Formula Boinc Sprints 2018

[TennesseeTony]

The current rankings show the TeAm in 2nd place for the Sprint, which allows us to move up to 4th place in the Marathon, overtaking CNT by 6 points.

 

[StefanR5R]

One PC which I added maybe 5 hours ago is still struggling to download the large (not) exe files. This PC is away from the others, and it's late night here now, otherwise I would perform the sneakernet transaction now which Ken asked about.

The downloads were still failing on this PC. (Only the two exe's failed to download; task input files were OK.) I corrected this now, though not by copying the files from another PC, but by downloading them outside of boinc:

• Shut down boinc-client.
• Open client_state.xml in editor.
• Find the sections which describe the two exe files.
• Download them from the given URL. I used wget for this; other download methods should work as well.*
• Move the files into "C:\ProgramData\BOINC\projects\boinc.multi-pool.info_latinsquares".
• Make sure they are executable.
• Edit the sections of the two exes in client_state.xml:
  • Change <status> from 0 to 1.
  • Remove the <persistent_file_xfer> sections.
• Start boinc-client.

*) Instead of the fourth step, the files could be copied from a different PC of same OS and CPU architecture, if you have one which was successfully attached to ODLK1 earlier.

 

[Ken g6]

Uh, oh, the server seems to be out of work!

Tasks ready to send 8
Tasks in progress 673637

Edit: My BOINC client fetched some work as I typed this, but the server is still running low.

 

[Kiska]

I got this "ODLK1 is temporarily shut down for maintenance. Please try again later."

Looks like I am not going to be able to get work anytime soon

 

[Ken g6]

I got this "ODLK1 is temporarily shut down for maintenance. Please try again later."

Looks like I am not going to be able to get work anytime soon

They came back fairly quickly.

 

[Tejas_2]

I hope your team does not mind that I have decided to jump in here to help out with ODLK1 for a while.

 

[crashtech]

I hope your team does not mind that I have decided to jump in here to help out with ODLK1 for a while.

Thanks,Tejas, that's too kind of you!

 

[Orange Kid]

Happy to have you aboard.

 

[StefanR5R]

The first 12 hours:

Evidently, formula-boinc.org has occasional difficulties to connect with the project server, just like everybody.

 

[crashtech]

Well I haven't been able to get my second-highest producing host attached to ODLK1. This might not be the best project for a Sprint? I've been having severe problems reaching the project website at all.

 

[StefanR5R]

It is workable for me. Granted, attaching my hosts didn't go quickly, and in some cases had to be retried a few times. Downloads keep stalling now and then (and during those stalls the client does not request new work...). And the web site is extremely slow, so that I don't even try to look at my tasks lists.

Maybe it works better for me than for you since I am geographically nearer the server.

 

[crashtech]

Eh, I spoke too soon. Finally I was able to get my last 12 cores onboard.

 

[Tejas_2]

It is a struggle to get attached, still making attempts to get several machines crunching.

 

[TennesseeTony]

You ever pass through Mt. Sterling/Winchester, Tex?

 

[Tejas_2]

You ever pass through Mt. Sterling/Winchester, Tex?

As a matter of fact yes to Winchester. In fact I'm in the process of finding a new home in the Lexington area to start a new job in a couple of weeks.

 

[TennesseeTony]

Born and raised in Mt. Sterling.

 

[Tejas_2]

Beautiful countryside for sure.

 

[zzuupp]

I hope your team does not mind that I have decided to jump in here to help out with ODLK1 for a while.

Welcome!

And good luck to all y'all who can attach and get work.

I got one box that stayed attached, but still no workee.

 

[Orange Kid]

ODLK1
Day one almost done. Tuff going for all on this one. Hanging on to number two with SUSA right on our tails.
We have moved to number 4 in the marathon but CNT is gaining points else ware and keeping it close there.

1    Gridcoin               25    2,696,637
2    TeAm AnandTech         18    674,870
3    SETI.USA                   15    660,997
4    Czech National Team       12    248,599
5    L'Alliance Francophone    10    163,685
6    UK BOINC Team        8    121,581
7    Rechenkraft.net        6    104,992
8    Overclock.net          4    27,392
9    Ukraine                 2    4,921
10    The Planetary Society       1    4,778

one of these times I will get the formatting right

 

[StefanR5R]

Day 1:

 

[StefanR5R]

I got one box that stayed attached, but still no workee.

There is work, but the work generator is barely keeping up with the requests for work from all the people who currently want some.

Whenever the project server responds with "Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks" - "Project has no tasks available", the client retries at most once to ask for more work, and if the retry fails too, goes into a longer period in which it does not ask for more work. You need to force the client to try again.

If a download stalls, the client does not ask for more work either, which can't be helped, except by keeping an eye on it that the downloads don't stall for hours. Also, if you get "Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site" - "Internet access OK - project servers may be temporarily down", the client may wait one or more hours before it tries again. Yet 10 ~ 15 minutes later, it could be successful (in the current case of ODLK1).

So, getting tasks at ODLK1 is a matter of not letting the client go into its normal routine of exponentially(?) increasing periods between retries.

one of these times I will get the formatting right

Before you fill in the preformatted text, click on the wrench icon at the top right of the input form in order to leave the rich text editor and go into the BB code editor. The latter preserves whitespace within [ CODE ] tags, the former collapses white space in [ CODE ].

 

[StefanR5R]

@zzuupp, have a look here:
https://hardforum.com/threads/formula-boinc-2018.1950308/page-13

I need to baby sit one of my computers and keep hitting the update button to keep it crunching. I'm not a fan of this project.

Use the automatic update scripts. No reason to baby sit and click the update button.

For windows use the this bat script:
for /l %%x in (1, 1, 10000) do (echo %%x
"c:\Program Files\Boinc\boinccmd.exe" --project https://boinc.multi-pool.info/latinsquares/ update
ping 127.0.0.1 -n 140 > nul)

For linux type this into the terminal:
watch -n 140 boinccmd --project https://boinc.multi-pool.info/latinsquares/ update

Comments:

• 140 seconds interval, as seen in the hardforum post #481, is a bit aggressive, given how overloaded the ODLK1 server is. If at all, such a short interval should only be used initially when the client has no tasks at all. Once you have the first dozen or so of tasks, better set a longer period.

• The DOS BAT script shown there runs a finite loop and uses ping as a "sleep" substitute.
  Infinite loop: FOR /L %%N IN () DO ( .............. )
  Better sleep substitute: TIMEOUT /T 140

• I use similar scripts myself on various occasions. But with a difference: In my scripts, I check how many tasks the client has already loaded. If there is a certain number of tasks, then the script either skips the project update (if it is a permanent monitoring script), or it breaks out of the loop and quits (if the script is only for initial setup).

At least on Thursday and on Friday, I was able to add hosts and get an initial supply of tasks with only a moderate amount of triggered updates. But looking at the current logs of my normally running clients, task availability does not appear to have improved over yesterday. :-(

--------
*) Edit: I picked up ideas and implementations for such conditional scripts from several people, e.g. from Ken g6 and from Luigi R. from Boinc.Italy.

 

[biodoc]

Seti.USA is slightly ahead of us now. Anyone have more cores to add to the sprint?

 

[StefanR5R]

Day 2, first half.

I am noticing that stats.free-dc did not receive a stats update for yesterday.
https://stats.free-dc.org/team/lts/54
https://stats3.free-dc.org/stats.php?page=proj&proj=lts
According to free-dc's timestamps (which may be wrong), ODLK1 did not export a stats dump.

--------
edit: A look across all three leagues.

Spoiler: June 9, 16:00 UTC stats

league  rank  team                           points     credits       %
-----------------------------------------------------------------------  
  1      1    Gridcoin                           25   4,108,521    37.3
         2    SETI.USA                           18   1,171,983    10.7
         3    TeAm AnandTech                     15   1,144,199    10.4
         4    Czech National Team                12     433,771     3.9
         5    L'Alliance Francophone             10     261,279     2.4
         6    Rechenkraft.net                     8     181,487     1.6
         7    UK BOINC Team                       6     180,267     1.6
         8    Overclock.net                       4      66,447     0.6
         9    Ukraine                             2       9,314     0.1
        10    The Planetary Society               1       6,666     0.1
        11    SETI.Germany                        -       5,718     0.1
        12    OcUK - Overclockers UK              -       3,847     0.0
        13    BOINC@Poland                        -       1,497     0.0
        14    Team China                          -         434     0.0
        15    BOINC@AUSTRALIA                     -         218     0.0
        16    The Knights Who Say Ni!             -         189     0.0
        17    Dutch Power Cows                    -          46     0.0
-----------------------------------------------------------------------  
  2      1    XtremeSystems                      25   1,744,336    15.9
         2    [H]ard|OCP                         18     897,453     8.2
         3    Crunching@EVGA                     15     263,706     2.4
         4    The Scottish Boinc Team            12     108,841     1.0
         5    meisterkuehler.de Team             10      48,259     0.4
         6    AMD Users                           8       4,801     0.0
         7    Ars Technica                        6       4,206     0.0
         8    BOINCstats                          4       2,105     0.0
         9    Team Norway                         2       1,490     0.0
        10    Russia                              1       1,005     0.0
        11    BOINC@Denmark                       -         688     0.0
        12    BOINC Synergy                       -         626     0.0
-----------------------------------------------------------------------  
  3      1    Anguillan Pirates                  25     253,811     2.3
         2    LITOMYSL Boinc Team Czech Republic 18      92,546     0.8
         3    Catalunya                          15       3,117     0.0
         4    Microsoft                          12         621     0.0
         5    BRASIL                             10          76     0.0
         6    BOINC.BE                            8          34     0.0
-----------------------------------------------------------------------  
              total                                  11,003,604   100.0

With 11 M points in 1.5 days (7.3 M/day), the sprint brought more than double of ODLK1's usual total production of ~3.3 M/day.

(Of course these 7.3 M/day are only from the teams which are tracked by Formula Boinc, but I doubt that there is substantial production from further teams.)

 

[StefanR5R]

PS,
Gridcoin are normally producing 3.0...3.2 M/day on Mondays-Fridays, and 2.8 M/day on Saturdays-Sundays.
https://stats3.free-dc.org/stats.php?page=team&proj=lts&team=48

In the sprint, they did 4.1/1.5 = 2.7 M/day so far.
That is, the participants of this sprint, who are eagerly requesting tasks from the project server now, caused only a minor decrease in Gridcoin's ODLK1 output.

This in turn means that the current scarcity of tasks, which may appear rather grave to some sprint participants, is actually affecting the team with the most volume here, Gridcoin, only to a small extent.

PS2,
the project server and its internet connection are definitely at their limit.
I have currently 70 downloads and 40 uploads waiting.