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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: Closing agent seems to cause loss of work |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 13
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hi guys,
I'm running a BOINC agent on a Windows XP machine. I've found that when I close my BOINC agent then reopen it, I lose some of the work that had been completed. For instance, one project was at 95% with about 30 minutes left when I closed it, and now when I opened BOINC today it is at 92 percent with over an hour still to go. This is frustrating because sometimes I'll only have a n hour to run BOINC before I need to close it, then when I open it again it seems that all of the work that I just did was destroyed. Is work actually lost, or is just that the estimation of how much work remains get skewed when I open and close BOINC? What could possibly be the cause of this appearance of lost work? Thanks, Cookiemobsta |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
This is normal.
The science applications are only able to save the progress at certain points (checkpoints). There is more about checkpointing here: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread?thread=11332 |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
That's sort of frustrating. Are there any plans to make it possible for a manual checkpoint to be made when the program closes? Otherwise I suppose I might want to switch to crunching solely DDDT work units; since that saves every 1% and they're small I'll lose barely any work.
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Read the FAQ: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread?thread=11332
----------------------------------------It explains why this is the best frequency that can be achieved, and suggests a few workarounds if you find it is a limiting factor. edit: be aware that DDDT work unit sizes are set to increase significantly very soon. Sorry. [Edit 1 times, last edit by Former Member at Mar 2, 2008 1:03:53 AM] |
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JmBoullier
Former Community Advisor Normandy - France Joined: Jan 26, 2007 Post Count: 3716 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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be aware that DDDT work unit sizes are set to increase significantly very soon. Sorry. True, but from a checkpointing interval viewpoint there will be no change (I carefully checked on beta work units). If your machine running a DDD-T job was checkpointing, say, every 90 seconds in average it will still be checkpointing every 90 seconds with the new WUs. The only visible difference is that the percentage will not be as easy an indication of when a checkpoint is taken. And since the new work units will be five times bigger there will be 500 possible checkpoints per WU instead of 100. Net result: DDD-T will still be the project which loses the smallest amount of work when stopping/restarting a computer. |
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Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
After observing 1 Beta of 4 hours for DDDT and what was said by the techs (reads like more jobs in one work unit), I second that
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WCG
Please help to make the Forums an enjoyable experience for All! |
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pluczka
Cruncher Joined: Apr 27, 2007 Post Count: 23 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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When having to reboot to install Windows updates, for instance, is it better to suspend BOINC, to snooze or to exit BOINC?
Thanks |
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Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
Exiting BOINC or through the BOINCmgr interface closing down the currently linked client (e.g. a remote client but also local BOINC service), is doubtlessly the most secure. But, if running version >= 5.10.35 on particularly the 'too quick closing' Vista works very reliable if using the OS shutdown procedure. Not a single corruption here since.
----------------------------------------Read the Start Here FAQ earlier referenced and other FAQs there for elaboration when best to do that v.v. prevention of work loss.
WCG
Please help to make the Forums an enjoyable experience for All! |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Cookiemobsta,
----------------------------------------I too am running XP. When I need to re-boot, I simply suspend boinc. When the system re-boots, and boinc restarts, I click on resume. No loss of data yet. Same should work when you need to stop processing temporarily ie suspend, stop; on restart, resume. Mark [Edit 2 times, last edit by Former Member at Mar 2, 2008 7:47:24 PM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
BOINC should not be sensitive to the way it is shut down.
If you observe BOINC failing to restart from a checkpoint, please report it so that the underlying cause can be identified. At present, the only widespread cause of this is the (fixed) Vista issue. |
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