No new work in seti@home

[petrusbroder]

Edit Nov. 10: Plenty of WUs around ...

As was announced previously:

From the seti@home site:

November 8, 2007
A big index build is stressing our science databases and the splitters are running very slowly. This has resulted in the project running out of work to send. We hope to see it clear by tomorrow morning.

Check here now and then ...

 

[Coquito]

I grabbed a handful of WUs early this afternoon, but for most of the past few days, I've been catching BOINC doing nada. I've switched to SoB for the time, but is there a way for BOINC to switch to another BOINC project automatically(when there is no work)?

 

[Rattledagger]

Originally posted by: Coquito
I grabbed a handful of WUs early this afternoon, but for most of the past few days, I've been catching BOINC doing nada. I've switched to SoB for the time, but is there a way for BOINC to switch to another BOINC project automatically(when there is no work)?

Yes, just "Attach" to multiple projects. To have one "main" project and multiple "backup"-projects, just change the Project-Specific preference and change Resource Share to example 10000 on the "main" project, and 1 on the "backups". BOINC will always download atleast 1 wu initially, but depending on resource-share it will normally not download more work except due to problems getting enough from your main project.

But please note, if you're set a large cache-setting, there's also a larger chance of grabbing many wu's from backup-projects...

 

[bryanW1995]

I usually carry a couple of days' worth of WU's just in case this sort of thing happens. Especially now during gauntlet that's a good idea. The boinc system doesn't always accurately predict the amount of time necessary for 1 day's work, however. On my amd systems I'm usually ok, but my e6750 is probably mowing through them twice as fast as the boinc systems thinks it should. weird.

 

[petrusbroder]

I have got some new WUs. There are not many, but they exist ...

 

[Wiz]

I only started (again) yesterday - but my clients are crunching units. Very few units.
Strange but my P4 3.8 with 3GB DDR2 takes about 39 minutes per WU while this P4 3.0 1GB DDR is taking several hours.
Same software on both, kind of strange it makes that big a difference.

 

[Alyx]

I hope they have it fixed up by now. I brought a few 4 more machines on today for the gauntlet and when I left them running they couldn't find work. It'd be a shame to have them just sitting there.

All the rest of my comps are fine, I've got 5 days of work saved up.

 

[bryanW1995]

let them run overnight, they should be full of WU's in the morning. just set them up to maintain 3 days' work in your preferences tab and, if this happens again, you'll still be ok.

 

[petrusbroder]

There are plenty of new WU around now. Good crunching all!

 

[Wiz]

I'm having trouble with my home machine, here is what it says in the Messages:

11/10/2007 11:19:56 AM|SETI@home|Sending scheduler request: To fetch work. Requesting 91394 seconds of work, reporting 0 completed tasks
11/10/2007 11:20:01 AM|SETI@home|Scheduler request succeeded: got 0 new tasks
11/10/2007 11:20:01 AM|SETI@home|Message from server: No work sent
11/10/2007 11:20:01 AM|SETI@home|Message from server: (won't finish in time) Computer on 100.0% of time, BOINC on 0.0% of that, this project gets 50.0% of that

Right now it is processing one seti unit and one rosetta unit.
It's been like this since I installed seti, but it was almost this 'bad' before though this is the first time I've seen the message above.

How do I get this box to store up a little work? It has no more than the two work units mentioned above at this time. I have gone into preferences and put numbers in for the number of "Additional work buffer" is there another place I can adjust this?

The part that really bothers me is this:

Computer on 100.0% of time, BOINC on 0.0% of that

Thanks!

 

[Rattledagger]

Originally posted by: Wiz
The part that really bothers me is this:

Computer on 100.0% of time, BOINC on 0.0% of that

Thanks!

Hmm, as long as BOINC runs 0% of the time, you can't cache any work...

Normally very low numbers is either due to BOINC being shut-down for an extended time, or the clock getting screwed-up for some reason and later corrected. But, both of these reasons will also affect "computer on N% of time", therefore it looks suspicious...

Hmm, if you've been suspending due to preferences or by menu or Snooze by right-clicking BOINC Manager-icon, it is possible it can have dropped low... If so, it should slowly start to increase again on its own...

But in any case, to quickly fix the problem, exit BOINC and make sure boinc.exe is really stopped.

Use notepad or similar, and choose to open client_state.xml that resides in your BOINC-directory (default \program files\boinc\)

Nearly at the start of this file you've got "time_stats", looking something like this:

<time_stats>
<on_frac>0.999404</on_frac>
<connected_frac>-1.000000</connected_frac>
<active_frac>0.999896</active_frac>
<cpu_efficiency>0.968340</cpu_efficiency>
<last_update>1194738153.502441</last_update>
</time_stats>

In your instance, edit active_frac, and make sure it's 0.99 instead of 0.001234 or whatever. Also check on_frac and cpu_efficiency is close to 0.9xxx.

Save client_state.xml and re-start BOINC, and you should be back to normal again...

 

[Wiz]

There was a file named "get_current_version.xml" with a date of 2025.
I changed that.
I'll look at the other file and see what's up there too.
Thanks!

 

[Wiz]

Why is your connected_frac -1 instead of 1?

When I made changes to the client_state file they changed back.
Then I changed both that file and the 'previous' file and restarted - I got this:

11/10/2007 4:18:40 PM||[error] Proposed work request 901916.096537 bigger than max 523585.745280

But then it downloaded a pile of WU's.

Seems to be fixed now, Thanks!

 

[bryanW1995]

I had a similar problem store WU's a few months ago on my e6750. RD helped me change my % of time boinc client is running and my % of time work allowed while boinc running to .99. They stayed that way for about a month or so, but now they've gone up on their own to 99.997% and 99.398%.

 

[Rattledagger]

Originally posted by: Wiz
Why is your connected_frac -1 instead of 1?

-1 for connected_frac basically means "don't know if you're permanently connected or not".

When I made changes to the client_state file they changed back.
Then I changed both that file and the 'previous' file and restarted - I got this:

11/10/2007 4:18:40 PM||[error] Proposed work request 901916.096537 bigger than max 523585.745280

But then it downloaded a pile of WU's.

Seems to be fixed now, Thanks!

Hmm, BOINC should only convert to the "previous" file in case the main is corrupted, but as long as it works now it doesn't matter.

As for the error-message, don't know the reason for this message, but it seems to have a small random chance to pop-up ocassionally, but doesn't give any problems so...

 

[Coquito]

I still can't connect. I'm running Einstein again.

 

[bryanW1995]

don't give up! The race is almost 1/2 over now, we are certain to get new WU's soon.

 

[Coquito]

Originally posted by: bryanW1995
don't give up! The race is almost 1/2 over now, we are certain to get new WU's soon.

I'm not giving up, but the BOINC client is in an abyss of failure right now.

 

[petrusbroder]

I have had sometimes similar problems as Coquito. Often when a comp with MS Windows (any version from 95 to XP Pro) who has been running 24/7 for 8 - 14 days without reboot. Often shutting down BOINC (including all processes) and then restarting helped. Sometimes a reboot was/is necessary. The problem has appeared less and less after BOINC 5.4.xx and has almost (but not totally) disappeared with BOINC 5.10.20 and later.

Now instead my Macs (running OSX with the Intel-processors) need similar actions ... The comps running OSX with the G4 or the G5 processors need no "clean up". :Q

I still reboot my comps at least once a week - which is a chore for 23 comps ... :sun:

Edit: There are plenty of WUs around - just now more than 250 000. 13.6 WUs are produced each second ...

 

[bryanW1995]

you have all 23 of those in your basement??? I thought I was being enterprising with 2 at home, 1 at a buddy's house, 1 at mom's and 4 at work!

If all 23 are yours, you might be better served selling a few of the older ones that don't produce much and using the proceeds to buy a couple of g0 quad/cheap p35 mobo combinations.

 

[petrusbroder]

No, not all 23 are in the basement - each of the kids (all 6 of them) have a computer in their rooms, my wife has a lap top in hers, then there is a home-entertainment-box, my working computer and my laptop. There are only 13 in the basement - and they are heating my house!
I am extracting all the hot air from the kitchen, bathrooms, the computer room and all the other rooms, leading it to a heat exchanger which heats the incoming air and produces some of the hot water. I also extract energy from a 220 meter deep well - so my house (8 bedrooms, kitchen, dining room, entertainment room and living room) uses approximately 20 000 KWh, 6 000 of these are for heating. Considering that we live in northern Sweden and are 8 people (2 adults, 5 teenagers and 1 pre-teen) that is a very low energy usage - and the computers' contribution is quite critical since approx. 78% of all the energy in the building (including the heat from the crunchers) is recycled ... How do you think I can afford to have them crunching 24/7/365?

I have my eyes on a quad but none of the quads are cheap in Sweden: the prices are some 25 - 40% higher than in the USA.
OTOH: I retired the 5 slowest mobo/processor combinations and got myself 3 AMD X2 - systems, and they really produce ...

One year ago my highest RAC was around 3 500 - 4 000. Now it is around 7 000 - 7 500.

 

[bryanW1995]

newegg and ncix don't ship to europe? That's really disappointing. That's stupid for them, anyway, especially with the weak dollar. It would be a LOT cheaper for most europeans to buy from US online retailers, esp british and euro zone citizens. I wonder if there are regulatory hurdles that newegg etc don't want to mess with?

 

[Coquito]

Originally posted by: petrusbroder
No, not all 23 are in the basement - each of the kids (all 6 of them) have a computer in their rooms, my wife has a lap top in hers, then there is a home-entertainment-box, my working computer and my laptop. There are only 13 in the basement - and they are heating my house!
I am extracting all the hot air from the kitchen, bathrooms, the computer room and all the other rooms, leading it to a heat exchanger which heats the incoming air and produces some of the hot water. I also extract energy from a 220 meter deep well - so my house (8 bedrooms, kitchen, dining room, entertainment room and living room) uses approximately 20 000 KWh, 6 000 of these are for heating. Considering that we live in northern Sweden and are 8 people (2 adults, 5 teenagers and 1 pre-teen) that is a very low energy usage - and the computers' contribution is quite critical since approx. 78% of all the energy in the building (including the heat from the crunchers) is recycled ... How do you think I can afford to have them crunching 24/7/365?

I have my eyes on a quad but none of the quads are cheap in Sweden: the prices are some 25 - 40% higher than in the USA.
OTOH: I retired the 5 slowest mobo/processor combinations and got myself 3 AMD X2 - systems, and they really produce ...

One year ago my highest RAC was around 3 500 - 4 000. Now it is around 7 000 - 7 500.

3lbs of retail chip & hsf isn't THAT expensive to ship across.

 

[petrusbroder]

Originally posted by: bryanW1995
newegg and ncix don't ship to europe? That's really disappointing. That's stupid for them, anyway, especially with the weak dollar. It would be a LOT cheaper for most europeans to buy from US online retailers, esp british and euro zone citizens. I wonder if there are regulatory hurdles that newegg etc don't want to mess with?

No, it is not that ... it is the value-added tax (VAT), which in in the order of 20 - 25% on all items shipped into the euro-zone. On top of that also a few % of customs tax, which often is included in the shipping costs.

E.g: @Newegg: C2D E6750 costs 195 USD, + shipping USD 25 = 220 USD + (25% tax on 195 = 48.75 = 268:75 USD = 1701 Swedish Kronor.
Least expensive online store in Sweden: 1725 + 90 Kronor in shipping ...

A QX6850 (3.0GHz, 1333MHz, etc) costs here in Sweden 8 750 Kronor. @Newegg 1030 USD (=6520 Kronor), + 25% tax = 8150 kronor. For that amount of money I can get 3 AMD X2 6400 Black Edition + 3 Mobos + 3 GBytes of good RAM. The three AMD-boxes get more crunching done - without OC - than the one single QX6850 ... If I OC them to 4 GHz or even more (which is possible) then suddenly I have some very competitive crunchers... and a 225W PSU of good quality is sufficient if I get a mobo with integrated video and use an Samsung HDD and a DVD-reader ...

 

[Philippart]

Originally posted by: petrusbroder
in the shipping costs.
E.g: @Newegg: C2D E6750 costs 195 USD, + shipping USD 25 = 220 USD + (25% tax on 195 = 48.75 = 268:75 USD = 1701 Swedish Kronor.
Least expensive online store in Sweden: 1725 + 90 Kronor in shipping ...

Does Newegg ship to Europe?

EDIT:

Originally posted by: bryanW1995
newegg and ncix don't ship to europe? That's really disappointing.

please delete