Hi,
on some of my machines I have the problem with MLC@home that NO task at all is working, I always geht the error
'output file rand_automata_000x........ for task ... absent'.
On other machines it workes without any problems at all.

What can I do to solve this?

Thanks.

Hi,
on some of my machines I have the problem with MLC@home that NO task at all is working, I always geht the error
'output file rand_automata_000x........ for task ... absent'.
On other machines it workes without any problems at all.

What can I do to solve this?

Thanks.

Have you tried the MLC@home forums?

Not really but I can try. There is only a topic with same issue but never an answer was given from somebody.

My experience is that in project own forums usually reply rate is at nearly zero, so mostly waste of time.

Here is much more activity.

But here we are remote from the scene of the action. "Output file absent" - is merely a symptom. The file is absent because the application never got far enough to write it - it crashed. You have to look, at least, at the task lists on the project website, and then drill down to the logged details of an individual failed task. That may reveal an obvious clue, or it may need to be deciphered by the project's programming team. You won't know until you look.

Yes thank you, I will try to find something out that way.

Now I also opened a thread in MLC forum. Maybe somebody will reply.

My experience is that in project own forums usually reply rate is at nearly zero, so mostly waste of time.

My experience is different and I see lots of activity in project fora.

I see lots of activity and posts from the MLC@home admin/developer over on the Discord BOINC/development channel.

You might want to join that platform and ping the developer directly.

https://discord.com/channels/605398931479724074/608037526396993554

My experience is different and I see lots of activity in project fora.

Then you are pretty lucky! On my post there I received ONE reply that was completely useless.
In e.g. Einstein@home forum I opened a thread about a month ago, zero reply. Last reply in complete forum is 9 weeks ago there.

I guess it varies a lot between projects.

In e.g. Einstein@home forum I opened a thread about a month ago, zero reply. Last reply in complete forum is 9 weeks ago there.

If by "complete forum" you are referring to all the Einstein boards, or even if you are only referring to the 'Problems' forum where you posted, you can't have looked very hard because questions get answered almost every day there.

Let me give you a tip. Probably at most mature projects, the staff/developers tend to leave the grunt work of answering every day questions to volunteers. The staff tend not to have the time once some volunteers start shouldering the load. So, if you don't get an answer, it surely means that none of the volunteers understands the question or has the experience to answer it. Even blindingly obvious and trivial questions get answers to them posted. Nobody deliberately withholds known information, no matter how obvious the answer might be. Nobody wants to snub you.

So, if you don't get an answer in a day or two, and if you are sure the problem is not a trivial one, with no easy alternative, you could attempt to attract staff attention by sending a PM. If you browse the News or Technical News channels you will easily find the staff who post there.

Or, you could dig a bit deeper for yourself. In what you posted at Einstein, there was a link to the Boinc wide teams site. Did you read what was there very carefully? Did you follow all the instructions given? The very first paragraph tends to suggest that perhaps Boinc wide teams don't work anymore and perhaps you should abandon the concept and manage each project separately. The 4th paragraph instructs you to contact the project staff about updating server software. Right there is the perfect reason for a PM to the Einstein staff in case there is still some sort of option for the mechanism to work. The volunteers who answer questions don't know.

It's common knowledge that Einstein uses an old and highly modified version of the server software so the likely answer is the 'feature' no longer exists or can't be implemented in Einstein's modified version. But at least you would know and could then stop banging on about it. Surely updating team details is not something you would need to do very often? Fix things manually and forget about it.

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Cheers,
Gary.

So, if you don't get an answer in a day or two, and if you are sure the problem is not a trivial one, with no easy alternative, you could attempt to attract staff attention by sending a PM.

As a moderator at CPDN, I really dislike people sending pms rather than posting in the forums. There are enough of us with varying levels of knowledge and experience across differing operating systems that questions nearly always get answers in a day or two at the most and if in the forums from the outset, the whole conversation is visible to all who might benefit. I know at CPDN if we do contact those working for the project for an answer we let the OP know and also point out the time frame that might mean waiting till the new university term, UK public holidays to be over etc.

I would hope that no one will take the suggestion of contacting moderators directly as a suggestion to do that first and am sure you did not intend that.

you could attempt to attract staff attention by sending a PM.

And unless you are staff I don't see anything in the reply that even mentions sending a PM to Moderators.

The use of the descriptive staff implies those persons directly involved with the running, maintenance and development of the project, i.e. the scientists.

My own personal policy as a moderator is to ignore basic help requests delivered by PM. If someone persists, it's little trouble to request them to start a forum thread, giving full details. I point out that they'll likely get better answers from the opinions of a wider population where sub-standard answers tend to get 'corrected by peer review' :-).

And just to add to what Keith mentioned, and since my earlier comment referred to a message posted at Einstein a long time ago with no response there, my comments in this thread related to what to do at Einstein and not necessarily at any other project.

That advice was based on the fact that Einstein staff rarely get involved in the day to day answering of basic help questions. However, they do respond positively if a moderator (a user stupid enough to have volunteered to try to answer basic questions) has asked them to look into something that seems quite likely to need attention. I have done that a couple of times recently with positive results. I regarded the BOINC wide teams thing as something trivial enough to NOT justify a request from me. I had no experience with it so wasn't prepared to give potentially unreliable advice at the time. I thought that some other volunteer might be able to comment about it.

Finally, I probably should have expanded on the term "staff". Staff doesn't include moderators UNLESS there is also an extra term like "Administrator" attached as well. At Einstein, there should be no issue with knowing who is staff and who is just another volunteer/user. I don't know about other projects. The term I should have used is "Technical Staff" because that very small sub-group are the ones that get to fix technical issues. The much larger group of academics and researchers, doctoral and post-doctoral students, etc, do not handle the day-to-day technical issues. Undoubtedly some of them may write specialist code but it is people like Bernd and Oliver who get to fix the technical issues when they occur.

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Cheers,
Gary.