Technical News, and SETI@home daily stats for 10.01.2008.

[Rattledagger]

Afternoon Break (Jan 09 2008)

More blips and blops in our traffic caused by who-knows-what. We still don't have enough data yet to see if yesterday's BOINC result outcome index build helped with those regular slow validation-fix updates. In any case, I misspoke: we are running a version of MySQL where triggers are available to us - we only have to figure out how to implement them to do what we need. This morning the secondary download server bane was having a mount headache and I had to give it a virtual kick to get it going again. And that router is still a problem, but we're not convinced it's the only problem. Swapped out cables, switches etc. to no avail this morning. I installed some real load balancing between vader and bane (in practice round robin DNS is hardly balanced) which may help.

There was still slowness to the web site as of a few minutes ago. This had nothing to do with recent web code tinkering/updates or database load or any such thing - this was strictly due to the aforementioned router problems, as half the web traffic was going through the same router (the other half over the standard campus network). I just moved the competing traffic onto the campus network as well, so that should improve web site performance in general.

Regarding recent assimilator clogs, we had another one this afternoon. And yes, once again it was from a result produced by an optimized client. This time around I attached a debugger and found the problem was in XML parsing of the result and sure enough with enough eye-squinting I found a couple garbage characters in the uploaded result file. Specifically, in the power-of-time declaration of a pulse. Instead of:

<pot length=211 encoding="x-csv">

It was:

<pot length=211 encoding71x-csv">

So there are two problems. First, something is causing corruption in the xml (the non-standard client? something else on our end?). And second, the assimilator is too sensitive to such corruption. It shouldn't bail out so readily and create these large ready-to-assimilate queues.

Minor updates to the server status page: I changed references to "beam/polarization pair" to the more concise "channel." I then added a parenthetic numeric value to the ends of each data file (representing total working/done channels for each file) so you don't have to count the little green squares. I also added total values at the bottom for all data files (mostly so we can see how long we have before we run out of data to split). Note how the "vertical" processes (i.e. splitting multiple files at once) has a negative side effect: we are forced to keep data files around much longer, which makes it difficult to keep a queue of data on disk. Some better "vertical" logic has been coded, to be rolled out in the next day or so.

- Matt

#____Total Work Done____Todays WD_______AWD________overtake________Team-name
01______394.769.274______790.230______600.791______impossible______SETI.USA
02______326.924.099______793.179______717.759______impossible______SETI.Germany
03______137.060.735______271.492______186.599______impossible______L'Alliance Francophone
04______115.820.587_______50.713_______53.610______impossible______BroadbandReports.com Team Starfire
05______114.386.226______184.979______151.058______impossible______BOINC Synergy
06_______97.760.037______104.065_______63.427______impossible______Czech National Team
07_______91.611.130______163.043______104.350______impossible______SETI@Netherlands
08_______81.504.720______152.031______127.048______impossible______The Knights Who Say Ni!
09_______43.302.886_______71.308_______52.279______impossible______Overclockers.com
10_______40.429.184_______43.882_______35.663______impossible______Team Art Bell
11_______40.306.047______-67.383______-49.373________816 days______OcUK - Overclockers UK
12_______33.692.256_______19.360_______14.723______impossible______Team 2ch
13_______28.923.013________7.194________8.491______impossible______The Planetary Society
14_______28.733.891_______53.797_______36.352______impossible______Team MacNN
15_______22.780.214______-91.943______-85.523________266 days______BOINC.Italy
16_______12.346.349______-46.195______-43.844________282 days______Ars Technica
17__________900.537_______81.201_______58.314______impossible______Team China
18__________129.635_______49.371_______14.313______impossible______SETI@Taiwan
19_______74.924.162______185.291______155.364______notanoption_____TeAm AnandTech
20_______-1.491.171______-44.836______-46.327______impossible______Universe Examiners
21_______-2.433.579______-18.805______-28.716______impossible______Phoenix Rising
22_______-3.123.991_______77.297_______64.381_________49 days______Team Starfire World BOINC
23______-14.557.458______-20.605______-24.752______impossible______Canada
24______-15.354.688______-47.515______-49.439______impossible______Dutch Power Cows
25______-17.215.626______-62.508______-56.089______impossible______Amateur Radio Operators
26______-17.720.817______-75.664______-71.798______impossible______PC Perspective Killer Frogs
27______-18.102.102_____-111.054______-94.870______impossible______Hewlett-Packard
28______-21.191.708______-11.567______-21.006______impossible______UK BOINC Team
29______-23.535.205_______45.962_______24.750________951 days______AUSTRIA - NATIONAL - TEAM
30______-23.706.623______-58.998______-55.596______impossible______Team NIPPON
31______-23.719.163_______-8.673______-15.318______impossible______US NAVY
32______-24.163.695______-89.604______-77.203______impossible______Team MacAddict
33______-24.448.831______-60.906______-49.590______impossible______BOINC SETI@home RUSSIA
34______-24.832.748______-35.152______-41.373______impossible______BOINC@AUSTRALIA
35______-26.156.877______-61.177______-55.574______impossible______BOINC@Denmark
36______-26.768.699______-65.225______-66.042______impossible______Hungary
37______-27.422.829_____-119.587_____-102.626______impossible______2CPU.com
38______-27.434.166______-28.800______-26.336______impossible______U.S.Air Force
39______-28.242.063_____-143.984_____-118.661______impossible______Planet 3DNow!
40______-33.261.517_____-111.522_____-104.230______impossible______Portugal@Home
41______-34.475.498______-96.089______-86.318______impossible______SETI.hr
42______-35.060.664______-89.022______-79.576______impossible______SETI@klamm.de
43______-38.792.996_____-126.604_____-107.964______impossible______Team EDGE
44______-38.855.045_____-118.455_____-103.518______impossible______HispaSeti & BOINC
45______-39.087.293_____-107.852______-95.505______impossible______BOINC.SK
46______-39.893.514_____-159.051_____-133.654______impossible______Picard
47______-39.919.035_____-101.687______-91.097______impossible______SETI Sverige [Sweden]
48______-40.810.777_____-163.355_____-137.688______impossible______LittleWhiteDog
49______-41.234.827______-52.834______-50.928______impossible______BOINC@Poland
50______-43.564.533_____-117.054_____-105.985______impossible______BOINC UK

Appart for Anandtech's stats, it shows how much more/less than Anandtech.
Also shows based on Average Work Done how many days for Anandtech to overtake the team, or be overtaken by a team behind...

 

[dajeepster]

Thanks for the update Rattledagger.

my outputs are going to suck for the next week... I went on vacation and forgot to shut off the auto updates from M$

 

[petrusbroder]

Thanks for the stats and info, Rattledagger!

I enjoy the info very much. I know, I can read it all at the seti@home forum, but I find it more enjoyable here - especially since your service relieves me of looking it all up! Thanks!

 

[bryanW1995]

yeah, thanks RD!

We need to recruit some of the people back who helped us during gauntlet. Taiwan is killing us!

 

[Zim Hosein]

Thanks for the SETI@home daily stats & tech news Rattledagger! :beer: