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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Beta Testing
Forum: Beta Test Support Forum
Thread: Beta_faah4000 Workunits Problem |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 27
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Van Fanel
Cruncher Joined: Dec 27, 2006 Post Count: 42 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I have two Workunits from the BETA_faah4000 recent batch, and I'm having a strange behaviour from them. Everytime they get to 25% completion they go back to 23.8% and restart from there (or at least that is what the progress bar in BOINC Manager indicates). They carry on like this for ever and ever and ever (at least until the moment I'm writing this) in this never ending-loop.
----------------------------------------It's a laptop with Pentium 4 3.0 GHz, 1GB RAM running on Windows XP. I have run one other of these workunits on my desktop and it went smoothly... I'm thinking about letting them crunch for one hour as that seems to be the running time for these. After that, what should I do? Abort them? EDIT: My other computer (Dual Core with Windows XP 64 bit is having the same problem with one other of these workunits  )EDIT2: After I don't know how many loops, it finally passed that 25% mark in the progress bar. This happened right after hitting the one hour threshold of calculations. [Edit 2 times, last edit by Van Fanel at Apr 18, 2008 8:49:41 PM] |
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breathesgelatin
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Aug 5, 2006 Post Count: 117 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I'm having the exact same behavior with some FA@H WUs. They go up to 24.9% and then drop back to 23.8%. They're not yet at the hour mark, so I'll let them continue running.
----------------------------------------I've also noticed they have the standard FA@H screensaver, despite Beta WUs not being supposed to have the screensaver. EDIT: Around an hour (in my case 55 minutes) they do begin counting up from 25%. The first one to hit this point is currently at ~ 29%.  [Edit 1 times, last edit by breathesgelatin at Apr 18, 2008 9:23:58 PM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
The graphics are only hidden for pre-launch projects. No need to hide them for a small update to an existing project.
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Van Fanel
Cruncher Joined: Dec 27, 2006 Post Count: 42 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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So my third and last computer is behaving the same way...
 However, it all seems to be a glitch with the progress bar. After passing the 25%-endless-loop-problem it carries on crunching just fine. The one hour mark also seems to be just a coincidence. The time it takes to pass the 25% threshold will depend on your machine specs. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
There is no 1-hour mark for FAAH Beta work units. That was a time limit for 1 batch of Beta units for an upcoming project. The progress bar moves backwards if an 'attempt' fails. The program starts over again with a slightly different 'attempt'.
Lawrence |
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breathesgelatin
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Aug 5, 2006 Post Count: 117 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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There is no 1-hour mark for FAAH Beta work units. That was a time limit for 1 batch of Beta units for an upcoming project. The progress bar moves backwards if an 'attempt' fails. The program starts over again with a slightly different 'attempt'. Lawrence So I understand that these new FAAH Betas are trying different 'attempts' and that's what's causing the progress bar to move back and forth? My first one of these WUs was reported and is pending validation. All my other ones of the FAAH Betas are on a different computer. They're crunching away steadily but are currently hovering between 25% and 50% done (get nearly up to 50% and bump back down to 25%). Now that I know that's what's going to happen with these WUs, it's fine, but it was a little disconcerting at first. For those crunching these, my first one took a bit more than 3 hours to crunch (on a pretty slow computer). On my other machine, which crunches on two cores, there are two currently at 28% which have been crunching 55 minutes--although they were at 50% around 49 minutes. So even with the ratcheting back and forth in the progress bar, they're significantly shorter than the normal FAAH WUs would be for me. Also should mention that the deadline seems pretty realistic on these - April 28. |
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trongnguyen_82
Cruncher Joined: Aug 10, 2006 Post Count: 10 Status: Offline |
My beta also reacts in the same way, bouncing back and fourth between 23.8% and 24.9%. The CPU time is at 15 minutes, so I guess it will continue to loop for a while.
----------------------------------------Edit: I recieved 2 FAAH Betas and both have small identical loops: from 23.8% to 24.9%. Estimate time waste for this loop is about 1 minute/loop * ~15-20 times = 15-20 minutes, not a big deal for a small workunit (average runtime is about 1 hour and 15 minutes on my PC). But if this scale up in the normal FAAH (which run in about 8 hours on my PC), it would cause about 3 hours with no progress which might be hardly acceptable for many crunchers.  [Edit 1 times, last edit by trongnguyen_82 at Apr 19, 2008 8:53:50 AM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I've just completed an FAAH Beta without any issues - took 35 minutes on my Intel Q6600 @3.42GHz, Windows XP, WCG Boinc client 5.10.30. - the other in the quorum did it in just over 45 minutes.
---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by Former Member at Apr 19, 2008 11:07:22 AM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hello trongnguyen_82,
Yes, the progress indicator on these FAAH units proves in a very annoying way that we are running a non-deterministic algorithm. It is an irritating mismatch to the standard BOINC framework. I foresee lots of forum queries. I wonder why the new FAAH program seems so much more blatant about it? Is this primarily caused by the application change or by a new set of molecules? Lawrence |
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Van Fanel
Cruncher Joined: Dec 27, 2006 Post Count: 42 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Yes, I agree. Lots of fellow crunchers will drop by and ask the same question.
As a possible way around it, I would advice to only update the progress bar when the step has been successful. In other words, instead of letting the progress bar advance in small bits, only update it after a successful iteration. The only set back is that the progress bar would seem static for most of the time... Sorry if this seems a bit too much in the air, but I would have to know the algorithm to express myself better. Just my 2 cents, and keep up the good work. Oh, and just for info, so far my BETA_faah4000 were deemed valid or pending validation. Depending on the computer they ran, it took from 1 to 3 hours each (either a Pentium IV or a Dual Core). |
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