Error message is new to me

Lots of people are seeing these "result ALREADY reported" messages. I've probably seen this more than 30-40 times and I haven't really been looking for it :). My guess is that due to the ongoing server flakiness, there are many instances of a server disruption just after the server has received and tried to acknowledge the receipt of results being reported. The server has the report and thinks it has issued the acknowledgement but the client has not actually seen it. Thus the client will not delete the result and will try again later, at which point the server will issue the rather peeved response with the undue emphasis on "ALREADY" just to show how peeved it is that the poor client is not keeping up with the game :).

So my guess is that this is all quite harmless client/server banter that you normally wouldn't see, but for the server flakiness.

There is another message which occurs much less frequently which initially did cause me some concern. I've seen it about 3-4 times now. Here is the latest example which occurred just a couple of hours ago that I've just seen by chance.

Notice that the first red line is an example of the "ALREADY" message. The second red line is telling the client that a "lost result" is being resent. This in itself is not that unusual since the client/server protocol (on EAH anyway) does allow for any discrepancies between what the server considers it has sent to the client and what the client can actually see that it has received to be reconciled and resynchronised as necessary.

The thing that initially disturbed me was that the server didn't send just the missing result but rather it sent the whole 15.7mb large data file and the associated grid file (both highlighted in brown). My immediate thinking was that if just one result was missing why didn't I already have the large data file on my system? Why is the server wasting bandwidth by sending it all again? Then the penny dropped. On any request for work, the server could decide that it was time for a new large data file. Whilst this hopefully occurs relatively infrequently, there is still a chance that a flaky server, answering a request for new work, thinks it has sent you a new large data file although your client has actually not received it. So a subsequent request for work will cause the server to notice the "out-of-sync" condition and then remedy the situation.

I don't know if these explanations are correct or even approximately correct but I'm reasonably happy to ignore this client/server banter and to look forward to the time when all this current strife is a fast-fading dim memory :).

currently it seems that the Einstein 'BOINC scheduler' can't create WUs fast enough...
see 'Oldest Unsent Result 0 d 0 h 1 m' on the server status page.
As there are nearly only short WUs available, the Einstein servers are stressed much more...

If you look back through the records of your client/server comms, you should find a previous (but apparently not fully completed) exchange for each of the results now being refused. I believe that the server had already accepted the report on this previous exchange. That's how it looks for the sample of my own that I have checked back on.

Yeah, very frustrating indeed for everybody. I'm sure some more drastic action would have been taken if there was significant data loss going on.

Anyway, welcome to EAH and hopefully things will soon be fixed on the original server and the current temporary replacement can quickly be retired.

Another new one to me:

16/01/2007 10:03:06|einstein@home|Scheduler request to http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/EinsteinAtHome_cgi/cgi succeeded
16/01/2007 10:03:06|einstein@home|Message from server: Server can't open database
16/01/2007 10:03:06|einstein@home|Project is down

For a change, a BOINC message which makes perfect sense! But unfortunately, it doesn't hint at a solution.

Has anyone else felt the cycle of - can't access website; website slowly comes up; website runs quick and clean for a few minutes; website access is slow again; can't access website - with a timescale roughly that of a computer continually rebooting itself?

right,, now thats a scary tholt.

as to the boinc message, i doubt theres anything we as users can do it may be that the data base server was off when you tryd to hit it,, i got the same error. needless to say all these short wu's are putting one heck of a strain on the hardware. and those 15 - 16 MB downloads arent helping it. whoever tholt the idea of one big data pack for multiple wu's was a great one, is probably rethinking that right about now lol.