I\'m running hadsm3fub_k6of_005973442_1. It is churning along but since Jan 31 my work total has not moved and the average has constantly dropped. I can connect and update just fine. Anyone know what\'s happening here?

Thanks,
Valis

I assume that you\'re talking about credits, which isn\'t the best way to keep track of a model\'s progress.
The best way is by looking in the Messages tab, and noting how often a trickle is uploaded, as credits are granted for each trickle returned, and not on bench marks, or the other methods used by other projects.

Looking at the server page for your models, here, you seem to be crashing just about all of them.
Shutting done BOINC, (and therefore the models), BEFORE shutting down the computer may help. Also before hibernating.

There\'s several possibilities about your current model (shown here):
1) It may have turned into a so called \"ice world\" (described here with discussion here), or
2) You may have interrupted it (turned off the computer, etc), just after it reached a phase change, and before the first trickle of the next phase. This causes these models to rewind to the beginning and start all over again. And the trickles will be discarded until the model goes past where it was when it rewound, so you won\'t get any more credit for it until it DOES reach this point.

Use the Show graphics button to look at it, and if necessary, press Z to remove the left hand overlay.
Check the timestep shown, and compare it with what\'s shown on the model\'s page, (226,842). If it\'s less than this AND not in phase 2, then the model\'s rewound.

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Backups: Here

Thanks Les, that all makes sense. It would seem to be the rewind issue, which fits as I\'ve always just shut down rather than exit first. Will change my practice. I\'ve aborted as I didn\'t want to wait for it to catch up. So far it isn\'t requesting any work, but I\'ll give it a chance.

While I\'m at it, I also run SETI 20% of the time and the climate model 80%. The new AstroPulse v5 runs with such high priority that it seems to ignore my prefs and runs all the time. Is there a way to over ride this?

Thanks again.

Valis

If a piece of work nears its deadline, boinc raises its priority to try to get the job done within the time limit. Given that your machine is often shut down, that could be the case. (The usurped time will be \'paid back\' after the high-priority work finishes.)

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"We have met the enemy and he is us." -- Pogo
Greetings from coastal Washington state, the scenic US Pacific Northwest.

OK, thanks.

So how do I stop it from requesting 0 seconds of work so I can download a new task?

In the Projects tab, is CPDN set \"No new tasks\"? (Note on right of the entry.) If so, highlight the CPDN entry and click \"Allow new tasks\" on the left.

If boinc is responsible for Astropulse\'s priority, you\'d have to suspend all Astropulse work to get a CPDN Model. There\'s no point, though, because boinc will give the machine to Astropulse (as soon as you reactivate Astropulse) until that situation is resolved. Better to allow boinc to do what it is designed to do.

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"We have met the enemy and he is us." -- Pogo
Greetings from coastal Washington state, the scenic US Pacific Northwest.

You can also run your computer for longer periods, so that BOINC has the time to DO all of the work that you expect of it. Even half an hour extra a day without you using it for other things would speed up the day when BOINC can get more work.

Either way, make sure that you have SETI set for No more work, otherwise the new work that you eventually get may be another Astropulse unit.

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Backups: Here

Putting SETI on no new tasks immediately forced a new download from CP. I don\'t understand why this is, since I\'ve never had to do this before and BIONC has always maintained work for both, but no worries.

Thanks for you\'re help.

I\'m sure I just don\'t understand what\'s going on, but I aborted the high priority SETI job as it hadn\'t been running long anyway, to start afresh and because CP hadn\'t done anything for so long and I wanted that to run. But another SETI job downloaded and went straight into high priority. So my prefs for 80% to CP are still being ignored, unless BIONC is smarter than I realise and is cumulatively expecting to run SETI a quarter of all the time spent running CP and is therefore trying to catch up. Otherwise I\'m stuck with suspending SETI when I want CP to run.

Thanks again

So my prefs for 80% to CP are still being ignored, unless BIONC is smarter than I realise and is cumulatively expecting to run SETI a quarter of all the time spent running CP and is therefore trying to catch up.
Thanks again

That\'s exactly what\'s happening.

BOINC goes into \'panic\' mode (aka running at high priority) when it thinks a task is going to miss its deadline. It will then ignore your resource-sharing preferences and run the at-risk tasks until they either finish or are no longer in danger of missing their deadlines.

There\'s no such thing as a free lunch, however. BOINC remembers that SETI got extra time, and both its short term debt and long term debt debt are debited as a result. In the end, what happens (assuming you don\'t intervene and nothing else affects the scheduling) is that after the SETI tasks are done, BOINC won\'t download any more for a while and will just download and run tasks from other projects. Once SETI has been in the penalty box for a while, to let CPDN catch up, BOINC will start downloading SETI again.

Bottom line: Assuming your projects always have work available, which is generally true for both SETI and CPDN, if you don\'t mess with the scheduler, over the long run it WILL honor your preferences. In the short term, however, it won\'t when tasks may miss deadlines. That\'s normal (and preferable to missing deadlines, since most projects, except for CPDN, usually discard work returned late.)

On my big computer, I have a dozen projects running, about half of which rarely have work to do. BOINC keeps the work queue filled with tasks from the projects that have work continuously. When one of those intermittent projects suddenly has lots of work available, this is frequently what happens:

1) Normally, BOINC keeps a supply of work on hand from projects A, B, C, D, and E.

2) Work becomes available for project F, and BOINC downloads several days worth of work for F.

3) Every project on the computer now takes longer to complete tasks, because there\'s now 6 projects instead of 5 contenting for processing time on the four cores in the CPU.

4) Two of projects, B and C, have tasks with short deadlines. With the (unexpected and unpredictable) increase in expected completion times due to the addition of project F\'s tasks, B and C now have some tasks that are going to miss their deadlines if they play nice and only use their fair share of CPU time.

5) BOINC puts B and C into panic mode, and those two tasks run at high priority, at the exclusion of all other projects. In addition, no projects will download any new work, so as not to exacerbate the problem.

6) Once B and C finish, BOINC goes out of panic mode and starts running A, D, E, and F again. New tasks will once again be downloaded for A, D, E, and F.

7) B and C won\'t download new tasks for a while until, by virtue of not running anything, they\'ve paid back the extra CPU time they used. Once that happens, they resume downloading new work and processing.

That\'s somewhat simplified, but hopefully that helps understand what\'s happening.

Bottom line advice: Either don\'t attempt to micro-manage BOINC\'s scheduler and let it do what it\'s supposed to, or tell SETI not to give you Astropulse tasks. I think you can select which tasks to run on their website.

Trying to micro-manage BOINC\'s scheduler often yields unexpected (and undesired) results. Been there, done that.

Mike

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Want to find one of the largest known primes? Try PrimeGrid. Or help cure disease at WCG.

Sorry, just saw this. Thanks very much for the very thorough explanation.

Cheers.