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Posts by old_user20587

Posts by old_user20587

1) Questions and Answers : Windows : sigh... 20+ hours of work thrown out at shutdown (Message 43876)
Posted 26 Feb 2012 by old_user20587
Post:
copy of the post @ http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=7325#42750

sigh, basically annoying but I'm not sure if there's anything anyone can do about this due to the way windows operates.

I run various BOINC projects, among them is the climatepredictation.net . Now climateprediction as many know has really large workunits, the kind that take hundreds of hours to process and travel back to the server with trickle updates. Unfortunately because the length of time is so long to process these, it's really unfortunate when something occurs to disrupt it, basically negating the data.

So what's happening is so silly it makes me angry. Unlike a lot of BOINCers, I turn my computer off from time to time, generally when I'm away for awhile. Now windows during a shutdown always acts the same way; it tries to close down each program and gets confused when something's preventing it from turning off. One such thing is a program such as microsoft word or even notepad asking "Do you want to save your work?". No problem with that, most users close out of the screen, save (or discard) and then try again. Unfortunately when BOINC is set in always run mode.... this point where windows is hung with the dialog box..... results in computational errors with the tasks that try to run. BOINC will keep trying to work on them, and when it can't... will throw up it's hands and give up completely on the workunit. What's especially annoying is that this occurs within about 1 or 2 minutes... without much time for the user to react and fix the problem.

Taking a look at my host page: http://climateapps2.oerc.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/results.php?hostid=1112451 You can see the 3 climateprediction.net tasks from February 24 that are showing ERROR WHILE COMPUTING. These are all because of the windows shutdown situation mentioned above. Each task had approximately 17-20 hours processed already. Gone. all gone.
2) Questions and Answers : Windows : Time Remaining is getting longer not shorter! (Message 32112)
Posted 10 Jan 2008 by old_user20587
Post:

So if and when you upgrade your BOINC version, consider the question of the service install or not.




Okay thanks for the advice. I\'ll probably do that. I\'ve tended to do service installs because I\'ve been in multi-user environments... but for my own PC I see your point.
3) Questions and Answers : Windows : Time Remaining is getting longer not shorter! (Message 32089)
Posted 9 Jan 2008 by old_user20587
Post:
Hi Idle Computer

Unfortunately your computer is hidden so we can\'t see what type of model you have. You\'ll have to decide for yourself whether to commit your computer for so long.



Although CPDN is currently only running on a single computer, other computers/networks I\'ve worked on in the past means that I usually keep that information hidden. However I can share the details of the current system: AuthenticAMD AMD Athlon(tm) Processor [x86 Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 0] (like I said, 1.1ghz) running XP right now.

Not the fastest computer in the world but on other boinc projects of course (with smaller units) it seems to have managed well.

If you do continue, make sure that in your preferences you have \'Keep in memory while suspended\' set to YES, disable the screensaver if you haven\'t already, and try to let the model get just past a checkpoint before turning the computer off. To see the checkpoints in the graphics window, open it then press Z then 8 on the keyboard. Exit from BOINC when the timestep number\'s high. These steps will let the model run as fast as it can in its current home.


Alright of the steps here I\'ve turned on the Keep in memory while suspended. I\'ll watch my current system usage to see how that affects other programs. If for example Photoshop or my video editing software shows ill effects, I won\'t be able to retain that setting on this computer. As for the other settings, I\'ve never been able to find the graphics option for this, or most other BOINC projects for that matter. I suspect it has to do with the fact that BOINC is installed in service mode. As such I\'m not sure where to find the information on timesteps.

The current model being processed seems to be a UK Met Office HadSM Slab Model 5.06. The CPDN FAQ seems to indicate that models are selected based on the benchmarks, so I pretty much assume my system would be handling the HadSM3 or HadAM3 models which appear to be the least intensive.

Like I said, I\'m just trying to get an idea if it would be worthwhile to run CPDN using a system such as this, or whether it would be better for all parties involved to focus on other BOINC projects with different resource requirements and distribution methods. For myself, CPDN (though not BOINC as it had previously been installed) was just one bullet point of a list of things that could potentially be environmentally savy so I thought I would try it out and contribute a resource percentage of my computer\'s resources here too. Is there some kind of \'minimum requirement\' that should be listed on CPDN pages for the kind of computer that should be involved in the project?
4) Questions and Answers : Windows : Time Remaining is getting longer not shorter! (Message 32078)
Posted 9 Jan 2008 by old_user20587
Post:

Since the climate model runs at a very stable rate, the best way to estimate how long a model will take to run is to calculate it by dividing the cpu-hours-so-far by the fraction completed so far.

e.g.) 100 hours, 0.1 done (10%) gives us a total of 1,000 hours.


I was hoping you weren\'t going to say that. Right now my poor 1.1ghz machine is reporting 91hours of CPU time - Progress 1.01%... so by my calculation that means it will be about 9100 hours to get it all done... and 9100/24 is 379.16 ... well over a year in raw computing time.

However this computer is mainly for my useage... therefore it\'s often only doing computation during the idle time and furthermore I turn it off at night. Is it even worth it to have me continue? or should I wait until I have a newer, more powerful computer before bothering with CPDN?




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