Posts by HDRW

1) Questions and Answers : Windows : Problem with uploading and reporting (Message 891276) Posted 4 May 2009 by HDRW Post: OK, well thanks for looking at it. It seems we're at a dead end, and probably will never know what happened. I'd still like to know why it didn't get sent during the three days between being finished and running out of time - those comms failures were nothing to do with the unit itself, obviously. Was there a major outage that I missed? Cheers, Howard
2) Questions and Answers : Windows : Problem with uploading and reporting (Message 891054) Posted 4 May 2009 by HDRW Post: If I do have another account, it's news to me! The AP unit has gone from here, leaving no trace that I can find except in the message log. A couple of units currently on the account in question are: Task ID Work Unit 1216698224 438386257 (this one has finished & is pending credit) 1217047009 438543840 (this one is in progress) Does this help to confirm that we're talking about the same account? Looking at the log, the AP unit finished on the 21st and was uploaded. But later there seems to be a comms problem, because patterns like the one below seem to be happening for many days - until the 28th, I believe: 2009-04-27 02:56:23 [SETI@home] Sending scheduler request: Requested by user 2009-04-27 02:56:23 [SETI@home] Reporting 1 tasks 2009-04-27 02:56:25 [---] Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site 2009-04-27 02:56:28 [---] Access to reference site succeeded - project servers may be temporarily down. 2009-04-27 02:56:29 [SETI@home] Scheduler request failed: couldn't connect to server 2009-04-27 02:56:29 [SETI@home] Deferring communication for 36 min 17 sec 2009-04-27 02:56:29 [SETI@home] Reason: scheduler request failed Now if the comms didn't start working until the 28th, and the AP unit's deadline was the 24th, what would happen to the unit when comms resumed (bearing in mind it was uploaded on the 21st)? Since the unit disappeared on the 28th, the only identity I have for it is the one in the log: ap_20dc08ag_B6_P0_00135_20090124_23731.wu_4_0 I could send you the whole log (not sure how) if that would help? Cheers, Howard
3) Questions and Answers : Windows : Problem with uploading and reporting (Message 890517) Posted 2 May 2009 by HDRW Post: I haven't stopped network activity - in fact I hadn't touched BOINC for some time at all! As for it being over the deadline "for some time" - when I looked it was less than 2 days over. But looking in the log file, I find: 2009-04-21 07:31:18 [SETI@home] Computation for task ap_20dc08ag_B6_P0_00135_20090124_23731.wu_4 finished ... 2009-04-21 07:31:20 [SETI@home] [file_xfer] Started upload of file ap_20dc08ag_B6_P0_00135_20090124_23731.wu_4_0 2009-04-21 07:31:25 [SETI@home] [file_xfer] Finished upload of file ap_20dc08ag_B6_P0_00135_20090124_23731.wu_4_0 2009-04-21 07:31:25 [SETI@home] [file_xfer] Throughput 22944 bytes/sec So that suggests it did get uploaded, three days before the deadline - but looking at my Stats I didn't get credited, my RAC is only 35, and that seems to be from the ordinary units. So what happened? Why didn't I get the credit (what is the approximate expected credit from an AP unit)? Why was it still on my machine 7 days after the upload? Cheers, Howard
4) Questions and Answers : Windows : Problem with uploading and reporting (Message 889105) Posted 28 Apr 2009 by HDRW Post: (The moderators moved this to Q&A) Yes, that's the machine. I don't know where the AstroPulse unit has gone - it was running for a number of weeks, and as I said, last weekend it was showing "Ready to report" - it's not showing on my system any more, and the "Your Results" page doesn't show it at all (is there a way to look back beyond what that shows?). The eight "6 hour" units are there, all sent at the same time earlier today, when presumably whatever was holding that up was resolved. The Statistics tab here was showing a straight-line descent from the 21st of April to now, until I did a manual communication just now and it's now upwards, obviously including the 8 units sent earlier, but as to where the AP unit has gone, I have no idea - it's just disappeared! Cheers, Howard
5) Questions and Answers : Windows : Problem with uploading and reporting (Message 888437) Posted 26 Apr 2009 by HDRW Post: I just leave BOINC running, with hardly a look at what's going on. It's just not that interesting to command my time over other things going on... But this morning I had a look and found that there are eight "6-hour" SETI work units saying "Uploading", and a 255-hour Astropulse that's "Ready to report" - but its deadline was 2 days ago! I don't know when the uploading will happen (I assume there's something wrong with the servers) but does that mean that the AP unit is going to be ignored and I won't get credit for it? Since I run SETI 50:50 with Einstein (started doing that at a previous long-running SETI outage) that represents over three weeks' worth of electricity and CPU cycles for nothing - this seems ludicrous. Nothing I have done caused this - this machine has been on 24/7 during that time and I don't do any heavy processing, so it's BOINC/SETI itself that has caused this to happen. I'm not that upset at losing the credit, but I'm furious that the effort expended won't contribute to the project. And what's more, could it explain the downturn in progress? It may not be people leaving, but lots of missed deadlines meaning that the work was done, but not acknowledged? Cheers, Howard
6) Message boards : Technical News : Small Word (Sep 20 2007) (Message 646490) Posted 22 Sep 2007 by HDRW Post: If it's suspected that a host isn't working (by heartbeat or whatever method), rather than returning their WUs to the pool, why not issue them to others as the 3rd cruncher? The current standard is that 2 people get each WU, but is there anything in the logic that stops a third one being added at some point? That way all 3 people should get the credit if they do finally submit the result. Or maybe I've misunderstood how it works... Cheers, Howard
7) Message boards : Number crunching : SETI/Einstein not swapping on time, & WU "Maximum CPU time exceeded" (Message 627799) Posted 27 Aug 2007 by HDRW Post: Because these messed up work units, which when they complete or error out, they'll have done only a very small percentage, they then screw up your 'Result duration correction factor' for that computer, Boinc thinks all Seti Work is going to take an increased amount of time, and then crunches any work that might miss their deadlines, it'll take a while for RDCF to go back down, check on your account page for your computer for it. Claggy OK, I'll just let it sort itself out - Thanks! Cheers, Howard
8) Message boards : Number crunching : SETI/Einstein not swapping on time, & WU "Maximum CPU time exceeded" (Message 627711) Posted 27 Aug 2007 by HDRW Post: I've had a couple of strange things the past couple of days - I run S@H and Einstein, with a 50/50 resource share, and a 60 minute switch time. All has been well until this weekend when the hourly switchover hasn't been happening. I also had a S@H WU abort with "Maximum CPU time exceeded". Are these related? I've double-checked the switch time, so it's not that which has changed. Here's some of the message log: 24/08/2007 23:41:33\|Einstein@Home\|Starting h1_0539.10_S5R2__309_S5R2c_1 24/08/2007 23:41:34\|Einstein@Home\|Starting task h1_0539.10_S5R2__309_S5R2c_1 using einstein_S5R2 version 433 24/08/2007 23:41:35\|Einstein@Home\|[file_xfer] Started upload of file h1_0539.10_S5R2__335_S5R2c_1_0 24/08/2007 23:41:41\|Einstein@Home\|[file_xfer] Finished upload of file h1_0539.10_S5R2__335_S5R2c_1_0 24/08/2007 23:41:41\|Einstein@Home\|[file_xfer] Throughput 33643 bytes/sec 25/08/2007 07:30:11\|SETI@home\|Restarting task 04mr07ab.10282.5389.3.4.5_4 using setiathome_enhanced version 527 - so Einstein held onto the system for nearly 8 hours before SETI got to play... ... 25/08/2007 21:11:42\|Einstein@Home\|Resuming task h1_0539.10_S5R2__309_S5R2c_1 using einstein_S5R2 version 433 ...and then SETI held it for nearly 14 hours... 26/08/2007 06:20:22\|SETI@home\|Resuming task 04mr07ab.10282.5389.3.4.5_4 using setiathome_enhanced version 527 ...and then Einstein for 9. (Benchmark removed) 26/08/2007 18:00:27\|SETI@home\|Aborting task 04mr07ab.10282.5389.3.4.5_4: exceeded CPU time limit 132146.139706 26/08/2007 18:00:27\|SETI@home\|Deferring communication for 1 min 0 sec 26/08/2007 18:00:27\|SETI@home\|Reason: Unrecoverable error for result 04mr07ab.10282.5389.3.4.5_4 (Maximum CPU time exceeded) 26/08/2007 18:00:32\|SETI@home\|Computation for task 04mr07ab.10282.5389.3.4.5_4 finished and that was the abort that I mentioned. What's causing these problems? Are they related? Can I do anything to get the switchover time back where it should be? Cheers, Howard
9) Message boards : Technical News : Splitsville (Aug 16 2007) (Message 620584) Posted 16 Aug 2007 by HDRW Post: Matt, Thanks for keeping us informed, as usual! Look on the bright side: at least you don't work for Skype! :-) Just a thought: I wonder how much of the load on the system is related to the number of work units, and how much to the volume of them? When things get tough, how easy would it be to increase the size of the WUs, so that they take longer to come back, thus reducing the rate that communications are happening? Cheers, Howard
10) Message boards : Technical News : Whipped Cream (Jul 24 2007) (Message 610495) Posted 28 Jul 2007 by HDRW Post: And pending credits seem to be on the rise for ALL of my rigs. I wonder what's afoot? It's that funny-shaped thing on the end of your leg! :-) Sorry, couldn't resist... I've long since given up worrying whether the status page is working and accurate - when things are going well it seems to be reasonably OK, but when the manure hits the air stirrer it's usually useless, which is when you need it to be working, of course! So now I just let the thing crunch when it can (and crunch Einstein when it can't) and things will work out in the end. I doubt that a message from ET will slip by unnoticed whatever happens from day to day, so why worry? Cheers, Howard
11) Message boards : Technical News : Blanking (Jul 18 2007) (Message 607657) Posted 23 Jul 2007 by HDRW Post: Inflamatory idea: is it possible that someone could learn something important (and therefore dangerous) about our radar defense systems by listening to the seti tapes? I suppose the information is readily available to any body with rabbit ears, unless the seti recorders are in some way unusual. I didn't think the SETI project had any sort of radar systems? And as for talking (I forget who) about filtering out radar signals as "obviously man-made", aren't we looking for things that are "obviously made by ET", which would look rather similar? But incredibly much smaller in signal strength, obviously. Cheers, Howard
12) Message boards : Number crunching : Network/Internet Routing problem to Berkeley from some of Europe (Message 108925) Posted 8 May 2005 by HDRW Post: <blockquote><blockquote> i think i've had enough now it will be seti classic with einstein and lhc</blockquote> Classic and SETI/BOINC are on the same Cogent circuit.</blockquote> I'm using SETI classic (I'm using OS/2 and I don't think there's a BOINC for it yet) and I've had serious lack of connection for the past couple of days - it's up now, but whatever caused it, it wasn't BOINC specific! I reckon I've lost about 30 machine-hours of SETI working because of this. Is there a cache facility available for SETI classic? I know originally they announced they would only issue a WU when the previous one was returned, which is a bit shortsighted when you are working in a less than perfect World... Cheers, Howard, St.Albans, England
13) Questions and Answers : Windows : Keep getting "No Work available" (Message 9720) Posted 19 Jul 2004 by HDRW Post: > View also the NewsTab at the main page. Do you mean the one on the right, where the last update was 22nd June, or the "Technical News" where the last update was 5th May?
14) Questions and Answers : Windows : Another Stupid Question (Message 9716) Posted 19 Jul 2004 by HDRW Post: I thought it was just me! I had the same "unknown fatal error: 1" (on all my machines), downloaded and got BOINC working (and stone me, what a convoluted pain of a process that is!) and lo and behold, "No work from project". What's more, from the S@H home page the latest Server Status report is from three days ago, and the latest "News" item is nearly a month old. I had to dig deep to find out from this thread that there was a central problem. And who on Earth decided that a BOINC User-ID should be a 32-byte random string? Since I run half a dozen machines, I have to copy the email message with the ID to each of them just so I can set the thing up... I already had a perfectly usable email address and "Name", why do we need another ID at all? User-Friendly it isn't! (/rant)

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