possible incorrect handling of report deadline

David@home
David@home
Joined: 11 Feb 05
Posts: 24
Credit: 11639
RAC: 0
Topic 188167

According to my results table I have two WUs flagged as over the deadline.

I have checked which machine these were on and I know for sure that this machine completed all the WUs by the date of 28th February, I am not 100% sure that the results were uploaded by the time but certainly they were uploaded on the 28th.

The report deadline for one WU was 28 Feb 2005 8:59:52 UTC

I would estimate that it was uploaded at the latest on 28 Feb 2005 at around 9:00am.

So it looks like 2 WUs, about 18 hours of work have been lost simply because they were uploaded a few minutes past the deadline.

Is this what is meant to happened? i.e. one minute past the deadline and the result is totally ignored?

Many thanks

Gary Roberts
Gary Roberts
Moderator
Joined: 9 Feb 05
Posts: 5872
Credit: 117683312582
RAC: 35127851

possible incorrect handling of report deadline

> So it looks like 2 WUs, about 18 hours of work have been lost simply because
> they were uploaded a few minutes past the deadline.
>
> Is this what is meant to happened? i.e. one minute past the deadline and the
> result is totally ignored?
>
> Many thanks

Don't you just hate losing all that work? Normally you could get credit if there weren't already three valid results, but if the result is already validated and you go one millisecond over the deadline, then tough luck. Out of interest, how many results do you currently have whose deadline is shown in green and whose state is marked as "In Progress"?

Cheers,
Gary.

David@home
David@home
Joined: 11 Feb 05
Posts: 24
Credit: 11639
RAC: 0

> > Don't you just hate

Message 6443 in response to message 6442

>
> Don't you just hate losing all that work? Normally you could get credit if
> there weren't already three valid results, but if the result is already
> validated and you go one millisecond over the deadline, then tough luck. Out
> of interest, how many results do you currently have whose deadline is shown in
> green and whose state is marked as "In Progress"?
>

Yip, that sounds very unfair! I thought the idea of four WUs was that the fourth still got the credit based on the first three. Sounds like it would be useful to have some flexiility in the credit allocation algorithm.

I currently have eight WUs marked green "In Progress", Einstein seems to have very short deadlines which is unfair to people who only connect to the web at intervals. How can I remove WUs that are close to the deadline to save me wasting time processing them as I will most likely miss the deadline as I can only upload every few days? Does Einstein@home plan to extent these short deadlines? If not I guess it is best I return to seti@home :(

Gary Roberts
Gary Roberts
Moderator
Joined: 9 Feb 05
Posts: 5872
Credit: 117683312582
RAC: 35127851

> Yip, that sounds very

Message 6444 in response to message 6443

> Yip, that sounds very unfair! I thought the idea of four WUs was that the
> fourth still got the credit based on the first three. Sounds like it would be
> useful to have some flexiility in the credit allocation algorithm.

The fourth and sometimes even fifth would get credit if completed within the expiry time. You only have a problem if you exceed the expiry time and the result is already validated by three faster crunchers.

> I currently have eight WUs marked green "In Progress", Einstein seems to have
> very short deadlines which is unfair to people who only connect to the web at
> intervals. How can I remove WUs that are close to the deadline to save me
> wasting time processing them as I will most likely miss the deadline as I can
> only upload every few days? Does Einstein@home plan to extent these short
> deadlines? If not I guess it is best I return to seti@home :(

Having a cache of 8 if you can only connect sporadically is the problem. In your general preferences set your "Connect to network" interval to about 1 day or so, so that you keep fewer excess WUs around. There are apparently good science reasons for adopting the 1 week expiry deadline. They are looking at this but don't seem willing to change anytime soon.

Please don't give up on EAH. If you browse the message boards you will find one of the best and most helpful communities with the CEO being the best and most helpful of all. He is very, very visible and very, very approachable. Maybe he's going to burn out sometine real soon :). To solve your problem of premature expiry all you really need to do is keep a modest cache and allow your machine to connect to the servers as often as possible say about once or twice a day to keep everything humming along smoothly.

Cheers,
Gary.

John McLeod VII
John McLeod VII
Moderator
Joined: 10 Nov 04
Posts: 547
Credit: 632255
RAC: 0

> > > > Don't you just hate

Message 6445 in response to message 6443

> >
> > Don't you just hate losing all that work? Normally you could get credit
> if
> > there weren't already three valid results, but if the result is already
> > validated and you go one millisecond over the deadline, then tough luck.
> Out
> > of interest, how many results do you currently have whose deadline is
> shown in
> > green and whose state is marked as "In Progress"?
> >
>
> Yip, that sounds very unfair! I thought the idea of four WUs was that the
> fourth still got the credit based on the first three. Sounds like it would be
> useful to have some flexiility in the credit allocation algorithm.
>
> I currently have eight WUs marked green "In Progress", Einstein seems to have
> very short deadlines which is unfair to people who only connect to the web at
> intervals. How can I remove WUs that are close to the deadline to save me
> wasting time processing them as I will most likely miss the deadline as I can
> only upload every few days? Does Einstein@home plan to extent these short
> deadlines? If not I guess it is best I return to seti@home :(
>
With 4.19, there is no easy technique (you could find the WU files and delete them, and maybe this would work). 4.2x has an abort WU function in the GUI.

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