Posts by floyd
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21)
Questions and Answers :
Windows :
Work fetch
(Message 331)
Posted 16 Aug 2020 by floyd Post: PS @floyd I was correct there was a misconfiguration The only reason you did not had it is that you joined the project several weeks later than I did.I hope you're not trying to insult me by suggesting I don't know what I'm talking about. After you'd shown that second URL I would have agreed that this was probably the result of a misconfiguration, if I hadn't had the impression that you didn't care about my opinion at all. At the same point I could have shown where your conclusions were wrong and I still could do it. Save us that. I just want to make clear that I do understand where you were correct and I do understand where you were not. You wanted an official reaction, now you have one and that's it. |
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22)
Questions and Answers :
Windows :
Work fetch
(Message 328)
Posted 16 Aug 2020 by floyd Post: I don't think your are one of the AdminsYou are right, I am not one of the Admins. By the way, as far as I know "the Admins" still is a single person and it's Sunday. please don't give uninformed answersIf you have better information, which is not surprising since this is your problem, why not give it right away. Have you checked your own host eventlog? You will likely find the same thing.Oh, you're making uninformed guesses. Edit: In the client_state.xml file I found these 2 lines wich where inserted in this file during the Add Project process.Now that is interesting information. I could share some too, but since you're not talking to me anyway ... If I am correct... I'll respectfully wait for the relevant person(s) to show up and tell you that you're not completely correct. |
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23)
Questions and Answers :
Windows :
Work fetch
(Message 325)
Posted 16 Aug 2020 by floyd Post: "Couldn't resolve host name" and "Project communication failed" should not be thereAgreed. The question is, why are they there? It think there is somekind of mismatch between the host work request and the response from the server.If the host name can't be resolved there is no request and thus no response. The problem is on your side. 16/08/2020 12:57:03 | MLC@Home | Sending scheduler request: To fetch work. 16/08/2020 12:57:04 | MLC@Home | Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.What are you doing? Hammering the update button? Stop that, take a deep breath, that may be all you need to do. It could well be a temporary issue with your ISP, or you being impatient. If time doesn't help, check your own system. |
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24)
Questions and Answers :
Issue Discussion :
Too many WUs
(Message 286)
Posted 30 Jul 2020 by floyd Post: Come on, you can't seriously compare FAH to BOINC. The functionality of the FAH client is very limited. That's not negative, it does what it's designed to do. But what is that really? Get a task, finish it, return it, get another one. No decisions to make. And you take that as an example of being smart? BOINC is much more complex than that. Different projects, different applications, work cache, deadlines, resource shares. People use all that to their liking. And then they're annoyed when a machine can't do it on its own or makes decisions they don't approve of. Set up BOINC as simple as FAH. Eliminate the cache, run a single project, and leave it alone. Then you are a big step closer to what FAH does and BOINC will do it well enough. You can carefully add more complexity but remember YOU are responsible for providing the right conditions. |
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25)
Questions and Answers :
Issue Discussion :
Validation errors.
(Message 276)
Posted 29 Jul 2020 by floyd Post: Boinc currently seems to think MLC should get all the attention since I suppose its deadlines are much sooner.That for one and also BOINC is trying to bring the new project up to its resource share. Time will help with the latter and I noticed the former has been changed too. Deadlines for new WUs are now 4 days, that should take stress from the systems. Mine are doing other work again now. |
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26)
Questions and Answers :
Issue Discussion :
Too many WUs
(Message 272)
Posted 28 Jul 2020 by floyd Post: I think one problem is your idea of how BOINC should work. BOINC is designed to work on its own and make its own decisions. You seem to wish to be always in control, in detail. But babysitting, micromanagement and sudden changes just make things more difficult for the system. Set up the basic guidelines, avoid restrictions and leave it alone, that's how BOINC works best. It may be boring and it takes patience but it works fine. My cache settings are the same as yours, 1.0+0.1 days, and I added MLC with 10% resource share a few days ago. No interference since and all is well. The client doesn't fetch more tasks than it can handle and does work at will. Turnaround times are approaching one day and will hopefully settle there. After that I may re-evaluate. Down the thread you ask for more controls to be made available. IMO that's not the way to go. I wouldn't mind if those controls existed but personally I wouldn't use them. I think what Jim1348 mentioned is a different issue. I've seen it occasionally but not often enough to develop a theory. It seems to happen with new projects or new applications. BOINC then fetches the same amount of work again and again, as fast as possible and apparently without end. No New Tasks will bring it to its senses but by then you'll have far more than you can handle. Surely you would notice if that happened. |
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27)
Questions and Answers :
Issue Discussion :
Validation errors.
(Message 262)
Posted 27 Jul 2020 by floyd Post: My understanding is that, over time, the boinc client and server keep per-project metrics where they learn what work a host can accomplish within a time periodThat's right and it works quite well in simple cases. For more complex scenarios the estimates are less reliable and can change any time. BOINC needs manoeuvring room to react effectively then. and only request that much workThat does not work exactly the way you seem to think it does. While the client has a somewhat vague idea of how much work can be done in a time period, the time period to fetch work for is given by the user alone. Inadequate settings are a frequent cause of trouble. Unfortunately many users don't notice that, or don't care, or just don't understand the problem. Hence my suggestion to increase the deadlines somewhat if possible, just to make it less likely that people over-fetch when they don't adjust their settings to a new project with characteristics different from what they're used to. Or make them do just that but I wouldn't know how given the conditions above. It effects a tiny number of results, and gets into thorny issues of identifying users trying game the system for credit.I hadn't thought of cheating and I trust you know more about that than I do. It's your decision after all. |
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28)
Message boards :
News :
[TWIM Notes] Jul 25, 2020
(Message 254)
Posted 26 Jul 2020 by floyd Post: Let me know if I should post these to the client, or just leave them as forum posts.My understanding is that client side notices should be reserved for important messages. While your information is interesting and welcome, and surprising, it's nothing the average user needs to know. We can always come here for a bigger picture. I'd like the news section to be read only. There's so many cases where a simple announcement started a thread that goes on for years and where people post anything vaguely related. |
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29)
Questions and Answers :
Issue Discussion :
Validation errors.
(Message 253)
Posted 26 Jul 2020 by floyd Post: did cause some extra valid results to be marked as invalid. I counted 57 such invalid resultsIs that what I experienced? If it is, 57 in a day seems low. I had 4 in hours, 3 of them caused by the same wingman who is notoriously late. I still do not wish to do such work that in the end turns out to be not needed, even if it is validated and credit granted, as it blocks valuable resources. So I now set up a cron job that aborts any replacement task I receive. I understand this goes somewhat beyond a solution to my problem and if someone has a better idea they're welcome but I think something needs to be done about this. Between the lines I read stretching the deadline is not acceptable and I wouldn't know how to make people return their results faster, but many have more errors on their account than actual results. Not computation errors but timed out or aborted tasks. That's such an overhead, is looks hardly acceptable to me. these results were marked as valid until last night, and were generating follow-on WUs, which will also eventually generate NaNsOkay, so those results are not suitable for generating new work units. But even if the results are not as expected or as desired, if they are correct results of your tasks as you assigned them, agreed upon by independent hosts, wouldn't that mean they're valid? Not necessarily useful but valid? Of course given the low number of such results this question is not really important, but still interesting. |
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30)
Questions and Answers :
Issue Discussion :
Validation errors.
(Message 238)
Posted 25 Jul 2020 by floyd Post: I'm still tweaking the validation algorithm to find the right balance Machine learning is stochastic, which makes validation (in the BOINC sense) a bit tricky No doubt correct and fair validation is difficult but here I dare guess the results were not rated invalid, instead validation was never attempted. I browsed through people's tasks and the majority of those with validate errors were replacement tasks where the result was returned after the delayed original result. They were invalidated just for formal reasons. As far as I know it's up to the project to decide under what circumstances results are considered for validation, but the first thing I'd suggest is to increase your quite short deadlines if possible. If you give people some more time to return their results you'll have fewer unnecessary extra tasks in the first place and if you allow people to cache some work that gets you time to abort unneeded tasks before they are processed. The reason I care about this is it just happened to me after I joined only today. I can tell you, if the first feedback you get is a validate error that's not exactly motivating. On the other hand, I watched this project for a while before I decided to join. I try to choose my projects carefully and this one looks promising. The topic is interesting and the way you run the project is a welcome change. There's so many projects running mostly behind the scenes, where staff don't have the time or don't care to keep their volunteers involved. I hope this one stays different. Keep up the good work. |
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A project of the Cognition, Robotics, and Learning (CORAL) Lab at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)