daily quota problem
26 Sep 2005 12:58:34 UTC
Topic 189929
(moderation:
hi folks
i have been having problems with my boinc einstein client not getting new work .
the logs show that the machine has reached its daily quota.
the machine in question is a dedicated dual 2.7 G5 running the latest gui boinc and the latest einstein client
os 10.4.2
according to the machines stats page a quota of 8/day is allocated...
http://einsteinathome.org/host/386578
i reckon that while my g5 is just crunching it will do more than 8 a day even without errors.. (12700 sec per unit)
i have not had many unit errors as far as i can see .
so the question is ho can i cha ge the quota ? i have run the benchmarks a couple of times to see if it changes but no joi.
other people have had this problem but so far suggestions have failed to solve the problem for me
many thanks
regards
adream
ps come and joing team macnn if you crunching on a mac and dont have a team, we're all really friendly :)
http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/team_display.php?teamid=21
63. (1) (b) "music" includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats
daily quota problem
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Hi adream,
As of right now, there is no way to get more than 8 WU/CPU/day. (so on your power Macs you should actually be getting 16 WU/day.. I am JEALOUS!). This is to make sure that people who are erroring out WUs don't suck up massive quantities of the system's resources.
If you're worried about your computers getting cold, the best thing that I can suggest is connecting to a "fast" project (short WUs) like Predictor (or even SETI might work well for you) at a relatively low resource share. I just looked at BOINCstats, and you seem to have already done this.
If you want to do mostly Einstein, I'd say give a 230 share to Einstein and a 10 share to your back up project (1 hour/day to back up project). CP would probably not be a good back up project because even with computers as fast as yours they take a bloody long time to compute.
The only other thing you can do is try to get the quota increased for everyone (10 should be reasonable, in my mind). Start a petition, make a stink... crazier things have happened.
many thanks for the prompt
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many thanks for the prompt and informative post eberndl
it seems to me that the 8 wu/day is far too low for a static maximun
who should we speak to get these things changed as it will develop into more of a problem as machines get faster ;)
oh well, its rare problem that your computers too fast ! i should enjoi while it lasts :)
thanks again
regards
adream
63. (1) (b) "music" includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats
RE: who should we speak to
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The staff member I see most on the boards is Bernd Machenschalk, I think he's the person in charge of the Windows client (maybe?) but if you can get his attention, then he can point you to the right person to talk to.
I've been looking for an email address on the University of Hannover web site, but I think it's located here which is currently timing out.
Maybe on the BOINC developer's Boards?
RE: I have been having
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The problem is not actually the quota of 8 per se but rather the fact that your machine seems to like acquiring "ghost" or "phantom" work units which uses up your available quota. Each cpu is capable of about 7 results per day and your quota of 8 per cpu is (just) sufficient. Prof Bruce Allen regularly scans these lists and he may very well be tempted to increase the limit to say 10 now that there are machines "knocking at the door" so to speak.
Why I believe you have a "ghost" problem is the fact that you have quite a few results listed on the web page with received dates of 22, 23, 24 Sept which have not started processing. There are later dates which have so the earlier dates most likely are not on your machine. There is supposed to be a fix for the ghosts problem which involves communication between BOINC server and client components and the resending of those work units which are missing from your machine. If you look back through the archives you should find messages from Bruce Allen commenting on this. It needs a particular version or later of BOINC to be installed and I have no idea if it is in MAC versions as I only run Windows.
If I were you I'd compare the actual worklist on your computer with what is shown on the website to confirm you have ghost work units. Then see if you can find a version of BOINC in which this problem has been "cured" by the addition of the handshaking protocol that allows the server to resend to the client any identified ghost work.
I would expect that Bruce may very well see these posts and make a comment himself. It's an important ongoing issue.
There is a "workaround" you could adopt to stop your computer going cold when all the ghosts expire and your 8/day quota gets savaged. Unfortunately it looks like that is going to happen so let me know if you want to know the workaround :).
Cheers,
Gary.
RE: Why I believe you have
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I don't recall if it is fixed in V4.72 Mac or not, but it's at http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dl/ - I believe it's boinc_4.72_macOSX.zip. That would be the first thing I would try, especially on a G5 dual, if only for the improved time estimations in 4.72.
Adream: At risk of being
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Adream:
At risk of being considered out of order, I'd suggest adjusting your prefs to give SETI some tiime as a backup client for when Einstein is out of work for your machine. With the current 4.44 Superbench and Alexkhan's alpha clients, you can actually earn more credits per cpu hour with SETI than with Einstein, so yuu won't personally lose anything; you just won't contribute quite as much to your team in Einstein.
C
Join Team MacNN
RE: RE: Why I believe you
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I don't believe this was fixed in 4.72. I belive it has made it into 5.1.
BOINC WIKI
adream, Your machine does
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adream,
Your machine does one WU every four hours. Thus it can do at most 12/day. Since it has two cpus, the quota should limit it to 16/day (this is 8/cpu/day).
So I agree that the problem is that WU are being lost in sending them to your machine. The latest BOINC client getting public distribution for the Mac is 4.43. But the ghost problem is only fixed in 4.45. I suggest you try one of the development clients from here.
Director, Einstein@Home
RE: adream, Your machine
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thanks for the replies folks, i have downloaded 5.1.4 and so far everything seems to be going well
i had no idea these newer versions where available and would have tried using them earlier.
my g5 does 1 unit every 3:32 per cpu for the last 8 or so units
anyhow thanks again for the help , i will report back if i have further problems :)
regards
adream
63. (1) (b) "music" includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats
@adream As a result of
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@adream
As a result of V5.1.4 being installed, is your machine now downloading replacements for the ghost work units that were shown on the website? In other words is the feature working correctly and are you being flooded with work? :).
Cheers,
Gary.