Posts by Purple Rabbit

1) Message boards : Number crunching : Credit updates? (Message 49440) Posted 27 Jun 2014 by Purple Rabbit Post: While not totally off topic, but within the realm of recent posts, I would like to make an observation. I'm not totally credit driven, but I am. Ten years ago there were just a few projects and I did them all. I had little choice except not to do them. Today there are many projects with some less worthwhile than others. After weeding out the projects that don't seem worthwhile my next step is to see what I can get! From the pile of worthwhile projects I can pick from those that give credits (or more credits) from those that do not. For some strange reason I'll pick the projects I've deemed worthwhile that give more credits over those that don't. Yes, I'm a horrible person. I've just described capitalism. This is either good or bad depending... My point: Given a pile of worthwhile projects I'll pick the ones that give me timely credits. I have no idea what I'll do with the credits, but having credits is better than not having them :) The apparent opinion here is that it's either CPDN or nothing. I'm sure that's true for a number of people, but the rest of us do lots of other projects. Summary: Are points important? Well kinda. CPDN as a project is important (doing worthwhile work), but if I can get more from a different worthwhile project, then I will. Recommendation: Obviously the first priority is to keep the servers running and supplied with work. The second priority is to gratify your employees (us). While some employees don't care, many do. Expand this over the University IT space and my concerns seem trivial. There are not enough people to do a good job. I'm just asking that within current resources that the priorities be evaluated and adjusted. They seem a bit askew at the moment.
2) Message boards : Number crunching : Taunting Tomato (Message 43423) Posted 18 Nov 2011 by Purple Rabbit Post: Tomato is my venerable AMD64 3800+ (host 1075531) who has been complaining recently about the demands I make of him. I retired him from CPDN last December--OK, I tried once in February of this year, but he didn't like it. I gave him simpler fair to chew and he's been doing well. I shook the dust bunnies out of him, fixed some things, and said several incantations. The engineer in me can't leave well enough alone so I (we) tried CPDN again. The first 3 attempts were "negative theta", "negative theta", and "negative pressure" all within a day. We were both quite discouraged, but I reminded Tomato that this wasn't (probably) his fault. We agreed to to try one more time. While Tomato hasn't trickled yet (but I have!) our fourth try has survived longer than the others. We are cautiously optimistic for the future.
3) Message boards : Number crunching : HADAM3P's too much RAC weight? (Message 38009) Posted 18 Sep 2009 by Purple Rabbit Post: Can the problem be as simple as the HADAM3P\'s trickle more often (for a given computer) than other models? The weighted RAC algorithm may be preferentially responding to this. Forgive me if I missed this in previous discussions. It\'s a long, rambling thread :-)
4) Message boards : Number crunching : Nostalgia (Message 37544) Posted 24 Jul 2009 by Purple Rabbit Post: One of my computers just got a new (to it) model type. I was somewhat amazed at what it downloaded. (I guess I haven't been paying attention before!) 81 MB for this, 31 MB for that, etc (hundreds of Megabytes). This made me think about how far we have come! I joined CPDN in the BOINC early days (Sept 2004) running a 600MHz machine on dial up. What we don't even blink at now would have been days of downloading (and uploading) across the Atlantic Ocean no less! If I remember right the files were a humongous 1MB or so (and then only one or two). I grew up using a slide rule and logarithm tables. I can't help but being amazed at the progress since my engineering degree in 1973. I kept up with technology (I worked in R&D), but I'm still amazed! And yes, I walked uphill both ways to school :) My point? In just 5 years more science can be done by the average guy, than what could have been done 10 years earlier with scads of computers.
5) Message boards : Number crunching : Server out of space (Message 37141) Posted 10 Jun 2009 by Purple Rabbit Post: Thanks for the update Milo. You're in the trenches trying to make all this work. I really appreciate that. You have been quite successful so far. Obviously, this is not an easy problem to solve. Is there ANY way the higher-ups can look at the architecture of CPDN and plan for the future? I think I know the answer to this question though...sigh.
6) Message boards : Number crunching : Server out of space (Message 37116) Posted 8 Jun 2009 by Purple Rabbit Post: Aye, yup. I understand. I knew I wasn't asking anything new (but perhaps revisiting old thoughts). I just thought that I'd prime the engine again. Sometimes it's worth tickling the process (for whatever that may be worth). Rick
7) Message boards : Number crunching : Server out of space (Message 37114) Posted 8 Jun 2009 by Purple Rabbit Post: Thanks again Iain, but... Yes, I agree, but can we make it better? It's worth a try. Tolu...Milo? How off base am I? Rick
8) Message boards : Number crunching : Server out of space (Message 37112) Posted 8 Jun 2009 by Purple Rabbit Post: Thanks Iain, </choir preaching on> There's no doubt the researchers need access to the data, but does it have to be on the dynamic servers? I assume their access rate is quite a bit less than the processors (us). OK, money, people etc. figure in to this, but Tolu just said he's buying a new server to handle the dynamic load. Perhaps the server might be better used as a researcher access server? Move the old stuff and voila, she works again! </choir preaching off> I don't pretend to know the funding and politics of the project, but I did work for the US Government for 30 years so I DO understand bureaucracy :-) All this just seems a strange to me. Of course I haven't had to tread the academic footsteps that Tolu et. al. (if there are any) have to follow. My simple engineer's mind tells me that just adding servers will eventually fail to scale up to the load.
9) Message boards : Number crunching : Server out of space (Message 37110) Posted 8 Jun 2009 by Purple Rabbit Post: Maybe it's time for the project to archive? I have tasks from 2004 from long defunct (or at least transmogrified) computers still showing. If, in fact, ALL previous work is still on the servers, then perhaps a judicious moving of tasks to offline storage might be in order? Because this is obviously NOT a new, brilliant idea, I'm curious why it hasn't been done (if it hasn't already been done) :-)
10) Message boards : Number crunching : Beware of Unwatched Computers (Message 36565) Posted 29 Mar 2009 by Purple Rabbit Post: A Spanish lady I know once barbecued cuarenta y cinco conejos for a single meal.... Well, she was quite a glutton. While I don\'t condone cannibalism among wabbits, two would be quite sufficient. Wabbits Wule (and we pretend to be chickens)! PS: This is getting silly :)
11) Message boards : Number crunching : Beware of Unwatched Computers (Message 36560) Posted 29 Mar 2009 by Purple Rabbit Post: Thanks Mo, I think you\'re the first one who has ever read my profile :) I just thought that I\'d tell a story on myself to show how easy it is to make a simple problem very complex. I\'ve been around CPDN for a while. I\'ve killed my share of tasks due to: CPDN errors, hardware problems, and operator head-space problems. I try to limit the latter. Rick Wabbits Wule (and they taste like chicken)! PS: I hope the idiom \"telling a story on myself\" translates beyond Midwest USA. It\'s like it sounds although the story is usually an embarrassing one for the writer. I offered mine for the good of the community :)
12) Message boards : Number crunching : Beware of Unwatched Computers (Message 36556) Posted 29 Mar 2009 by Purple Rabbit Post: Poor Pumpkin* (P4, 3.2 GHz) was banished to the basement last year when I bought a more capable sibling (Potato) as my main computer. I have several computers in the basement that run for weeks without intervention unless one of them raises their hand (crashes or aborts a task) and says it has a problem. Pumpkin seemed to be doing fine. It does multiple projects and everything was (seemed to be) going fine, but, alas, this was not the case for CPDN. It was stuck, although BOINC was alternating it with the other projects as expected. All the other projects were happy though. I just noticed this afternoon that Pumpkin hadn\'t trickled since 20 March. No trickle files pending. Hmmm, ice world? I couldn\'t tell because Pumpkin is headless (no graphics). I had my hand on the abort button, but a quick check showed others had finished the WU. OK, I\'ll give it another chance. I stopped BOINC and rebooted. Ah ha, progress resumes! I wish I had seen this 9 days ago. I know I\'m being Mr. Obvious here (besides I already knew this!), but sometimes the simple things are overlooked by even the best of us (plus me). I\'m sure the FAQs say this many times over, but the shock of having a computer spinning its wheels for nine days doesn\'t always lead one to search out a FAQ to be reminded of a basic tenet of CPDN participation--proper care and feeding is important. Moral of the story: Do the simple things first before assuming the worst. Rick Yes, they are vegetables. I\'m a wabbit with a garden.
13) Message boards : Number crunching : Sulphur Download? (Message 16664) Posted 18 Oct 2005 by Purple Rabbit Post: They want a lot back by Jan/Feb? but I am sure they will accept more after the deadline. For what it\'s worth I downloaded my first Sulphur model (Sunday) on my Linux box (ID: 163411) with a deadline of 28 September 2006. It wants 51 CPU days on a P4 3.0GHz machine (slab model is about 24 days). That\'s about 200 days with my resource share. I\'ve trickled twice with no problems (so far). Clearly there\'s no rush for this one. Is this new or maybe a separate series?
14) Message boards : Number crunching : Very weird WU. (Message 12334) Posted 6 May 2005 by Purple Rabbit Post: I can't tell if my models wanted to download another one after Phase 1. I have BOINC set to not download more CPDN models (depleting). I saw the strange behavior and didn't want to put more models at risk. Unfortunately you can't do this with BOINC 4.19. The one model that made it to Phase 2 (I killed the others upgrading to SUSE 9.3) transitioned properly except the estimated time went to some time in 2016 and the s/TS were very slow. This slowly came back to normal in a few days. I can't say more because the upgrade got this one too (sigh). My backups didn't work.
15) Message boards : Number crunching : Very weird WU. (Message 12305) Posted 5 May 2005 by Purple Rabbit Post: > The box is running redhat 2.4, and 4.13 of the cruncher. > > Boinc version 4.27. > > Anybody else seen one of these short ones? I've seen this several times on BOINC 4.3, SUSE 9.3. It's not really a short WU. It looks like the initial estimated time is only for phase 1. It adjusts when phase 2 starts and the estimated time and s/TS are closer to normal. I haven't seen this behavior in Windows so I assume it's a Linux thing. Rick
16) Message boards : Number crunching : Running Two Models Simultaneously on an HT Machine (Message 11295) Posted 23 Mar 2005 by Purple Rabbit Post: > The only difference in our setups is I am using windows XP home sp2. My > timesteps are 3.72 seconds and have been consistently this fast since > september 1 when this machine started model 1 and 2. Thanks Bruce, Good info. I'm time slicing, but I leave the results in memory. It works just fine on the WinXP computers. It just seemed horrendously slow when 2 CPDN models ran together on my new Linux computer. One of my potential problems is the BOINC version. I haven't ruled out the use of BOINC ver 4.27 as a problem. The CPDN server is known to be behind the current version. Maybe I ought to revert to 4.19 (for Linux)? I'm running (all WinXP on ver 2.25) models on a 1.3 GHz Celeron, an 866 MHz Mobile P3 (Laptop), and a 3.4 GHz Dell computer on CPDN on my other computers. They are all doing OK. It's just my new computer-from-parts-Linux-computer that seems to be doing strange things. I either have a hardware problem (but 3 other projects don't care), my hardware is CPDN adverse, or I have an operator-head-space problem. The latter is my choice. I'm new to Linux.
17) Message boards : Number crunching : Running Two Models Simultaneously on an HT Machine (Message 11290) Posted 22 Mar 2005 by Purple Rabbit Post: > I agree with Geophi that it is worth finding out what is going wrong. The > number of possibilities is large, but then you would not have a sense of > achievement if building your own machine were necessarily that easy ;) Thanks Andrew. I built my first computer in 1979 (Heathkit H89) soldering iron and all. This one was a piece of cake compared to the first one. I'm more of a hardware guy. Linux is a new challenge for me. One point I was making was that I was getting 2.2 s/TS while running OTHER projects as well. A double CPDN run caused the big hit. Clearly the 2 CPDN models were competing for the same resources. Mixing with other projects seems to give a better time. This was the first time I had 2 simultaneous CPDN models on the same HT computer. This doesn't negate anything geophi said. It's just an observation. I haven't run the other tests yet. I'm waiting for the third model to do something. Since the other 2 bombed exactly halfway in Phase 1 I expected a similar result. As this model approached the midpoint of Phase 1 it rewound 1 day. The others didn't rewind. There's definitely something wrong somewhere, but I'll take the rewinding as a minor victory :-)
18) Message boards : Number crunching : Running Two Models Simultaneously on an HT Machine (Message 11197) Posted 21 Mar 2005 by Purple Rabbit Post: Thanks geophi. There just seemed a lot of discrepancy in the numbers. More testing is on my schedule. I'll plead guilty to being ignorant. I thought I had a case. I've read all the through-put vs rate threads. This seemed to be different, but I guess not.
19) Message boards : Number crunching : Running Two Models Simultaneously on an HT Machine (Message 11194) Posted 20 Mar 2005 by Purple Rabbit Post: My immediate experiences tell me to not to do this, but I may have other problems. I just created a Linux computer out of parts (Host 129514). It's a 3.0 GHz Prescott P4 with 512MB Kingston memory. It has a Syntax MB (whatever that is, their home pages are in Chinese). I have downloaded 3 models so far. As I ran the first model I got a 2.2 s/TS rate. This was with several other projects, but not CPDN. It bombed at 129624 with a 251 error. The next two models I received were sequential. When they were running together I saw a 2.73 s/TS rate. Alone they were 2.2 s/TS. Model 1 bombed at 129514 TS (error 251 again). When the second model was alone it ran at 2.16 s/TS. This was when there were no other projects with work, but still hyper threaded. I understand the interactions of memory and the board specifications. I haven't run mprime to test the system (yet). My point is that 2 models running simultaneously yielded 2.73 s/TS. One alone on the same HT computer was 2.0 s/TS or better. This kind of tells me not to run 2 CPDN mdels together on the same HT machine. OK, my examples bombed, but I think(?) they are valid up to that point.
20) Message boards : Number crunching : Am I the only slow one? (Message 6871) Posted 11 Dec 2004 by Purple Rabbit Post: Thanks Carl I was keying off of a thread on one of the boards about the Classic THC that said (sort of)--"We have all the data we need for our paper. You can download more data and run them, but we don't care." I was just a bit curious if I was in the same boat. If being a slow plodder is useful, I'll stay around. Geez, I've been here for 4 months. I'll keep crunching along (at my owm pace). Santa might even bring me a "real" computer.

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