Einstein having issues running (again)
13 Apr 2008 6:00:21 UTC
Topic 193627
(moderation:
Hello all,
Was on here a while ago (Multiple Screensavers runnning) and just got a new workunit for Einstein. And the problem still persists...but only for Einstein! So I shut down the screensaver but is appears it still is happening somehow:
12/04/2008 11:21:19 PM|Einstein@Home|Restarting task h1_0933.00_S5R3__579_S5R3b_1 using einstein_S5R3 version 426
12/04/2008 11:32:19 PM|Einstein@Home|Restarting task h1_0933.00_S5R3__579_S5R3b_1 using einstein_S5R3 version 426
12/04/2008 11:46:43 PM|Einstein@Home|Restarting task h1_0933.00_S5R3__579_S5R3b_1 using einstein_S5R3 version 426
12/04/2008 11:49:50 PM|Einstein@Home|Restarting task h1_0933.00_S5R3__579_S5R3b_1 using einstein_S5R3 version 426
13/04/2008 12:18:46 AM|Einstein@Home|Restarting task h1_0933.00_S5R3__579_S5R3b_1 using einstein_S5R3 version 426
13/04/2008 12:47:30 AM|Einstein@Home|Restarting task h1_0933.00_S5R3__579_S5R3b_1 using einstein_S5R3 version 426
13/04/2008 12:53:48 AM|Einstein@Home|Restarting task h1_0933.00_S5R3__579_S5R3b_1 using einstein_S5R3 version 426
13/04/2008 1:26:33 AM|Einstein@Home|Restarting task h1_0933.00_S5R3__579_S5R3b_1 using einstein_S5R3 version 426
13/04/2008 1:46:29 AM|Einstein@Home|Restarting task h1_0933.00_S5R3__579_S5R3b_1 using einstein_S5R3 version 426
Any idea what is going on? or how to fix it? Thanks for any help
Einstein having issues running (again)
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I'm assuming you are using the XP computer that you have listed in your profile. If so you stated you have multiple screensavers running and that you have shut down the screen saver. My suggestion would be to go into control panel\\Display settings and set the screen saver to None. And then see if it is still happening.
Without knowing more that's the only idea I can come up with. I looked at the system properties again but it doesn't show what version of the client or bonic you are using. If you can give us a better state of the system it might give us ideas of what's going on...
HTH
My screensaver IS turned off
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My screensaver IS turned off (set to none). Did that as soon as I seen I had a Eisnstein workunit to prevent any probs. Yet it is still restarting Eistien. I have 5.10.45 version of BOINC. I do use XP (Home Edition) with Service Pack 2. AMD 64 3200+ processor. 1 Gig or RAM. Radeon x1300 video card if that helps at all.
It's been doing it for over 12 hours...almost half done...hopefully it'll finish or pause and let my PC crunch other tasks.
Hi! Did you limit the CPU
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Hi!
Did you limit the CPU usage in the Web preferences for E@H? (There's an option to allow only X % of the CPU to be used). If so, try restting to 100% usage and check if the problem persists.
CU
Bikeman
Thanks Bikeman, but the
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Thanks Bikeman, but the workunit finished before I was able to try the changes...though i'm slightly curious as to why Einstein isn't downloading more workunits.
Also about the CPU usage..isn't turning it up to 100% bad? I mean doesn't Windows need 10-20% to run? I didn't change the CPU usage..i used the default i beleive which is 60-70%. Hopefully i get a workunit soon so I can try..or better yet doesn't have the problem so i can turn on my Graphics Screensaver again. Thanks again for the help
I seem to be having a problem
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I seem to be having a problem also downloading new Einstein work. I click on update and get the following:
4/18/2008 11:40:16 AM|Einstein@Home|Sending scheduler request: Requested by user. Requesting 0 seconds of work, reporting 0 completed tasks
4/18/2008 11:40:21 AM|Einstein@Home|Scheduler request succeeded: got 0 new tasks
4/18/2008 1:38:28 PM|SETI@home|Sending scheduler request: To fetch work. Requesting 44 seconds of work, reporting 2 completed tasks
4/18/2008 1:38:33 PM|SETI@home|Scheduler request succeeded: got 1 new tasks
4/18/2008 1:38:36 PM|SETI@home|Started download of 12mr08ah.25564.12342.7.8.204
4/18/2008 1:38:38 PM|SETI@home|Finished download of 12mr08ah.25564.12342.7.8.204
4/18/2008 1:41:27 PM|Einstein@Home|Sending scheduler request: Requested by user. Requesting 0 seconds of work, reporting 0 completed tasks
4/18/2008 1:41:32 PM|Einstein@Home|Scheduler request succeeded: got 0 new tasks
4/18/2008 1:41:32 PM||General prefs: from Einstein@Home (last modified 18-Apr-2008 11:43:37)
4/18/2008 1:41:32 PM||Host location: home
4/18/2008 1:41:32 PM||General prefs: using separate prefs for home
4/18/2008 1:41:32 PM||Reading preferences override file
4/18/2008 1:41:32 PM||Preferences limit memory usage when active to 1023.34MB
4/18/2008 1:41:32 PM||Preferences limit memory usage when idle to 1842.02MB
4/18/2008 1:41:32 PM||Preferences limit disk usage to 37.25GB
Seti is giving work but I have no Einstein work to do and cannot seem to get any.
RE: Thanks Bikeman, but the
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There is no need to worry about Windows not getting enough execution time if you set the BOINC throttle setting to 100%. Windows will take whatever it needs from anything else running on the system.
Furthermore, the Science apps are designed to run at the lowest priority there is on the system, and at least as far as EAH and SAH goes, they are very good about not getting in the way of anything else for the most part. The BOINC Core Client runs at a normal priority on Windows, but the fact of the matter is it uses so little CPU time to do it's job, that rarely is an issue either.
The throttle setting in BOINC is there for the situation (mostly for notebooks) where running BOINC flat out pushes the host into thermal instability. IOWs, it really is a thermal management feature and not a CPU time management feature.
The reason Bikeman was asking is there have been reports of some problems with the way the throttle works on multicore hosts in the later 5.10 vesions of BOINC. The current best workaround for that is to just not use it if you don't have to.
HTH,
Alinator
RE: I seem to be having a
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There is no problem with work supply from the project. Your BOINC client (when instructed to talk to the project as shown above) simply doesn't want any more work and is therefore not requesting any. It will ask for more work in due course when that work is actually needed.
The way your BOINC client makes decisions about when to ask for work is quite complex and depends on a whole range of factors such as:-
* average hours per day your computer runs
* on_frac (1)
* active_frac (1)
* cpu_efficiency (1)
* long_term_debt (one value for each project) (1)
* duration_correction_factor (one value for each project) (1)
* work_buf_min_days (2)
* work_buf_additional_days (2)
* max_cpus (2)
* cpu_usage_limit (2)
(1) Values for these parameters can be obtained fron the file client_state.xml
(2) Values for these parameters can be obtained fron the file global_prefs_override.xml
You can browse both files with a text editor like notepad but be careful not to make/save any changes.
The above information should allow the precise reason why your BOINC client isn't requesting E@H work to be understood. The probable reason is that you don't have your computer on very often (or you're not using all available CPUs) and BOINC needs to limit work anyway so as not to risk deadlines. Seti has had some issues lately with the supply of work and your computer may have done extra E@H work as a result. Now that Seti work is available, the debt is being repaid. More E@H work will be downloaded when Seti has caught up.
Through BOINC manager's local preferences editing ability, it would probably be very easy to force your client to download E@H work right now. However there is absolutely no need to do this manual intervention because BOINC is quite capable of managing things on its own without outside interference :-). However it would be prudent to review your preferences relating to work supply and ask yourself if the values really do reflect your needs.
You have a Q6600 based machine attached to Seti and E@H only. Your combined RAC at the moment is only 259 which is surprisingly low for a quad core machine like yours. Do you actually have all four cores working? If so, your machine must be on for only about 3-4 hours per day to keep your RAC that low or else something else is taking all the CPU cycles.
If you'd like to make your machine a bit more productive, it should be possible to improve your RAC considerably. It's entirely at your discretion of course.
Cheers,
Gary.
I appreciate your answer.
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I appreciate your answer. The computer is on most days for about 12 to 14 hours. I'm physically at it probably about half that. I have tried to give Seti 2/3 the time with Einstein 1/3 due to the physically larger Einstein workunits or so it appears. No other programs are physically active when I'm not on the computer except the virus protection (2) and the firewall. If my RAC(?) is low, I don't know what the problem is.
RE: I appreciate your
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No problems - happy to oblige.
That's a generous amount of time to get a lot of crunching done. If your own use of the computer is for things like office work, browsing, email, etc, the projects effectively get virtually 100% of the ontime since those other tasks use very little of the available CPU cycles. Your machine should be capable of doing a lot more work in that time than it is currently returning.
By "larger" are you referring to size of downloads or length of crunch time? If you mean the former, you are actually hurting yourself somewhat by not maximising the number of tasks you can get from a set of the large data files that are downloaded for E@H. Other computers are actually hogging most of the tasks before you get a chance to request your share.
This is really only of academic interest since you should really assign your resource shares to favour the project you are most interested in. I also support both projects (and LHC as well) and I tend to look at a measure of the scientific merit as shown by the willingness of fund granting bodies to support the project with ongoing research dollars.
RAC stands for Recent Average Credit and is a measure of how much work your computer is accomplishing on average per day. If you take a look to the left under where your name and ID are listed for any message you post, you will see the current values for both total credit and RAC. If you go to the home page of the E@H website and click on the top computers link, you will see quite a few details (including CPU type) for the top performing hosts. Scroll down to #33 in the list and you will see the start of the Q6600 based hosts and there are quite a few from that point onward. Admittedly, the very top hosts are (a) on 24/7, (b) highly overclocked, and (c) running optimised science apps, but you can at least get an idea of what is possible with your type of CPU. Under the conditions you have listed, you should be able to get a RAC of at least 1000 by combining the values from both projects. The fact that you only get 250 looks suspiciously like you are only using one of your 4 CPUs.
To check that out, fire up BOINC Manager (advanced view) and go to the tasks tab where there will be a list of all tasks currently crunching on your machine. If there aren't 4 tasks currently running then you aren't using all your 4 CPUs. If that is the case, select Advanced -> Preferences... On the processor usage tab of the screen that pops up, check that you have "use at most 4 processors" and "use at most 100% CPU time" selected. If not, change the values appropriately and save them by selecting "OK".
People often think they shouldn't select 100% CPU usage. There is no problem with using 100% if your cooling is adequate. Only if you have a laptop with badly designed airflow resulting in overheating and/or a fan that is always running at max speed making annoyingly loud noise, should you reduce it below 100%. In other words it's more for user comfort than for CPU protection. If you do have a laptop, it would be wise to check airways for blockage and to take steps to improve the flow of cool air underneath it. Apart from regular cleaning of the air intakes, one of the simplest things is to elevate it from the desktop by using spacer pads (5-10mm) underneath each of the normal feet.
If all 4 of your CPUs are currently running something else must be limiting the output of your machine. Let us know what you find out.
Cheers,
Gary.
RE: RE: I appreciate your
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As to the processor, I upgraded the computer in March. Before that I had a Pentium 4, 1.7 mhz with only 512 MB RAM. That could account for the low RAC.
I normally show the advanced view - no graphics.
I followed your instructions. It seems I have been limiting the CPU to 2 processors but with no suspension when I'm on the computer. However, I'm still getting Seti but no Einstein. Learned a lot from you. Thanks.