seti@home problem

[bryanW1995]

Ok, so I keep running out of WU's on my e6750. I'm tired of coming home and seeing that my computer has been lazy for much of the day and not accomplished anything. I went to bam and signed up for seti@home beta/astropulse. I see how to split the resource share between the different projects, but what I really want to do is to set it up to run seti@home except when it's not giving me WU's and then to run beta/astropulse. Is there a way to set that up or do I need to use a set % of resources for each project?

 

[petrusbroder]

Well, one way to do this is to set the seti@home resources to e.g. 500 and the beta/astropulse to 5 (e.g. a 100-fold difference). Your computers may crunch a beta-WU now and then but 99% of the time it will cruncg seti@home. When you run out of the seti@home WU, then the comp will crunch the beta/astropulse units until seti@home WUs come in ...

Unfortunately I am not aware of any way to set up a "if - then" crunching ...

 

[bryanW1995]

no, that will work just fine. I just can't figure out why I keep running out of WU's in seti@home. I have my file server sitting 2ft to my right. It has a constant list of 50 WU's in it's queue (6 days' worth). This computer is supposed to have 6 days' worth, too, it just NEVER EVER EVER has more than a few hours' worth. It spends probably 30% of its time looking for WU's, which is the whole point of loading up on lots of WU's. I've even tried installing/uninstalling boinc with absolutely no success. This seems like a silly thing to bother somebody, but I would really like that extra 300 RAC to work for us all.

 

[Rattledagger]

Well, for the moment the Splitters isn't managing to generate a surplus of work, so filling-up cache is difficult. But, there's some reasons that can hinder filling-up a cache of work even then it's lots available.... Some of the reasons are:

"Cache an additional N days" only works with v5.10.xx and later BOINC-clients.
Computer is using wrong Venue, so is using another sets of preferences than you expect.
You're using an override-file with too-small settings.
If you get a wu with short deadline and has a large "connect every N days"-setting", work-request can be blocked until queue empty or idle cpu (on multi-cpu). Not sure if same is true with large "additional-days"-setting...
Work for other projects is in deadline-trouble, or, for some reason you "own" other projects cpu-resources...

Check the computer's info, near bottom there's 4 fields:
% of time BOINC client is running
While BOINC running, % of time work is allowed
Average CPU efficiency
Result duration correction factor

The 2 fields with % shold normally be close to 100%, while "Average CPU efficiency should be close to 1. If any of these is significantly less than 100% or 1, it means you'll get little work each time asks for work.
"Result duration correction factor" will for SETI@home normally be below 1, close to 0.1 won't be a problem. But, if it's close to 2 or maybe even higher, something is out of whack...

 

[petrusbroder]

Hmm, thanks for that info, Rattledagger!
I had almost forgotten that ...

 

[bryanW1995]

thank you! look at this for my e6750 machine:

% of time BOINC client is running 0.0927 %
While BOINC running, % of time work is allowed 30.5413 %
Average CPU efficiency 0.889583
Result duration correction factor 0.210457

boinc is running almost 100% of the time computer is on. look at these from my x2 4000+

% of time BOINC client is running 99.8709 %
While BOINC running, % of time work is allowed 99.7444 %
Average CPU efficiency 0.996483
Result duration correction factor 0.33296

I use the x2 4000+ at work. I use the e6750 at home. nobody else uses either computer. how can I fix this?

edit: here's my list of computers. clearly, the e6750 is completely messed up.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu...user.php?userid=494498

 

[Rattledagger]

Originally posted by: bryanW1995
thank you! look at this for my e6750 machine:

% of time BOINC client is running 0.0927 %
While BOINC running, % of time work is allowed 30.5413 %
Average CPU efficiency 0.889583
Result duration correction factor 0.210457

Only 0.09% was extremely low, if you haven't had your computer shut-down for some weeks, the most likely reason is the computer-clock has been screwed-up and later corrected...

"Average CPU efficiency" is fairly normal, and it's averaged over only 24 hours so play a game for some hours, and you're at 0.75 or something...

For the two others on the other hand, they will slowly increase, but if not mis-remembers it's averaged over 2 weeks, so it could be a long wait...

To manually correct, make sure BOINC is stopped (if running as service, just exiting BOINC Manager is not enough).
Use a text-editor (notepad) and open-up client_state.xml in the BOINC-directory.
1st. in this file you've got <host_info>, followed by <time_stats>
Edit <on_frac>0.000927</on_frac>
and <active_frac>0.305413</active_fac>
so both is around 0.99, and afterwards save client_state.xml, and re-start BOINC.

 

[bryanW1995]

sweet, thanks. russiansensation, you're toast now!

 

[bryanW1995]

alright, it's fixed! I edited the xml file as instructed. when I closed down boinc it was running 2 WU's with 3 waiting. I had it set to keep enough WU's for 9.99 days. Immediately upon restarting, it started downloading about 100 WU's!!!

 

[RussianSensation]

Keep them coming Bryan!!! At the end it helps our team!

 

[bryanW1995]

yeah, now if I can just get mom's xp 2800+ to work...it's still sending back client errors...the work never ends...