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Posts by old_user33

Posts by old_user33

1) Message boards : Number crunching : BOINC 4.19 (Message 8037)
Posted 29 Jan 2005 by Profile old_user33
Post:
I upgraded from Boinc 4.13 to 4.19 a couple of days ago. No problems at all, with the current model still crunching as normal - Athlon XP 2800+, Win2K Pro SP4.

Also no problems on another machine - Athlon64 3500+, WinXP Home SP2, crunching PP@H and S@H.

I note that CC4.19 is now the standard download at PP@H and S@H, while LHC@H state that it will be their download when they get going again (I have my fingers crossed for next week). E@H are, of course already on 4.19, since I understand that they were the main instigators for the recent updates.

Pete How
2) Message boards : Number crunching : BOINC - Time sharing between projects (Message 3843)
Posted 11 Sep 2004 by Profile old_user33
Post:
I am sharing CPDN and S@H in the ratio 10:1 on one of omy PCs, but find that almost all the time, Boinc 4.05 is switching between the projects hourly (giving a 50:50 ratio), with S@H very occassionally getting a 2 hour slot.

Looking at the client_state.xml file, I see the CPDN currently has a "debt" of 0 and S@H a "debt" of 799 (S@H has just preempted CPDN). I admit this is a single observation. I have not yet done a longer term study of whether/if this changes.

Once again, as I often find myself thinking that Boinc's behaviour seems bizarre. Does anyone actually know for sure (not just guessing!) what the debt value actually means, how it is calculated, what it's units are, what Boinc's behaviour is for any given values?

Could it be that "debt" is just another of these overly complex mathematical functions like the notion of Recent Average Credit. Are these "bugs" that JM7 refers to just bugs, or have the Boinc Dev team just got bogged down in such complexities that there are too many circumstances when their logic fails. When I worked as a programmer, I was always taught to use the KISS principle - Keep It Simple Stupid. It would seem very simple to me to have a 10:1 ratio that simply gives 10 hrs to the first project and then 1 hr on the other, and then round the loop again?

Sorry if I sound a bit cynical.
3) Questions and Answers : Preferences : Clarification of Boinc limits on disk space please (Message 3586)
Posted 9 Sep 2004 by Profile old_user33
Post:
I have been a Boinc tester since the early days, but I am still confused by Boinc\'s limits on disk space usage as defined in the Global Prefs (not that I have any problems).

Boinc\'s own web site states under the heading \"Disk usage limits\":
\"You can limit disk space usage in any of three ways\" - Max space used by Boinc, Max percentage used by Boinc and Min.space to keep free.

I specifically note the word ANY, which implies that any one of these values can apply. Since the default when you first sign up is for non-zero values to be in all three of these settings, which actually applies, or is there a hierachy of precedence? Posters in various project forums usually seem to \"recommend\" values for all three settings.

I have also read in the forums of all projects, postings which suggest that \"max disk space\" does not actually mean that used by Boinc itself, but that used in total (OS, apps, data etc) - contrary to the statement on Boinc\'s own web page. Is this really true, or are posters getting confused between disk usage and free space(or is it just me that confused)?

I also think that having these set globally, ie for all computers of a given account, overlooks the fact that different computers may have different disk and memory constraints, eg my main PC, on which I run P@H and LHC@H, has 180GB of disk space (with a great deal free), whereas my other PC , on which I run CPDN and S@H, has only 20GB (with a very much smaller amount of free space) and only half the memory. Globally-defined settings may not suit all.

Any clarification/comments would be welcome.

Pete
4) Message boards : Number crunching : Unexpected problem downloading files (Message 2504)
Posted 1 Sep 2004 by Profile old_user33
Post:
I had the same error msg yesterday, when starting up with the new S@H version 4. It downloaded two files sucessfully, but had the above problem downloading a PDB file, and then just hung.

After resetting the project and then restarting Boinc, it then downloaded everything afresh, and started crunching normally. I suspect the S@H server was having problems or was overloaded at the time.

5) Message boards : Number crunching : Time slicing question (Message 2500)
Posted 1 Sep 2004 by Profile old_user33
Post:
> At least to some degree it is documented here:
&gt; <a> href="http://boinc.berkeley.edu/client_sched.php"&gt;http://boinc.berkeley.edu/client_sched.php</a>
&gt;
&gt; At some point it wasn't depending on RAC but the local cpu recent average
&gt; debt, dunno how it works now, though.
&gt;
@Janus, Thanks for the link.

The info there is rather technical, and I am not sure how much of it an ordinary user would understand. I think you are correct in that we should be talking about resource "debt" rather than RAC. It would be helpful to know how one can assess this one's self, so one might understand why Boinc is allocating resource to one project rather than another - which may be contrary to "common sense".

I can see the benefit that when work is in the queue, Boinc should take into account the report deadline for any WU to ensure that it completes before expiry. However I still cannot understand the logic of the need for the current mechanism, apparent based on HISTORICAL resource allocation. Unless I am missing something crucial here, then I would still use the adjective "bizarre". Some input from a Boinc developer on this subject might be illuminating, as I would really like to understand the logic of it - even if I don't agree with it.

I am lucky to have two PCs, so I do not share CPDN with any other project, but I have upgraded to Boinc 4.05 on the other PC, in order to out the new time-slicing with P@H (when it returns from upgrading) and S@H.

Pete
6) Message boards : Number crunching : Problem using CDNspy (Message 2484)
Posted 1 Sep 2004 by Profile old_user33
Post:
I find that CPDNspy 1.3.1 works fine for me. Nice job Admiral.

I have Java 2 Runtime Environment Standard Edition Version 1.4.2 installed under Win2000 Pro SP4.

I do find, however, that this package uses significant amounts of CPU if left running. Task Manager shows javaw.exe cycling (mostly) between 6% and 14% of my Athlon XP 2100+ Palomino - which does cut too deep into crunching time. I therefore only run it when I want to see the data, and then shut it down (not minimise to system tray).

7) Message boards : Number crunching : Time slicing question (Message 2471)
Posted 1 Sep 2004 by Profile old_user33
Post:
I have griped about this aspect of Boinc before, in other project forums.

I can see no logical reason why resource sharing should be based on RAC. This is surely contrary to what any normal user would expect. I certainly did. I presumed that when I set a share ratio, then that is what Boinc would actually do.

Now that hourly time-slicing is used in version 4, this would seem to me to make RAC even more irrelevant - even bizarre! What makes it worse, is that this is not apparently documented anywhere except in the forum threads. For an application that has resource sharing as one of it's main features, I think this should be made very clear to new users up front, otherwise it is very confusing.

8) Questions and Answers : Windows : 2 WUs downloaded, but there is no sign of one of them (Message 162)
Posted 6 Aug 2004 by Profile old_user33
Post:
When I started CPDN Boinc for the first time, it appeared from the msgs that 2 WUs were completely downloaded:

003e_000025107.zip
003f_000025108.zip

The results page for my account shows 2 WUs in progress - IDs 123 and 124, which correspond to these two units.

However, the work tab in the GUI shows only the 25108 WU, and I cannot find any trace of the 25107 anywhere on any disk. From past experience of other Boinc projects, I would expect to find the pending WU files in the project directory (climateprediction.net), with the current WU\'s files on the slot 0 directory.
9) Questions and Answers : Windows : Internet browsers report tag error in client_state.xml (Message 151)
Posted 6 Aug 2004 by Profile old_user33
Post:
I have noticed that both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox report a synyax error when I use these browsers to look at the client_state.xml file (I have removed the angle-brackets so the msg will print):

XML Parsing Error: mismatched tag. Expected: /file_signature.
Location: file:///H:/Program%20Files/Apps/BOINC/client_state.xml
Line Number 94, Column 7:
/signed_xml
------^

I don\'t know if this is a genuine error, but I\'ll report it anyway, since I have not seen this with any other Boinc projects.
10) Questions and Answers : Windows : Bad link on main forum page (Message 20)
Posted 5 Aug 2004 by Profile old_user33
Post:
Carl,

The link pointing to the help desk (questions and problems) on the main CPDN Boinc Forum page (forum_index.php) is missing a slash between the \"cpdnboinc\" and the \"forum_help.php\", and therefore returns a \"Not Found\" page

Pete




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