MilkyWay@Home Project

Post by **Labbie** » Thu Jun 11, 2009 2:25 am

same thought - LOL

Post by **Buga1** » Thu Jun 11, 2009 2:28 am

Well I'm just trying to hold off the inevitable. Its only a matter of time. Just like the last time I passed ya. LMAO

Rick

Post by **Labbie** » Thu Jun 11, 2009 2:33 am

Buga1 wrote:Well I'm just trying to hold off the inevitable. Its only a matter of time. Just like the last time I passed ya. LMAO

Rick

Guess I should order that turbo 4870, but was kind of waiting to see what the CUDA side of MW GPU will do. I guess I can put multiples in one box...

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Fri Jun 12, 2009 2:13 am

12 Jun 2009 AEST:

Multiple Updates today. In order from oldest to newest:

We have started a thread in the science forums relating to the astrophysics portion of the project for those who are interested.

A few more optimizations to the search process have been made, so we're running some of the old stripes again to get better fits. The new runs are ps_new_11_1, for example.

Matts searches had the wrong sized integral so they were crunching much faster than expected. We've stopped these so there shouldn't be any new short workunits.

Since it looks like the server is handling things fine (no work shortages), I've put out the CUDA code for milkyway@home. If this works and the server holds up we won't need milkywayGPU@home. The code can be downloaded in the usual code release directory. I've also added two CUDA binaries for intel versions of OS X, single and double precision if anyone would like to test them out. They're also in the code release directory. If anyone would like to test the code for linux and windows that would be appreciated. I've started a new forum thread about this here.

I noticed a problem in the binaries and code I put on the code download page. I removed them to do some fixes, but they should be available tonight or at the latest tomorrow morning.

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Fri Jun 12, 2009 2:16 am

I notice they just said something about maybe not needing MilkyWayGPU@home. So everyone (CPU and GPU) will be on the same project? Hope they have a plan to stop the work shortage happening again. Last time the GPUs seem to get a decent amount of work (because they request so often) but the CPUs missed out.

Maybe MW should just take the plunge and say that they are going to be a GPU only project and dump all of those that have CPUs only.

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Fri Jun 12, 2009 11:18 am

12 Jun 2009 AEST:

Travis here. I'm going to be camping until Sunday so don't break anything while I'm gone. Hopefully Matt and John will keep the server running and filled with work for you guys :) I'm still having a few problems with the CUDA application for regular milkyway, so it'll probably be out Monday or Tuesday after I get back.

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 2:22 am

16 Jun 2009 AEST:

John has made the following post in the science section. It's an in depth explanantion of the current astronomy work being done here and quite readable and easy to understand (even I can get it). I recommend it if you'd like to know a bit more about what's going on here on the astronomy end of things.--Travis

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 12:28 am

23 Jun 2009 AEST:

Do to some rather unsavory activity in the Cafe, it now has a minimum RAC of 5 to enable posting messages.--Travis

Post by **Shaalae** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 9:11 am

i've installed an app for my GPU but it doesn't seem to work. At least the task manager isn't showing anything. And i have installed the appropriate catalyst version.

Post by **Shaalae** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 9:14 am

update: it is going very fast. i think it works. sorry. i guess it is normal that it is not listed in the task manager...

Post by **Buga1** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 5:07 pm

Hoowdy, Looks like its working from what your times are over at MilkyWay. In task manager you will see astronomy_.19xxxxx. Glad you got it to work.

Rick

Post by **Buga1** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 5:03 pm

Came home for lunch to see MW is having a problem. The DB got corrupted I guess. As any new people that signed up with MW since end of May are now gone. And any credit to others have reverted back to there May stats.

Im gonna set to No new work until they figure out what they are gonna do.

Rick

Post by **Shaalae** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 7:37 pm

yes, my account (and Boinc manager) shows the normal figures, but the stats show exactly the same figures like einstein@home which is very strange...

Post by **Buga1** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 10:10 pm

Looks like they got some of it fixed pretty soon after I posted. I have wu's right now atleast. LOL

Rick

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 12:30 am

News from the 22nd Oct 2009:

Hello from the 5th Pan-Galactic BOINC Workshop in Barcelona! I had my presentation today so I'm making the slides available to everyone. You can download them here (sorry they're in keynote for all the Windows users out there). I'll be back next week so try not to break anything before then.--Travis.

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 12:31 am

News from the 23rd OCt 2009:

I've also made a powerpoint version of the slides from our BOINC workshop presentation here.

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 12:14 am

News for the 3rd Nov 2009:

As most of you have noticed, the Milkyway@home database crashed yesterday. It appears that the database managed to corrupt itself, then failed in a spectacular fashion. We are busy cleaning up the mess, and everything will be sorted out soon. A special thanks to the support staff for the server, as they managed to restore the database at 5am this morning.--Matthew

Post by **Red Atomic** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 3:28 am

This completely screwed up boinc for me, had to reset Milkyway before any project could connect again.

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Fri Nov 06, 2009 1:24 am

News for the 4th Nov 2009:

We've been looking into the website performance and it looks like we're going to be ordering some more hardware in the next couple weeks which should improve the performance. Until then you're probably just going to have to bear with the website slowness. I'm currently trying to finish up my phd thesis (I defend in less than 2 weeks), so I probably won't be frequenting the forums very much until then.--Travis

I've started some new searches with larger sized workunits, so hopefully these will help the server strain. Let us know how they're running.--Travis

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Tue Jan 12, 2010 6:21 am

11 Jan 2010

Well, I tried to run the script to update the news forum, and it ended up crashing halfway through so we have a lot of REALLY old news :) I'm going to try and fix this.
--Travis

Well, it looks like our old news couldn't make the transition to the new software. Hopefully it won't be missed too much. I think we've gotten most of the server problems ironed out, so let me know how things are working.

Testing the new news forum. Can anyone see this? :)

10 Jan 2010

I've tried making a change to the feeder which I think might increase the websites performance. Let me know how it goes. I'm also still working on trying to figure out the issue with profiles not updating, but I'm hoping to have it worked out in the next day or two.--Travis

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Tue Jan 19, 2010 8:48 am

17 Jan 2010:

I applied a patch which should hopefully fix the CPU utilization of the GPU applications, which was causing some users problems with running the CPU app alongside the GPU app. Let me know how it works.

18 Jan 2010:

Some of our users have said that they're having problems using the ATI application on an anonymous platform; when they have settings that specify no cpu, and no nvidia gpu work, and only ATI gpu work. If anyone is having this problem please post your app_info.xml so I can send it to the boinc_dev mailing list to get it debugged. thanks!
--Travis

19 Jan 2010:

I updated the server with the fix for people whose app_plan.xml with count set < 1. Let me know if it worked.

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Sun Jan 24, 2010 1:36 am

22 Jan 2010:

I've implemented optimistic and pessimistic validation for the particle swarm searches now as well (as opposed to just the differential evolution searches that were running before). I've tested them quite a bit so I think it's working correctly, but just warning you the server might crash a few times in the next few days while I get all the bugs sorted out.
Let me know if you're having any problems with the ps_s222_opt_1, ps_s222_pes_1 workunits.

I'm lowering the purge time (sorry) to help speed up the database. This should hopefully improve response time for the webpage and downloading new workunits.

Post by **Shaalae** » Wed Jan 27, 2010 4:52 pm

I'm having troubles with a few milkyway wus. One wu is going into the seventh hour now and others are taking over 2 hours. i don't know what's going on - anybody an idea? something wrong with the app for mw? wu broken?

edit: most of them are ready now, they were validated and i got credits, so no real harm done. But it is strange...

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Wed Jan 27, 2010 11:26 pm

I just started back at MW a couple of days ago. The units are taking about 4 1/2 hours on my system and that is with using an opt. app. I do remember a little while back they increased the run time. If you have just started back then this may be it. Otherwise if you have been crunching with them recently then you may have gotten a 'bad' workunit or two. Sometimes happens.

Post by **Shaalae** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 5:28 am

thx. i will watch the next mw wus closely...

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 5:33 am

Further to Shaalae's problem. I have also seemed to pick up a workunit that is not normal. After nearly 30 minutes it is only 1.06% done. I have suspended this unit and moved on to the next which seems to be running fine. I think I will have to pay closer attention and see what happens. Also, have not seen anything on the MW boards about bad units yet.

Post by **Buga1** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 6:33 am

Seems to be here and there, Ive had some wu's take 30 + mins. Didn't notice them running, but I see them in my validated list at MW. They seem to be fine and granted credit. Just taking a long time. Nee to look some more.

Rick

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Tue Feb 02, 2010 5:08 am

29 Jan 2010:

I really think I fixed them now. Finally!

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Thu Feb 04, 2010 3:03 am

03 Feb 2010:

Sorry about the earlier outage. Everything should be up and running smoothly now.

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Fri Feb 12, 2010 10:04 am

10 Feb 2010:

Sorry about the outage. We had some hardware issues but everything should be back running smoothly now.

RPI has put out a press release about our project. Thanks everyone for all your help! http://news.rpi.edu:80/update.do?artcenterkey=2685

It looks like physorg picked up our press release, so I've shared the story on reddit.com.
If you get the chance, please go and upvote the reddit post so we can spread the news! :)

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Sun Feb 14, 2010 12:48 pm

13 Feb 2010:

Hey everyone,
I've joined the MilkyWay@Home project for the semester and have heard some rumblings of people wanting some sort of visualization, or screen saver, dare I say :-). We've come up with a few ideas and would like input on which sounds the most appealing to you.
The ideas are ordered from showing the most scientific data to the least. In other words, Idea 1 will give a very clear visualization of what the work units are doing, whereas Idea 3 is more eye candy with fewer details on the science. I want to know which end of the nitty-gritty/eye candy spectrum you prefer.
Idea 1: A zoomed in view of a wedge, displaying the streams being computed for the wedge with indications of progress so far, color-coding to indicate what stars are in what stream, etc. A very good view of what really is being computed, but not much of an overall picture.
Idea 2: An alternating view of the galaxy that starts zoomed out (showing the current best model of the galaxy), followed by a zoom or similar transfer to showing the currently computing wedge. These views would alternate at some specified time interval.
Idea 3: A constant zoomed out view of the galaxy with maybe some small pictures on the sides showing a currently computing wedge and some sort of progress indicator for current work units.
Obviously it would be ideal to incorporate aspects of all different views, but given time constraints, I'd like to focus my efforts on the most popular idea. I encourage you to throw out your own modifications on the ideas and we'll hash through this.
Let 'em rip
-Eric

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Fri Feb 19, 2010 1:30 am

18 Feb 2010:

Matt has started up some new searches on a different area of the Milky Way and it looks like the server is having trouble keeping up with requests for the new data file of stars. Hopefully things will go back to normal after the new data file has been sent out to most of our users.
We're also in the process of purchasing more RAM for the server (which seems to be the current bottleneck), so hopefully this will help the problem in the future.

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Thu Mar 11, 2010 5:01 am

11 Mar 2010:

Matt tried to start up some new searches (and looked like everything went wrong yet again). I've removed those and will start up some others (that shouldn't have any problems). I'll be meeting with Matt to go over the process of starting searches again so we stop having these problems. --Travis

I'd also like to put a note out there to people running scripts to cancel WUs from certain searches, asking you to stop. These can lead to some bad server problems where some WUs accumulate on the server because they're not being processed fast enough. We'll be taking some steps on the server end to stop this kind of activity, but until that gets finished I'd like to ask people to stop. If it continues I'll start banning or zeroing out offending users credit. --Travis

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Sat Mar 20, 2010 2:54 am

19 Mar 2010:

Sorry about the downtime. I've been trying to figure out a problem where a lot of workunits are being returned as invalid. I'm hoping the searches running now shouldn't have the problem.

Post by **Gavin Shaw** » Sat Jun 26, 2010 3:05 am

25 Jun 2010:

We're looking into the error users are getting fetching the project list, and I think I put in a fix. Please let us know if you're still having problems.

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