Astropulse release progress has been slowed by various things. Some necessary updates were made to the generic BOINC scheduler which we then employed on Monday. After that we found several weird problems including computers being refused work because their hardware was wrongly deemed inappropriate. At first this seemed like a "Mac only" problem but as far as I could tell some Macs were still able to get work. In any case, we ultimately fell back to the "old" scheduler this morning. This improved things according to some rough, immediate analysis. It is still unclear the complete set of scheduler problems, their causes, and their solutions. We'll chip away at that as Dave works his way through a large e-mail backlog.

Yesterday Dave, Jeff, and I had a "work stoppage" and went for a hardcore hike in the Desolation Wilderness (near Lake Tahoe) - something we've been talking about doing for way too long, as we are all avid hikers. We were joined by my wife and Daniel, a visiting BOINC developer from Spain. Since this is technical news, the technical details are thus: We took the Twin Bridges trailhead (at 6200') up to and beyond Horsetail Falls. This included some surprisingly dangerous boulder scrambling which sapped more energy than originally expected. Our plan to bag Ralston Peak (9200') was reduced to basic exploration up to (and ultimately into) Lake of the Woods (over 8000'). The boulder scrambling downward was even worse, but all knees/ankles survived intact. All told, about 7-8 miles of hiking/scrambling, almost 2000 vertical feet gained and lost, taking about 8 hours including lengthy breaks. I felt poorly acclimated, even though I easily conquered a similar hike in Yosemite (up to the top of Nevada Falls and back) six days earlier. Dave was acclimated but started the hike a bit exhausted as he did about 800 feet of rock climbing in upper Yosemite the previous day.

- 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

Astropulse release progress has been slowed by various things. Some necessary updates were made to the generic BOINC scheduler which we then employed on Monday. After that we found several weird problems including computers being refused work because their hardware was wrongly deemed inappropriate. At first this seemed like a "Mac only" problem but as far as I could tell some Macs were still able to get work.

As far as I can tell, those Macs able to get work were all either running with an optimized client and hence using the app_info file. I had several people switch over to the optimized client and they immediately got work.

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By the way... Dave did find the problem that's probably causing all our current scheduler woes. Will be enacted in beta shortly - we're still using the old (working) scheduler in the public project and will try the new scheduler next week.

- 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

Matt, has something happened to the xml stats updates? I notice that I haven't posted my SETI stats to BOINCstats in the last day, even though I've been granted credits here... and the other stats sites are even farther behind...

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.

Hello, from Albany, CA!...

Matt, has something happened to the xml stats updates? I notice that I haven't posted my SETI stats to BOINCstats in the last day, even though I've been granted credits here... and the other stats sites are even farther behind...

Yep, same here...looks like a general failure, affecting all users.

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25/07/2008 23:41:48|SETI@home|Sending scheduler request: Requested by user. Requesting 0 seconds of work, reporting 1 completed tasks
25/07/2008 23:41:53|SETI@home|Scheduler request succeeded: got 0 new tasks
25/07/2008 23:41:53|SETI@home|Message from server: Project is temporarily shut down for maintenance

...but everything shows green on the server status page. Guess they'll be onto it even as I write.

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Matt, has something happened to the xml stats updates? I notice that I haven't posted my SETI stats to BOINCstats in the last day, even though I've been granted credits here... and the other stats sites are even farther behind...

Beat me to it, I just logged in to ask the same question.

red a plenty on status page now, transitioners are off and some splitters also, Ive got that weekend feeling :(

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Astropulse release progress has been slowed by various things. Some necessary updates were made to the generic BOINC scheduler which we then employed on Monday. After that we found several weird problems including computers being refused work because their hardware was wrongly deemed inappropriate. At first this seemed like a "Mac only" problem but as far as I could tell some Macs were still able to get work. In any case, we ultimately fell back to the "old" scheduler this morning. This improved things according to some rough, immediate analysis. It is still unclear the complete set of scheduler problems, their causes, and their solutions. We'll chip away at that as Dave works his way through a large e-mail backlog.

Yesterday Dave, Jeff, and I had a "work stoppage" and went for a hardcore hike in the Desolation Wilderness (near Lake Tahoe) - something we've been talking about doing for way too long, as we are all avid hikers. We were joined by my wife and Daniel, a visiting BOINC developer from Spain. Since this is technical news, the technical details are thus: We took the Twin Bridges trailhead (at 6200') up to and beyond Horsetail Falls. This included some surprisingly dangerous boulder scrambling which sapped more energy than originally expected. Our plan to bag Ralston Peak (9200') was reduced to basic exploration up to (and ultimately into) Lake of the Woods (over 8000'). The boulder scrambling downward was even worse, but all knees/ankles survived intact. All told, about 7-8 miles of hiking/scrambling, almost 2000 vertical feet gained and lost, taking about 8 hours including lengthy breaks. I felt poorly acclimated, even though I easily conquered a similar hike in Yosemite (up to the top of Nevada Falls and back) six days earlier. Dave was acclimated but started the hike a bit exhausted as he did about 800 feet of rock climbing in upper Yosemite the previous day.

- Matt

Matt:

Data point, after the queue drained empty, I was still getting the not for this platform message. With the empty queue I reset the project. Now it is failing to download the science application. I'm on an Intel Mac. Hope it isn't something silly like when you did the server side upgrade and downgrade that something like an unprintable character got into the file name or something has a cap where it is supposed to be lower case.

Altitude is funny. You can be fine one trip and be totally slammed the next. And it can take a long time to acclimate. It isn't something to be ignored either.

Gary

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Seems this would be a good time to get Seti right befor worrying about Astropulse.

Hi, I am running Boinc (latest release) on a Mac Dual Core. What exactly is an optimized client? Why should I have one and where do I get it?

Please advise.

Thanks, and keep up the good work Seti team!

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Seems this would be a good time to get Seti right befor worrying about Astropulse.

SETI will never be "right" (or perfect) since it is an ongoing, never been done before type of science project that they are figuring out as they go. And every time a user or Project Admin needs to add something, it breaks something else. Its unavoidable and should be expected at this point.

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Hi, I am running Boinc (latest release) on a Mac Dual Core. What exactly is an optimized client? Why should I have one and where do I get it?

Please advise.

Thanks, and keep up the good work Seti team!

Check this thread for details.

Hi
Ran SETI years ago and it was trouble free, then I come back and it seems that it never works! what is the point of running SETI if it never works? can grind my pc into the ground on one of the other projects on Boinc. Going of on a hike dosn't seem very responsible at a time like this! best these folk put in some work if they expect ideots like us to support their aims. Am I Right?
Andy (u/k)

Hi
Ran SETI years ago and it was trouble free, then I come back and it seems that it never works! what is the point of running SETI if it never works? can grind my pc into the ground on one of the other projects on Boinc. Going of on a hike dosn't seem very responsible at a time like this! best these folk put in some work if they expect ideots like us to support their aims. Am I Right?
Andy (u/k)

Easy dude.........
What troubles are you having?
If you post what is going on in the NC forum, there are lots of folks who love to trouble shoot this stuff.........
Give it a try please......

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

Hi
Ran SETI years ago and it was trouble free, then I come back and it seems that it never works! what is the point of running SETI if it never works? can grind my pc into the ground on one of the other projects on Boinc. Going of on a hike dosn't seem very responsible at a time like this! best these folk put in some work if they expect ideots like us to support their aims. Am I Right?
Andy (u/k)

Seti has developed a lot more since you probably last did any work for it. New hardware, new software, as people have mentioned it is an ongoing project so will always have problems.

I think your comment about the staff going off on a hike is highly inappropriate as if you have seen the work that these guys put in to the project, then you would see that it was a rare occasion when they could do something together.

Personally they should arrange to do it more often as it gives them a well earned break, which they seldom get even on weekends, they work to keep us happy.

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Matt, has something happened to the xml stats updates? I notice that I haven't posted my SETI stats to BOINCstats in the last day, even though I've been granted credits here... and the other stats sites are even farther behind...

Yep, same here...looks like a general failure, affecting all users.

Yeah BoincStats reads 0 per day right now, Setiatwork seems to be doing Ok, Of course He's complained of Seti trying to keep Him from have any stats to publish in the past.

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CA HSR built a foundation, is laying Track!
PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550 Loco, US's 1st HST

Hi
Ran SETI years ago and it was trouble free, then I come back and it seems that it never works! what is the point of running SETI if it never works? can grind my pc into the ground on one of the other projects on Boinc. Going of on a hike dosn't seem very responsible at a time like this! best these folk put in some work if they expect ideots like us to support their aims. Am I Right?
Andy (u/k)

BOINC is intended to harness a waste product: unused CPU cycles on machines that would otherwise be idle.

Given that it's a waste product then that means that your excess CPU is going to the idle task instead of SETI.

Doesn't seem worth the kind of angst your message represents.

If you're really worried about running out of work, pick another BOINC project or three and give each a low priority compared to SETI.

... and since SETI is currently adding a new kind of search for ET (Astropulse), expect some problems as they're rolling that out. You can't make an Omelette without breaking some eggs.

Some of the best development I've done has taken place more than a half-mile from the nearest computer. "Take a hike" is a valid programming method.

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. . . Special Regards to All @ Berkeley and as Well, Matt - for the Posting - Thanks

> i'm getting plenty of work and seems alright on this end

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BOINC Wiki . . .

Science Status Page . . .

And on an unrelated note, the scheduling servers are down again, not able to report or get new WU's.

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***************************************
-Steve