Hi,

just a heads up that there will be increased traffic during the next few days. Formula BOINC scheduled a sprint at Cosmology@Home from Thursday, July 19, 22:00 UTC to Sunday, July 22, 22:00 UTC.
http://formula-boinc.org/sprint.py?sprint=11&year=2018

Recent Formula BOINC sprints at other projects generated double or more the daily production compared to normal days.

I started up this project again the other day and it seems like only 500 of each app were in the queue. Now its dry.

The server is going to have a bad day.

Formula BOINC Sprint is the Blame and all the members that download all the tasks to Bunker them and keeping others from getting any tasks at all.
Bunkering is killing Formula BOINC Sprint and keeping unreal but then that is what Formula BOINC seems to want.
I think it is time to dump Formula BOINC Sprints if they cannot be run on equal ground for all as they do in the Real Formula Races.
At lest Formula Races has management to keep it running well unlike Formula BOINC with no management and no communications to members or the Admin or Management of any BOINC Project website.

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Crunching@EVGA The Number One Team in the BOINC Community. Folding@EVGA The Number One Team in the Folding@Home Community.

But then the Top Team is also the blame IMO http://www.cosmologyathome.org/top_teams.php to bring down Formula Boinc and the Sprints.

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Crunching@EVGA The Number One Team in the BOINC Community. Folding@EVGA The Number One Team in the Folding@Home Community.

Yeah cause F1 runs on equal ground when every car ends up a lap down except for the top 3 teams. And when the leader can lose 160HP and still no one can pass him.

If projects don't want to participate they can ask to not be included. FB is NOT NEW. It's been running for over a decade.

Yeah cause F1 runs on equal ground when every car ends up a lap down except for the top 3 teams. And when the leader can lose 160HP and still no one can pass him.

If projects don't want to participate they can ask to not be included. FB is NOT NEW. It's been running for over a decade.

Another way of looking at it is that projects should be asked if they wanted to be included in the first place... Some projects know they cannot handle the extra attention without notice or with super short notice. It is a sign of respect to approach them first.

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Another way of looking at it is that projects should be asked if they wanted to be included in the first place... Some projects know they cannot handle the extra attention without notice or with super short notice. It is a sign of respect to approach them first.

AFAIK, projects ARE asked if they want to be included in each years events beforehand.

Which includes the year long "Marathoin" as well as possibly being picked for one of the weekend "Sprints".

The only issue is that no-one is told which project will be chosen for each Sprint - so it can catch some projects out if they do not produce enough work or they have bandwidth issues with the increased demand for tasks.

But projects can exclude themselves if they want.

As far as I can tell, the Cosmology@Home server is generating enough work for everyone who wants to join the sprint.

Of course those who are impatient may be dissatisfied with the pace at which new work is generated. So, be patient. :-)

mmonnin wrote:

I started up this project again the other day and it seems like only 500 of each app were in the queue. Now its dry.

The server is going to have a bad day.

No, it only had two or three bad hours. (And may have another one or two bad hours later today.)

As far as I can tell, the Cosmology@Home server is generating enough work for everyone who wants to join the sprint.

Of course those who are impatient may be dissatisfied with the pace at which new work is generated. So, be patient. :-)

Excellent news :-)

The question though is will the validator, validate all the tasks being uploaded?

Currently the Server Status page shows nearly 160,000 tasks awaiting validation...and that queue will no doubt increase due to the Sprint.

So, a lot of people may be disappointed that they receive little or no credit over the duration of the Sprint (as only credits awarded between tonight at 10pm UTC and Sunday at 10pm UTC will count towards the Sprint statistics), UNLESS the validator can be given a nudge to clear the backlog?

PS: It is almost IMPOSSIBLE to edit a post as the background to the post and the colour of the text entered are both WHITE... :-(

UBT - Timbo wrote:

The question though is will the validator, validate all the tasks being uploaded?

Currently the Server Status page shows nearly 160,000 tasks awaiting validation...and that queue will no doubt increase due to the Sprint.

So, a lot of people may be disappointed that they receive little or no credit over the duration of the Sprint (as only credits awarded between tonight at 10pm UTC and Sunday at 10pm UTC will count towards the Sprint statistics), UNLESS the validator can be given a nudge to clear the backlog?

I am pretty sure that camb_boinc2docker work will be validated within seconds or minutes after upload, as usual, whereas there is great risk that camb_legacy work will not be validated before the end of the sprint. See thread " camb_legacy tasks temporarily suspended".


UBT - Timbo wrote:

PS: It is almost IMPOSSIBLE to edit a post as the background to the post and the colour of the text entered are both WHITE... :-(

Workaround: Click on the Preview button, and you will get a white-on-black text input again, instead of white-on-white.

Yeah cause F1 runs on equal ground when every car ends up a lap down except for the top 3 teams. And when the leader can lose 160HP and still no one can pass him.

If projects don't want to participate they can ask to not be included. FB is NOT NEW. It's been running for over a decade.

Maybe but how can a Project be excluded if they are never asked in the First Place?
Also by "equal ground" being they all get 100 Gallons of Full not some getting 100 Gallons and some only 50 Gallons of Full.

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Crunching@EVGA The Number One Team in the BOINC Community. Folding@EVGA The Number One Team in the Folding@Home Community.

bcavnaugh wrote:

Also by "equal ground" being they all get 100 Gallons of Full not some getting 100 Gallons and some only 50 Gallons of Full.

There is no inequality. Everybody has the same good luck or bad luck getting tasks.

There were hours earlier today, during which about 75 % of the requests for work would get you work. Right now, only a few hours before the actual start of the sprint, unfortunately only about 10 % of all requests for work get you work.

It will get better again when the initial rush is over. Nothing out of the ordinary.

On Thursday, I wrote:

As far as I can tell, the Cosmology@Home server is generating enough work for everyone who wants to join the sprint.

Of course those who are impatient may be dissatisfied with the pace at which new work is generated. So, be patient. :-)

We are now 7+ hours into the sprint, and unfortunately, the rate of work generation is not just low, it is too low.

There is more participation than available work. :-/

It might be that docker WU's would validate quickly as someone said but NO work is issued for that. As far as the other sub-project is concerned the server states "script_validator not running" and there are thousands waiting to be validated. AFAICS it is not Boinc Formula problem or one that is caused by them.

I'm very happy to have C@H participate in the Formula BOINC sprint, however, I do wish the organizers would have contacted me earlier, then we could have built a much bigger work pool in preparation (by the time I saw this post yesterday it was too late). We could have also communicated better to the sprinters the ongoing issues with the camb_legacy app, and pointed everyone to be running only camb_boinc2docker.

To clarify / confirm what has been said, camb_boinc2docker validation is running completely smoothly. Work generation is also running at normal pace, but demand is very high so it is likely slow for clients to grab workunits. camb_legacy validation on the other hand is currently broken and has been for several weeks. For those participating in the sprint, its unlikely I can fix it in time for the Sunday deadline, unfortunately.

I'm very happy to have C@H participate in the Formula BOINC sprint, however, I do wish the organizers would have contacted me earlier, then we could have built a much bigger work pool in preparation (by the time I saw this post yesterday it was too late). We could have also communicated better to the sprinters the ongoing issues with the camb_legacy app, and pointed everyone to be running only camb_boinc2docker.

I've been told that the Formula BOINC "system" chooss a project for each Sprint RAMDOMLY, so there cannot be any warning to project admins beforehand as there is no "human involvement" in the choice..

To clarify / confirm what has been said, camb_boinc2docker validation is running completely smoothly. Work generation is also running at normal pace, but demand is very high so it is likely slow for clients to grab workunits. camb_legacy validation on the other hand is currently broken and has been for several weeks. For those participating in the sprint, its unlikely I can fix it in time for the Sunday deadline, unfortunately.

Agreed - although it is a shame that the legacy tasks have issues, but the docker tasks are fine, although they seem to need "network access" at all times, else they stop processing - and of course they need VBox which some members have issues with installing or running.

OTOH, why are legacy tasks still being issued, if they are not being validated and have issues?

Formula BOINC Sprint is the Blame and all the members that download all the tasks to Bunker them and keeping others from getting any tasks at all.
Bunkering is killing Formula BOINC Sprint and keeping unreal but then that is what Formula BOINC seems to want.
I think it is time to dump Formula BOINC Sprints if they cannot be run on equal ground for all as they do in the Real Formula Races.
At lest Formula Races has management to keep it running well unlike Formula BOINC with no management and no communications to members or the Admin or Management of any BOINC Project website.

Stop your crying . boinc2dockers can`t be bunkering. And camp_legacy is wastet time.

Stop your crying . boinc2dockers can`t be bunkering. And camp_legacy is wastet time.

+1

@scole of TSBT, camb_boinc2dockers can be bunkered.

But (a), certainly not many did bunker camb_boinc2dockers, and not much of it, and (b) whatever bunkering activity was going on on Thursday, it didn't have any bearing on the further decline of work availability that we saw over the course of Friday, especially towards Friday night.

Contributors' computing capacity during this sprint simply exceeds the pace of Cosmology@Home's work generator, by far. (My initial predictions in this thread that work would become available again some time after the start of the sprint were, unfortunately, far off.)

PS,
perhaps the camb_boinc2docker work generator shouldn't even work faster than it does. Given that the tasks have a run time of just a few minutes but produce results files that are 2.6 MB big, I wonder if Cosmology@Home's internet connection bandwidth is another limit which prevents a higher production rate here.

(In other words, camb_boinc2docker tasks are not very effective from the Distributed Computing point of view, because of too short of a run time and too large network transfers.)