I recently restarted computing for climateprediction. I had the same computer on my host list three times after I added back this time around. I merged them successfully and all the credit rolled into the latest host correctly. However, the next day or so, all that credit disappeared and I had a new slate for this same host. Where has the credit gone and who do I need to contact about this?

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This is a known defect of CPDN's implementation of the BOINC server software, possibly related to the handling of archived results. As far as I know (i.e. by checking the effect of my own host merges) this merely loses the association between credits on old hosts and the credit total on the new host: the user total is correct.

If that isn't the case then please post back, as user totals really do need to be correct. (Host totals ought, of course, to be correct as well but unfortunately CPDN seems to have a high tolerance for this kind of error.)

Thank you for the reply! It seems like nothing has been lost from total credit and is accurate. Will just have to live with it!

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Guys, I have a similar problem. After crunching since 2005, on various machines I recently upgraded my machine from Win XP to 7. I worked for some time with the same version of BOINC until one of my projects I was working on finished. I then upgraded to the newest version of BOINC yesterday. On starting BOINC after a reboot it didn't restart the previous project. Bit of a pain.. but no big problem it was already long overdue! The bigger pain is that I now have 300 something credit points, and last time I looked it was a much greater number.

How did this happen and is there any way of getting my credit back? I hoped that it was just a matter of time and I just had to wait a bit for things to sincronize, but 24 hours later and Im still on 300...

My page: http://climateapps2.oerc.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/show_user.php?userid=76760

Any thoughts?

Karl

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The reason that your previous model 'disappeared', is most likely because the new version of BOINC was installed into a different location.

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The reason that your credits are mucked up, (at least according to BOINCstats), is because you keep changing your user name on this project:

If you search there for drong0, you get 3 appearances.
All of these are 'owned' by drong0, but if you click on the Options button and then on the graph button at the right hand end of the line labelled Climate Prediction, the page for each of the 3 appearances is 'owned' by a different 'person':
Karl
Karl Stiller Work
drong0

For all of your credit to be 'owned' by the one person, all appearances MUST be registered by-and-to the one person.

Perhaps you registered here 3 times, each time with a different name?

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Backups: Here

Hmmm.. this is very strange.

I have always used the same account. Karl was I believe the first computer I crunched on, and then I added karl work which was my computer at a past workplace. Both these computers used to show up fine in the same account at the time.

When I installed this version I pointed the directories to the same directories that it was using before, and used the same username, however I had to reset my password. The previous version of BOINC was 6.6.20 and I installed the latest BOINC: 7.0.28. Could it be some sort of compatibility problem with a file left over from version 6.6.20?

Should I try uninstalling BOINC and cleaning out all the data directories?

Karl

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With computers that use Windows, they all get a name by default. This is what is used when first attaching them to a project, and it can then be changed if needed.

BUT ...
This name is ONLY visible to the user, under Domain name. To everyone else this field isn't visible.
And the name also shows under Name in your list of computers. To everyone one else, this column, and the one after (Location
), don't appear.
(Have a look at some one else's account to see what it looks like. e.g. Click on my name to the left of here.)

So, for these names to appear in BOINCstats, it would seem that you've done something different/unusual, such as also using this same name as the account name. But I don't recall seeing this sort of thing before, and I don't know how to fix it.

Some basics that may help:
BOINC (and the projects), use the email address as the unique identifier for a person, because it IS unique.

A user name can be changed if desired. BUT ... it should be the same on ALL projects, so that the stats sites can line up everyone's data across all projects. (The reason that you have 3 appearances on BOINCstats.)

Be careful in deleting things. I'd suggest that you save a copy of all xml files that start account_. e.g. account_climateprediction.xml
These files contain a descriptor for your account, part of which is <authenticator>. This is the account key that can be used as part of a login process, for when you forget one of the other parts.

Apparently it's impossible to downgrade from version 7.* to version 6.* of BOINC, because several files, one of which is client.state.xml, are totally different.
The only way to do it is to completely delete EVERYTHING, and then re-install a 6.* version.
And some early release versions of 7 had bugs that caused unexpected problems.
What effects the latest version has is something that I don't know, and am not in a hurry to find out. :)

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Backups: Here

And another thing: Hosts can't be 'unmerged', so if merging 3 of them with 3 different names caused it, then you may be stuck with 3 separate accounts and appearances on stats sites.

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Backups: Here

Some recent host merges have successfully transferred the credits to the new host. I'm not aware of any server software updates, so the reason may be that on these occasions the old host (with credits) was selected and merged into the new host (with no credits). It may be that on previous occasions the merge was performed the other way around and that is where the bug is.

... so the reason may be that on these occasions the old host (with credits) was selected and merged into the new host (with no credits). It may be that on previous occasions the merge was performed the other way around and that is where the bug is.

... this supposition appears to be wrong. Removing the project, then uninstalling BOINC, then re-installing and re-attaching created a new host: selecting the new host (with no credits) and merging into the old host (with credits) produced a merged host with the same number of credits. If this problem still exists there must be another explanation, perhaps to do with the treatment of archived results.