I got a small credit bump today at BOINCstats and it now matches what shows on my CPDN account. However, my account hasn't shown any increase for quite a few days even while several of my models have been trickling away with (seemingly) no trouble. That issue seems related to what's been posted in Trickles not updating credits.

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I got a small credit bump today at BOINCstats and it now matches what shows on my CPDN account. However, my account hasn't shown any increase for quite a few days even while several of my models have been trickling away with (seemingly) no trouble. . .

Me too.

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Best wishes:)

There was a database dump at 11:59 yesterday, containing the credit data as at Mon, 09 Jun 2014 10:20:19 GMT.

Probably the result of various emails left for the admins over the weekend.

Hi,

The db_dump script won't run in daemon mode on our server, so I have to run it manually until I can recompile our boinc daemons.

I ran it manually yesterday.

The recompiling won't happen for a while, because we are in the middle of major work to improve the back end storage servers.

In the meantime, I will run the script manually whenever I get the chance, which won't be until tomorrow (Wed 11 June).

Jonathan Miller
CPDN Sys-Admin

In the meantime, I will run the script manually whenever I get the chance, which won't be until tomorrow (Wed 11 June).

To save you a chore, now we're up-to-date with the export, there's no point in re-running db_dump until the next time trickles-to-credits has run.

And there's not much point running trickles-to-credits until the missing trickles have been recorded in the database (which seems to be happening right now - apparently I'm reporting about one trickle a minute :-D ).

Not sure if this is the place to post this or not but I recently finished 5 workunits, each taking a little more than 100 hours to complete. All 5 finished without error, but the credit were a little disappointing (and in 3 cases VERY disappointing):

http://climateapps2.oerc.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/result.php?resultid=16479705 - 399 Granted Credits

http://climateapps2.oerc.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/result.php?resultid=16479704 - 0 Granted Credits

http://climateapps2.oerc.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/result.php?resultid=16479697 - 0 Granted Credits

http://climateapps2.oerc.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/result.php?resultid=16435396 - 0 Granted Credits

http://climateapps2.oerc.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/result.php?resultid=16479699 - 1194 Granted Credits

The thing is just 3 months ago I did several tasks of about the same duration (100+ hours) and got 2386 Granted Credits for each one.

Example:
http://climateapps2.oerc.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/result.php?resultid=16308073

Are credits still being processed on these 5? They finished about a week ago.

I don't want to seem like a credit monkey but... 300+ hours of processing for 3 successfully completed WUs and 0 Granted Credits is sort of tough.

Fox, the credit calculation script hasn't run for about ten days now. When it does run, you'll get your credits.

Awesome. Thanks for the info!

So any idea on when the credit calculation script will run? I havent seen any adjustment to my balance for 12 days now. Im not actually that fussed about the credits, but they are a nice feedback mechanism, telling me all is well with my computations/crunching.

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The credit script will run when it will run.
This project, credits are the least worry for the support crew.
I only hope (but don't worry) that the support crew totally forgets how to make the credits show up. Or did say backwards. ??

It will happen. Probably. Sometime.
Other priorities supervene.

Que sera, sera.

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Running the credit script may well be the least important priority for the support crew, and it may not be that important for the hardcore regular contributors to these message boards. However, credit is an important feedback for ordinary participants running climateprediction on their computer, perhaps in conjunction with other BOINC projects.

When I see the climateprediction credit flatline (which for me has been going on since 2nd June) it's discouraging. I'm no longer sure if I'm contributing, and I'm also not sure how the lack of credit is affecting how BOINC calculates the ratio of work between projects: will BOINC decide that as I've apparently done no work on climateprediction recently I must be in need of many more workunits? Maybe not - it might calculate in a different way. But I don't know.

The impression I get from this (and from the weird way in which the longest workunits have the shortest deadlines) is that the project is under-resourced or badly structured. As I say, it's discouraging.

Graham

The lack of credit updates doesn't affect the ratio of work between projects.

BOINC clients 6.12 and before divide up your 'resource share' settings on the basis of the time spent on each project: BOINC clients 7.0 and later maintain their own internal estimate of what credit might have been, and divide resources according to that.

So one small reassurance, but I agree 100% with all your other points.

However, credit is an important feedback for ordinary participants running climateprediction on their computer, perhaps in conjunction with other BOINC projects.

An alternative way of ensuring all is well is checking the Advanced > Event Log which will tell you that sheduler requests are being handled and zip files uploaded.

the weird way in which the longest workunits have the shortest deadlines

With CPDN you will still get credits for work submitted past the deadline and it still gets used. The reason some very long work units have a short deadline is that it has been requested by the scientists submitting work to the project. It probably means someone has a deadline to finish their PHD or the money for their particular bit of research is likely to run out.

Graham -- I'm much like you in this regard. I realize that the project players have place either a 'least important' *or not of any consequence* priority regarding credit script handling. Like the project, ordinary participants have priorities. As one of those ordinary participants, one who has participated in this project for 9 years, I too have priorities. As a result, when one of my systems which supported Climate needed to be reconfigured, with BOINC installed from scratch, I did NOT include Climate as one of its projects.

There are plenty of other projects out there, some of which are doing quite good work with user contributions. For them, user contributions have a higher priority and users respond to that. For that matter, there are plenty of projects out there whose work is relatively trivial in the scheme of things, but they too have a significantly higher priority regarding the 'care and feeding' of users and again, users respond to that.

To me, the priorities a project has represents choices they make. The response they get from the user community represents the choices the user community makes..

Running the credit script may well be the least important priority for the support crew, and it may not be that important for the hardcore regular contributors to these message boards. However, credit is an important feedback for ordinary participants running climateprediction on their computer, perhaps in conjunction with other BOINC projects.

When I see the climateprediction credit flatline (which for me has been going on since 2nd June) it's discouraging. I'm no longer sure if I'm contributing, and I'm also not sure how the lack of credit is affecting how BOINC calculates the ratio of work between projects: will BOINC decide that as I've apparently done no work on climateprediction recently I must be in need of many more workunits? Maybe not - it might calculate in a different way. But I don't know.

The impression I get from this (and from the weird way in which the longest workunits have the shortest deadlines) is that the project is under-resourced or badly structured. As I say, it's discouraging.

Graham

A new user here, echoing what others have said about credits being an important feedback mechanism for contributors. Since I added this project over a month ago I've only received one single credit update. I'm not a credit whore (or else I wouldn't be participating in this project at all) but like all humans, I need simple regular feedback to confirm that what I'm doing is having the affect I think it is.

Consequently I've turned off this project on all my computers except one, at least until I see a credit update. Please remember that BOINC is not about getting computers on board for your project, it's about getting *people* on board. People think differently to computers and it's important to keep your people happy if you want to keep using their computers.

I've been ignoring this thread, but it's late (well, the small hours) and I can't sleep.

I have to say that the question of credit updates is a matter of the most profound indifference. I can see that a minority of people, running multiple office computers, may be using these to alert them to problems with their own machines and how they handle BOINC but, for someone like me who joined relatively late, and with a good but hardly top-end laptop, I'm never going to be able to compete on points with those people. I'll contribute what I can. I can see from my own user record that I've added a small addition to the total. The laptop can't run any faster.

The project, meanwhile, does not hire script kiddies. Their programmers have better things to do, like ensuring the servers stay online and ready to handle vast quantities of fluid dynamics data (I currently have a .zip sitting on my system that just will not upload, not for the first time, even this week). I couldn't get in to the message boards over the weekend. I rely on those to ensure nothing untoward has happened to the project, like the upload of the wrong files, and to give me some feedback on what my computer's hard word is being used for.

I think it's much more important that they concentrate on jobs like those than worry about a points system that just promotes unfair comparisons. Someone nursing along a old single-core PC won't keep up with my laptop, but my laptop will never keep up with someone with access to a 64-core workstation, so I'm not going to worry about it, and I'm not going to nag the tech crew over it when they have better things to do.

Some good points made above, from different viewpoints. Thanks for the thoughtful and useful responses, especially for the reassurance about the way BOINC works.

I should maybe add that, like Niall, I'm not worried about competing with other participants for credit - I just like to compare between projects. And of course I agree that the scientific work is far more important than allocating credit. But the point made by a couple of people about engaging participants and not just computers is also, I think, a valid one.

Graham

Running the credit script may well be the least important priority for the support crew, and it may not be that important for the hardcore regular contributors to these message boards. However, credit is an important feedback for ordinary participants running climateprediction on their computer, perhaps in conjunction with other BOINC projects.

When I see the climateprediction credit flatline (which for me has been going on since 2nd June) it's discouraging. I'm no longer sure if I'm contributing, and I'm also not sure how the lack of credit is affecting how BOINC calculates the ratio of work between projects: will BOINC decide that as I've apparently done no work on climateprediction recently I must be in need of many more workunits? Maybe not - it might calculate in a different way. But I don't know.

The impression I get from this (and from the weird way in which the longest workunits have the shortest deadlines) is that the project is under-resourced or badly structured. As I say, it's discouraging.

Graham

The funny in this is, that before the share was computed on time spend, then this credit new approach came along, discovery was made that credit gets assigned with [large] delay and thus work shares would not be balanced [with block processing per project anyway taking a longer time]. The base design would have addressed the excessive credit awarders too, presuming cpu and gpu are considered 2 different resources, then the client starts computing it's own credit, and we're in effect back to pure time share at client side. Lol.

Yes, got one 22 day job with 90 day deadline and 7 more euros done in 80 hours and due in 365 days. Can you follow? Mind you the long job is a _4 copy, maybe Miles & Co are now finally in a rush to get a result off this full coupled ocean model and conclude that experiment?

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Coelum Non Animum Mutant, Qui Trans Mare Currunt

The full resolution ocean models had a short deadline because the researchers wanted the results quickly. Later results still got and will get used and will still get credits even if submitted after the, "deadline." Most CPDN tasks only have a deadline at all because the BOINC software demands it. There is more about this on other threads.

As for credit itself, the competing view is for those wanting to compete. Credit is the only measure we have for cross project contribution measure. Mind you, if exports are not run either, how can one compare? On CPDN your account it shows 77k credit, but on the bottom section summary it shows as having 34k, RAC zero. Surely I'm missing something.

Not good if this is not addressed timely, indeed the last credit I see given is of June 2, but then work dried up for a while, seemingly somewhere between June 1 and June 18 when new work was received, with CPDN actually having a work share of greater than zero at this time, all others defined 0, acting as backup. Either way, no RAC and think that's a value computed over 60 days.

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Coelum Non Animum Mutant, Qui Trans Mare Currunt