Now what?

[CycloneRanger]

All of a sudden, my crunch totals have started dropping, with a particularly precipitous 'cliffing' on or about October 21. I have not (knowingly) changed anything, and can't figure out what happened. Could someone who understands these things better than I please take a look and see if there's anything obvious?

Thanks as always!

Psych Lone Ranger

[Nightlord]

Your two active boxes didn't return any WCG credits for about a week 3/4 the way through October. At a guess, that looks like an October Week holiday?

However the GPU grid enabled machines only had a small outage at around the same time. Having said that, the frequency of returned of GPU grid WU's appears to have slowed a little at the same time as that was all happening. Has there been any windows updates to your Nvidia drivers for GPU grid - it's been a while since I crunched that project, so I don't know if they changed anything on the project.

I then looked at your machines on GPU grid, the 9800GTX box seems to be killing a lot of WU's with an out of memory error. I doubt it really means out of video memory, but from past experience, something rather more vague.

I think someone who actively runs GPU Grid is needed to answer that one.

[aardvark]

Not sure about the "out of memory" problem. maybe try a repair on boinc manager. I moved away from GPU Grid a few weeks ago (as did a few others) because Collatz gives at least 50% better credit (if not nearer 100%), Try Collatz @ http://boinc.thesonntags.com/collatz/, this will at least test your hardware. If all works then check out the GPU Grid forum, they seem to have most problems covered there. The only minor hastle for me with Collatz is that I must disable SLI (running two GTX260's) otherwise I get a lot of errors.

[CycloneRanger]

Well, I installed Collatz, and it's running. Too early to tell how well. It did, however, take over my crunching, and nothing else will run with it. I didn't expect that!

[steve]

Well, I installed Collatz, and it's running. Too early to tell how well. It did, however, take over my crunching, and nothing else will run with it. I didn't expect that!

Try using a new version of boinc

Which version are you using?

[CycloneRanger]

6.10.17

But Collatz is really smokin'!

[steve]

6.10.17

But Collatz is really smokin'!

enter this in your boinc cc_config.xml to reset the debts to zero

<cc_config>
<zero_debts>1</zero_debts>

[CycloneRanger]

All of this raises an ancillary question or two:

1. Where does one find out about the newer / "better" projects?

2. Where does one find out about such things as the "zero_debts" fix provided above?

Inquiring minds want to know!

[PinkPenguin]

Try these to start with:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/User_manual

This does contain useful information and pointers:
http://www.boinc-wiki.info/Main_Page

For anything else I have had to look at the source code which you can download via SVN:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/SourceCode

Otherwise various message boards provide useful information (particularly SETI project but also others depending on type of project).

[Megacruncher]

You find out about everything by asking here. Works for me (usually).

[CycloneRanger]

OK, here's the update:

1. Collatz is running like a mad dog (but I still can't run a concurrent project)

2. Thanks for the tips on resources -- the unofficial boinc wiki looks to be especially my cup of tea!

3. I still don't know where you find out about the high-performing or otherwise interesting new projects. I don't yet see discussion of them anywhere.

Thanks to all for the assistance!

[Nightlord]

For high performing CPU projects, you could look at ABC, but be sure to use a 64 bit OS.

On 64 bit, ABC is nearly twice as fast as the 32 bit and it pays Easter eggs now and then: long WU's scale exponentially in granted credit - If I get a WU that I clam 50, I get around 60, if I claim around 100, I get around 200, by the time I get to claim 2about 250 I'm granted 1000. 8)

For a general trend you could look at the project credit comparison charts on boincstats at http://boincstats.com/stats/project_cpcs.php, but a lot of the data is way out of date and can be like comparing apples and oranges, but worth a look now and then.

[PinkPenguin]

You find out about everything by asking here. Works for me (usually).

Your quite right and I'm sorry - I should have mentioned it...

OK, here's the update:

1. Collatz is running like a mad dog (but I still can't run a concurrent project)

2. Thanks for the tips on resources -- the unofficial boinc wiki looks to be especially my cup of tea!

3. I still don't know where you find out about the high-performing or otherwise interesting new projects. I don't yet see discussion of them anywhere.

Thanks to all for the assistance!

For 1. take a look at this thread
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thr ... true#28441
if UBT-Mikee's problem is like yours you will find the answer a little further down.

For 3. I haven't yet found a reliable list of projects though there are a great many lists around for BOINC - at the moment I just keep an eye on John's stats site where new projects tend to appear quite quickly (before BOINCSTATS) and you link directly to the project site to find out more:
http://ubt-seti.dyndns.org/tsbt/teams.php?cs=2&sz=2

[CycloneRanger]

<< For 1. take a look at this thread
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thr ... true#28441
if UBT-Mikee's problem is like yours you will find the answer a little further down. >>


Worked like a champ -- thanks!