Wormhole computing

Annika
Annika
Joined: 8 Aug 06
Posts: 720
Credit: 494410
RAC: 0

Or maybe he changed providers

Or maybe he changed providers and only has a crappy modem atm, so he transfers all the WUs to and from the only PC that has network connection... don't laugh, that happened to me a while ago... Some providers force you to use their modems, for voip and stuff, or the phoneflat gets all but useless...
Afaik it is theoretically possible to crunch WUs on another box than the one they were sent to as long as you re-transfer them for uploading.

Donald A. Tevault
Donald A. Tevault
Joined: 17 Feb 06
Posts: 439
Credit: 73516529
RAC: 0

RE: RE: I still have a

Message 73476 in response to message 73474

Quote:
Quote:

I still have a hard time believing that his computer could have crunched all those units in the time allotted. That is, (by my count) his computer reported 12 units on Sept 24. Two of those looked "normal" and reported times of about 100 hours each. Those two units were sent to his computer on Sept 9 or 15 days prior to reporting. Fifteen days equals 360 hours of time. If his computer spent 200 of those hours crunching the "normal units", that leaves only 160 hours for crunching the other 10 "suspect" units. I don't think so! But, please, somebody check my math and logic.

EDIT: His Computers belonging to lists 4 computers, all of which contacted the server on Sept 24, but only 1 shows recent results. Could he have crunched the "suspect" units on the other computers and reported them on the active one? I don't know why he would want to do that but it might account for the total amount of time needed.

I think you hit the nail on the head here: The computer in question is a Pentium D, with 2 cores, at > 3 GHz, and should be able to crunch a monster faster than the 100 hours!! I think what we see here is the effect of a computer upgrade. The "instant" units were crunched on the Pentium D and the regular ones on an older model. The dard-disk with the BOINC installation was transplanted and this might have messed up the whole flow.

Does this make sense?

The debug output indicates a real-time crunching time of approx 170000 seconds, multiplied times 2 cores this would allow for the number of "instant" units submitted.

CU

H-B


I doubt that this is caused by a hard-drive transplant.

First off, he's running Windows. So, this would only work if he's adding the old drive as a secondary drive in the new computer. (Unlike Linux, putting it in as a primary boot drive won't work with Windows. The hardware won't get configured correctly.)

Also, a few weeks ago, I had to change a drive from a Duron 950 machine over to a Pentium III machine when the Duron's motherboard died. The machine was in the middle of a work unit at the time. Everything came up correctly, the workunit completed and validated with all correct results.

On the other hand, if the clock on the new computer hadn't been set correctly, well, who knows?

Annika
Annika
Joined: 8 Aug 06
Posts: 720
Credit: 494410
RAC: 0

Hmm, maybe. But I still tend

Hmm, maybe. But I still tend to favor the "multiple boxes, one internet connection" theory.

Donald A. Tevault
Donald A. Tevault
Joined: 17 Feb 06
Posts: 439
Credit: 73516529
RAC: 0

RE: Hmm, maybe. But I still

Message 73478 in response to message 73477

Quote:
Hmm, maybe. But I still tend to favor the "multiple boxes, one internet connection" theory.


Well, I also doubt that. I have all of my boxes hooked to one Internet connection via a Cisco 3100 switch, and I've never seen anything like it here.

Pooh Bear 27
Pooh Bear 27
Joined: 20 Mar 05
Posts: 1376
Credit: 20312671
RAC: 0

Look at the times it was sent

Look at the times it was sent to the computer, and the times sent back to the server. There is NO WAY that 10 results could have been downloaded, crunched and sent back in less than 3 minutes.

All 10 results are just seconds of "sent" and "reported".

This is not normal in any means.

Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Bikeman (Heinz-...
Moderator
Joined: 28 Aug 06
Posts: 3522
Credit: 686138939
RAC: 552243

RE: Look at the times it

Message 73480 in response to message 73479

Quote:

Look at the times it was sent to the computer, and the times sent back to the server. There is NO WAY that 10 results could have been downloaded, crunched and sent back in less than 3 minutes.

All 10 results are just seconds of "sent" and "reported".

This is not normal in any means.

The "Result sent" timestamps are definitely not consistent with the results themselves and must be "wrong", by accident, software error or whatever. One of the results had a timestamp in it's debug output and it was from the 18th, before it was allegedly sent to the computer. Wormhole computing indeed.

CU

H-B

Richard Haselgrove
Richard Haselgrove
Joined: 10 Dec 05
Posts: 2139
Credit: 2752967155
RAC: 1383389

RE: RE: Look at the times

Message 73481 in response to message 73480

Quote:
Quote:

Look at the times it was sent to the computer, and the times sent back to the server. There is NO WAY that 10 results could have been downloaded, crunched and sent back in less than 3 minutes.

All 10 results are just seconds of "sent" and "reported".

This is not normal in any means.

The "Result sent" timestamps are definitely not consistent with the results themselves and must be "wrong", by accident, software error or whatever. One of the results had a timestamp in it's debug output and it was from the 18th, before it was allegedly sent to the computer. Wormhole computing indeed.


OK, all great fun, but let's not be too hard on the guy.

Have a look at WU 34742053 - one that hasn't reported yet. As I type it looks like this:

86981815 1010940 24 Sep 2007 16:27:48 UTC 8 Oct 2007 16:42:53 UTC In Progress Unknown New --- --- ---
86981816 468298 17 Sep 2007 16:45:42 UTC 8 Oct 2007 16:45:42 UTC In Progress Unknown New --- --- ---

Note that the deadlines are within 3 minutes of each other, but the 'sent' times are almost an entire week apart. That's what the server does when a datafile is lost and re-sent: the deadline date remains the same, but the date of issue is amended. I think it's fair to assume that all the current crop of short WUs were issued on or about the 17th September.

My guess is that many of the WUs were actually crunched on one of the other machines on his account, but the result files were uploaded all from the same machine. That doesn't have to involve a whole hard disk transplant: he could even have zipped and emailed the boinc folder to himself (USB memory sticks are quicker and easier). I think he's possibly gone a complicated way round - perhaps he only copied the project folder, rather than the entire BOINC directory (which would be the best way to accomplish this sort of thing) - and that's why he's ended up with an unexpected result re-issue in the middle. Odd, but not necessarily criminal.

Unless Bernd or Bruce find otherwise, of course.... No harm in checking.

Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Bikeman (Heinz-...
Moderator
Joined: 28 Aug 06
Posts: 3522
Credit: 686138939
RAC: 552243

Thats's what Annika was

Thats's what Annika was suspecting as well and I think it's the most probable explanation. I definitely don't see a case of "credit fraud" here :-)

CU
Bikeman

DanNeely
DanNeely
Joined: 4 Sep 05
Posts: 1364
Credit: 3562358667
RAC: 1580

RE: I doubt that this is

Message 73483 in response to message 73476

Quote:


I doubt that this is caused by a hard-drive transplant.

First off, he's running Windows. So, this would only work if he's adding the old drive as a secondary drive in the new computer. (Unlike Linux, putting it in as a primary boot drive won't work with Windows. The hardware won't get configured correctly.)

I've done this repeatedly with nVidia boards without issue. Unlike the competition nVidia's used a fairly unified driver model on all their nForce boards. While you might not have everything working perfectly after the swap until you install the ones for the new one, I've never had a problem getting a stable boot to do the actual install itself.

Most other brands are hit and miss with a moboswap, but since nVidia boards are consistantly among the fastest and most reliable out there I don't have any reason to buy the competition anyway.

Alinator
Alinator
Joined: 8 May 05
Posts: 927
Credit: 9352143
RAC: 0

RE: OK, all great fun, but

Message 73484 in response to message 73481

Quote:

OK, all great fun, but let's not be too hard on the guy.

Have a look at WU 34742053 - one that hasn't reported yet. As I type it looks like this:

86981815 1010940 24 Sep 2007 16:27:48 UTC 8 Oct 2007 16:42:53 UTC In Progress Unknown New --- --- ---
86981816 468298 17 Sep 2007 16:45:42 UTC 8 Oct 2007 16:45:42 UTC In Progress Unknown New --- --- ---

Note that the deadlines are within 3 minutes of each other, but the 'sent' times are almost an entire week apart. That's what the server does when a datafile is lost and re-sent: the deadline date remains the same, but the date of issue is amended. I think it's fair to assume that all the current crop of short WUs were issued on or about the 17th September.

My guess is that many of the WUs were actually crunched on one of the other machines on his account, but the result files were uploaded all from the same machine. That doesn't have to involve a whole hard disk transplant: he could even have zipped and emailed the boinc folder to himself (USB memory sticks are quicker and easier). I think he's possibly gone a complicated way round - perhaps he only copied the project folder, rather than the entire BOINC directory (which would be the best way to accomplish this sort of thing) - and that's why he's ended up with an unexpected result re-issue in the middle. Odd, but not necessarily criminal.

Unless Bernd or Bruce find otherwise, of course.... No harm in checking.

Actually, I think they're being transplanted onto some other machines we can't see and are not attached to any BOINC project (technically).

After looking at the whole picture on BOINCStats and the plethora of projects he's runnning, there just isn't enough horsepower on the active hosts showing to account for the overall RAC he's pulling.

Alinator

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