Wait a minute! If you have 2 GPUs in a PC, BOINC will only see 2. How can you tell it you have, say, 4 if you only have 2?

You er.. "spoof " Boinc into seeing the number you want. I personally have no idea how it is done, but you only need to look at the "Top Hosts" to see it in action.

Wait a minute! If you have 2 GPUs in a PC, BOINC will only see 2. How can you tell it you have, say, 4 if you only have 2?

You er.. "spoof " Boinc into seeing the number you want. I personally have no idea how it is done, but you only need to look at the "Top Hosts" to see it in action.

Head over to GPUGrid and review their forums. Keith talks about it there, well not completely but he gives you a hint...

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Wait a minute! If you have 2 GPUs in a PC, BOINC will only see 2. How can you tell it you have, say, 4 if you only have 2?

Only if you use a stock client. All of BOINC's source code is open and free for anyone to use as they see fit. I simply compile the client to make the client see more gpus than are physically present. All that does is allow the schedulers to send me more work to maintain a larger cache.

It is not "cheating" the science in any way. Same cpus and gpus crunching the work. And the returned results are validated against my wingmen. And no aborted task is "thrown away" It is simply and quickly reissued to someone else to crunch. The science still gets done. Bunkering for the WOW contest has been going on since inception. It is a contest after all with virtual trophies awarded to the participants, teams and groups who crunch the most science for Seti. And that is the reason why we are here crunching isn't it? We are only processing 1% of the output from Breakthrough Listen. We need more computers and participants crunching all the data we receive. I think the WOW contest is one way to engage more people with distributed computing. It is a good thing.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Wait a minute! If you have 2 GPUs in a PC, BOINC will only see 2. How can you tell it you have, say, 4 if you only have 2?

You er.. "spoof " Boinc into seeing the number you want. I personally have no idea how it is done, but you only need to look at the "Top Hosts" to see it in action.

Hi Bernie,

Ok, now THAT IS cheating. :( I don't have an idea how and don't want to know how. Plain and simple. I have run out of work during outages / crisis events too. I don't care, gives my PCs a chance to catch a breath. ;)

Have a great day!

Siran

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CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

Wait a minute! If you have 2 GPUs in a PC, BOINC will only see 2. How can you tell it you have, say, 4 if you only have 2?

You er.. "spoof " Boinc into seeing the number you want. I personally have no idea how it is done, but you only need to look at the "Top Hosts" to see it in action.

Head over to GPUGrid and review their forums. Keith talks about it there, well not completely but he gives you a hint...

Nope, don't wanna know.

Have a great day! :)

Siran

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CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

Wait a minute! If you have 2 GPUs in a PC, BOINC will only see 2. How can you tell it you have, say, 4 if you only have 2?

Only if you use a stock client. All of BOINC's source code is open and free for anyone to use as they see fit. I simply compile the client to make the client see more gpus than are physically present. All that does is allow the schedulers to send me more work to maintain a larger cache.

It is not "cheating" the science in any way. Same cpus and gpus crunching the work. And the returned results are validated against my wingmen. And no aborted task is "thrown away" It is simply and quickly reissued to someone else to crunch. The science still gets done. Bunkering for the WOW contest has been going on since inception. It is a contest after all with virtual trophies awarded to the participants, teams and groups who crunch the most science for Seti. And that is the reason why we are here crunching isn't it? We are only processing 1% of the output from Breakthrough Listen. We need more computers and participants crunching all the data we receive. I think the WOW contest is one way to engage more people with distributed computing. It is a good thing.

Keith,

I have to say that filling up your cache with more WUs than is NORMALLY allowed is cheating the system. Plain and simple! That's like going to the store, paying with a 10 dollar bill and getting change back for 20. And, I didn't say anything about "cheating the science". No, the cheat is on regular users.

Have a great day! :)

Siran

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CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

Keith,

I have to say that filling up your cache with more WUs than is NORMALLY allowed is cheating the system. Plain and simple! That's like going to the store, paying with a 10 dollar bill and getting change back for 20. And, I didn't say anything about "cheating the science". No, the cheat is on regular users.

Have a great day! :)

Siran

Siran, you are certainly entitled to that world view. I don't have a problem with it. I am not harming regular users in any material way. I am simply letting the servers supply me with enough work that the computers don't go idle during outages. So more science gets done. That's my take on it.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Siran, you are certainly entitled to that world view. I don't have a problem with it. I am not harming regular users in any material way. I am simply letting the servers supply me with enough work that the computers don't go idle during outages. So more science gets done. That's my take on it.

+ 1

We have a big msg exchange in the past about the use of the "spoofed clients" and at the end the result was clear, our "huge cache" hosts are managed in a different way from the normal host, so their impact is even less than a regular host during the outages. Since they only ask for new work well after the rest of the community fill their caches.

What we achieved with this "huge caches" is keep the hungry host filled to produce all they can, as posted by Keith, no harm is done to any other participant of the project. We simply crunch more Wu because we could keep our hosts working 24/7 for the Seti cause..

About bunkering, was a normal practice for years, so not imagine why now all this msg exchanges, my only clue is because the ones who do that keeps their hosts invisible to the rest so they pass without notice, different from me who make all transparent and my hosts are visible.

BTW Bunkering or use spoofed client, does not improve the host crunching performance just keep it working 24/7.

<edit> Maybe the Admins of the forums could switch all this msg to a more appropriated thread than Panic mode.

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my only clue is because the ones who do that keeps their hosts invisible to the rest so they pass without notice.

<--------- Looks around the room, ducks his head down and pulls up his shirt 8^)

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my only clue is because the ones who do that keeps their hosts invisible to the rest so they pass without notice.

<--------- Looks around the room, ducks his head down and pulls up his shirt 8^)

I will hide my hosts, at least until the WoW event starts, so if you can't see you can't feel it. LOL

BTW If the Boinc code is open to all, why we could be called "cheaters" if we have the skills to make the changes and create our own "spoofed or bunkering client"?.

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Keith,

I have to say that filling up your cache with more WUs than is NORMALLY allowed is cheating the system. Plain and simple! That's like going to the store, paying with a 10 dollar bill and getting change back for 20. And, I didn't say anything about "cheating the science". No, the cheat is on regular users.

Have a great day! :)

Siran

Siran, you are certainly entitled to that world view. I don't have a problem with it. I am not harming regular users in any material way. I am simply letting the servers supply me with enough work that the computers don't go idle during outages. So more science gets done. That's my take on it.

Hi Keith,

Correct me if I'm wrong here. If I remember correctly, SETI put the 100 WU limit in to help relieve stress on their servers, correct? Or was it because people were hoarding WUs? I seem to remember that it had something to do with users and the servers.

Here's what I'm trying to get at: I think I can count on one hand the number of programmers I know out here: Petri, the gentleman in Germany, the gentleman in Taiwan, just off the top of my head. I'm not a programmer. Sure I dabbled in it when I first got into computers B.A.S.I.C., C++, even Perl, PHP for my website. But my brain does not work like Jerry at nerdgasm. He could program blindfolded, I've watched him program in his videos. I cannot program without having a reference source because I just cannot memorize everything about programming languages

I would estimate that perhaps 98% of the users, if not more, at SETI aren't programmers. So now we have a limit on WUs. Some programmer discovered that they can modify the BOINC code, being that it is free and anyone can do with it what they please, and hey! He can get more WUs than the average users can just by making a modification and compiling the program. And now instead of getting only 100 WU, he gets 200, 300, 400... My question is this: Does that seem fair to the rest of us that cannot cheat the system and get more than our share of the WUs because we cannot program?

I guess this is a moot point at this stage since the WOW event has been going on for several years now. I kinda wish I hadn't found out about "spoofing" and "bunkering" even though I haven't a clue what "bunkering" is except in times of war. My problem is that I like reading the stuff on these fora. I've been doing it for 20 years now. Heck, I learned about the Raspberry Pis out here and now have 3 of my own crunching away.

Anyway, I'm sorry if I may have made you upset. I think I will drop this topic now. :)

Have a great day! :)

Siran

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CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

And to bring the thread COMPLETELY back on track....

There is a rumor that the Sun will rise in the EAST tomorrow ;)



And my part of the USA Midwest is actually getting rain this morning. So some of the heatwave "here" has temporarily gone down.






Tom

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association).

Hi Siran

Some additional explanation about.

"Spoofed client" - It's a special sauce of the open available boinc code with some modifications who make it think you have more GPU's on the hosts than it really has. That's allow an additional 100 WU for each additional GPU, but the 100 WU limit are still respected, so nobody is cheating the 100 WU limit. Works as the rescheduling by making the host WU cache larger, and nobody said the use of the rescheduler is cheating. We keep this special build in a closed loop for heavy users only, those who knows what they realy doing, because if it used without discretion could create problem with the DB. Several threads talk about that in the past and as was explained before no harm is done to the DB if used as intended. They can't be released to the general public exactly because we can't force anybody to use as intended.

"Bunkering" - Is when you, by any mean (there are several techniques) "store" a set of ready crunched or not WU to release in a determinate date, normally was used for the challenges or large events like the WoW event. Several users and teams uses this method to increase their participation on the event. Could be seen as weird but it just follow the rule of the deadline of the WU. So no cheating, just keep the WU report time on the hands of the operator. Anyone could do the same by using the boinc provided suspended network activity tab.

What is important to anybody understand, "bunkering" or "spoofed" has no impact on the host crunching performance, the WU are crunched in the same way, takes the same time to crunch, they only allow the user take more control of his resources in order to keep the host 24/7 working for the SETI cause.

Hope this help to understand what we talk about. I know fear of the unknown is normal.

@Tom

Here is hot, shinning skie, pool, barbeque & cooler ready. You know that i mean...

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I would estimate that perhaps 98% of the users, if not more, at SETI aren't programmers. So now we have a limit on WUs. Some programmer discovered that they can modify the BOINC code, being that it is free and anyone can do with it what they please, and hey! He can get more WUs than the average users can just by making a modification and compiling the program. And now instead of getting only 100 WU, he gets 200, 300, 400... My question is this: Does that seem fair to the rest of us that cannot cheat the system and get more than our share of the WUs because we cannot program?

You could do exactly the same, without any knowledge of programming, just run several instances of boinc in your host.
That is a boinc build in function, and is well documented. So no cheating at all.

What i tried to explain is not about what is fair or not, there are several ways to use the advanced controls to take control over your boinc, you don't need to be a programmer, just need to expend some (a lot of) time to learn them and choose what is the best for your particular configuration. Average users just simply set & forget so they use the standard configuration and don't care about this.

<edit> BTW I'm not a programmer too, just learn some basic FORTRAN on my engineering school (>35 Years ago) . Just tried to learn all i can to try to squeeze all i can from my host.

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Hi Siran,

The reason why we have a 100 WU per device limit is because DA figured that was enough work to keep a 1 core Intel cpu busy for 10 days back at the beginning of the project. And that was true for the time and the applications and hardware. But time has marched on with newer multi-core processors and gpu computing. And the server hardware has been upgraded multiple times to handle more participants. But the code for the 100 WU per device is still there in the code because DA is loathe to change anything in the code unless dragged kicking and screaming by the users. Why do we still have the screensaver when no screens today need saving. Just an example of how old the code is and that has never been changed. The code has not kept up with the advent of gpu computing which is the prime production contributor. The code is still focused on cpu computing even though a good portion of users don't run the cpu applications at all because they are so time and energy inefficient compared to gpus.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

The reason why we have a 100 WU per device limit is because DA figured that was enough work to keep a 1 core Intel cpu busy for 10 days back at the beginning of the project.

Sorry but I believe you are incorrect. The limit was not part of the original Boinc, it was imposed as CPU's and GPU's got faster and could crunch more work per hour. I do not believe David Anderson had anything to do with it. It is a SETI@Home limit not a Boinc one

After any outage there were hundreds of machines trying to return thousands of task and this caused database problems.

As machines have got faster this has obviously got worse. So the limit is there to prevent the DB being swamped

If there is not a DB problem can I ask why you and others who use this "spoofing" are careful to not return all your tasks in one go after an outage. Because this is what you said when I questioned it before,

You said you didn't want to swamp the server after an outage, why not?

Whilst used responsibly I have no problem with it, however used in conjunction with bunkering, it will, I suspect, lead to more accusations of cheating in the WOW event as the opportunity to bunker thousands of WU's is now easy.

Why do we still have the screensaver when no screens today need saving.

Because it is good PR for those wanting to "show off" SETI@Home and there were many post about it when Windows 10 stopped it from working.

The maximum return rate is 255 tasks every 5 mins.

Nothing you do will change this. Even if it says “reporting 5368 tasks”, only 255 will make it through.

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Seti@Home classic workunits: 29,492 CPU time: 134,419 hours

The maximum return rate is 255 tasks every 5 mins.

Nothing you do will change this. Even if it says “reporting 5368 tasks”, only 255 will make it through.

I've reported a queue of several thousand uploads in less than five minutes, 512 at a time manually hitting the Update button right after each prev. scheduler request was completed, watching them disappear from the BOINC tasks display until there were none to report. I've also done this several times (as part of recovering my lost tasks... have to clear out any to upload and report first.) If the above is true, where did they go? And why did it seem to be working?

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i've only seen 255 going through for each update. unless they recently updated it to now take 512 at a time.

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Seti@Home classic workunits: 29,492 CPU time: 134,419 hours

That may be as I note that the recommended cc_config <max_tasks_reported> value is 512, but there's no time limit it seems.

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