Bug - bad at meeting deadline - leaves until the very last minute

Message boards : Questions and problems : Bug - bad at meeting deadline - leaves until the very last minute
Message board moderation

To post messages, you must log in.

1 · 2 · Next

AuthorMessage
Profile Jord
Volunteer tester
Help desk expert
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 29 Aug 05
Posts: 15477
Netherlands
Message 97578 - Posted: 14 Apr 2020, 10:44:56 UTC - in response to Message 97577.  

No, how should BOINC know that?

The project gave the task a certain amount of flops by which they estimate how long the task will take. BOINC takes that number to calculate how long the task is estimated to take. BOINC does this calculation every 30 seconds to a minute. If that number wildly differs from the actual amount of flops (and thus time) the task takes, there's nothing in the world that BOINC can do to know that. You'll have to yell at the project then that they have to increase the amount of estimated flops their tasks take.

Aside from that, do you manually suspend the CPU, or do you use the exclusive_apps option in BOINC Manager to stop calculations automatically when the game is detected in memory and that they resume when the game leaves memory? Because that way BOINC can easier learn your idiosyncrasies.
ID: 97578 · Report as offensive
Profile Jord
Volunteer tester
Help desk expert
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 29 Aug 05
Posts: 15477
Netherlands
Message 97597 - Posted: 14 Apr 2020, 14:49:27 UTC - in response to Message 97585.  
Last modified: 14 Apr 2020, 14:53:16 UTC

But nevermind the game, even without that it's left it VERY close to the deadline (1 day to go and only 10 minutes spare?!). Since WUs don't always take exactly as long as you think, or the computer might be switched off unexpectedly etc, surely Boinc should leave more leeway?
BOINC can't predict the future, so if the computer's switched off unexpectedly, how do you want BOINC to know that?
Again, the task comes with an amount of flops decided by the project how long the task should take. Has BOINC run multiple of these tasks, think between 10 and 50, then it will be much better in predicting how long such tasks take. But if it's still running them for the first time, or first week, it doesn't know and it can only use the estimated flops given by the project. And if those flops calculate that it can easily run the task, say within 4 hours, then BOINC won't try to start it so quickly. That's not a bug, that's a project thing.

Whether the task runs in BOINC natively or in VBox shouldn't matter. The amount of flops is the amount of flops, no matter where it's run. And if those flops tell BOINC that the task can be done in an hour, there's no hurry. Even if the task will essentially take a week to be done. Because BOINC can't possibly know this until it's run a couple of them.

You can check in BOINC Manager->Tasks tab->Select the task->Properties what the estimated computing size is. You can divide that by the fpops amount your CPU benchmark gave BOINC, to give an estimated time (in seconds) that BOINC uses to calculated the task. The value is given in GFLOPS, with G being Giga, so that's times 1000^3, or times 1000, times 1000, times 1000.
ID: 97597 · Report as offensive
Profile Jord
Volunteer tester
Help desk expert
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 29 Aug 05
Posts: 15477
Netherlands
Message 97604 - Posted: 14 Apr 2020, 15:22:48 UTC - in response to Message 97603.  

It would be better if a 4 hour task was started in panic mode say 8 hours before the end.
Why? That will only make it problematic for other projects to run their tasks on time, and then you - or someone else - will be complaining about that. If they've run enough and the estimate is spot on and the task can be run within the next 24 and be finished before the deadline, then why the panic from you?
BOINC will try to run all tasks before their deadline, so if it manages to do that, why not be content?
ID: 97604 · Report as offensive
Profile Jord
Volunteer tester
Help desk expert
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 29 Aug 05
Posts: 15477
Netherlands
Message 97605 - Posted: 14 Apr 2020, 15:25:45 UTC

And if it doesn't, there's still no man overboard, because BOINC has the extra time to run the task and try to return it before it's sent out again and done by someone else's computer. And if that doesn't work - the computer went off unexpectedly - the other fail safe of BOINC comes into play -> a new task is sent out to another user who may be able to run & return it in a timely fashion. The science will always be done.
ID: 97605 · Report as offensive
Richard Haselgrove
Volunteer tester
Help desk expert

Send message
Joined: 5 Oct 06
Posts: 5077
United Kingdom
Message 97626 - Posted: 14 Apr 2020, 18:42:11 UTC - in response to Message 97577.  
Last modified: 14 Apr 2020, 18:43:56 UTC

I've had an LHC Theory task (1 CPU core) for about 2 weeks. Since I've set Rosetta at a much higher priority, it hardly gets run
I think this might be the key to the problem. What are your actual Resource Shares for each of the two projects? Have you done the maths for, say, how many minutes per month each project would be allowed to run at that ratio? Starting point - there are 43,200 minutes in this month. Divvy them up (but remember to allow time for gaming).

I suspect the answer is that BOINC has to break one of your rules. Either it breaks Resource Share, or it breaks deadline. As far as BOINC is concerned, RS is desirable, deadline is required. So it will keep to resource share as long as possible, but eventually sacrifice it.

[Edit - rechecked minutes/month. I thought that felt odd.]
ID: 97626 · Report as offensive
Profile Jord
Volunteer tester
Help desk expert
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 29 Aug 05
Posts: 15477
Netherlands
Message 97632 - Posted: 14 Apr 2020, 19:23:29 UTC - in response to Message 97623.  

Would you leave for work 30 minutes before your shift started, and assume there would be no traffic jams?
You want to leave home 4 days before your work shift starts in 4 days time, to make sure you're there in time?
ID: 97632 · Report as offensive
Richard Haselgrove
Volunteer tester
Help desk expert

Send message
Joined: 5 Oct 06
Posts: 5077
United Kingdom
Message 97635 - Posted: 14 Apr 2020, 19:55:52 UTC - in response to Message 97633.  

[Edit - rechecked minutes/month. I thought that felt odd.]
Why did it feel odd?
Because the first figure I copied out of the Windows calculator was 30,000 - I've no idea how I got that. 60*24*30 hasn't got much to go wrong.
ID: 97635 · Report as offensive
Dr Who Fan
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 10 May 07
Posts: 1328
United States
Message 97640 - Posted: 14 Apr 2020, 20:42:32 UTC - in response to Message 97636.  

I always use a proper Casio scientific calculator. With a graphics screen so I can see what I typed in wrongly. It's actually the one I bought 28 years ago to use at school. It was £100! Still working except sometimes I have to bend it to get the screen to light up enough to see.

I really hate it when I use someone's cheapy calculator they got free with something, and it gets a simple calculation like 3+4x5 wrong.



Scientific calculator = Doing the math equation in proper format / order; Free / cheap calculator = doing math in "RPN" (Reverse Polish Notation) format from left to right or linear.
ID: 97640 · Report as offensive
Nick Name

Send message
Joined: 14 Aug 19
Posts: 55
United States
Message 97668 - Posted: 15 Apr 2020, 8:14:55 UTC - in response to Message 97597.  

BOINC can't predict the future, so if the computer's switched off unexpectedly, how do you want BOINC to know that?

No, but it could actually honor FIFO (First In First Out) and run tasks to completion once they've started, which is the way most people would expect it to work and rightfully so. Doing those two things would solve this for most cases.

I saw this exact scenario many times over the years, it's pretty frustrating to see BOINC letting work sit that you know it can't complete before the deadline, because it's running something else that has a later deadline! It's why I usually run a very low cache, while BOINC still runs things out of order sometimes at least it will have time to get everything returned in time.
Team USA forum
Follow us on Twitter
Help us #crunchforcures!
ID: 97668 · Report as offensive
Profile Dave
Help desk expert

Send message
Joined: 28 Jun 10
Posts: 2515
United Kingdom
Message 97671 - Posted: 15 Apr 2020, 11:01:35 UTC - in response to Message 97668.  

BOINC can't predict the future, so if the computer's switched off unexpectedly, how do you want BOINC to know that?

No, but it could actually honor FIFO (First In First Out) and run tasks to completion once they've started, which is the way most people would expect it to work and rightfully so. Doing those two things would solve this for most cases.

I saw this exact scenario many times over the years, it's pretty frustrating to see BOINC letting work sit that you know it can't complete before the deadline, because it's running something else that has a later deadline! It's why I usually run a very low cache, while BOINC still runs things out of order sometimes at least it will have time to get everything returned in time.


Maybe true for most cases. If one of the projects has tasks lasting several weeks as CPDN does at least on slower computers, FIFO would then stop shorter tasks with much shorter deadlines ever running.

The way I see it, whatever system is used, it isn't going to please all of the people all of the time. Personally, I am happy the way it is
ID: 97671 · Report as offensive
1 · 2 · Next

Message boards : Questions and problems : Bug - bad at meeting deadline - leaves until the very last minute

Copyright © 2024 University of California.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.