Cleanup crew

Slagathor
Slagathor
Joined: 28 Feb 05
Posts: 14
Credit: 21118749
RAC: 0
Topic 193284

I'm fortunate enough to have a few reasonably fast machines with high-speed connections and lots of disk space. Are there any BOINC preferences or server-side switches that can be flipped to flag them as being willing to do cleanup work?

By that, I mean it would be okay with me if they had to download a new data set just to process one or two work units. If it would help minimize the occurence or impact of some of those _3 or _4 or _5 reissues that stretch out for weeks or months.

I've also got about a dozen not-quite-as-fast workhorse machines on high-speed connections that can't (yet) do anything other than S5R2 because of an OS limitation (FreeBSD), so if there are still any S5R2 work units hanging around, I'd be happy to have them crunch those to get them cleaned up. (They're asking the server for work, but aren't getting any because there aren't work units in their assigned frequency ranges available, even though there seem to be work units in other frequencies.)

Obviously things work very well the way they are, but I just wanted to ask if there's anything else I could do to help.

Cheers to all.

Richard Haselgrove
Richard Haselgrove
Joined: 10 Dec 05
Posts: 2143
Credit: 2951080307
RAC: 689890

Cleanup crew

Quote:

I'm fortunate enough to have a few reasonably fast machines with high-speed connections and lots of disk space. Are there any BOINC preferences or server-side switches that can be flipped to flag them as being willing to do cleanup work?

By that, I mean it would be okay with me if they had to download a new data set just to process one or two work units. If it would help minimize the occurence or impact of some of those _3 or _4 or _5 reissues that stretch out for weeks or months.

I've also got about a dozen not-quite-as-fast workhorse machines on high-speed connections that can't (yet) do anything other than S5R2 because of an OS limitation (FreeBSD), so if there are still any S5R2 work units hanging around, I'd be happy to have them crunch those to get them cleaned up. (They're asking the server for work, but aren't getting any because there aren't work units in their assigned frequency ranges available, even though there seem to be work units in other frequencies.)

Obviously things work very well the way they are, but I just wanted to ask if there's anything else I could do to help.

Cheers to all.


If you're willing to be adventurous, there's something you could try on the 'S5R2 only' boxes:

Stop BOINC completely (if it's running other projects)
Find the client_state.xml file - in Windows it's in the \\BOINC directory, you'll have to hunt for it yourself in FreeBSD.
Open it in a simple text editor - in Windows I would use notepad, you will know the appropriate equivalent.
Remove all references to Einstein data files of the form

l1_0255.95_S5R2
3234816.000000
0.000000
49a8a9a29a5d6872ed0cfce313fcc230
1


http://einstein.astro.gla.ac.uk/download/a9/l1_0255.95_S5R2
http://einstein.aei.mpg.de/download/a9/l1_0255.95_S5R2
http://einstein.aset.psu.edu/download/a9/l1_0255.95_S5R2
http://morel.mit.edu/download/a9/l1_0255.95_S5R2
http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/download/a9/l1_0255.95_S5R2
http://einstein.ligo.caltech.edu/download/a9/l1_0255.95_S5R2
http://einstein.astro.gla.ac.uk/download/a9/l1_0255.95_S5R2
http://einstein.aei.mpg.de/download/a9/l1_0255.95_S5R2
http://einstein.aset.psu.edu/download/a9/l1_0255.95_S5R2
http://morel.mit.edu/download/a9/l1_0255.95_S5R2
http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/download/a9/l1_0255.95_S5R2
http://einstein.ligo.caltech.edu/download/a9/l1_0255.95_S5R2

- make sure you keep the structure intact by removing complete ... blocks, but it doesn't really matter if you delete too many - Einstein will replace anything it needs.

Then, when you restart BOINC, the machine won't have a pre-assigned frequency, and will be free to accept anything that's offered to it.

However, I don't think that's the only reason you're not getting work. I think that each time your FreeBSD box asks for work, the server will look at what it has available, and if none of them are suitable (all S5R3), you'll still get 'no work from server'.

I don't know Bernd's plans, but the remaining 'tail' of S5R2 work must be getting quite small by now: I'm down to just 2 pending now (it was about 6 at the beginning of the week). If previous run-ends are anything to go by, the staff may decide to blitz them by re-issuing the last few to multiple hosts, in the hope that at least one of them will complete each WU. If they do that, you'll be ready and available to help them out.

Slagathor
Slagathor
Joined: 28 Feb 05
Posts: 14
Credit: 21118749
RAC: 0

RE: I don't think that's

Message 75100 in response to message 75099

Quote:
I don't think that's the only reason you're not getting work. I think that each time your FreeBSD box asks for work, the server will look at what it has available, and if none of them are suitable (all S5R3), you'll still get 'no work from server'.

You're right -- I did what you suggested, and I'm sure it would work, except there are no workunits available.

Thank you for your reply!

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