TeAm D²OL in crisis!

[GeoffS]

The TeAm is in a state of crisis at this point. Over the last few weeks, the number of flushers has decreased at a noticable rate:

6/16 : 76
6/17 : 79
6/18 : 80
6/19 : 77
6/22 : 86
6/23 : 71
6/24 : 63
6/26 : 70 (over 2 days)
6/29 : 74 (over 3 days)
7/1 : 68 (over 2 days)
7/4 : 68 (over 3 days)
7/5 : 63
7/6 : 60
7/7 : 65
7/8 : 66
7/9 : 56 <--- a new low


At our (recent) peak of 86, we seem to have lost OVER 30 flushers. What's going on? Are people just giving up and moving to other projects in the face of adversary? Do people just think the DPC can't be caught, so there's no point? This is the time that we should be regrouping and mounting a counterattack, but we appear to be just fizzling out like a wet firecracker. What's happening? Why are people leaving? For those of you that have left, if you could let the rest of us, or just me for that matter, know, it would be greatly appreciated!

Geoff

 

[MechEng]

Well... I for one haven't flushed, because I have been running DPAD for a while.
I just wan't to reach 3.000.000 and then I will be back, for a while... No promises made

 

[GLeeM]

Hi Geoff,

I ran in your 30 day race to help you guys for a while, but my main project is F@H and we are about to be passed in ~16 days.

I haven't been passed TeAmwise yet and Gokie is hot on my tail. It's only a matter of time.

I do wish you luck though, D2OL is a worthy project!!

 

[CyGoR]

Hi Geoff and other D2OL members..

I'm one of those 20 members who are not active any more..
Why I'm not active? I've switched all my systems (both of 'm) back to the project which I'm doing for the past few years, United Devices.
Both projects serve a great cause.
I resumed running D2OL when the race started, I even got some help from UD TeAm mates, and I had a great time racing you guys! But from the beginning I did say that when the race ends, I'll be running UD full time again..
I started cruching D2OL a while back when the DPC was closing in very fast to help you fend them of.

You're right, this is of course the time you should counterattack the DPC, whatever they product, the TeAm could do better then them...

Let's hope that Seti-1 ends soon, there will be members joining other projects, thats for sure!!

Sorry...

 

[GeoffS]

... and all of the temporary help was certainly appreciated and will eventually be returned... I had 3 machines running 17-or-bust to try to fend off TPR for a month of so and will also always go to the aid of of a TeAm in need, however I don't think that we had 20 on-loan crunchers ...

 

[TAandy]

I told you a couple of weeks ago I was going to try FAD for a while, I like the way they tell their participants of any successes they have.
I've been running D²OL now for nearly three years and the silence is still deafening
I've not given up completely, it's still running on my old P3 800 in my sons bedroom, but that only runs when I get in from work until he goes to bed.

 

[kloostec]

Hey Geoff,

As I indicated when the race started, I was basically only running D2OL until the end of the race, at which time I'd move my systems back to UD. I have left my laptop on D2OL so that I don't have to put vmware and windows on it, but I've been away on holiday (most of the time without a plug-in, so I couldn't even crunch) for two weeks. My laptop's production has resumed a bit since we started staying in a room with always-on dsl, but will reduce again once I start running my laptop only 8 hours a day at work again...

Still looking forward to the 10000 milestone!

 

[Stormgiant]

Right now, i don't have my fleet at work crushing anything and moved my P4 at home back to DPAD, my main project right now. When i'll get a second PC, i'll put it to D2OL...

 

[Slapstick]

Sorry Geoffs but even the Cowtippers have cut their production back and may decide to leave D2ol altogether. Shame has already shut down a few of his PC's.

The lack of response from D2ol?s staff on project status, the lack of correcting some obvious stats padding by some individuals, the delay in ver 2.5 (which would have corrected the stats padding), the decided ?Political Correctness? of the forums over there, (Ok it?s their board so they set the rules but to go back over a year and delete posts that may offend some agency they have applied for a grant from is getting a little ridiculous) plus a few other odds and ends make us wonder if it wouldn?t be better to just drop that project.

Also the cost of running our home racks along with the increase in cooling costs, (11 AMD?s sure heats up a place) is starting to get prohibitive, (we just an 8 ½ % increase in our electric rates here). If you don?t see the TC?s after the planned outage of the 14th then you?ll know we dropped out of D2ol altogether

 

[Shame]

Originally posted by: Slapstick
Sorry Geoffs but even the Cowtippers have cut their production back and may decide to leave D2ol altogether. Shame has already shut down a few of his PC's.

The lack of response from D2ol?s staff on project status, the lack of correcting some obvious stats padding by some individuals, the delay in ver 2.5 (which would have corrected the stats padding), the decided ?Political Correctness? of the forums over there, (Ok it?s their board so they set the rules but to go back over a year and delete posts that may offend some agency they have applied for a grant from is getting a little ridiculous) plus a few other odds and ends make us wonder if it wouldn?t be better to just drop that project.

Also the cost of running our home racks along with the increase in cooling costs, (11 AMD?s sure heats up a place) is starting to get prohibitive, (we just an 8 ½ % increase in our electric rates here). If you don?t see the TC?s after the planned outage of the 14th then you?ll know we dropped out of D2ol altogether

I second that.

 

[Freewolf]

Originally posted by: Shame

Originally posted by: Slapstick
Sorry Geoffs but even the Cowtippers have cut their production back and may decide to leave D2ol altogether. Shame has already shut down a few of his PC's.

The lack of response from D2ol?s staff on project status, the lack of correcting some obvious stats padding by some individuals, the delay in ver 2.5 (which would have corrected the stats padding), the decided ?Political Correctness? of the forums over there, (Ok it?s their board so they set the rules but to go back over a year and delete posts that may offend some agency they have applied for a grant from is getting a little ridiculous) plus a few other odds and ends make us wonder if it wouldn?t be better to just drop that project.

Also the cost of running our home racks along with the increase in cooling costs, (11 AMD?s sure heats up a place) is starting to get prohibitive, (we just an 8 ½ % increase in our electric rates here). If you don?t see the TC?s after the planned outage of the 14th then you?ll know we dropped out of D2ol altogether

I second that.

Dam we finally agreed on something

:shocked:

bty my last 2 light bills have been over $300 dollars each. The last one broke $360.

 

[GeoffS]

Originally posted by: Slapstick
If you don?t see the TC?s after the planned outage of the 14th then you?ll know we dropped out of D2ol altogether

Hopefully that's *not* how the TeAm will find out...

 

[BlackMountainCow]

I joined D2OL some 6000 WUs ago and gonna try very hard to finsih 10000 WUs untill I move in August!

 

[The Reaper]

I've been having problems with my crunchers. I can't seem to keep them all running. I am so sick of spending all this money and time on them. The hardware these days are absolute garbage.

Kill list in the last year and a half:

Epox 8RDA+, 4 caps exploded in less then 4 months
2x256 HyperX PC3500 (the good BH-5), one stick died in 3 months
2x512 Geil Golden Dragon PC3500, will not do over 185FSB, also has voltage issues on NF7-S
Abit NF7-S v2, will not due over 180FSB and is slowly dying
DFI Ultra Infinity, I'm on my third one and it died this weekend
2 AXP 2400 mobile CPU's, fried thanks to DFI's warped sockets

EVERYONE DO NOT BUY DFI PRODUCTS!

I hope to have things running better soon with estimated 400+ wu a day.

 

[GLeeM]

What's happening? Why are people leaving? For those of you that have left, if you could let the rest of us, or just me for that matter, know, it would be greatly appreciated!

I guess what you are asking is how do we hang on to new people who start and crunch for a while and then quit. It would be helpful if we could talk to (email) them to see if they need help or just to keep interest up in our worthwhile projects and how important the research is. If they were involved in our forum, that might also help keep them crunching. Seti seems to have a good idea with their introduction thread and mentors who contact the new people.

There has been at least 200 new people in F@H since I started, I don't think 50 of them still contribute!

Our ability to keep people active is just not good.

 

[Shame]

Originally posted by: GeoffS

Originally posted by: Slapstick
If you don?t see the TC?s after the planned outage of the 14th then you?ll know we dropped out of D2ol altogether

Hopefully that's *not* how the TeAm will find out...

Slapstick keeps more than 17 machines at "the big house", 2 servers at same, and 11 at home running and crunching smoothly. He certainly doesn't deserve a one-liner to his concerns. I have several of the same concerns/observations, including:

1. It's friggen hot in our respective houses!
2. TeAm assistance on the *MINOR* projects hasn't exactly been forthcoming. For example: We get invaded by Cows at D2OL ... very few people here even blink an eye; THEN we get laid into by ARS at SoB ... very few people here even raise an eyebrow. #2 in both now. SETI got threatened a while back and we we're all supposed to drop what we were doing to crunch candidates which have probably been crunched 10 times over... Watch out DPAD because there is very little help coming...
3. TRI hasn't exactly kept us up to date on progress. Malaria stats, TRI?
4. Cheating. Unfortunately, unprovable because of the node.prp files, but it IS happening. TRI should have fixed this problem a long, long, long time ago...
5. Charles. He has been acting a tad *french* lately, as Slapstick previously indicated .
6. It's not Geoff's fault. Seriously.

2, 3 and 4 are my biggest concerns... And in that order.

Hey Slapstick! We are CT's, not TC's!

Don't get me wrong: I still like the idea behind D2OL (and more than the other projects), but TRI needs to get their head out of the sand, and quickly.

2.06851% system0wide total project contribution = CT's right to bitch a little bit.

 

[PieDerro]

Well, I've started piloting D2OL on my P4 at home. If it goes well here, I might consider switching part or all of my SETI1 herd over when the first project finishes (SETIBOINC is a real let down in terms of project organisation, stats reporting and the rest).

So don't run off now everyone! It'll all be good.

P.S. Could someone give me a link as to how different CPUs perform at D2OL? Also, is it mainly limited by CPU type, speed, or memory bandwidth? I know how SETI performs on different CPUs like the back of my hand, but it would be great to know whether D2OL performs better on P4s, hyperthreaded and Multiprocessor machines, P4-Ms, P3s and Celerons (Celerons sucked at SETI compared to P4's, but in RC5, for example, Celerons and P4s perform remarkably similarly).

Cheers,
Pie

 

[Redviffer]

I'm not running everything that I had on D2OL (10 nodes), but still have a couple going, and FAD is my other DC project. I've dropped out of DPAD and SETI1 altogether.

 

[GeoffS]

^^^

 

[networkman]

For the reasons Shame listed, I also have dropped the D2OL project, as well as the SETI project.

The only project of any consequence I am running is the Climate Prediciton project, and that's only on a couple rigs as it takes so LONG to complete a unit.

I've also picked up a new hobby involving VLF radio astronomy and some pulsar detection with a local group, so that's where I've been spending most of my time.

All of my completed work will, of course, remain with the TeAm -- I've just moved on to other areas of interest.

 

[kmoney56]

I dropped D2OL, at least temporarily, for FaD. My reasoning is the lack of some type of software to monitor all of the nodes. With FaD, I have my machine running as a 'server' and can therefore keep track of everything in one place. Everyday when I'd come in to work, at least one of my quad and one of my dual xeon servers would have a node or two inactive. In order to bring em up you have to edit the config file to shut them all down (since I don't know which one isn't working) then run a script to bring them all back up. Very time consuming. Also with FaD, I haven't had one stop responding yet and it's been a week and a half. If these things change through a software update or some type of queue software I don't know about, I'd probably come back!

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: kmoney56
I dropped D2OL, at least temporarily, for FaD. My reasoning is the lack of some type of software to monitor all of the nodes. With FaD, I have my machine running as a 'server' and can therefore keep track of everything in one place. Everyday when I'd come in to work, at least one of my quad and one of my dual xeon servers would have a node or two inactive. In order to bring em up you have to edit the config file to shut them all down (since I don't know which one isn't working) then run a script to bring them all back up. Very time consuming. Also with FaD, I haven't had one stop responding yet and it's been a week and a half. If these things change through a software update or some type of queue software I don't know about, I'd probably come back!

DSpy can do this quite well. You just make the D²OL folder shared on the network and link the software to it. I found it very useful for monitoring four computers and making sure they stayed up.

 

[kmoney56]

Thanks for the info PorBleemo...I'm going to rack up some points in FaD then I'll look at coming back!

 

[GeoffS]

^^^

 

[BlackMountainCow]

Originally posted by: PorBleemo

Originally posted by: kmoney56
I dropped D2OL, at least temporarily, for FaD. My reasoning is the lack of some type of software to monitor all of the nodes. With FaD, I have my machine running as a 'server' and can therefore keep track of everything in one place. Everyday when I'd come in to work, at least one of my quad and one of my dual xeon servers would have a node or two inactive. In order to bring em up you have to edit the config file to shut them all down (since I don't know which one isn't working) then run a script to bring them all back up. Very time consuming. Also with FaD, I haven't had one stop responding yet and it's been a week and a half. If these things change through a software update or some type of queue software I don't know about, I'd probably come back!

DSpy can do this quite well. You just make the D²OL folder shared on the network and link the software to it. I found it very useful for monitoring four computers and making sure they stayed up.

What he said. I use Dspy to look after 4 PCs and it has never let me down and works perfectly through firewalls.