The BOINC FAQs

Jord
Joined: 26 Jan 05
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Topic 192199

With help from my good buddy Neil Munday, who set up space on his server and allowed me again to use his splendid Open Source FAQ writing software, I have worked the last couple of days on a new BOINC FAQ. This site is not to replace the Wiki, it's merely a tool for you who help, who look for help and who are just wondering about where to find help.

It's a small collection of FAQs at this moment, but I didn't see the need to first make it complete before putting it on the web. It can and will be added to over the next couple of weeks, if not years.

The link to it is http://boincfaq.mundayweb.com/index.php

I am on the look out for co-writers.
If you have any expertise in writing FAQs, if you can explain things in a reasonably easy way, please contact me and I'll see to it you get a moderator account.

My email address can be found under the About option in the top right of the screen.

The email address is also there if you want anything added, changed, replaced or just want to talk to me. :-)

Jord.

Jord
Joined: 26 Jan 05
Posts: 2952
Credit: 5893653
RAC: 92

The BOINC FAQs

No more English FAQ writers needed. Dex, Jorden, mo.v, Neil and Ozzfan write the English FAQs. For the moment these are enough.

John Keck has volunteered to be the English Proof Reader/Editor.

But we can still use some German and other language FAQ writers.
Cori, Dotsch, Hermann and Jakob Creutzfeld will translate the English->German FAQs and write the new German ones. If you want to be part of that team, please contact me.

I haven't got a definitive German Proof Reader/Editor yet.

Dutch FAQs will come as well, written and translated by Jorden. (that's me ;))
But even here I could use help.

Jord
Joined: 26 Jan 05
Posts: 2952
Credit: 5893653
RAC: 92

Question for you all... What

Question for you all... What are you missing from the FAQs that you want added?
Easy question, difficult to answer perhaps. :-)

JDBurch
JDBurch
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Posts: 190
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Is there a log (a timeline

Is there a log (a timeline History) for BOINC Project problems (either systemic or project specific)? ...and the ultimate solutions to those problems?

Augie
Augie
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RE: Question for you all...

Message 57829 in response to message 57827

Quote:
Question for you all... What are you missing from the FAQs that you want added?
Easy question, difficult to answer perhaps. :-)

I just posted to "crunchers" - Have been receiving "pending" credits for a significant amount of work (102 files since 2007FEB08). stderr is "can't find Fstat.out.ckp. No usable checkpoint found."

Have I done something dumb - it started occurring after I stopped all activity on one machine, requested no new work for that machine and then installed Windows Vista Ultimate on it. Installed a new BOINC/Einstein@home, after the operating system install, then restored work and noticed that it took about three days before I got credit for anything on the new machine. Running new BOINC v5.8.8 on the Vista machine and 5.2.13 on the older Windows XP Pro SP2 machine (laptop). Now both machines are experiencing the stderr problems.

So what might the error be telling me (or trying to tell me?).
thanks,

Jord
Joined: 26 Jan 05
Posts: 2952
Credit: 5893653
RAC: 92

I'm not that well versed in

I'm not that well versed in Vista, but did you put your BOINC directory somewhere else than the default C:\\Program Files\\BOINC ? One thing programs can't do in Vista is write regular reports to the Program Files folder.

If your BOINC directory is nowhere near Program Files, then make sure you have full rights to write to the BOINC directory and all sub directories.

KJ0P
KJ0P
Joined: 13 Sep 10
Posts: 1
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Hi: KJ0P here. In my

Hi:

KJ0P here.
In my Task list there are always one of two types working: One is Arecibo Binary Pulsar Search, the other is Global Correlations S5 search. I suppose I understand the Pulsar search but just what is the GC S5 search actually searching?

TNX,
M73

tullio
tullio
Joined: 22 Jan 05
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RE: Hi: KJ0P here.

Message 57832 in response to message 57831

Quote:

Hi:

KJ0P here.
In my Task list there are always one of two types working: One is Arecibo Binary Pulsar Search, the other is Global Correlations S5 search. I suppose I understand the Pulsar search but just what is the GC S5 search actually searching?

TNX,
M73


Gravitational waves.

Jord
Joined: 26 Jan 05
Posts: 2952
Credit: 5893653
RAC: 92

In December of 2006 I

In December of 2006 I approached my friend Neil Munday if it was possible to start a FAQ for BOINC, using his FAQ database code that he had written for the PC Format FAQs. The BOINC FAQ Service was launched 15/12/2006.

With its ten years anniversary coming up, I felt that a lot of the information in the FAQs was antiquated and that it needed a new environment, so I asked Neil if it was possible to copy everything over to a Mediawiki environment so I could start the rewrite. He sent me the whole contents of the original FAQs in text format, after which Ed from Seattle (as bowtieguru) and Kiska helped me manually put everything from that file into the Wikipedia environment. Ready for the rewrite.

Ed further made sure links were up to date and that most all FAQs were in a readable content, while I started work on the rewrites, the font, the CSS, images and about everything else. I've since added a lot of new content, rewritten a lot of the old FAQs, but a couple of stragglers are still in the old format and have the old content. I've been working on this since the summer vacation, but my concentration waned and I lost interest in a lot of things.

Since October I started getting nightmares, slept about three hours a night or close to 20 hours when completely exhausted. So I went to my doctor to try to figure out what this was. He sent me on to a psychologist, who diagnosed me going through a deep depression. And apparently it's been happening for quite some time already, a little over a year.  

So I have these scary thoughts going through my mind, deep dark thoughts that I don't want to have, and wild vivid day-dreams in which I see me do horrible things to myself. While working on that, I chose not to use my computer that much, and when I do, to then just do some gaming. Most of the time though I sit on my living room couch watching old series on my UHD TV: Andromeda, Mythbusters, Time Team, Fringe, Mantis, Raven, and when I really do need a laugh, one of the Ancient Aliens episodes: Ancient Alien Theorists Believe... that only they know it all. ;-)

But this means that the rewrite of the FAQs is on hold and its original relaunch date of mid-December 2016 has come and gone. I do know I cannot do it all alone, but sadly the 10 people I originally got together to do all this with have not turned up (apart from aforementioned Ed and Kiska). Good personnel is hard to find, or I am a lousy boss. :-/

I put the link to the FAQs on here earlier, but took it down again after a week as I felt it wasn't ready for too much prime time. Now it doesn't matter.
If I don't put it out there for you all to use, it'll never get used and it just takes up space on a server. Might as well get its address out in the open.
And perhaps that this spurs those original 10 on to come help out, or perhaps that you feel you want access and want to start writing. It's possible, just contact me for an account.

For instance, anyone out there who can help me add images to the first page of the Wiki with links under them going off to parts of the FAQs? I want to set up the front page not unlike the first page of Mediawiki, but I don't know how. Yes, templates and possibly CSS. But with my mind as a sieve it's difficult to figure out, especially when I forget what I read the moment I read it. Happens a lot.

The rest of the FAQs is subject to continual changes as well, mostly about how it looks, and in the future a little less green even. The peasoup green is done because the Monobook colours were too hard for my tired eyes, and so I changed all CSS to these new colours. Should become lighter in the future. But still green. :)

Leaves me with the thank yous:
Thanks go out to Neil for his invaluable help on how to work with a CSS file, and of course for hosting the new FAQs. I'm always feeling sorry I can't pay him a grand a year for hosting this on his server. Perhaps one day.
Thanks go out to David, for BOINC, as without it no FAQs.
Thanks to the community, as without their frequently asked questions, no FAQs. :)

Go on, go look: https://boinc.mundayweb.com/wiki/index.php?title=BOINC_FAQs_Central

Jord.

Jord
Joined: 26 Jan 05
Posts: 2952
Credit: 5893653
RAC: 92

It's with regret that I must

It's with regret that I must relay that effective immediately the old BOINC FAQs are off line and that Neil and I decided we retire them and have its URL point to the BOINC FAQ Wiki from now on. We must do this because Neil's Mundayweb domain moved to a newer server with PHP7 and the old code of the BOINC FAQ Service can no longer cope with that. No backwards compatibility. It would also cost too much time and man power to update the old code to work with PHP7, hence our decision.

All of the FAQs in the old FAQs are in the new Wiki, so nothing is lost really. Although a couple of them may not be visible, because of intensive rewrites, or waiting to be rewritten. But that will fix itself when I get to them.

Orange Kid
Orange Kid
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I am suddenly getting this on


 

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