The model already does check-pointing, so there\'s no reason why it couldn\'t implement automatic rollback when the model crashes. I just have a 78% sulfur crash, losing months of work. If I lose any more work, I have no choice but to leave the project.

The Model already does roll-backs for internal errors. If it hits a brick wall, it rewinds a Model day and retries. If it still doesn\'t get through, it rewinds a Model month and, finally, a Model year before crashing.

External things are another matter entirely and can come from anything from hardware problems, to operator error, to program mix. For example, Norton anti-Virus scans can cause conflict if it happens to lock a file for scan just as CPDN wants that file. (For that reason we recommend that the CPDN folder be excluded from scans.) Can it be programmed? Perhaps. But it seems a complicated problem to trap & evaluate all the possibilities; meanwhile, Carl and Tolu have more than they can handle keeping all the Projects afloat.

What were the symptoms of your crash?

Edit: Regular backups of the entire CPDN folder are also recommended, to prevent that which you experienced. (Such a backup saved one of my Spinup Runs ~195 years into a 200 Model-year Run...)

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"We have met the enemy and he is us." -- Pogo
Greetings from coastal Washington state, the scenic US Pacific Northwest.

The Model already does roll-backs for internal errors. If it hits a brick wall, it rewinds a Model day and retries. If it still doesn\'t get through, it rewinds a Model month and, finally, a Model year before crashing.

External things are another matter entirely and can come from anything from hardware problems, to operator error, to program mix. For example, Norton anti-Virus scans can cause conflict if it happens to lock a file for scan just as CPDN wants that file. (For that reason we recommend that the CPDN folder be excluded from scans.) Can it be programmed? Perhaps. But it seems a complicated problem to trap & evaluate all the possibilities; meanwhile, Carl and Tolu have more than they can handle keeping all the Projects afloat.

What were the symptoms of your crash?

Edit: Regular backups of the entire CPDN folder are also recommended, to prevent that which you experienced. (Such a backup saved one of my Spinup Runs ~195 years into a 200 Model-year Run...)

Anti-Virus exclusion is already done. And if manual back-up is necessary, it should be done automatically.

Backup is not necessary, I never have and never will, I just keep my systems up to speed and no problems.....

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BOINC Wiki

if manual back-up is necessary, it should be done automatically.

There\'s a danger of talking at cross purposes here. Automatic rollback is already implemented (the original point), though in a post on the seasonal/attribution forum Tolu refers to rollback to the last, penultimate and then first checkpoint, and I think that may be the pattern for the current experiments. It seems to be the case with the BBC model, because there was a poster on those boards a tad cheesed off after he appeared to have gone back to his first checkpoint after a system crash (not BOINC related).

But rollback does not always work, and given the complexities of the model it\'s not surprising. Automating a full backup of the BOINC folder is problematic partly because it can\'t be done on the fly, but also because BOINC is multi project. It has a use in climateprediction, and disadvantages for everyone else.

Personally, I don\'t find exiting BOINC occasionally and doing a drag and drop copy a great chore. ;-)

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