Two computers with same account

Reinhard
Reinhard
Joined: 2 Jun 17
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Topic 208510

I have the same account on two computers and deleted boinc on one computer. Now the other computer works correct but the results are not registrated because boinc account knows only that one computer with deleted boinc. Is there any possibility to save the results to the right pc and how can it show the right pc?

Gary Roberts
Gary Roberts
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Reinhard_9 wrote:I have the

Reinhard_9 wrote:
I have the same account on two computers and deleted boinc on one computer.

Hi Reinhard,
Welcome to the Einstein@Home project!

I'm not sure what you mean by "same account".  Normally, your 'account' is what you create when you register with the project and you can have as many physical computers as you like on the one account.  Each computer is automatically given a separate 'identity' which is referred to as a 'host ID'.  Do you mean 'account' or do you mean 'host ID'?

host IDs are generated automatically when a new computer first makes contact with the project.  They are stored locally in a file called 'client_state.xml' which resides in the BOINC data directory.  If you have two different computers claiming to have the same host ID, it probably means that the directory from one machine has been copied to the other without removing the state file - or something like that.  If the project servers see two different machines claiming to have the same host ID, one will be replaced with a new ID by the servers.

I had a look at your hosts list and there is only one ID showing and it last contacted the servers more than two weeks ago.  There are seven tasks showing and all have gone past the deadline quite a few days ago. They are most likely to have been reissued and probably completed by others by now.  Even if you were able to send in the ones you have, it is probably too late anyway.  You can check for yourself by clicking on the 'Workunit ID' link for each of your tasks and you will see the current status.  I did check two and they were already completed.

If you would care to tell us more detail about how this situation came about, somebody would probably be able to explain more fully where things went wrong so that you don't get caught again in the future.  If you have tasks ready to send back that have NOT already been completed by others, it MAY be possible to 'adjust' the computer that has such tasks so that the 'correct' host ID is used to upload and report the tasks.

You would need to act fairly quickly though and it would involve editing your state file with a plain text editor.   You would need to give a lot more detail to even know if this is possible.  It could be a lot of effort for a nil return.

 

Cheers,
Gary.

Reinhard
Reinhard
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Hi Gary, Thank You for your

Hi Gary,

Thank You for your answer.

I will try this:

"If you have tasks ready to send back that have NOT already been completed by others, it MAY be possible to 'adjust' the computer that has such tasks so that the 'correct' host ID is used to upload and report the tasks."

If that doesn't work I suspend Boinc for ever.

 

Cheers, Reinhard

Gary Roberts
Gary Roberts
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Reinhard_9 wrote:Hi

Reinhard_9 wrote:

Hi Gary,

Thank You for your answer.

I will try this:

.....

Without knowing exactly why it happened and what exactly you currently see, it's very hard to give proper advice.

As a pure guess, you should stop the client and open the state file with a plain text editor.  The host ID recognised by the website is 12536894 and it has contacted the server 69 times previously.  This information comes from the 'details' page for the host showing on the website.

You need to find the <project> ... </project> block in the state file that belongs to Einstein.  There will be other such blocks if you are attached to other projects.  The first <project> block will be quite close to the start of the state file.  Within the correct block, you need to search for <rpc_seqno> and <hostid> tags.  Whatever they currently contain may need to be changed.  Below is what they should look like after you edit them:-

       <rpc_seqno>70</rpc_seqno>

       <hostid>12536894</hostid>

There may well be other things to check.  Each completed task will have a <result> .... </result> block containing information about the completed result.  For example, you should look for the following three items to be confident that the server will be able to accept them as suitable for entering the validation process:-

        <exit_status>0</exit_status>

        <state>5</state>

        <ready_to_report/>

The first two are near the start of a <result> block.  The last is near the end.  A 'good' result will have lots of lines in between.  There are other things that I would normally check but if you don't have the above, there's not much point going further.  Whenever I need to do anything like this, I compare a 'damaged' state file with one from a machine performing normally.  That tends to make it pretty easy to get things 'fixed'.  I guess you don't have that luxury :-).

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

 

Cheers,
Gary.

Reinhard
Reinhard
Joined: 2 Jun 17
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Hi Gary,   thanks for your

Hi Gary,

 

thanks for your answer. state-file shows the following:

<rpc_seqno>270</rpc_seqno>

       <hostid>12535841</hostid>

hostid is the correct id on which the jobs are running. id 12536894 is the pc on which boinc was killed.

Beside client_state.xml there exists a file client_state_prev.xml with the same time and date. Is this correct?

All the information from the horizontal menu in boinc manager seems to be correct, i.e. projects, statistics etc.

The information in vertical menu are information from hostid 12536894. There are only 6 result blocks.

<exit_status>0</exit_status>

        <state>2</state>

Can't find  <ready_to_report/> in any block.

 

Cheers, Reinhard.

 

Gary Roberts
Gary Roberts
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The server is only going to

The server is only going to accept a reply from a machine identifying itself as 12536894 that has a rpc_seqno (remote procedure call sequence number) greater than 69 which is why I suggested 70.   The server will NOT accept any results from 12535841 because that's not the ID it sent the tasks to in the first place.  It doesn't matter what your local client has for the ID at the moment.  It wont mind if you change it to something else.  You have to make the ID acceptable to the server.  The only value that will do that is 12536894.  I don't know that I can make that any clearer.

client_state_prev.xml is a backup copy of the state file made just before the state file itself is updated (I believe).  I think the idea is to preserve the status in case something goes wrong (power outage or crash) in the middle of a state file update.  If BOINC (upon restart) detects a corrupted state file it can use the backup copy - or something along those lines I believe.

exit_status=0 and state=2 are the values for a task that has not been fully crunched.  These values also apply to tasks that haven't even started crunching.  When crunching has been successfully completed, the values will be 0 and 5 respectively as previously mentioned.  You don't have <ready_to_report/> because your BOINC client doesn't see the tasks as completed.

If you start BOINC and open BOINC Manager on the tasks tab, can you tell me the contents of the Status column for each task on the page?  Possible values are:-  Ready to start,  Running,  Suspended,  Uploading,  Ready to report.  You have said previously that the tasks are finished, in which case the status should either be Uploading or Ready to report.

If state=2 is what shows in the state file for all the tasks, they should show either Ready to start or Running on the tasks tab.  Just be aware that if your BOINC client tries to contact the server at this time it will be telling the server that its ID is 12535841 and the server wont like that because your machine is supposed to be 12536894 (according to the servers records).  I have no idea what action the server might decide to take as a result of this discrepancy, now that the tasks are way past the deadline.  Your biggest problem at the moment is to make sure your local client sees the tasks as fully crunched with a status of Ready to report.

Another thing you could check to see if the tasks really have been crunched is to look for result files in the BOINC data directory (where the state file is).  You should be able to find files whose names resemble the task names in BOINC manager with extra extensions.  If you don't have such files, you wont be able to retrieve the situation.

 

 

Cheers,
Gary.

Christian Beer
Christian Beer
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Here is the solution: You

Here is the solution: You have two accounts. Each account has one computer attached. This is the other account: https://einsteinathome.org/account/217423 with the working computer.

The account with the discontinued PC was added using an @yahoo.de address. The other, with the working computer, is using an account created with an @t-online.de address. The first part is the same in both cases.

I just saw that Gary also replied with some more technical suggestions. Those are not relevant in your case as everything is working as expected. You don't need to fiddle around with client_state.xml.

Reinhard
Reinhard
Joined: 28 May 17
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Oh, that was my fault. Sorry.

Oh, that was my fault. Sorry. Thank you for your help Gary and Christian.

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