WCG Questions

[metallicafan]

Well I was kind of curious about the WCG project so last night I decided to install that on the second core of my Opty (first core is running my GPU2 client). I was very impressed with how easy it was to install (with help from the Hard Guides) and how clean the interface was. I really like the client thus far and I'm thinking about dedicating a couple more CPUs to the project. I might switch over all my standard clients to the WCG project. Do my part to make the Horde the #1 WCG team!

I do have a couple questions however. I have completed a couple WUs now and they dont seem to upload back to the server. They still seems to be sitting in the Queue with a status of Ready to Report. I tried to take a look at the preferences but I figured the defaults were probably pretty good except for the CPU settings of course. Anyone have any ideas? Is there any preferences that I absolutely MUST change out of the box?

Thanks.

 

[alan2308]

I have never been able to make heads or tails out of the scheduling with WCG WU's but rest assured that they will upload just fine on their own.

 

[brycejones]

I have never been able to make heads or tails out of the scheduling with WCG WU's but rest assured that they will upload just fine on their own.

seconded!

 

[metallicafan]

Do the WCG stats just update once per day?

 

[sirmonkey1985]

Do the WCG stats just update once per day?

yes...

 

[nomad8u]

Well I was kind of curious about the WCG project so last night I decided to install that on the second core of my Opty (first core is running my GPU2 client). I was very impressed with how easy it was to install (with help from the Hard Guides) and how clean the interface was. I really like the client thus far and I'm thinking about dedicating a couple more CPUs to the project. I might switch over all my standard clients to the WCG project. Do my part to make the Horde the #1 WCG team!

I do have a couple questions however. I have completed a couple WUs now and they dont seem to upload back to the server. They still seems to be sitting in the Queue with a status of Ready to Report. I tried to take a look at the preferences but I figured the defaults were probably pretty good except for the CPU settings of course. Anyone have any ideas? Is there any preferences that I absolutely MUST change out of the box?

Thanks.

Sounds great! Nice to see some additional horsepower to help push the team to what I hope will be the top 50 by this time next year.

I can shed a little light on the uploading of WU here with my observations and what I did to tweak it a bit. But first understand that I pretty much ALWAYS have 1 sometimes as many as 8-10 files sitting in the queue ready to upload.

I have 4 systems crunching WCG 2x Q6600; 1x E4300; 1x P4HT. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I had an Athlon XP 2600+ running in place of the E4300.

When you finish a WU, some initial data is uploaded (very small amount) that basically says "hey this WU is done and will be inbound on the next update". The actual data sits in the queue waiting to be uploaded until that machine requests more work. THEN it uploads all completed WU for that machine (PC) and gets however much more work it needs to fill your queue back up.

You can control the amount of your work queue (I have the Q6600 set to keep about 1.5 days worth of work in my queue and the E4300 and P4 are set to about 1/2 day each) in your "local" BOINC Manager from the "Advanced/Preferences" menu on the "Network Usage" tab. It's a combination of 2 settings. "Connect about every xx.xx days" and "Additional work buffer". I have my systems set to connect about every 0.0010 days which I think if I recall correctly works out to be about every couple of hours. The work buffer gives you some cushion in case the servers or site goes down so your systems will keep crunching. These two settings seem to work hand in hand to keep a steady flow of work going and uploading.

The client is self tuning in that it took my systems about a week to hit their rythm of requesting work and uploading so don't expect these changes to show an effect immediately. You can "force" an upload but this just screws with the system self tuning so I learned to avoid it after a week or so. These setting in the local clients override the ones you setup from the website BTW...

I don't think there's really any "must do" setting other than what you want for "connect every" and "work buffer". It took me a little over a month to get these 2 setting the way I like them (change the connect every and wait 3-4 days and watch the log). Since they had a "major" outage from a snow storm (a couple of days) a couple years ago I plan on setting my work buffers up to 2 days from December through March just in case. This WILL affect my WU upload times though...

It's a great client overall. Once you get it setup and tuned to your liking you won't even know it's there.

The official WCG stats update at 2359 UTC. The Free-DC stats update a bit more often but not sure how often, ours update once a day at 2100 MST I think. There's a cool little Firefox extension so you can monitir your total points/RAC from the Firefox status bar. Got to Firefox add-ons and search for "Boinc".

 

[metallicafan]

Hey thanks for the info nomad8u. Seems like a great project and a very mature client. If things go well here in the first week or so I will probably devote a few more cores to the grid.

Thanks for the info on the WUs. I guess its just a little different than what is normal with the fah clients. Not really a big deal if it waits to upload I just wanted to make sure I wasn't configuring something wrong.

So the WUs will upload once your machine needs more work? So if you have a low "connect every" variable (like every couple hours) and a higher work buffer variable shouldnt that keep your queue full but still push finished units up every couple hours?

One other question - I have seen Challenges on the WCG website, but I looked at the Horde's challenge history and it says we have never competed in a challenge. Is there any reason why? I think that it could be a fun thing to do as a team.

Thanks again for the advice. Time for more D.

 

[capreppy]

I've signed up for WCG, but haven't moved any F@H clients to it yet. At some point, I will, but want to keep F@H SMP clients running for now

 

[nomad8u]

So the WUs will upload once your machine needs more work? So if you have a low "connect every" variable (like every couple hours) and a higher work buffer variable shouldnt that keep your queue full but still push finished units up every couple hours?

One other question - I have seen Challenges on the WCG website, but I looked at the Horde's challenge history and it says we have never competed in a challenge. Is there any reason why? I think that it could be a fun thing to do as a team.

Thanks again for the advice. Time for more D.

Yes your WU will upload every time the scheduler goes out to request more work. If you set a higher work buffer, it'll upload a bit more initially but will eventually reach an equilibrium again and be about the same as it was at the lower level of work buffer. The only reason to have a higher work buffer is to prevent idle machines if the network or collection servers are down etc.

I saw the Challenges thing but haven't looked into it yet. Yeah, it might be fun to get involved in some.

I made a mistake yesterday on the stats updating. Here's the info direct from the FAQ:

World Community Grid statistics are updated twice a day. This occurs at 00:00 and 12:00 UTC. This includes all statistics on World Community Grid except for Team Statistics.

Team Statistics are updated once a day at 00:00 UTC.

The multiple updates a day will continue as long as the statistics update does not significantly interfere with members use of the site or overall system performance.

So I take that to mean your "personal" stats update twice/day and the team stats once...

I've signed up for WCG, but haven't moved any F@H clients to it yet. At some point, I will, but want to keep F@H SMP clients running for now

I saw your name on the Team stats @WCG. Nice to have you join us whenever. Any unused resources that aren't being used for F@H will get put to good use on WCG IMHO.