I have recently joined ClimatePrediction and would like a little reassurance about the estimated run time of my WU.

It\'s 3000+ hours, which I\'ve guestimated to between 4 and 5 months of 24/7 crunching.

I truly don\'t have a problem with that sort of runtime. From chatter on my team\'s (KWSN!) message board, I knew that climate models took a l - o - n - g time and deliberately put the project on a very stable linux box for exactly that reason.

My jittery-ness (is that a word?) stems from a concern that the BOINC manager might reach some threshold heretofore unknown to me and abort the WU for exceeding a runtime limit.

Is there a preference setting that I should change to avoid this problem, or is it even a problem?

If cpdn models overrun their deadline, the server ignores this. Disable the screensaver - it slows the crunching down. Make sure that in your preferences you\'ve said YES to leave applications in memory while suspended? And when you do need to exit from boinc, try to do this shortly after a 6-day checkpoint when the countdown to the next one is high - just after 432.

Two must-read items. In the READMEs linked through my sig, in the one about avoiding crashes, item #1 by Les about backups. And item #5 by Mike on how to avoid all the usual pitfalls.

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Thank you very much!

I\'ve got a similar problem, but worse - the estimated time to completion is 13000 hours (!) - and the deadline is given as less than a year away; does this mean it\'s impossible to finish the work?

I\'ve got a similar problem, but worse - the estimated time to completion is 13000 hours (!) - and the deadline is given as less than a year away; does this mean it\'s impossible to finish the work?

If I remember correctly the minimum requirement for this project is a 1ghz processor with more than 512mb of RAM. While it is possible to run on slower systems it requires much more babysitting. As mentioned previously the server is not really concerned about the deadline as long as it gets trickles at least every 6 weeks.

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BOINCing since 2002/12/8

Just to be picky, (sorry John :) ), and for others reading this in the future, it\'s 512mb of ram PER CONCURRENT MODEL!
2 models (on an HT processor, or dual dore) needs 1G of ram.

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Backups: Here

Squid One, to expand on what John and Les said. Your AMD has enough memory for a model, but the Intel has only 256Mb RAM, which is likely to cause a model crash sooner or later. If you do run a model on the Intel, you\'d do well to make frequent backups just in case. For how to, see Les\'s signature.

The project minimum specification for CPU is 1.6GHz. But I did complete a model with a 1.33GHz machine. My computer was doing 6sec per timestep. Squid, your Intel\'s doing 18sec/TS. This would mean at least 2 years running 24/7 to complete the model. I would advise disabling the screensaver to see to what extent this speeds the processing up. Probably quite a lot.

But I wonder whether this computer would be better used on a boinc project with shorter workunits. You wouldn\'t need to back them up and you\'d be able to finish them easily. Maybe more satisfying that giving the computer a massive cpdn job it\'s not really designed for.

When your AMD starts trickling you\'ll need to look at its sec/TS.

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