It's the weekend and D2OL seems to be having problems again

[networkman]

Interesting post Ken - may I call you that? You're not displaying your profile for whatever reason.

I think most of the members here would recognize mastertech01 as the our TeAm's D2OL project leader, probably with GeoffS as a very enthusiastic second. That being said, if mastertech01 makes a case for it and suggests we go on "strike" I will follow his lead.

You may not like it, but I'm not going to follow the lead of a member who's neither been here very long nor apparently posted much; your arguements may be very valid, but arguements alone don't make a leader.

 

[BitSpit]

Originally posted by: mastertech01
Bitspit, thanks for the info. If you can test it out that would be helpfull. I have been reading up on some others as well. Too bad they dont seem to return results as quickly as D2OL, but a smooth reliable setup is most appreciated in the long run I suppose.

I've got it running just fine on Win95. It has WinSock2 and IE5 installed. It installs just fine if you have the shell integration enabled. Otherwise, after installing the software, you have to copy a file to the Start Up folder.

 

[mastertech01]

We have indeed been taking a lot of discouraging turns in the past 4 weeks since they changed the software on us. It was running so smoothly for the month that I ran this project before that. However this project has potential that I have not seen from others, and I believe we have to give it all the opportunity that is reasonable to be fixed. Reasonable however is the difficult point to determine. Patience is a virtue and the best comes to those with the most.

Ken I understand your frustration but the system is still up and running, not totally screwed like last weekend. Lets see what Sengent can offer up in resolution. If they continue on with hardly a comment and little resolve I believe we as a team should look at a possible change. I would like to keep this group together as much as is possible as I know your potential and what we can do with the right project. If we just scatter all about many will just quit and perhaps never crunch again. We have a team here and whether it is with D2OL or another project, preferably a humanitarian project, I believe we as a TeAm can do wonders for a great cause.

I believe D2OL the mission is STILL a great cause. Unfortunately its administrators have been less than encouraging for our effort. The largest problem is that we dont really know who IS the administrator, who has responsibility to make the decisions that need to be made. I personally think that Ken at the forums is only taking the blame for a much higher source of the problem. This is very common in business as you know. And Sengent is in the software business. We dont know the source of the funding for the entire project... perhaps Sengent has been restricted in what it can offer. But it sure as hell would be nice to hear from whomever it is so that we can make an honest mature decision on where to go from here.

Getting all hot and bent out of shape wont bring a cure, just fester the wounds. You all have endured a great deal of inconvenience and I dont blame you for being frustrated and disgusted. I only ask that you bear with it a bit longer and if things simply wont change, then I know I am personally willing to consider a new project. I cant force anyone to stay with it, Im not your daddy, not your boss, not your motivation. I am simply a TeAm mate who attempted to bring a great project to the community to share in and one which has reaped, if nothing more, at the minimum a bringing together of some of the best damned DC TeAm mates who can pull together and make a real effort to be the best in the world for a worthy cause. You have impressed many around the globe.

One thing you can do is keep an honorable profile, show restraint, and maintain a mature attitude. If this project does turn around and gets a lot better, I sure would hate to lose some of its finest members, and especially prevent future members from considering the project, because we failed to show unity and respect for its cause.

I posted earlier in this thread pretty much the rest of how I feel. I believe this is a TeAm project, and if we should move on to something else it should be a TeAm decision. We should vote on it at the right time and stay together... that IS what TeAm is all about.

Believe me I am human too.. I get frustrated more than you know. But for the sake of the TeAm I am keeping a positive outlook on the future. I hope you will continue on with us whatever the venture.

John

 

[TAandy]

My opinion, for what it`s worth,
I`ve been running D2OL for about a year and despite all the crap of server outages, disappearing candidates, and practically non-existent support from Sengent, I have stuck with it because I think it is the best DC project at the moment and has great potential, or it would if Sengent would get their fingers out. However, if mastertech wants to change projects, I`ll go along with that.
PS,
Don`t know if any of you know this, but when I started D2OL there was an offer of $25000 dollars for the best candidate !! (see here) so I would think it is in Sengent`s interest to keep this project running.
PPS, DNassaur in the above post seems to be THE head honcho at Sengent, but he hasn`t been on the forums for months.

 

[ken008]

Ran out of space on my last post. I am not a team leader . I know that. That is what I said. I am not telling anyone to do that. Do not follow me. Just consider the facts. Read, read , read, these people are arrogant. The aims of the project are in question. That is the point. Rather than have people filter off, make a stand, get some answers now. People are getting ready to quit let`s make a stand . It is the best chance to keep the team together. When it is working this project is fun, it has a lot of potential. What is the problem? Who Knows?

 

[Mardeth]

Im having no problems at all stats page looks ok, but a bit slow and I can download canditates.

 

[bfour]

They have a few more days of my support before I switch all my machines over to DF! As well as any new assimaltions that I get! Spent 3 years doing RC5 and never had as much trouble as I have seen with D2OL. IMHO DF is a better project and not as reliant on the servers for data! Additionally protein folding is medicaly related due to the use of proteins in life! Mastertech I will continue, but not much longer A majority of my machines except 2 are doing DF bad candidates, no data, and erratic stats are taking their toll!

 

[JWMiddleton]

I am going to give this a bit more time to see how things go. If we leave, I believe I will move any D2OL boxes back to SETI and await SETI2. It will have a lot more to it than just the search for ET; there will be humanitarian elements available, but possibly not at first. SETI has gone through many growing pains and they have a pretty decently running setup with tons of 3rd party (user) support: SetiQueue, SetiDriver, SetiSpy, SetiPro, etc. My only complaint with SETI is that I can no longer compete. I've reach my limit to compete with my personal fleet when many other have huge corporate fleets. But, I can do nicely with D2OL.


After I wrote this I noticed that two of my boxes ran out of WUs overnight. An Athlon XP finished its last WU around 1:50 AM. What a waste!

 

[dmcowen674]

John (MasterTech) Seems like the D2OL client is still a beta. Do they have any plans on working with BOINC???

 

[mastertech01]

Originally posted by: JWMiddleton
I am going to give this a bit more time to see how things go. If we leave, I believe I will move any D2OL boxes back to SETI and await SETI2. It will have a lot more to it than just the search for ET; there will be humanitarian elements available, but possibly not at first. SETI has gone through many growing pains and they have a pretty decently running setup with tons of 3rd party (user) support: SetiQueue, SetiDriver, SetiSpy, SetiPro, etc. My only complaint with SETI is that I can no longer compete. I've reach my limit to compete with my personal fleet when many other have huge corporate fleets. But, I can do nicely with D2OL.


After I wrote this I noticed that two of my boxes ran out of WUs overnight. An Athlon XP finished its last WU around 1:50 AM. What a waste!

I just checked mine and they are down but never went empty. Do you have yours cached to 100 JW?

 

[mastertech01]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674
John (MasterTech) Seems like the D2OL client is still a beta. Do they have any plans on working with BOINC???

I have no idea what thier plans are Dave, they dont seem to like to talk much.

 

[RemyCanad]

All I can say is hmmmmmmmm.

If it keeps up I will be forced to leave. I know I am not a big producer or anything so it really won't affect the team. But I am just going to let you guys know before hand so if I do stop producing you will know why.

I am going to give them till the new year to fix it all. That's over a months time. I would love to stay with the team but I figure the team has more patience than me. And will give them longer to get things fixed up.

What really gets me is that I am going to be getting access to atlease 3 more computers. But I will not be putting D2OL on them becuase I won't be able to run over to them and fix them if something locks up and such.....

Well now its time to wait and see.

 

[mastertech01]

Originally posted by: RemyCanad
All I can say is hmmmmmmmm.

If it keeps up I will be forced to leave. I know I am not a big producer or anything so it really won't affect the team. But I am just going to let you guys know before hand so if I do stop producing you will know why.

I am going to give them till the new year to fix it all. That's over a months time. I would love to stay with the team but I figure the team has more patience than me. And will give them longer to get things fixed up.

What really gets me is that I am going to be getting access to atlease 3 more computers. But I will not be putting D2OL on them becuase I won't be able to run over to them and fix them if something locks up and such.....

Well now its time to wait and see.

At this point I cant blame you there. I may be the only one crunching D2OL, but its the best thing going for me, and the sole purpose I purchased 10 computers, KVM switches, network eguipment, etc etc. Try telling your spouse you forked all that money out and are abandoning the project... Well thanks for giving what you have people, and great luck to you all whatever you decide to do.

 

[GeoffS]

Well... for anyone that noticed, my production over the last couple of days is waaaaay down. This is not intentional and don't want anyone to ready anything into that. We had a power failure at work yesterday and I have not been able to swing by and fire up my sleeping herd. I am *NOT* currently on strike, however I will follow the will of the team if it comes to that. We are by far the most active team on this project. I have invited Ken to visit this forum (even provided a link) to be an ambassador, however he has chosen not to take the opportunity to stoke the enthusiasm fires of the members here. I agree with John (mastertech01) that I would prefer to work on a humanitarian project. I, as many of you, have spent much personal time and funds to back my participation in this project and won't stand by for being treated with indifference from the project managers.

Geoff

 

[GeoffS]

btw.. pls feel free to add your own input on the Sengent forums here

Geoff

 

[FoBoT]

i crunch one box on D2OL, i will keep one box on it as the will of the team goes

however, since mastertech01 invited suggestions for alternatives (if eventually needed), i would like to add some more information about DistributedFolding and make a few comments

i have been doing DC since Jan 2000 , i started on Folding@home (the stanford folding project), and then moved to G@H mainly due to the off-line friendliness of that client.

i think it is generally known how stanford interacts with their volunteers (the people that run their software) , most that went through the difficulties of both the F@H and G@H projects during 2000/2001 and left were most turned off by being IGNORED by the people running the project (in my opinion).
The recent cheating issues in SETI were ignored by Berkeley until the issue was thrown into the press , they were hoping to not have to deal with it, i suppose. it took considerable effort to get them to respond and address the problem

it seems that sengent/D2OL is falling into the same pattern

i have been doing DistributedFolding as my main project since leaving G@H / stanford about 1 year ago. i could go through many advantages on the client(software) and stats, but not in this post, i would like to focus on two main points that are more pertinent to the comments throughout this thread

1- DistributedFolding is a medical/humanitarian type project. i participated in ECCP at a moderate level, but towards the end, a very enlightening post on the Arstechnica forums dimmed my interest in crypto projects, the piece that caught my eye was this "somebody picks a number and then we (the DC community) expends many Ghz/cpu/years to guess that number they picked". that way of looking at it caught my attention. i decided that medical projects where unknowns were being sought were of higher interest to me.

2- Project management interaction with volunteers (participants running the software). DistributedFolding is run by the The Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute which is affiliated with the University of Toronto, but is "run" on a daily basis by Howard Feldman (for Dr. Christopher W. V. Hogue ). I challenge anyone to show me a DC project in which the project management interacts more closely with the volunteers (participants running the software) than Howard.
The "official" project forum is active with participants from many teams and Howard responds quickly to questions/concerns and suggestions from everyone. Howard currently has 567 posts on the DF forum, please browse through the posts and you will see for yourself how interactive he is on the DF project. Just a week or so ago a suggestion was made to change some aspects of team management. after a thorough discussion on the issue, howard implemented a change to address the issue.

well, this was a bit long winded, but i just wanted to share my experience. i currently have DC client software running on different pc's for 8 different projects, and i feel i have a good perspective on what is going on with most of them.

have a nice day everyone and here is to hoping the D2OL problems are resolved quickly and that the people running the project respond favorably to GeoffS's post on their forums

 

[Carrot44]

Am I down or is it just me. Can not upload or download anything but frustration.

Ken

 

[mastertech01]

You arent down Carrot.. its them

Thanks for all the info Fobot! I will be doing D2OL for at least a while longer yet, but its nice to see options with info.

 

[Carrot44]

Ok lets assume they get it back up on Monday or Tuesday. Does history mean it will go down Thursday for Thanks giving?

Ken

 

[Mardeth]

Im gonna wait till friday and then Ill see what the situations is. If it gone worse or still the same and there doesnt seem to be a light in the end of the tunnel Im gonna change the project Im giving my volunteer time for. Probably ECC2

 

[Baldy18]

Distributed Folding is no walk in the park either. I stopped my contributions to DF because it refused to startup or shotdown properly on my Windows 98 boxes. The attitude of everyone about the problems I was having was that it was an unpredictable thing and would work on some boxes and not others. People flet like it wasn't such a big deal and nobody wanted to do anything to fix it so I quit. I have no problems with helping them with a 2K box or two sometimes but they will never have the support of my 98 boxes.

D2OL has been a good project for one that is on build 01.01.01. These are software people and I think that if we give them some more time we might have better results. I think that for now I will stay with D2OL but keep an eye on my machines during the weekend. If things get hairy I'll switch to other projects until things get fixed again.

 

[Slatzman]

well said Baldy....I still have faith in this project and will see it through until Sengent gives up on us, which I don't think they have done....yet.

I still think this is the best project out there and once the bugs are hopefully worked out, it will be even better.

I like being able to move up quickly in the stats, the small work units, and being on a TeAm that is currently kicking the crap out of the competition in the project.

I hope we keep everyone around to help us take over the #1 spot sometime in the new year!!!

Slatz

 

[mastertech01]

Originally posted by: Baldy18
Distributed Folding is no walk in the park either. I stopped my contributions to DF because it refused to startup or shotdown properly on my Windows 98 boxes. The attitude of everyone about the problems I was having was that it was an unpredictable thing and would work on some boxes and not others. People flet like it wasn't such a big deal and nobody wanted to do anything to fix it so I quit. I have no problems with helping them with a 2K box or two sometimes but they will never have the support of my 98 boxes.

D2OL has been a good project for one that is on build 01.01.01. These are software people and I think that if we give them some more time we might have better results. I think that for now I will stay with D2OL but keep an eye on my machines during the weekend. If things get hairy I'll switch to other projects until things get fixed again.

You know Baldy, if we could increase our ques to 300 I think that would help a great deal. We could crunch offline on the weekends and the servers could spaz out all they like. As long as we can purge when the servers are indeed working that would be fine with me. Unfortunately I have some machines that can easily do 100 a day, and one prolly 150. Maybe we could suggest that to Sengent as I know they once only had a 30 candidate limit in que.

 

[Baldy18]

I think that is a great idea. On a weekend like this were the servers are completely offline that would help a bunch. However, on a weekend like the last one were the servers were still up (sometimes) but not functioning right it wouldn't help unless we put all our machines offline before the weekend started. It never is guarenteed though when the servers will be back online so I'd just prefer they fix the problems and not just cover it up with a bandaid like larger queues.

 

[mastertech01]

Originally posted by: Baldy18
I think that is a great idea. On a weekend like this were the servers are completely offline that would help a bunch. However, on a weekend like the last one were the servers were still up (sometimes) but not functioning right it wouldn't help unless we put all our machines offline before the weekend started. It never is guarenteed though when the servers will be back online so I'd just prefer they fix the problems and not just cover it up with a bandaid like larger queues.

Naturally I think we all prefer that as well. But if it was a temporary fix I could live it. Taking them offline for the weekend would be an option, especially if you are like JW and out of town. If you are home and have time to watch how the servers are doing you can stay connected untill you detect a problem and go offline and online at will. Thus preserving your completed work. As long as your nodes arent sending results they will hold those results till you feel it safe to send them up. The large cache would give us several days protection, 2 at least, from totally flipped out servers. Its not the best answer, but certainly one we could continue on with untill they have a better one. IMHO