I'm getting a bit frustrated with astropulse. I have 2 tasks that my computer spent 100+ hours apiece crunching on that have gone past their due date. Both were reported on July 10th and were due on Aug 4th. They're now shown in red as it's Aug 5th. Am I wasting my valuable cpu time on tasks that will never be validated?

I'm getting a bit frustrated with astropulse. I have 2 tasks that my computer spent 100+ hours apiece crunching on that have gone past their due date. Both were reported on July 10th and were due on Aug 4th. They're now shown in red as it's Aug 5th. Am I wasting my valuable cpu time on tasks that will never be validated?

I assume that your computer uploaded its results on 10 July, and they now show up in your list of pending tasks. If S@H didn't get a matching report from another user by 4 August, it will send the tasks out to another user when the servers are started up tomorrow. Your pending tasks will remain, until the other user(s) reports.

You've met your deadline, you just need to wait for validation from another user. If it has to, S@H will try a third, fourth, etc. user.

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Obviously, they weren't reported ever, otherwise they wouldn't have timed out.

And if your computer spent 100+ hours doing them, you couldn't have reported them on July 10, since they were sent to you on that same day.

Gruß,
Gundolf
[edit]If you check your BOINC log file (stdoutdae.txt) for "ap_21mr07aa_B5_P1_00366_20100709_22725.wu_1" what do find? Maybe it never reached your computer (ghost unit).[/edit]

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Computer sind nicht alles im Leben. (Kleiner Scherz)

SETI@home classic workunits 3,758
SETI@home classic CPU time 66,520 hours

The 2 APs haven't been reported according to the list, here's one of them. I guess they where finished during the outage?

As far as I know, there is no AP validation being done at present until the validator for AP gets updated with a bug fix and the new credit scheme. That's why the AP splitters and validators were shut down during this last run.

Dunno if they will have a reworked version online coming out of the outage tomorrow or not.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

10 Jul 2010 is the date when the task is Sent to your computer.
But it happens it never arrives to you and your computer never computes it.

If it shows in red you (your BOINC) did not report it.
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/workunit.php?wuid=630604214

Are you sure the same Astropulse v505 v5.05 task:
ap_21mr07aa_B5_P1_00366_20100709_22725.wu_1

was on your computer (search in stdoutdae.txt)?

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- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

This raises an interesting question, in 2 parts:

What happens to tasks whose deadline comes up during a scheduled outage? Do they permit reporting afterward?

And similarly, what about Astropulse that come due while the validators are out?

From past similar situations, I expect the project will allow some leeway in reporting times.

Plus a question for Doug: you say the tasks spent 100 hours, so are they showing as complete on your machine, and trying to upload?

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Actually, it shows four AP WUs timed out. Three on Aug.4th and one on July 19th. If all four are completed and you report them tomorrow you should get credit for them though the one from the 19th is still waiting validation and completed by a third, but that one is a little iffy.

Eep, Kittyman is right, I forgot about the problem with the AP Validator. But, even with the broken validator, they should stay in pending (once reported)until validated.

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PROUD MEMBER OF Team Starfire World BOINC

Doug, it looks like you are not able to complete Astropulses within the time limit right now, I don't see any successful APs in your list of tasks. you can use "Project Preferences" to select SETI@home Enhanced only. (Be sure to also select "No" under "If no work for selected applications is available, accept work from other applications?")

since you are not getting points for AP right now, this should have absolutely no effect adverse on your RAC. Your RAC might even go up slightly if the CPU time currently used on AP went to tasks you can complete.

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I've included the results from one of them. The status currently shows in progress. As you can see the exit status is 0 which I assume to be normal. There is no dump to STDERR.

The other 2 are:
ap_21mr07aa_B4_P1_00374_20100709_29375.wu_1
ap_05no09af_B0_P0_00256_20100705_24861.wu_2

Both are in the same state of in progress and beyond the reporting date. What is the nature of the astropulse bug? I got a timeout and a nasty stderr dump on an older run.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Name ap_21mr07aa_B5_P1_00366_20100709_22725.wu_1
Workunit 630604214
Created 9 Jul 2010 20:04:42 UTC
Sent 10 Jul 2010 5:26:33 UTC
Received ---
Server state In progress
Outcome ---
Client state New
Exit status 0 (0x0)
Computer ID 5153516
Report deadline 4 Aug 2010 5:26:33 UTC
Run time 0.00
CPU time 0.00
Validate state Initial
Credit 0.00
Application version Astropulse v505 v5.05

Stderr output

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The tasks did complete (at least they showed 100%) before they were uploaded. I'm guessing now that this may have something to do with the validator.

Are you sure the task was correctly computed, no error's?

My last (SETI-BÊta) AP tasks were validated on 23 july.
Last AP validation.

Four AP tasks were maxed out on number of resend's and not validated against a wingman, since there wasn't one with a Completed whitout errors (0), but still got (max) credit.

My bad, this is SETI 'Main'.........

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I've just shutdown astropulse tasks for now until I/S.E.T.I. have gotten a better handle on this. It's a damn shame. Astropulse has a lot of potential.

you might consider using optimized apps. This can cut your reporting times in 1/2.

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

Where would I find such apps and what exactly do they do?

Uh, did I mention the AP validators are broke?

Or am I spitting into the wind?

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

Where would I find such apps and what exactly do they do?

Guess using the latest v.36 lunatics installer would be best.

This is the place for optimized application, but there are a few limits.

You can begin reading here, you're quite new to this and some information to start with this, is very much needed and appreciated.

Since there are several "kinds"of Optimized Applications, f.i. for CPU &
NVidia GPU and ATI GPU, in Windoze Flavors.

Hope, I/this didn't discourage you :)

[ADDED]

Well, so much for forgetting to post inmediatly. :)

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Thanks for the information on optimized apps. No gpu's present. I can't see upgrading my ancient PCI bus with a graphics card. Better off buying all new hardware. I am a reluctant user of Windows 7 because I killed my landline and bought a magicJack which, despite their claims, does not run on Linux yet. My Fedora system runs twice as fast, but I am captive. I could go on for days with my tirads about Microsoft, but I won't bore you here.

Doug, if you're willing to do a bit of research in the stdoutdae.txt file perhaps we can figure out what happened. There may also be an "old" version but probably the recent version will go back far enough. If you search for "ap_" you should find all the messages pertaining to those Astropulse v505 tasks. What would be of particular interest is when processing started and finished, also when the result uploads started and finished. Then if you could look for the next successful Scheduler request after each upload finished that would define when the completed tasks were reported and should have transitioned to showing a "Received" time.

The Astropulse validators being disabled or not running should have no effect on that received time update, it's strictly a Scheduler update to the BOINC database. I can't think of a good reason your host would be particularly vulnerable to that update failing, and my guess is there are at least 3 separate requests to the Scheduler involved. Bad luck to that extent isn't believable either.

You posted:

I've just shutdown astropulse tasks for now until I/S.E.T.I. have gotten a better handle on this. It's a damn shame. Astropulse has a lot of potential.

I hope you realize the only way to not get Astropulse v505 tasks is unchecking the "If no work for selected applications is available, accept work from other applications?" box, there are no Astropulse nor Astropulse v5 tasks any more.

                                                               Joe