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Posts by Andrew Hingston

Posts by Andrew Hingston

1) Questions and Answers : Windows : How can the researches get access to BBC climate change model (Message 22265)
Posted 21 Apr 2006 by Profile Andrew Hingston
Post:
Thanks a lot guys. I hope I have it right at last. The model stores the results on my PC, and whenever I am browsing on the internet, it automatically sends these results to the servers at Oxford University. Correct ???

Yes. The BOINC part is separate from the climateprediction software, and provides the means of communication between the model, you, and the rest of the world.
2) Message boards : climateprediction.net Science : Sulphur model repeatedly respaws child process (Message 22253)
Posted 21 Apr 2006 by Profile Andrew Hingston
Post:
See this thread for what may be a similar problem.
3) Questions and Answers : Windows : CPDN Crash timing. (Message 22050)
Posted 15 Apr 2006 by Profile Andrew Hingston
Post:
You could set the timer so that it only runs Boinc on the hours you know you won\'t be using the machine? (Say, 2am - 8am or whatever).

Can\'t see JM7 doing that ;-)
4) Questions and Answers : Windows : Global statistics (Message 21985)
Posted 10 Apr 2006 by Profile Andrew Hingston
Post:
I think you have to have the graphics window open when you contact the server. To try this open graphics in the work(tasks) tab, then use update in the projects tab.

By the way, you should consider not using the screensaver option (set Windows screensaver to blank or none). It tends to use a great deal of procesing power and so slows progress.
5) Questions and Answers : Windows : Time to completion increasing (Message 21960)
Posted 9 Apr 2006 by Profile Andrew Hingston
Post:
Experience with the 5.2 versions of BOINC suggests that they are a poor indicator of time to completion. Whether 5.3 and later will prove much better I\'m not sure but the best estimate will be the one you do yourself, taking % complete and actual CPU time as the basis.

The only reason to worry about time to completion increasing would be if the percentage complete actually fell - this can happen if your experiment hits a problem and has to go back to an earlier point, but there is nothing you can do about that.

If you are worried about how long the experiments wil take, you can set no new work in the projects tab and then suspend one of the tasks, letting the other run to completion.
6) Questions and Answers : Preferences : Load manager on startup (Message 21954)
Posted 8 Apr 2006 by Profile Andrew Hingston
Post:
There are two ways of getting it to load automatically.

The most usual way is to have it in your startup folder.

1. Navigate to your BOINC folder (probably in C:/program files).

2. Right click on boincmgr.exe and choose create shortcut.

3. Place that shortcut in your startup folder in C:/Documents and Settings/[All users or your profile]/Start Menu/Programs/startup.

The other way is to install BOINC as a service.

Don\'t worry about losing everything if you uninstall BOINC by the way. If you use control panel add/remove you will uninstall BOINC but not the application and account files. So long as you install the new BOINC version into the same folder you should be able to carry on as before. But for safety make a backup first in case a file gets trashed. If you choose that you can install the latest version of BOINC and it will offer a startup option for you.
7) Questions and Answers : Windows : Master file parse failed (Message 21946)
Posted 7 Apr 2006 by Profile Andrew Hingston
Post:
See this post.
8) Message boards : Number crunching : No Credit - Why? (Message 21874)
Posted 4 Apr 2006 by Profile Andrew Hingston
Post:
My guess would be that the climateprediction task is not running for long enough, and may not even be checkpointing (reaching a save point).

Credit is awarded on trickles to the server which occur at the end of each model year (1 Dec). You can see how far the model has got in the graphics window of the work (tasks) tab. The first is due at 1 Dec 1921.

The checkpoints are set at the end of each 6 model days (00.30 on the 1st, 7th, 13th of each model month). There is a countdown to the checkpoint in the graphics window with key 8 (Z to remove the side panel). If you have preferences set to remove the model from memory when preempted, or it is lost to memory eg when you shut down, then progress made since the last checkpoint will be lost.
9) Questions and Answers : Preferences : Disk Space (Message 21854)
Posted 3 Apr 2006 by Profile Andrew Hingston
Post:
The minimum for the current main project is about 550 MB. The reason that the space used has been going up will be the folders relating to old projects - you can identify the current one from the work tab, the others in the CPDN project folder of the BOINC disrectory can be deleted if you are short of space.
10) Message boards : Number crunching : Not downloading work (no work available for platform) (Message 21741)
Posted 30 Mar 2006 by Profile Andrew Hingston
Post:
Carl, the project chief software engineer has now said that there will be no further work for the Mac OS.

\'We have all the slabs & sulphurs we\'ll need and it would just be a waste of electricity. I\'m afraid the only hope for CPDN Mac\'s in the future would be Intel Macs: (a) if I can ever convince anyone to get us one and
(b) if we ever have the time, although from what I\'ve heard it should be a lot similar to our Linux builds since Intel Fortran for the Mac is available (Intel Fortran is what we use on Windows & Linux)\'
11) Questions and Answers : Macintosh : No work sent (there was work for other platforms) (Message 21738)
Posted 30 Mar 2006 by Profile Andrew Hingston
Post:
Carl, the chief software engineer, has now said that there will be no work for Macs for the forseeable future. He has been unable to get the current experiment to run on the Mac OS, and:

We have all the slabs & sulphurs we\'ll need and it would just be a waste of electricity [to send these out]. I\'m afraid the only hope for CPDN Mac\'s in the future would be Intel Macs: (a) if I can ever convince anyone to get us one and
(b) if we ever have the time, although from what I\'ve heard it should be a lot similar to our Linux builds since Intel Fortran for the Mac is available (Intel Fortran is what we use on Windows & Linux)
12) Questions and Answers : Windows : Models dont run with PCAnywhere host waiting (Message 21698)
Posted 29 Mar 2006 by Profile Andrew Hingston
Post:
You may have your general preferences set with \'do work whilst my computer is is use\' set to no. BOINC may well interpret PCAnywhere as \'use\'. If you change to a \'run always\' command (right click on the BOINC icon in the system tray and select) and BOINC runs then, that will be the explanation.
13) Questions and Answers : Windows : Deleting old computers from host (Message 21613)
Posted 26 Mar 2006 by Profile Andrew Hingston
Post:
Unfortunatly it is not possible to delete hosts once they have workunits associated with them, probably for reasons of data integrity.
14) Questions and Answers : Windows : Lost % of \'Progress\' - ? why (Message 21612)
Posted 26 Mar 2006 by Profile Andrew Hingston
Post:
If it is indeed the same experiment then the model has rewound to an earlier checkpoint a part of an inbuilt self recovery process.

The important question is why this might have happened, and I notice that previous models have crashed either with the so called \'107\' error or exit code -5, which is non specific. That suggests that your computer is having trouble running the experiment. I think that the best advice is to read this thread. Although that does not mention exit code 5, similar considerations apply. As you have a relatively old and low powered Duron processor it is possible that your computer is struggling to cope. Updating the drivers might resolve it, otherwise it would be sensible to run some checks to see how it performs under other demanding tasks.
15) Message boards : Number crunching : Not downloading work (no work available for platform) (Message 21522)
Posted 23 Mar 2006 by Profile Andrew Hingston
Post:
The team have not been able to get the latest experiments to run under the Mac OS. But Mac could run the sulphur experiment, which is still current, and I have not seen anything from the team on whether they will be generating new WUs for Mac users there. It\'s worth remaining attached and to keep an eye on the boards for an announcement. The devs are overstretched as always, and lack of response should not be taken negatively.
16) Questions and Answers : Wish list : Automatic Rollback (Message 21521)
Posted 23 Mar 2006 by Profile Andrew Hingston
Post:
if manual back-up is necessary, it should be done automatically.

There\'s a danger of talking at cross purposes here. Automatic rollback is already implemented (the original point), though in a post on the seasonal/attribution forum Tolu refers to rollback to the last, penultimate and then first checkpoint, and I think that may be the pattern for the current experiments. It seems to be the case with the BBC model, because there was a poster on those boards a tad cheesed off after he appeared to have gone back to his first checkpoint after a system crash (not BOINC related).

But rollback does not always work, and given the complexities of the model it\'s not surprising. Automating a full backup of the BOINC folder is problematic partly because it can\'t be done on the fly, but also because BOINC is multi project. It has a use in climateprediction, and disadvantages for everyone else.

Personally, I don\'t find exiting BOINC occasionally and doing a drag and drop copy a great chore. ;-)

17) Questions and Answers : Windows : I can\'t uninstall Boinc (Message 21506)
Posted 22 Mar 2006 by Profile Andrew Hingston
Post:
I\'ve not heard of this before but you could try the Microsoft uninstaller.
18) Message boards : Number crunching : Database faults/flaws now for a week (Message 21478)
Posted 21 Mar 2006 by Profile Andrew Hingston
Post:
The servers are pretty overloaded at the moment, and Carl has been trying to keep things afloat until he gets new hardware in a couple of weeks. We may have to expect a few problems in the interim.
19) Questions and Answers : Windows : Failure to attach projects to computer (Message 21477)
Posted 21 Mar 2006 by Profile Andrew Hingston
Post:
I think he is trying to attach to this one, Jim :-)

I don\'t have an answer to the problem either, because I don\'t know what might be different between SETI and the others that might explain it. Have you looked at the advice in the BOINC Wiki? Any clues from there on where it is going wrong?
20) Message boards : Number crunching : A question of credit. (Message 21447)
Posted 20 Mar 2006 by Profile Andrew Hingston
Post:
I\'m guessing doing the math that tricles are now 25k a part?, or every January per model year?.

Actually at the beginning of December, but yes.


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