ton of messages for help every day and physically don't have time to check every single one. If they did then they would have too much time on their hands.

I have just started to downloaded new tasks, I have a fast computer so it turns a task around in a little near 2 hours. I don't expect them to download quick, currently getting 2.26kpbs with a majority of the tasks in line to download pending.

I don't have a backup project so will just have to sit it out and get work when I can, am sure the guys at Berkeley would appreciate a few days off to relax at home and not have to worry about the work line being empty.

No work, ah well, will get it when it comes.

Happy Holidays all!

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True to from (sic) just like on every long holiday no work!

Not true, Tim. The SETI servers have never churned out as many new workunits as they have in the past few days. They're actually at their limit, demonstrating what they're capable of.

For 3 days now BOINC is Idle!!

Not true, Tim. Your two active rigs have been receiving and returning work for the past three days.

Rig 1 Rig 2

I've taken issue with you before for your incessant whingeing about this project. It's not justified, in my opinion, but using untruths to propagate your message is disingenuous.

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Well, the splitters are now screaming away at over 20 WUs/second creation rate. And they are not 17-19 pointers either. The ready to send cache is building, and the bandwidth is starting to relax. Most everybody (including the Reverend) should be slowly starting to get work to keep their crunchers busy.

@ Matt.......
Did this come about in the normal progress of things, or did you deep-six some data for now to ease things up a bit?

And might you create a process whereby the splitters monitor things and automatically suspend a dataset that consists of such short work and return to it once they have built the cache up again? Not to say that it should not be processed, but could it be done in smaller doses so as not to decimate the ready to send cache and send the bandwidth to the limits?

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

Maybe if more people take heed of the donation drive that the guys at Berkeley spent time sending to us all and more people sent money then perhaps things would be a bit better.

There will always be the "few" that have things to say regarding the running and subsequent problems associated with a massive project like this.

Come on though people.

It's A) Christmas and the guys at Berkeley have to work / check in on things, for what?, to keep us "joe public" happy. As someone mentioned earlier, attach to a backup project if you want to keep crunching workunits.

B) Anyone who runs servers on a large scale will know that sometimes things don't run smoothly and you get hiccups.

Matt and everyone at Berkeley does a fantastic job to keep everything running as smoothly as possible and they are human like the rest of us. They are allowed to have a break occasionally. With the resources they have and behind the scenes stuff that goes on that we don't see / get to hear about. They should be given as much credit as they can. No donations = ultimately no project and hundreds of hours of valuable time wasted due to lack of funding.

Enjoy the holidays and get a well deserved break. Thanks for all the hard work as always.

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@Seti People

Great Job on makeing things run so well, and have a great Christmas and New Years.

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On the "clients recently connected" front, I'm getting "last updated: December 31 1969 16:00:00" at 0930 PST 12/24/07, so there are still date issues with the apache logs...

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Hello, from Albany, CA!...

And might you create a process whereby the splitters monitor things and automatically suspend a dataset that consists of such short work and return to it once they have built the cache up again? Not to say that it should not be processed, but could it be done in smaller doses so as not to decimate the ready to send cache and send the bandwidth to the limits?

why couldn't the download process give the short time wu's to the slower clients and the longer (normal?) ones to the faster clients. I think biasing the work distribution could be used to even out the network loading, right?

And might you create a process whereby the splitters monitor things and automatically suspend a dataset that consists of such short work and return to it once they have built the cache up again? Not to say that it should not be processed, but could it be done in smaller doses so as not to decimate the ready to send cache and send the bandwidth to the limits?

why couldn't the download process give the short time wu's to the slower clients and the longer (normal?) ones to the faster clients. I think biasing the work distribution could be used to even out the network loading, right?

That concept has been discussed, don't know if it is being considered or not....

BUT......it would not help in the recent situation where at least 3 entire datasets consisted of nothing but 17-19 point WUs and that's all that was being split for days on end..... The splitters would have to be able to have some logic involved that would cause them to switch off to some different datasets in such a situation.

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."