I posted this to the forum earlier today, but thought I'd better send it here also. stan

I almost didn't start cp back up when it went to BOINC because of problems that I had with the SETI BOINC (I have not gone back to SETI BOINC because of the problems). Anyway, when I download a new work unit it will say it will take about 2000 hours on my 1.3 Ghz machine which was acceptable as it took nearly 5 weeks on my 2.6 Ghz machine using the "classic" format. The first two work units quit after about 200 hours with a "client error" message. It uploads and gives me credit, but I wonder if it really is working or just a waste of my computer time for bad work units or bad BOINC problems.

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I posted on General Questions that it was my experience that only about 1 in 8 of the models on boinc completed. This ratio seems to be acceptable.

I too left Seti boinc (after 5 years 60,000+ classic units), I only run a token wu on a machine because of the cross user ID problem........

I have come to rather like this project as long as I dont woory about models completing, and actually because I have machines in several locations watching the stats lets me moniter those machines to see if I have a problem e.g, if a trickle dosent show up as expected.

I don't use the graphics much, have had several crashes that may be due to older cards/drivers and I always suspend and then exit model before shutting down which seems to help the 1 in 8 a bit. Also I don't upgrade to the boys at seti particular version of the week.

I will never return to seti, and I wish I could get away from the boinc platform, but in the mean time this is a pretty good project as long as you dont expect to see to many models to complete....

I have one model within 60 hours of completing that may not make it...its been acting funny for the last several weeks...if there is a power failure I'm sure its a goner hehe

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>
> I posted on General Questions that it was my experience that only about 1 in 8
> of the models on boinc completed. This ratio seems to be acceptable.
>
> I too left Seti boinc (after 5 years 60,000+ classic units), I only run a
> token wu on a machine because of the cross user ID problem........
>
> I have come to rather like this project as long as I dont woory about models
> completing, and actually because I have machines in several locations watching
> the stats lets me moniter those machines to see if I have a problem e.g, if a
> trickle dosent show up as expected.
>
> I don't use the graphics much, have had several crashes that may be due to
> older cards/drivers and I always suspend and then exit model before shutting
> down which seems to help the 1 in 8 a bit. Also I don't upgrade to the boys at
> seti particular version of the week.
>
> I will never return to seti, and I wish I could get away from the boinc
> platform, but in the mean time this is a pretty good project as long as you
> dont expect to see to many models to complete....
>
> I have one model within 60 hours of completing that may not make it...its been
> acting funny for the last several weeks...if there is a power failure I'm sure
> its a goner hehe
>
>
>

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Answered my question. Any reason given why only 1 in 8 finish? I probably won't return to seti either and I started about a month after it got out of Beta testing. I don't think the BOINC platform is working (my opinion), but if the higher ups are ok with only 1 in 8 who am I to be concerned. I run CP on a machine that runs background programs only (24/7/365) so it's not like I'm out anything. Maybe I'll switch to Folding at Home or whatever else is out there later on, but I'll run this for a while. I run United Devices on my primary machine as a backgroung program.

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The biggest reason for the 1 in 8 ratio that I see is corruption of the client_state.xml file. Everything BOINC related on a given computer is stored in this file. There has been progress made on this issue, there is now a client_state_prev.xml so sometimes a error is recoverable. Exiting BOINC manually rather than allowing the OS to kill it also helps keep this file intact.

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BOINC WIKI

BOINCing since 2002/12/8

I do not worry too much if only 1 in 8 runs completes sucessfully, when over 70% of model years calculated are in sucessfully completed models.

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