Thanks a lot, Michael :-) I might do that, but atm my favorite idea (which came to me in an extremely boring maths class) is to simply boot my desktop from a Linux live cd (they are made to cooperate with all sorts of strange setups, so maybe that'll get along okay with the modem, and if not... you know Backtrack und my nooblike neighbors? ;-) ), I mean, the Linux BOINC version is a shell script, so I wouldn't have to install anything, simply mount a partition of my hard disk to store the client and WUs on. Maybe that'll work. I'll try it out as soon as I get home from uni and language class.
If I can't get one of the live cds to run and go online in a reasonable amount of time I'll probably try the VMWare approach, and if I have problems with that I'll gladly accept your offer. It's about time for me to finally register at the Heise boards instead of just reading them anyway ;-) Btw, I have two Gigs of RAM (recently upgraded for a uni project involving Rainbow Tables) so I should be able to run a VM okay.
Somehow, I'll get that box to run under Linux at least on a temporary basis. Anything for the science :-)
I'm typing this running my (otherwise MS XP) notebook on a "Knoppix" live-DVD , with E@H crunching in the background. Even the WLAN support is OK by now. You can tell Knoppix to create a single, big file on your MS filesystem (even NTFS) and mount this one to persist changes to the filesystem that comes on DVD or CD (including installing new applications). So it's all very transparent and it feels just like using a conventional Linux installation. I like it a lot for BOINC stuff.
Knoppix DVD Version 5.2 was on a recent issue of "c't", someone near you will have a copy.
CU
BRM
Well I'm probably going to choke on crow with this but I Took all my systems down from Einstein yesterday and went back to running Seti as my primary project. I only run standardized clients on both projects.
Arion,
this is your problem. While the E@H was a highly optimized client with little potential for optimization left, the official SETI@Home client is not optimized at all. There are optimized SETI clients out there and these crunch a workunit almost twice as quickly as the standard client. If you put these numbers into your calculation you see that (considering the same level of optimization) both projects grant the same credit/time.
Now the first release of the E@H client is not as optimized as the one before, but this will change with time.
Thanks Martin...
I appreciate you taking the time to clarify this a bit more for me. I don't run optimized clients on any of my systems mainly because when there's a problem, where do you look? By optimized I mean others that were created outside the application released by the project.
I initially was upset/dismayed that we had made a major change and I saw it affecting my computers. I've participated in 3 projects over the years. The only one that I saw, based on personal experience that mimiced what was now happening with Einstein was when I ran Climate Prediction. After my computer ran non stop for 2 weeks I only had 500+ credits and I saw that it was going to take me a year or more to complete the workunit I abandoned the project. I'm not a rocket scientist, but IMHO I'd rather "see" results on things I work on. Whether or not its the number of units I can process a day or the amount of credit I receive based on that work, it's a guage that I am able to see. When I'm satisfied with what I'm seeing I just leave everything alone and let my systems go at their hearts content. I only get involved again when I notice something out of the ordinary. (Such as no work getting done, drastic change in number of units processed or credits suddenly out of the norm.) If I can't figure out the reason for these changes I log on the boards to find out what happened.
I must admit that I don't like change. I started with Seti@home back in 1999 using the "Classic" version. When they decided to change over to Boinc, at first I was kind of excited because we were lead to beleive that this was supposed to be a good thing as more science would be done, we'd be able to work with other projects, and it would reduce the propensity of the ability to cheat on the credits. So many people said that when they changed to Boinc they were going to drop out of the project. And I admit it after months of hearing this I took on the same attitude. (before I even tried boinc to see if it was a good thing or not) then one day about 6 months before the changeover Seti mentioned that there was another project they recommended people use as a backup in case they were having problems. I visited the website and when I noticed the World year of Physics banner, my oldest son was taking physics in high school at the time, I showed it to him and he said he was interested. I took my slowest system at the time and set up Boinc on it and only ran Einstein. We, my son and I thought we were doing something good for science and one that at least one of us could relate to. I've run Einstein ever since. Before Seti made the changeover I'd changed my mind about Boinc and figured I'd at least give it a shot. For a short period after that changeover I continued to run Seti as my primary and Einstein as a backup project. It didn't take long after this when I saw that Einstein was a much more stable project and the natives here were considerably more friendly. So I set up all 4 systems at the time to run Einstein. Being here NEVER was about the credits!!!!
Over the past 2 years I've had 2 of my systems running Einstein exclusively and set my slowest system to run Seti and Einstein. (so I could remain active there) This also made it easier over the weekend for me to just set all my systems to Seti and I had a chance to see for myself how the credits granted were related and how each machine compared in the amount of work they did. Last night I reset all my systems except my 4800+ to run both projects on a shared basis until they get the problems with the AMD's fixed. Based on personal experience I fully expect Einstein's developers to correct this within a reasonable period of time. At this point I'll put everything back to the way it was with Einstein getting most of my resoruces.
Sorry for being so long winded... My hope with my explanation is that someone might take the opportunity to stop and think about what's going on before rushing to judgement.
Well I'm probably going to choke on crow with this but I Took all my systems down from Einstein yesterday and went back to running Seti as my primary project. I only run standardized clients on both projects.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but is the primary issue regarding S5R2 an AMD/Intel issue, or is there something else I'm missing. Although all of the the S5R2 jobs I've completed are still pending, there is without a doubt a decrease in credits per time with S5R2, which is fine if everyone is playing by the same rules so to speak. I have been trying to find anyone who has yet to received a single credit for any of their completed work. I realize they have to have several completed results to verify the accuracy, but this is about as long as I have had the same finished jobs "pending". Has anyone received any credits yet, or noticed a significant difference in points alloted to the same job completed by an Intel chip compared to an AMD?
I'm going to give them a little more time as I'm usually one of the first to complain when something appears not to be working properly, but I have the Rosetta software loaded on all of my machines and all I would have to do is download new work.
Gary
Arion,
this is your problem. While the E@H was a highly optimized client with little potential for optimization left, the official SETI@Home client is not optimized at all. There are optimized SETI clients out there and these crunch a workunit almost twice as quickly as the standard client. If you put these numbers into your calculation you see that (considering the same level of optimization) both projects grant the same credit/time.
Now the first release of the E@H client is not as optimized as the one before, but this will change with time.
Thanks Martin...
I appreciate you taking the time to clarify this a bit more for me. I don't run optimized clients on any of my systems mainly because when there's a problem, where do you look? By optimized I mean others that were created outside the application released by the project.
I initially was upset/dismayed that we had made a major change and I saw it affecting my computers. I've participated in 3 projects over the years. The only one that I saw, based on personal experience that mimiced what was now happening with Einstein was when I ran Climate Prediction. After my computer ran non stop for 2 weeks I only had 500+ credits and I saw that it was going to take me a year or more to complete the workunit I abandoned the project. I'm not a rocket scientist, but IMHO I'd rather "see" results on things I work on. Whether or not its the number of units I can process a day or the amount of credit I receive based on that work, it's a guage that I am able to see. When I'm satisfied with what I'm seeing I just leave everything alone and let my systems go at their hearts content. I only get involved again when I notice something out of the ordinary. (Such as no work getting done, drastic change in number of units processed or credits suddenly out of the norm.) If I can't figure out the reason for these changes I log on the boards to find out what happened.
I must admit that I don't like change. I started with Seti@home back in 1999 using the "Classic" version. When they decided to change over to Boinc, at first I was kind of excited because we were lead to beleive that this was supposed to be a good thing as more science would be done, we'd be able to work with other projects, and it would reduce the propensity of the ability to cheat on the credits. So many people said that when they changed to Boinc they were going to drop out of the project. And I admit it after months of hearing this I took on the same attitude. (before I even tried boinc to see if it was a good thing or not) then one day about 6 months before the changeover Seti mentioned that there was another project they recommended people use as a backup in case they were having problems. I visited the website and when I noticed the World year of Physics banner, my oldest son was taking physics in high school at the time, I showed it to him and he said he was interested. I took my slowest system at the time and set up Boinc on it and only ran Einstein. We, my son and I thought we were doing something good for science and one that at least one of us could relate to. I've run Einstein ever since. Before Seti made the changeover I'd changed my mind about Boinc and figured I'd at least give it a shot. For a short period after that changeover I continued to run Seti as my primary and Einstein as a backup project. It didn't take long after this when I saw that Einstein was a much more stable project and the natives here were considerably more friendly. So I set up all 4 systems at the time to run Einstein. Being here NEVER was about the credits!!!!
Over the past 2 years I've had 2 of my systems running Einstein exclusively and set my slowest system to run Seti and Einstein. (so I could remain active there) This also made it easier over the weekend for me to just set all my systems to Seti and I had a chance to see for myself how the credits granted were related and how each machine compared in the amount of work they did. Last night I reset all my systems except my 4800+ to run both projects on a shared basis until they get the problems with the AMD's fixed. Based on personal experience I fully expect Einstein's developers to correct this within a reasonable period of time. At this point I'll put everything back to the way it was with Einstein getting most of my resoruces.
Sorry for being so long winded... My hope with my explanation is that someone might take the opportunity to stop and think about what's going on before rushing to judgement.
Arion
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.....Douglas Adams
...
I initially was upset/dismayed that we had made a major change and I saw it affecting my computers. I've participated in 3 projects over the years. The only one that I saw, based on personal experience that mimiced what was now happening with Einstein was when I ran Climate Prediction. After my computer ran non stop for 2 weeks I only had 500+ credits and I saw that it was going to take me a year or more to complete the workunit I abandoned the project. I'm not a rocket scientist, but IMHO I'd rather "see" results on things I work on. Whether or not its the number of units I can process a day or the amount of credit I receive based on that work, it's a guage that I am able to see.
...
IMHO this is a bit unfair to Climate Prediction, at least as it is run now. Credits/day rate is comparable to S@H and E@H, intermediate results are uploaded to the server about daily and you do get credit for these "trickle" uploads, which also have scientific value to the project. You also get a lot of feedback on the current state of the simulation taking place in your particular workunit.
As another member posted earlier, let's not forget that today is only the second working day after the transition.
Let's be patient.
I also have a software engineering background and I know that the best way to make a faulty software even worse is to put too much pressure on the developers to rush out a new version. The current version is not optimal, that's a fact. Creating the impression here that most of the contributers will leave the project beacuse of this will not do any good in the long run. The developers should take their time to fix this and after that is done we will all laugh at the amount of panic spread here, I guess.
I just did something stupid which will probably give some of you the wrong idea.
Anyone who looks at my current stats is probably going to say, "Yeah, there's another one who's having problems with Einstein crashing on an AMD processor." But, that's not the case.
Yesterday, I took delivery on the parts to build a brand-new, Athlon64 6000+ machine. I finished putting it together last night, and booted it up on a live Kubuntu CD. I got the bright idea of installing BOINC, and just letting it run with the live CD for a while to burn in the system. The first pair (dual-core, ya' know) of S5R2 units finished this morning, after only 7 hours and 52 minutes. (Not too shabby.) I let another pair start, which was a mistake.
I checked on their progress about the time that they were due to finish. One unit had finished, and the other only had a few seconds to go. A pair of S5RI's had already downloaded. Then, I picked up the mouse, and for some reason, my computer just powered itself off. I don't know why, it just did. Of course, with everything running in memory, and with nothing on the harddrive, I had the aweful experience of watching over 400 already-earned cobblestones vanish into thin air.
Anyway, I've finally installed Kubuntu to the harddrive, although, I may change back to regular Ubuntu later. I've learned my lesson. No more running Einstein from a live CD. My apologies to the four quorum partners that I hosed in this deal.
But, on the good side. . .
As I said, performance from the 6000+ isn't too shabby. My other Athlon64 machine is a single-core 3500+ with Windows XP, and it takes about 19 hours or so to crunch an 'R2.
Don't worry, I wasn't going to risk that. My favorite live CD can easily mount HD partitions if they're FAT or ext or sth (NTFS would be read-only) so I'll just let it write in a folder on my Debian partition, that won't hurt.
I'm really sorry to hear about your bad luck with your WUs, I hope you'll make up for the loss real soon. And congrats to your nice new machine, I got my first dual core 3 weeks ago and know what it feels like ;-)
Just as a general comment to those whining about the new WUs being significantly larger than the old ones. WU growth in openended projects inevitable, resign yourself to the fact or leave.
I'm primimarily looking at projects like einstien and seti that have a finite amount of good data, but for which more exetended processing of the data will result in better science
Since there's always more work available if the WU size stayed constant the steady accumulation of more and faster hosts would eventually overload the servers. Crunching more data at the same level of detail, instead of the same amount of data at more detail also increases bandwidth consumption as well. To keep the servers below thier maximum capacities and the ISP bill from being hit by over the limit fees it's neccesary to either make the WUs larger or limit the total number available. The latter is the option generally taken by projects with a finite amount of total work since in they can buy a server to support a known and non growing peak capacity. In einstien/seti/cpdn/etc's case doing so would end up wasting a growing fraction of the potential computing capacity and reduce the amount of science that's being done. Putting a cap in place where there wasn't one before will disgruntle users with higher end systems. Raising the WU size will cause complaining from people with lowend machines, but thier contributions are much smaller than what the faster machines can provide, so ultimately if something needs to be lost they're the more expendable ones. Meanwhile the longer work units will result in more detailed analysis that can tease fainter signals out of the noise, or result in more realistic simulations. Both of these outcomes directly favor the goals of the researchers and those who are financing them.
Well it's good to see so much robust discussion! :-)
I have several positive points here:
- the discourse is ( still! ) civil, and essentially topic based ( compared with hurtful targeting of individuals, say ). So I have yet to see anything that transgresses our 'Rules Of Engagement'..... :-)
- as Prof Allen has commented before, clearly a lot of users CARE about the operation of this project! Enough that they take the time to provide their feedback. This is healthy, very much appreciated by the project staff, and no doubt ( eventually! ) analysed and fed into ongoing development. These forums ( fora? forae? I'm never sure about that one.... ) are certainly fulfilling what is one of their main functions. :-)
- obviously E@H has a user base of widely varying origins, locations, skills ( type & level ), expectations, hardware, software, communications methods ... etc. This has the double edge of being both a huge challenge and offering a large reward. :-)
- the project is moving, yet again, up a notch in the scientific sense. The R2 hierarchical search, both the idea and the enactment, is certainly new ground trodden upon. I hope many users feel at least some tingle of excitement about that. :-)
So please continue with your polite discussion of the very many fascinating facets that these changes have stimulated. Isn't this distributed computing thingy a real jewel that just begs to be picked up, tapped, rolled around and viewed time and again? :-)
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: Thanks a lot, Michael
)
I'm typing this running my (otherwise MS XP) notebook on a "Knoppix" live-DVD , with E@H crunching in the background. Even the WLAN support is OK by now. You can tell Knoppix to create a single, big file on your MS filesystem (even NTFS) and mount this one to persist changes to the filesystem that comes on DVD or CD (including installing new applications). So it's all very transparent and it feels just like using a conventional Linux installation. I like it a lot for BOINC stuff.
Knoppix DVD Version 5.2 was on a recent issue of "c't", someone near you will have a copy.
CU
BRM
RE: RE: Well I'm probably
)
Thanks Martin...
I appreciate you taking the time to clarify this a bit more for me. I don't run optimized clients on any of my systems mainly because when there's a problem, where do you look? By optimized I mean others that were created outside the application released by the project.
I initially was upset/dismayed that we had made a major change and I saw it affecting my computers. I've participated in 3 projects over the years. The only one that I saw, based on personal experience that mimiced what was now happening with Einstein was when I ran Climate Prediction. After my computer ran non stop for 2 weeks I only had 500+ credits and I saw that it was going to take me a year or more to complete the workunit I abandoned the project. I'm not a rocket scientist, but IMHO I'd rather "see" results on things I work on. Whether or not its the number of units I can process a day or the amount of credit I receive based on that work, it's a guage that I am able to see. When I'm satisfied with what I'm seeing I just leave everything alone and let my systems go at their hearts content. I only get involved again when I notice something out of the ordinary. (Such as no work getting done, drastic change in number of units processed or credits suddenly out of the norm.) If I can't figure out the reason for these changes I log on the boards to find out what happened.
I must admit that I don't like change. I started with Seti@home back in 1999 using the "Classic" version. When they decided to change over to Boinc, at first I was kind of excited because we were lead to beleive that this was supposed to be a good thing as more science would be done, we'd be able to work with other projects, and it would reduce the propensity of the ability to cheat on the credits. So many people said that when they changed to Boinc they were going to drop out of the project. And I admit it after months of hearing this I took on the same attitude. (before I even tried boinc to see if it was a good thing or not) then one day about 6 months before the changeover Seti mentioned that there was another project they recommended people use as a backup in case they were having problems. I visited the website and when I noticed the World year of Physics banner, my oldest son was taking physics in high school at the time, I showed it to him and he said he was interested. I took my slowest system at the time and set up Boinc on it and only ran Einstein. We, my son and I thought we were doing something good for science and one that at least one of us could relate to. I've run Einstein ever since. Before Seti made the changeover I'd changed my mind about Boinc and figured I'd at least give it a shot. For a short period after that changeover I continued to run Seti as my primary and Einstein as a backup project. It didn't take long after this when I saw that Einstein was a much more stable project and the natives here were considerably more friendly. So I set up all 4 systems at the time to run Einstein. Being here NEVER was about the credits!!!!
Over the past 2 years I've had 2 of my systems running Einstein exclusively and set my slowest system to run Seti and Einstein. (so I could remain active there) This also made it easier over the weekend for me to just set all my systems to Seti and I had a chance to see for myself how the credits granted were related and how each machine compared in the amount of work they did. Last night I reset all my systems except my 4800+ to run both projects on a shared basis until they get the problems with the AMD's fixed. Based on personal experience I fully expect Einstein's developers to correct this within a reasonable period of time. At this point I'll put everything back to the way it was with Einstein getting most of my resoruces.
Sorry for being so long winded... My hope with my explanation is that someone might take the opportunity to stop and think about what's going on before rushing to judgement.
Arion
RE: RE: RE: Well I'm
)
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.....Douglas Adams
RE: ... I initially was
)
IMHO this is a bit unfair to Climate Prediction, at least as it is run now. Credits/day rate is comparable to S@H and E@H, intermediate results are uploaded to the server about daily and you do get credit for these "trickle" uploads, which also have scientific value to the project. You also get a lot of feedback on the current state of the simulation taking place in your particular workunit.
As another member posted earlier, let's not forget that today is only the second working day after the transition.
Let's be patient.
I also have a software engineering background and I know that the best way to make a faulty software even worse is to put too much pressure on the developers to rush out a new version. The current version is not optimal, that's a fact. Creating the impression here that most of the contributers will leave the project beacuse of this will not do any good in the long run. The developers should take their time to fix this and after that is done we will all laugh at the amount of panic spread here, I guess.
CU
BRM
Okay, I'll admit it. . .
)
Okay, I'll admit it. . .
I just did something stupid which will probably give some of you the wrong idea.
Anyone who looks at my current stats is probably going to say, "Yeah, there's another one who's having problems with Einstein crashing on an AMD processor." But, that's not the case.
Yesterday, I took delivery on the parts to build a brand-new, Athlon64 6000+ machine. I finished putting it together last night, and booted it up on a live Kubuntu CD. I got the bright idea of installing BOINC, and just letting it run with the live CD for a while to burn in the system. The first pair (dual-core, ya' know) of S5R2 units finished this morning, after only 7 hours and 52 minutes. (Not too shabby.) I let another pair start, which was a mistake.
I checked on their progress about the time that they were due to finish. One unit had finished, and the other only had a few seconds to go. A pair of S5RI's had already downloaded. Then, I picked up the mouse, and for some reason, my computer just powered itself off. I don't know why, it just did. Of course, with everything running in memory, and with nothing on the harddrive, I had the aweful experience of watching over 400 already-earned cobblestones vanish into thin air.
Anyway, I've finally installed Kubuntu to the harddrive, although, I may change back to regular Ubuntu later. I've learned my lesson. No more running Einstein from a live CD. My apologies to the four quorum partners that I hosed in this deal.
But, on the good side. . .
As I said, performance from the 6000+ isn't too shabby. My other Athlon64 machine is a single-core 3500+ with Windows XP, and it takes about 19 hours or so to crunch an 'R2.
Don't worry, I wasn't going
)
Don't worry, I wasn't going to risk that. My favorite live CD can easily mount HD partitions if they're FAT or ext or sth (NTFS would be read-only) so I'll just let it write in a folder on my Debian partition, that won't hurt.
I'm really sorry to hear about your bad luck with your WUs, I hope you'll make up for the loss real soon. And congrats to your nice new machine, I got my first dual core 3 weeks ago and know what it feels like ;-)
[quote IMHO this is a bit
)
[quote
IMHO this is a bit unfair to Climate Prediction, at least as it is run now.
Just as a general comment to
)
Just as a general comment to those whining about the new WUs being significantly larger than the old ones. WU growth in openended projects inevitable, resign yourself to the fact or leave.
I'm primimarily looking at projects like einstien and seti that have a finite amount of good data, but for which more exetended processing of the data will result in better science
Since there's always more work available if the WU size stayed constant the steady accumulation of more and faster hosts would eventually overload the servers. Crunching more data at the same level of detail, instead of the same amount of data at more detail also increases bandwidth consumption as well. To keep the servers below thier maximum capacities and the ISP bill from being hit by over the limit fees it's neccesary to either make the WUs larger or limit the total number available. The latter is the option generally taken by projects with a finite amount of total work since in they can buy a server to support a known and non growing peak capacity. In einstien/seti/cpdn/etc's case doing so would end up wasting a growing fraction of the potential computing capacity and reduce the amount of science that's being done. Putting a cap in place where there wasn't one before will disgruntle users with higher end systems. Raising the WU size will cause complaining from people with lowend machines, but thier contributions are much smaller than what the faster machines can provide, so ultimately if something needs to be lost they're the more expendable ones. Meanwhile the longer work units will result in more detailed analysis that can tease fainter signals out of the noise, or result in more realistic simulations. Both of these outcomes directly favor the goals of the researchers and those who are financing them.
Well it's good to see so much
)
Well it's good to see so much robust discussion! :-)
I have several positive points here:
- the discourse is ( still! ) civil, and essentially topic based ( compared with hurtful targeting of individuals, say ). So I have yet to see anything that transgresses our 'Rules Of Engagement'..... :-)
- as Prof Allen has commented before, clearly a lot of users CARE about the operation of this project! Enough that they take the time to provide their feedback. This is healthy, very much appreciated by the project staff, and no doubt ( eventually! ) analysed and fed into ongoing development. These forums ( fora? forae? I'm never sure about that one.... ) are certainly fulfilling what is one of their main functions. :-)
- obviously E@H has a user base of widely varying origins, locations, skills ( type & level ), expectations, hardware, software, communications methods ... etc. This has the double edge of being both a huge challenge and offering a large reward. :-)
- the project is moving, yet again, up a notch in the scientific sense. The R2 hierarchical search, both the idea and the enactment, is certainly new ground trodden upon. I hope many users feel at least some tingle of excitement about that. :-)
So please continue with your polite discussion of the very many fascinating facets that these changes have stimulated. Isn't this distributed computing thingy a real jewel that just begs to be picked up, tapped, rolled around and viewed time and again? :-)
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
I'm one of the lowend, slow,
)
I'm one of the lowend, slow, slow, slow crunchers. I'm not complaining. Actually I'm insulted that it's suggested my work isn't worth much.
I got through the end of S5R1 by choosing "No New Work" until I was down to my last WU, then downloading a bunch at once. That worked.
Now I have my first S5R2 and will see how that goes. I really don't want to be forced out.