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Profile KWSN - A Shrubbery
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Message 725 - Posted 1 Oct 2006 18:16:35 UTC

Seems to me that a percentage of our origional testers are no longer active. This is becoming increasingly evident in the posts about results not able to be validated because there just aren't enough systems downloading work.

What I propose is handing out invitation codes to active crunchers. Say two or three per person to be forwarded to team members, friends, enemies, etc who might be able to contribute here.

We'd even be willing to accept restrictions such as only users who have Sun running OS XV.

Course I'm just a cog in the wheel, but if the powers that be are like minded, you know how to contact me. After all, my phone is bugged and there is that pizza delivery van parked out front for the last couple weeks.

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Message 727 - Posted 1 Oct 2006 19:25:37 UTC

I agree, it is taking over a week for mine to validate. With fewer active users and a minimum quorum of 3, I think we could use some fresh blood. I asked about invitation codes in the Q&A forum 5 days ago and still have not received a reply.
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Message 728 - Posted 1 Oct 2006 20:20:22 UTC

I give you the OK to mail me some, it will not be considered as spam ;)

BTW: It's a fine idea methinks.

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Message 732 - Posted 2 Oct 2006 0:35:01 UTC - in response to Message ID 725 .

That's a good idea. I'll send out the invitation code to all users who have currently more than 0 credits and at least 1 result in our db. Please pass it on to serious alpha testers who don't mind to see lots of errors and problems and maybe even loose their credit if needed.

Thanks!
Andre


Seems to me that a percentage of our origional testers are no longer active. This is becoming increasingly evident in the posts about results not able to be validated because there just aren't enough systems downloading work.

What I propose is handing out invitation codes to active crunchers. Say two or three per person to be forwarded to team members, friends, enemies, etc who might be able to contribute here.

We'd even be willing to accept restrictions such as only users who have Sun running OS XV.

Course I'm just a cog in the wheel, but if the powers that be are like minded, you know how to contact me. After all, my phone is bugged and there is that pizza delivery van parked out front for the last couple weeks.


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Message 733 - Posted 2 Oct 2006 1:27:07 UTC

This is a particularly bad problem for intel macs. According to boincstats, there are 208 hosts, and of those, only 12 intel macs. It shows them all as active. But my guess is that it takes some real time before those who have left show as inactive. Also, the message telling mac users to stop crunching is probably contributing to the problem. I think that there are about 3-5 intel mac machines still crunching, and probably a very small percentage of their time. We just can't get WUs out of "pending" status.

So please try to focusing on getting more intel mac users to join.

Also, could we please reduce the quarum number from 3 to 2, at least until we get some more folks to join?
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Message 735 - Posted 2 Oct 2006 2:00:04 UTC

I am not sure about declining numbers, my last results were sent to me on the 26/9/06 and I returned them on the 27/09 and 28/09. A number are still pending, I have not received anymore work since the 28/9/06.
Is the fact I have not got any work to do with no available Linux machines to accept the new work?
Work is available but I don't know if it is for Windows/Linux/Mac.
Could a problem with the crediting of Cobblestones (more credits for Windows, less for Linux) be causing some of the Linux testers to drop away, as they probably think it is unfair and favouring Windows machines?
The real reason for us in this project is to help test it out so crediting issues or any other problem prior to beta release can be found and corrected.

I will add this project has the best monitored message board I have participated on. The Project people are quick to respond and seem to genuinely care and accept any help offered.
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Profile Andre Kerstens
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Message 736 - Posted 2 Oct 2006 2:45:19 UTC - in response to Message ID 735 .
Last modified: 2 Oct 2006 2:45:42 UTC

Although I am not 100% sure if this explanation holds, but I think it has to do with the fact that D@H uses homogeneous redundancy (or HR). For this to work well, we need a good mix of mac, linux and windows machines or else the boinc server shared memory segment will quickly get full of results reserved by windows machines meaning that linux and macs won't get any work (the client tells you that there is work, but that it is committed to other platforms). Since we have so much more windows machines compared to the rest, it is well possible that these steal away all the results in the shared memory segment. Making the shared memory segment bigger will relieve this problem for a short while until again all the results in that bigger memory have been taken by the majority of windows machines again. There is a possible solution for this in the works by the boinc dev team and the world community grid people (who also use HR) in that the shared memory is partitioned, which means every platform will always have some work for them in the queue. The downside is that estimations of the size of these partitions have to be really good or else results might have to wait a long time before being send out (in the case that the partition is too big) or there is not enough work available (in the case the partition is too small).

Anyways, hope this explanation helps a bit (or might confuse a lot more ;-)

Andre

PS Thanks for the compliment :-)

I am not sure about declining numbers, my last results were sent to me on the 26/9/06 and I returned them on the 27/09 and 28/09. A number are still pending, I have not received anymore work since the 28/9/06.
Is the fact I have not got any work to do with no available Linux machines to accept the new work?
Work is available but I don't know if it is for Windows/Linux/Mac.
Could a problem with the crediting of Cobblestones (more credits for Windows, less for Linux) be causing some of the Linux testers to drop away, as they probably think it is unfair and favouring Windows machines?
The real reason for us in this project is to help test it out so crediting issues or any other problem prior to beta release can be found and corrected.

I will add this project has the best monitored message board I have participated on. The Project people are quick to respond and seem to genuinely care and accept any help offered.


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Profile [SETI.USA]Tank_Master
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Message 742 - Posted 2 Oct 2006 7:32:35 UTC
Last modified: 2 Oct 2006 7:35:16 UTC

waa hoo! i got an invite this evening. Once hashclash it out of work, which shouldnt be long, i can bring a fair amount og computing power here. I currently can do about 6k RAC, but not all of it will go here, for I have 31 other projects i am working on :P.

Just wondering if there is any estimate on how long a WU *should* take on 1) P4 3.0GHz & 1GB RAM and 2) P3 866 & 256-384MB RAM. I have 10 of the former and 30 of the latter.
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Message 744 - Posted 2 Oct 2006 10:20:09 UTC - in response to Message ID 742 .

waa hoo! i got an invite this evening. Once hashclash it out of work, which shouldnt be long, i can bring a fair amount og computing power here. I currently can do about 6k RAC, but not all of it will go here, for I have 31 other projects i am working on :P.

Just wondering if there is any estimate on how long a WU *should* take on 1) P4 3.0GHz & 1GB RAM and 2) P3 866 & 256-384MB RAM. I have 10 of the former and 30 of the latter.


Hello Tank_Master, welcome to the project.
To give you an idea Linux machines do run the work units quicker than Windows machines due to the nature of the computer programmes making up Docking@home. My linux machine is an AMD Opteron 848 (2 cpus at 2.2 GHz) and each work unit takes 1 hour 27 minutes.
From what other testers have said it appears that Windows P4 machines take approx 2 to 3 hours and P3 machine a little bit longer at about 4 hours.
I could be wrong on this so are there any Windows testers out there can you give Tank_Master a better esimate?
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Message 745 - Posted 2 Oct 2006 13:05:52 UTC

On my Pentium M 2.0 Ghz it took 3.5 hours to complete the first WU

Profile [SETI.USA]Tank_Master
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Message 746 - Posted 2 Oct 2006 14:08:11 UTC

So its in par with rosetta and spinhenge, I can manage that. WCG is a bit long, and i can only effectivly run them on my P4s. This sounds like I sould be able to run peoject on a higher end P3 as well. cool. Thx for the info Conan and Christophe Vercammen.(And yes, ill be running windows all off of them, after all, the licences were doneted to us :Þ)

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Message 747 - Posted 2 Oct 2006 14:09:52 UTC
Last modified: 2 Oct 2006 14:11:36 UTC

Doesn't help that some one has posted the invite code in a public forum, how hard is it to realise that the code is not public and it should be used to invite people along to the projects

Tut tut

Anyhow hopefully account creation will close again soon

Edit: PS had set BOINC back to getting work for this project yesterday
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Message 749 - Posted 2 Oct 2006 14:49:06 UTC - in response to Message ID 747 .

We'll change the invite code when we reach 180 or so users. Just hope we get more hosts that do NOT run windows, else this exercise was pretty futile :-)

Thanks
Andre

Doesn't help that some one has posted the invite code in a public forum, how hard is it to realise that the code is not public and it should be used to invite people along to the projects

Tut tut

Anyhow hopefully account creation will close again soon

Edit: PS had set BOINC back to getting work for this project yesterday


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Message 750 - Posted 2 Oct 2006 14:50:28 UTC

The code has now been edited out of the post I mentioned before

Good luck with the quest for more macs & linux
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Message 751 - Posted 2 Oct 2006 15:19:38 UTC - in response to Message ID 750 .

All workunits on my Kubuntu-Linux makes errors with code 1.
It breaks after 4min.
(AMD Athlon 2800+)

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Message 753 - Posted 2 Oct 2006 16:42:50 UTC

In the main page in the news secction the one posted on September 19, 2006 15:30:00 will help you with a temp fix for your problem.

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Message 756 - Posted 2 Oct 2006 18:54:03 UTC

Maybe you should make a download button for Linux application ONLY on the first side of the project and invite anyone to participate.

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Message 758 - Posted 2 Oct 2006 20:12:20 UTC - in response to Message ID 756 .

Maybe you should make a download button for Linux application ONLY on the first side of the project and invite anyone to participate.


Make that Mac and Linux.
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Message 768 - Posted 3 Oct 2006 11:22:08 UTC

> To help out I added another Linux computer to the list.
Problem arose with error message saying "there is work available but it is committed to other platforms" or something like that. I have not been able to get any Linux work units since the 28/9/06.
No work available and low credits (9 to 11 on average for Linux but 26 or more for Windows), could be a couple of reasons people may have dropped off.

Keep smiling, it makes people wonder what you have done.
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Message 772 - Posted 3 Oct 2006 13:06:32 UTC

We've changed the invite code again since we're at 185 users or so. Let's see if that is enough for now. We are aware of the linux/mac 'commited to other platforms' problem and are looking for a suitable solution. Because of the homogeneous redundancy this is not so easy to solve though.

Thanks
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Message 774 - Posted 3 Oct 2006 14:18:23 UTC - in response to Message ID 772 .

We've changed the invite code again since we're at 185 users or so. Let's see if that is enough for now.


Can you please break down that 185 by OS? Specifically, how many Macs? And how many of those reported in the past few days?
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Message 778 - Posted 3 Oct 2006 16:48:37 UTC - in response to Message ID 774 .

I'll break it down in platforms:

306 Windows systems
83 Linux systems
15 Intel Macs
6 PPC Macs (no app yet for this)

As you can see we could use some more Macs...


Can you please break down that 185 by OS? Specifically, how many Macs? And how many of those reported in the past few days?


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Message 779 - Posted 3 Oct 2006 17:13:47 UTC - in response to Message ID 778 .

I'll break it down in platforms:

306 Windows systems
83 Linux systems
15 Intel Macs
6 PPC Macs (no app yet for this)

As you can see we could use some more Macs...



Thanks!
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Message 789 - Posted 3 Oct 2006 19:58:32 UTC

Thanks, we were able to recruit 3 or 4 Linux users with the code you provided. I'll be on the lookout for more (and try to find some Mac users) for the next wave.

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Message 794 - Posted 3 Oct 2006 22:37:30 UTC

We got at least one PPC Mac user as well, just waiting on the client for it.
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Message boards : Number crunching : Declining tester numbers?

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