Posts by eckley

InfoMessage
1) Message boards : Projects : News on Project Outages
Message 63793
Posted 24 Aug 2015 by eckley
POGS Skynet...

Started sending out work again on the 19th. On the morning of the 20th, I saw that their servers weren't responding. The whole POGS system is down (not just the BOINC portion) although the main Skynet site is up and appears unaffected.

I am guessing a serious crash at this point being out of commission for almost 2 days now... (When are they going to finally equip servers with air bags??)


Hey guys,

That's correct the NFS server had a complete meltdown over the weekend, (something about not enough beer) Kevin is currently on the scene and attempting to resuscitate it.

If all else fails we have regular backups so we will be back soon.

Alex
2) Message boards : The Lounge : Techy Matters
Message 63569
Posted 12 Aug 2015 by eckley
For smart TV features I use a chromecast, cost a whole $45 so not too concerned about future proofing and allows me to play pretty much anything I want on the TV using my phone as a remote.
3) Message boards : BOINC client : Security manner
Message 62258
Posted 20 May 2015 by eckley
ASAIK HTC don't yet pre-install it but they have branded their own application around BOINC. http://www.htc.com/au/go/power-to-give/.
4) Message boards : BOINC client : Windows 10 Phone
Message 62241
Posted 19 May 2015 by eckley
AFAIK Win 10 Mobile supports ARM devices and i386 devices so both the boinc client and any application executables would need to be compiled for those devices. Which in theory is possible.
5) Message boards : Server programs : Boinc wrapper_26011_windows_intelx86.exe is flagged as containing a trojan
Message 60874
Posted 12 Mar 2015 by eckley
Awesome thanks for the quick reply Rom
6) Message boards : Server programs : Boinc wrapper_26011_windows_intelx86.exe is flagged as containing a trojan
Message 60868
Posted 12 Mar 2015 by eckley
Hey guys,

Just looking at moving theSkyNet POGS onto the newer precompiled wrappers, from http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/WrapperApp and ran a quick virus scan using virustotal.com. Where it found that 4 of the scanners are detecting a trojan in the wrapper_26011_windows_intelx86.exe file.
see https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/b303fd5cf67c2132f3c188888777f05dd05cdf91c09f97cb0c3dab76fdbf6d68/analysis/ for more details.

I imagine it would just be a false positive but as we'll be pushing this out to clients we wanted to be doubly sure. Does anyone know one which machine the wrapper was compiled on and can verify that the machine is clean?

Cheers
Alex
webMaster theSkyNet
7) Message boards : Promotion : Is BOINC dead?
Message 60664
Posted 4 Mar 2015 by eckley
Hey Mark,

Not sure which projects your refering to but we are still alive and kicking at theSkyNet
http://pogs.theskynet.org/pogs/forum_forum.php?id=1
http://www.theskynet.org/news
8) Message boards : Questions and problems : Nas4Free BOINC client
Message 60243
Posted 11 Feb 2015 by eckley
Check this out it might help you if you haven't already seen it.
http://people.freebsd.org/~pav/boinc.html
9) Message boards : Questions and problems : A small big detail
Message 59567
Posted 12 Jan 2015 by eckley
At theSkyNet we've accoisoanlly awarded small real world prizes for events or challenges see http://www.theskynet.org/news/56?locale=en or http://www.theskynet.org/news/55?locale=en for example.
10) Message boards : Questions and problems : Force SSL outbound connections only
Message 58884
Posted 23 Dec 2014 by eckley
Just adding that theSkyNet POGS supports SSL with a CA-issued key as well :)
11) Message boards : The Lounge : Absentee project admins
Message 55900
Posted 9 Sep 2014 by eckley
I couldn't agree more.
We try our best to respond to people as fast as possible and will always try to provide direct feedback to our users as to what their computer is doing. At theSkyNet POGS for example we can show an image for every galaxy your computers have worked on and even highlight which section specific section of the galaxy your computer is responsible for processing.

Cheers
Alex
theSkyNet.org Webmaster
12) Message boards : BOINC client : 7.3.19 and 7.4.8
Message 55659
Posted 28 Aug 2014 by eckley
Hey ChristianB

Have you had any feedback from David?

Also can you provide anymore information on what is wrong with the HTTPS config on the server and I'll see what I can sort out.

Cheers
Alex
WebMaster www.theSkyNet.org
13) Message boards : Documentation : Recent Average Credit description incomplete
Message 55640
Posted 27 Aug 2014 by eckley
Hey,

I realise this thread is a little old now but I was looking for the same information and thought I'd share what I found.
Apologies for the fairly long winded explanation you can skip to the bottom for some example graphs.

Credit is awarded by the code in this file sched/credit.cpp
Specifically were interested in the grant_credit function (starts on line 52). The users RAC is updated on line 79 with the following command
    update_average(
        now,
        start_time, credit, CREDIT_HALF_LIFE,
        user.expavg_credit, user.expavg_time
    );

The CREDIT_HALF_LIFE is defined in sched/sched_util_basic.h on line 32.
#define SECONDS_IN_DAY (3600*24)
#define CREDIT_HALF_LIFE  (SECONDS_IN_DAY*7)



We can find the definition for this function in the lib/util.cpp file on line 238.

// Update an estimate of "units per day" of something (credit or CPU time).
// The estimate is exponentially averaged with a given half-life
// (i.e. if no new work is done, the average will decline by 50% in this time).
// This function can be called either with new work,
// or with zero work to decay an existing average.
//
// NOTE: if you change this, also change update_average in
// html/inc/credit.inc
//
void update_average(
    double now,
    double work_start_time,       // when new work was started
                                    // (or zero if no new work)
    double work,                    // amount of new work
    double half_life,
    double& avg,                    // average work per day (in and out)
    double& avg_time                // when average was last computed
) 


Which, if you don't like the complex math in the source code, can be summarised as:
#First calculate the weight value 
weight = 2^[ -1 * days_since_last_update/7days ]
#then determine which function to use
if weight is approx 1 (this occurs as days_since_last_update approaches 0.0)
new_avg = old_avg * weight + ln(2)*new_credit/7days #the math here is a little more complex
else 
#this is the main function and will be used most of the time
new_avg = (old_avg - new_credit_per_day) * weight + new_credit_per_day


To help visualise the weight function I've graphed it here http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot+2%5e(-x%2f7)+from+x%3d0+to+10 where x is the number of days since last updated.

If new_credit_per_day == 0 the above simply becomes
new_avg = old_avg * weight

Which gives your standard exponential decay.
If new_credit_per_day less than old_avg you get exponential decay to the new_credit_per_day value.
Finally if new_credit_per_day is greater than old_avg you get exponential growth towards the new_credit_per_day value.

for example: (where x is number of days)
Graph starting at 1000 RAC with no new credit
Graph starting at 1000 RAC with 500 new credit each day
Graph starting at 1000 RAC with 1500 new credit each day

This process is performed every time a user is granted new credit for any reason otherwise it is updated at least daily by the update_stats background task.

Hope this helps someone else :)

Alex
Web developer for theSkyNet.org
14) Message boards : Web interfaces : remove postings
Message 53659
Posted 16 Apr 2014 by eckley
For me, Yes to both.
1) An option to mass hide posts would be nice.
2) The ability to delete posts without going through the DB would be useful as well. Although as you say it is possible to delete straight through the DB, I just like to avoid directly modifying the DB on production servers.

Alex
15) Message boards : Web interfaces : remove postings
Message 53652
Posted 16 Apr 2014 by eckley
I'll second that :)
Also the combination of setting the Akismet key and limiting new members to only post in a single forum has really helped out on theSkyNet.

Alex
16) Message boards : Promotion : boinc in retail
Message 53320
Posted 26 Mar 2014 by eckley
That's a really interesting idea, I imagine there are a host of computers sitting idle in stores. I wonder what this would do to their electricity bill though.

Alex
17) Message boards : The Lounge : Absentee project admins
Message 53210
Posted 18 Mar 2014 by eckley
Come check out theSkyNet.org forums we're 99% spam free :)
In other news any hints from other admins on how to stop spammers rather than just suspending their accounts?

Cheers
Alex
theSkyNet.org WebMaster
18) Message boards : Web interfaces : User Id...
Message 51629
Posted 3 Dec 2013 by eckley
Hey,

I'm new here so someone more experienced might be able to jump in as well, but I had to figure this out for our project (http://www.theskynet.org).

You can make a call to /project/lookup_account.php with the get params email_addr and passwd_hash where passwd_hash is a MD5 hash of your_password + your_email. Note your email must be lower case.

This will return an authenticator that you can then use with /project/am_get_info.php with the get params account_key set to the authenticator returned by the first call.

This will then return all your account details including your user id.
more details at http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/WebRpc

Cheers
Alex
webmaster theSkyNet


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