Development for LHC@home

This is a testing project.
Credits are not that important here.
The main concern is to get the apps working properly.

You missed the answer.

This is a testing project.
Credits are not that important here.
The main concern is to get the apps working properly.

You missed the answer.

No I didn't. You are confusing the main concern of the project owner with the concern of a cruncher. As a cruncher, I can influence neither the project setup, nor its scientific value. I can only donate time and hardware. For credit, which costs the project owner nothing. And not only does it cost nothing, it does not in any way prevent or detract the project owner from getting the apps working properly. So how did you come up with the idea, that by not receiving credit you will somehow help the project?

This is a testing project.
Credits are not that important here.
The main concern is to get the apps working properly.

You missed the answer.

No I didn't. You are confusing the main concern of the project owner with the concern of a cruncher. As a cruncher, I can influence neither the project setup, nor its scientific value. I can only donate time and hardware. For credit, which costs the project owner nothing. And not only does it cost nothing, it does not in any way prevent or detract the project owner from getting the apps working properly. So how did you come up with the idea, that by not receiving credit you will somehow help the project?

Completely, totally in agreement with the sentiment expressed here by KPX. The ONLY satisfaction a cruncher has directly available are the credits. Without them, our effort is meaningless. From our standpoint, a project is a project is a project. Whether its a test environment or a production one is absolutely immaterial to our side of the fence. Our computers neither know the difference, nor do they (or we) care.

A bit of credit philosophy here. About five years ago, I began to notice a really significant difference in the credit awarded by the projects I was participating in. REALLY significant. So, I set up my own little experiment. For the past five years, I have done NOTHING to alter my production setup. At the end of five years, what was apparently a statistical anomaly became as bright as day. I participate in eight projects. Of these eight, two - Einstein@home and milky@home - are very liberal with credits. Two others - seti@home and climateprediction.net - are extremely stingy with credit. All eight projects receive exactly the same amount of computer time, and it's apparent that over the years, available work from each project has tended to even itself out, resulting in what I see as a viable picture of BOINC efforts.

In MHO, of course.

the mt task seems to give some funny credit scores:


mt = 21,326.91sec = 10,801.58
mt = 109,653.90sec = 9,977.32
CMS = 39,582.64sec = 329.96

Maybe just needs some time to settle down

Just had a vLHC task (#283824) that ran 129,064.72 seconds. (Almost 36 hrs.)
Got 275.59 credits for it.
RIDICULOUS!

PrimeGrid tasks that run that long get between 4 and 5 THOUSAND credits. ClimatePrediction likewise.
THIS MUST BE FIXED! There is NO reason for anyone to waste their CPU cycles on this project if this is the reward they're going to get. Yeah, I know the project doesn't care about credits. Guess what? The users do. No users, no project. Don't pull the "CPU time vs wall time" bit, either. Not the user's problem if the project doesn't do anything with the 36 hours they were given.

Benchmark and Theory and CMS are all 'low credit' but at least REASONABLE. Obviously vLHC is not. I'm giving vLHC one more task, then I'll move on to check ALICE, then probably shelve -dev for another few months. Still hoping you get your act together.

Some weeks ago I benchmarked my BOINC client (FLOPS and IOPS).
Since then my hosts always report a constant FLOPS value calculated as the average of 10 benchmark results to all projects I participate.

Most projects show a value of "max FLOPS of the device" on its result pages but this value seems to be calculated in different ways.

Example:
Host reports: 4.44 GFLOPS, 8 cores
ATLAS_MCORE: 35.55 GFLOPS
CMS-dev 1 core: 4.44 GFLOPS
CMS-dev 2 cores: 8.89 GFLOPS
CMS-dev 3 cores: 13.33 GFLOPS


In my eyes CMS does a better job at this point as it takes into account how much ressources I really spend for each WU.
ATLAS instead shows the maximum possible GFLOPS although I usually run 2 core WUs.

The GFLOPS value becomes important as this is a key factor of the credit calculation.
BOINC´s CreditNew system includes several normalization steps (Cross-version, Host, Anonymous platform, Cross-project) as well as sanity checks and cheat prevention.

My recent tests with CMS-dev show a huge drop of granted credits as I reduced the cores from 3 to 2.
3 core WU: 42,913.41 seconds total time, 2,100.26 credits
2 core WU: 46,731.78 seconds total time, 363.83 credits (I expected around 1525 credits)

I assume my 2 core could have violated a sanity check or a cheat prevention in the server´s logic and therefore got some default credits.


This behaviour could become important when ATLAS joins the consolidated server.
It could also be an issue for users who run individual settings for different subprojects as the GFLOPS values jump from high to low and vice versa.


To prevent running into problems the developers should revise the server´s credit calculation logic and ensure that it´s input is already normalized by the number of cores effectively used.

MAJOR problem: Credits here are not being exported in XML, thus are not showing up at the statistics sites, thus are not being updated in our sigs. Likewise badges are not being exported. All work done here is just going into a "black hole" and not being properly credited to the volunteers.

Side effect: The stats site that I use for "what do I need to run now" has shown LHCathome-dev as being "offline" now for over a month. Therefore, I haven't bothered doing any -dev work for the last month. I was surprised when I hit "allow new work" on -dev on one host, more or less by accident, and actually GOT new work, since the project has been showing as "offline" for so long - I'd assumed there were major problems here (which obviously there are) or that you'd shut down! If nobody knows you exist and are functioning - even long-time contributors - it's hard to get volunteers to do the work... and if the volunteers are not going to get the credit in their sigs even if they DO the work...

Has the project even noticed that there aren't any volunteers, and maybe wondered why?

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So-so problem: Credits here are still EXTREMELY, ludicrously, insultingly, low. Example:

347053 334335 873 1 Jul 2017, 10:37:14 UTC 1 Jul 2017, 23:56:37 UTC Completed and validated 45,720.30 104,398.40 1,236.30 Theory Simulation v3.02 (vbox64_mt_mcore)
x86_64-apple-darwin

vs:

4796778 2286190 1055 1 Jul 2017, 17:31:29 UTC 2 Jul 2017, 10:22:37 UTC Completed and validated 13,983.65 40,417.26 5,258.61 Amicable Numbers up to 10^20 v2.00 (mt)
x86_64-apple-darwin

Both were mt tasks using 3 cores. Same machine, a few hours apart. -dev task took roughly 3x as long wall time, almost 3x as much CPU time... and got 1/4 the credit. THAT'S A FACTOR OF 12! Even if you think Amicable Numbers gives "too much" credit, comparing to almost ANY other project will give similar results, just not as extreme. As we've tried to tell you since the beginning, you need to at LEAST triple, preferably quadruple (or more), the credit you give, to even be in the ballpark of "correct".

Note the "users in last 24 hours" for Theory: at the moment it's 8. Now look at Amicable Numbers: it's 218. Which project is doing more useful work? Hmm... Which project is MUCH newer, thus has had much less time to attract volunteers? Yep. Amic has only been around a few months. So for all (7?) of you who think "credits don't matter, it's all about the work being done" - great philosophy, but lousy real-world outcome.

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Annoyance: My Mac and Linux hosts are churning out Theory tasks, however slowly and for however little payout. My Windows host that's available to -dev right now was returning nothing but errors, even after resetting project. Yes, it's the latest BOINC and VBox, but there's no incentive on my end to further trace the problem and try to fix it, I just hit "no new work" again.

Another problem - compare these two Theory tasks:

347055 334337 1700 1 Jul 2017, 10:39:22 UTC 2 Jul 2017, 4:16:44 UTC Completed and validated 59,655.44 126,154.80 538.15 Theory Simulation v3.02 (vbox64_mt_mcore)
x86_64-pc-linux-gnu

347053 334335 873 1 Jul 2017, 10:37:14 UTC 1 Jul 2017, 23:56:37 UTC Completed and validated 45,720.30 104,398.40 1,236.30 Theory Simulation v3.02 (vbox64_mt_mcore)
x86_64-apple-darwin

Same day, same time, work units only 2 digits apart, Linux box took longer to run (wall and CPU) but got < 1/2 the credit? Your credit algorithm is SERIOUSLY screwed up. I can't imagine a way that these two tasks were so much different that you can reasonably say the Mac could have done "over twice as much work" in that time.

Suggested fix: If they're all similar, just give 4000 credits per Theory task and be done with it.

Thanks for pointing this out. For those who are motivated mainly by credit, I would suggest using the production project. Credit should work here and we should investigate why not but the focus is on preparing new releases, testing new features and debugging issues.

As I mentioned here before (some where) my account numbers have not been getting updated as far as *last contact* with the server from my computers so I have to check each computer instead of just checking from the laptop in front of me.

And the Statistics pages here also act a bit strange........or maybe that is a trick to get me to always have my RAC over 16,000

And Ivan will never catch up to *Paul* this way

Paul has not been here for about a month but he seems to stay ahead of me on the RAC page unless I stay above 16K

Other than that I have no task problems here and am running the X2 and X3 core version of Theory tasks right now (and lots of CMS over at LHC)

I can try the multi-core CMS here if you need me to test that here so we can get that moved over to LHC (and the Theory multi-core since I have ran thousands with no problems)

Still having one occasional problem with the CMS over there with the server for Laurence to check. (on the LHC *CMS Tasks Failing* thread)

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Mad Scientist For Life

the focus is on preparing new releases, testing new features and debugging issues

Yes... but "issues" includes ANYTHING "BOINC-related", because these sub-projects will eventually move to production and have the same problems if they aren't fixed here. Thus giving low credits will continue to be a problem there, if you don't work out how many credits should be granted...

Also, I suppose the 7 other people currently running Theory tasks here are all either employees or really really dedicated to helping this specific project, and that's great - and if you can do all your development and testing and debugging with that small a number of users, and limited number of sample hosts, well, congratulations! The point is that some of us came here because we want to help, but you seem to be doing your best to chase us off. (How many users have signed up but now have NO credit the last, say, three months?) Wouldn't it be better to have hundreds of users to test for you? WuProp says I gave 5000+ core-hours to -dev last year. About 500 this year. Stats site says I'm "number 31" in work contributed on this project - but of course, that may be WAY wrong, since it's not being updated...

If the goal of this project is as you originally stated when you started up, to get BOINC volunteers to help, by testing your programs on Macs, different flavors of Windows, Linux, etc., different CPUs, different environments - then you have to actually FIX problems (i.e.; credits) that are pointed out, over and over and over again, instead of just saying "if you don't like it, go away and pester the production project". Or you wind up with a handful of people running Linux on Xeons in-house, and production learns the hard way that, say, Theory won't work on Windows 10... Oops, we didn't have any volunteers to test that!

These ARE things that CAN be fixed, I would assume very easily. Exporting the credits and badges in XML correctly per BOINC standards, as EVERY other project does? And as YOU did, until apparently a month or so ago? Um. Yeah.

Think of it this way. It's payday, but instead of direct-depositing your money in the bank, your boss sends you an email that says "you worked x hours and earned $x this month, great job, you really helped the company". What can you do with that email? Nothing! That's the difference between credits earned here that show up ONLY here, and credits that are exported so they can be "spent" - seen in our sigs, etc. You're already paying way below "minimum wage", now you're insulting us by not even giving us that pittance! If credits are as worthless as you say they are, then why hoard them like gold? (Or anti-matter...) That's not even considering the "out of business" sign on the front door (stats sites showing you "offline" all month) that I guess we should all just somehow know to ignore, and come in to work anyway...

Credit should work here and we should investigate why not but the focus is on preparing new releases, testing new features and debugging issues.

+1 Not more and not less.

The stats site that I use for "what do I need to run now" has shown LHCathome-dev as being "offline" now for over a month.

Two and a half months later, it's STILL showing as "offline". Have no idea if any credits are being exported, as I've gotten no work on any of my machines during that period. (ATLAS, ALICE, SixTrack, or Benchmark, which consistently shows unsent tasks but none in progress and no users, as discussed elsewhere.)

https://lhcathomedev.cern.ch/lhcathome-dev/server_status.php

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Mad Scientist For Life

https://lhcathomedev.cern.ch/lhcathome-dev/server_status.php

Yes, that is where I got "consistently shows unsent tasks". At this moment it shows 218 unsent for Benchmark. Three in progress. Zero users in last 24 hours. Benchmark is "on" in my preferences. Windows, Mac, and Linux boxes running. All get "no work available from project". I did get three whole tasks for Sixtrack recently. The one on the Mac failed immediately, the two on Windows ran to completion and have been waiting for validation ever since.

Boincstats shows last export as 23 Jan.

Boincstats shows last export as 23 Jan.

Still true ..

Boincstats shows last export as 23 Jan.

Still true ..

Last update user XML 2018-01-23 09:20:05 UTC (76 days 06:56:31 old)
Last update host XML 2018-01-23 09:20:06 UTC (76 days 06:56:30 old)
Last update team XML 2018-01-23 09:20:07 UTC (76 days 06:56:29 old)

Everything up and running again, thanks!

Last update user XML 2018-04-12 11:35:04 UTC (07:47:15 old)
Last update host XML 2018-04-12 11:35:07 UTC (07:47:12 old)
Last update team XML 2018-04-12 11:35:08 UTC (07:47:11 old)

Everything up and running again, thanks!

Yes, thank you very much!