Posts by A Starful of Moons

1) Message boards : BOINC client : Feature suggestion - sharing of partially completed WUs (Message 76234)
Posted 3 Mar 2017 by Profile A Starful of Moons
Post:
Hi there.

A few days ago I came up with an idea for a new feature which I think could do something about late workunit results being sent back to projects' servers.
Now, I don't know that well how the process of processing workunits works, and what is possible and what isn't, but hear me out.

My idea is: uploading back partially completed workunits, to be redistributed to other users to finish calculations. I think this could be a good feature that would do something about workunits not being finished before their deadlines. This could be good in the case of users who irregularly use their computers which leads to long overdue workunits still on their machines.

From an end user's perspective this could be implemented by putting two a new checkbox in the BOINC manager's options>computing settings window. The checkbox could say something like "upload unfinished results on exit" or something that gets the message across easily. Checking this box could instruct BOINC to send results from, say, the latest checkpoint of a workunit, back to the servers upon client shutdown on the local machine. The servers storing workunits could send the checkpointed data and workunit to a new computer to continue calculations, minimizing the number of late workunit results. Example: User A only processes 75% of the WU, and does not regularly use the computer. A's WU could be sent to user B's computer, which would compute the remaining 25%.

From the score system point of view: One of my ideas for this feature is giving partial credit to the user who started processing, and partial to the one who finished processing. Say, 50-50, or some other ratio depending on the amount of work each user has put into processing a single workunit and how easy or meaningful it would be to implement a new credit system like this.

But first, is this possible? I don't know much about how workunits themselves are built. Do they need to be fully processed on the same computer, or could they be transferred to a different computer halfway through completion? If yes, would the new computer have to have the same hardware config (cpu clock speed, ram, etc.) or would slight differences not matter? (slightly higher/lower cpu clock speed, higher/lower amount of ram on the new machine?) I'm at least sure that assuming they would have to be run on the same OS through the whole process is not mistaken of me.

If I am right, this will require altering the software on the servers and on the boinc client itself to enable them to recognize partially completed WUs and manage them appropriately. Would this be too big of a problem or..?

Now, I am not sure how big of a deal overdue workunits are, but if they are I hope this would be a good way to counter-act the occurrence. (or has this idea crossed someone else's mind before and they ended up saying "meh.."(I think I know that if a WU is not reported back in time, it is sent out again to be processed by another machine.)

I hope this idea will get the attention of someone from the development team, and that maybe it will get implemented if it is worth it.

TL;DR: Send partially completed work to another computer which finishes processing the WU.

Cheers, BOINCers.
2) Message boards : Questions and problems : Work units hang after a while on notebook (Message 70776)
Posted 11 Jul 2016 by Profile A Starful of Moons
Post:
As the title says, work units hang when they reach a random percentage of completion on my notebook. I am not sure if the work unit is still processing correctly in the background, but the loading bar stops and so does the percentage count.

The project that I am currently having these issues with is theSkyNet Pogs (fitsedwrapper). I have had these same issues before when I was computing for World Community Grid with this machine a few months ago so in the end I just aborted the tasks and quit using boinc on this device. So I started again, since I'm abroad and don't have my significantly more powerful desktop computer with me. I want to do some BOINC-ing/crunching with this device too, beside what my smartphone does.

I figured that the problems I ran into last time were because the work units I kept receiving for this machine had a long estimated time for completion (around 8 hours). Those eight hours to complete a task seemed too long considering I don't use this laptop much when I'm at home, and also because it is relatively underpowered (specs will follow). I assumed that the reason why work units eventually get stuck is because my laptop is too underpowered to crunch for Boinc. And just as I'm composing this I noticed the current work unit being computed just stopped at 12,5% (great..). I guessed that connecting this laptop to a project that won't give me work units that take such long time to process will resolve the issue, but I see it didn't. I waited before to see if the progress count would resume increasing after a while, but it just stays there like a dead fish. Suspending the task and then resuming it didn't help either.

Is my computer really not fit for processing stuff through boinc or is it a problem with the software?

Screenshot for those who want: https://imgur.com/7rwdedy

My computer and its' specs: An ASUS K53U notebook, with AMD Brazos Dual Core E450 1.65 GHz processor and integrated Radeon HD 6320 graphics and 6 gigs of ram. Purchased in 2012 (if I remember correctly), originally came with Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit), upgraded it to Windows 10 last July.

I've set my boinc client to only work on one work unit at a time (use 50% of CPUs) so it doesn't significantly slow down the computer overall when I'm browsing, watching videos and chatting.

Boinc version I'm currently running: 7.6.22 (x64) (no virtualbox)
wxWidgets-version: 3.0.1

I apologise if the same thing or something really similar to this was already posted here in the forums. I didn't find anything when I searched.

*************Event Log************* (assuming I can just paste it here)

2016-07-10 18:56:54 | | Starting BOINC client version 7.6.22 for windows_x86_64
2016-07-10 18:56:54 | | log flags: file_xfer, sched_ops, task
2016-07-10 18:56:54 | | Libraries: libcurl/7.45.0 OpenSSL/1.0.2d zlib/1.2.8
2016-07-10 18:56:54 | | Data directory: D:\ProgramData\BOINC
2016-07-10 18:56:54 | | Running under account Oliver
2016-07-10 18:57:18 | | CAL: ATI GPU 0: AMD Radeon HD 6200/6300/7200/7300 series (Wrestler) (CAL version 1.4.1848, 384MB, 351MB available, 162 GFLOPS peak)
2016-07-10 18:57:18 | | OpenCL: AMD/ATI GPU 0: AMD Radeon HD 6200/6300/7200/7300 series (Wrestler) (driver version 1800.11 (VM), device version OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (1800.11), 384MB, 351MB available, 162 GFLOPS peak)
2016-07-10 18:57:18 | | OpenCL CPU: AMD E-450 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics (OpenCL driver vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., driver version 1800.11 (sse2), device version OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (1800.11))
2016-07-10 18:57:19 | | Host name: Oliver-laptopPC
2016-07-10 18:57:19 | | Processor: 2 AuthenticAMD AMD E-450 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics [Family 20 Model 2 Stepping 0]
2016-07-10 18:57:19 | | Processor features: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 htt pni ssse3 cx16 popcnt syscall nx lm svm sse4a ibs skinit wdt page1gb rdtscp
2016-07-10 18:57:19 | | OS: Microsoft Windows 10: Core x64 Edition, (10.00.10586.00)
2016-07-10 18:57:19 | | Memory: 5.61 GB physical, 11.36 GB virtual
2016-07-10 18:57:19 | | Disk: 148.06 GB total, 99.82 GB free
2016-07-10 18:57:19 | | Local time is UTC +2 hours
2016-07-10 18:57:19 | pogs | URL http://pogs.theskynet.org/pogs/; Computer ID 723302; resource share 100
2016-07-10 18:57:19 | | General prefs: from http://gerasim.boinc.ru/ (last modified 12-Oct-2015 13:32:33)
2016-07-10 18:57:19 | | Host location: none
2016-07-10 18:57:19 | | General prefs: using your defaults
2016-07-10 18:57:19 | | Reading preferences override file
2016-07-10 18:57:19 | | Preferences:
2016-07-10 18:57:19 | | max memory usage when active: 2869.86MB
2016-07-10 18:57:19 | | max memory usage when idle: 5165.74MB
2016-07-10 18:57:19 | | max disk usage: 10.00GB
2016-07-10 18:57:19 | | max CPUs used: 1
2016-07-10 18:57:19 | | (to change preferences, visit a project web site or select Preferences in the Manager)
2016-07-10 19:08:01 | pogs | work fetch resumed by user
2016-07-10 19:08:02 | pogs | update requested by user
2016-07-10 19:08:03 | pogs | Sending scheduler request: Requested by user.
2016-07-10 19:08:03 | pogs | Requesting new tasks for CPU
2016-07-10 19:08:04 | pogs | Scheduler request completed: got 1 new tasks
2016-07-10 19:08:07 | pogs | Started download of 092012.0+552751_area30886085
2016-07-10 19:08:07 | pogs | Started download of 092012.0+552751_area30886085.job.xml
2016-07-10 19:08:08 | pogs | Finished download of 092012.0+552751_area30886085
2016-07-10 19:08:08 | pogs | Finished download of 092012.0+552751_area30886085.job.xml
2016-07-10 19:08:08 | pogs | Started download of 0005zlib_0.0500.dat
2016-07-10 19:08:08 | pogs | Started download of 0005_starformhist_cb07_z0.0500.lbr
2016-07-10 19:08:09 | pogs | Finished download of 0005zlib_0.0500.dat
2016-07-10 19:08:09 | pogs | Started download of 0005_infrared_dce08_z0.0500.lbr
2016-07-10 19:08:32 | pogs | Finished download of 0005_infrared_dce08_z0.0500.lbr
2016-07-10 19:08:37 | pogs | Finished download of 0005_starformhist_cb07_z0.0500.lbr
2016-07-10 19:08:38 | pogs | Starting task 092012.0+552751_area30886085_2
2016-07-10 19:17:00 | | Suspending computation - user request
2016-07-10 19:17:04 | | Resuming computation
2016-07-10 19:55:31 | | Suspending computation - user request
2016-07-10 19:55:37 | | Windows is suspending operations
2016-07-10 19:55:37 | | Suspending network activity - requested by operating system
2016-07-11 10:51:00 | | Resuming after OS suspension
2016-07-11 10:51:02 | | Resuming computation
2016-07-11 10:51:02 | | Resuming network activity
2016-07-11 10:51:08 | | Windows is resuming operations
2016-07-11 11:10:46 | pogs | task 092012.0+552751_area30886085_2 suspended by user
2016-07-11 11:10:50 | pogs | task 092012.0+552751_area30886085_2 resumed by user
2016-07-11 11:11:12 | pogs | task 092012.0+552751_area30886085_2 aborted by user
2016-07-11 11:11:19 | pogs | Computation for task 092012.0+552751_area30886085_2 finished
2016-07-11 11:11:42 | pogs | update requested by user
2016-07-11 11:11:44 | pogs | Sending scheduler request: Requested by user.
2016-07-11 11:11:44 | pogs | Reporting 1 completed tasks
2016-07-11 11:11:44 | pogs | Requesting new tasks for CPU
2016-07-11 11:11:45 | pogs | Scheduler request completed: got 1 new tasks
2016-07-11 11:11:48 | pogs | Started download of 111349.7+093510_area31095953
2016-07-11 11:11:48 | pogs | Started download of 111349.7+093510_area31095953.job.xml
2016-07-11 11:11:49 | pogs | Finished download of 111349.7+093510_area31095953
2016-07-11 11:11:49 | pogs | Finished download of 111349.7+093510_area31095953.job.xml
2016-07-11 11:11:51 | pogs | Starting task 111349.7+093510_area31095953_1
2016-07-11 11:37:58 | pogs | task 111349.7+093510_area31095953_1 suspended by user
2016-07-11 11:38:06 | pogs | task 111349.7+093510_area31095953_1 resumed by user



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