More tasks than days to complete
3 Oct 2017 10:27:54 UTC
Topic 210008
(moderation:
Hey I have several tasks that I know won't get completed by the deadline. Should I delete the excess or let them complete anyway? What happens to the ones that finish running but don't complete by the deadline? Thanks.
Dyna66 wrote:Hey I have
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Yes you can safely abort any tasks and they will just be recycled thru to other computers. The ones you don't get too and are past the deadline will get the same fate, recycled out to other computers. It takes time for boinc to learn how you use your pc and since each project estimates how long a workunit will run using their own formulas sometimes we get waaaaay too much work to finish on time. I prefer to abort tasks when I see I can't get to them, but it's not that much difference in the long run. Every task we do has to be verified by another computer, or 2 or 3 others, so no task is hyper critical as far as time goes.
Dyna66 wrote:... Should I
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When the deadline is reached for a particular task, an extra copy is created on the server and sent to a third computer. If your overdue copy managed to be completed and returned before the extra copy is returned, your copy (and the third copy when it arrives) will be checked and credited, if valid. If your copy arrives later than the third copy, it will be completely ignored if the third copy has already caused the validation process to be completed.
Therefore, if your copy can't be completed within, say, a couple of hours of missing the deadline at most, the sensible thing to do is to abort it as soon as possible to avoid wasting your computer time on it and to allow it to be redirected to a third computer immediately, rather than doing nothing. It's considered 'good etiquette' to not unnecessarily delay the validation process.
By aborting excess tasks as soon as you know they will not make the deadline, you are shortening the total time needed to process a particular task and helping other volunteers not to have too many 'pending results' whilst waiting for the extra result. Some volunteers get a little uptight if they have large numbers of 'pendings'. It also helps keep the size of the online database a little smaller since completed entries can be cleared out sooner rather than later.
What you do is up to you but it would be best to abort immediately those tasks that have no chance of making the deadline. Note that you should ignore time estimates and work with the time taken by a completed task. You currently have one of those. It took a little over 14 hours to complete. If you work on that figure and use what you know about the usage patterns of your computer (crunching hours per day, CPU cores used for crunching, time to deadline, tasks for other projects, etc.), you should be able to work out what is achievable by the deadline.
From looking at your tasks list, the large influx of tasks on Sep 27 is unusual. I notice you support Seti as well. Perhaps you were trying to get a bunch of Seti tasks and Seti couldn't supply at the time :-). If that's the case, make sure you set 'No new tasks' for Einstein before trying that again ;-).
Cheers,
Gary.
I had sometime ago a
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I had sometime ago a situation at LHC@Home where I got a load of tasks I couldn't finish by the deadline. I tried to finish as many as I could, but at deadline Boinc (7.6.33) aborted automatically all tasks that were not started in time. I don't know if this is something that a project can setup or not.