No progress on running task

[Fardringle]

It has been a VERY long time since there was any RNA World work available, so I was excited to see a task show up in the running tasks lists in my BOINC Manager. However, after five days running with no interruptions (no pauses, no suspend, no computer reboot), the task is still only showing 0.100% completed. The workunit history says that this task has been handed out by the server many dozens of times since December 2013 and has failed or aborted on every attempt. Is it just being given out repeatedly so that people like me will get excited, or are the project admins just hoping that someone will eventually actually complete it?

This is the computer:
http://www.rnaworld.de/rnaworld/show_ho ... stid=32109

And this is the task:
http://www.rnaworld.de/rnaworld/workuni ... id=6330930

[gemini8]

The admins want to see someone complete it.
This and other long-running tasks are the last few of a batch of monsters that take months, some even years to complete.
They're getting fewer in number.

If you want to try getting it done, handle it with absolute care.
If you don't want to, just abort it like the other one your machine had some years ago - and do it earlier.

I'm still waiting for one monsters of those to find onto one of my machines, and while waiting I read everything about them I could on these forums, especially the warnings and explanations Jacob Klein offered, who is sort of a monster hunters.

You may find this information interesting:
viewtopic.php?f=75&t=16160

[Fardringle]

Thank you for the link to that discussion! It is interesting to see the "battles" over the years to complete some of these tasks! I would definitely love to see this task be completed by my computer so I'll let it keep going. I was just concerned that it hasn't showed any progress at all yet, but I guess that's fairly normal for these monsters.

The big test/concern is if it will survive a computer reboot. I generally keep my computers running 24/7, but Windows does sometimes force reboots for updates whether we like it or not, and I will have to shut the computer down for a while next week to replace a couple of dying cooling fans when their replacements are delivered.

[gemini8]

If you know of downtimes thate are longer than two weeks, feel free to ask the admins to further prolong the deadline (which is else auto-extended by two weeks).
Unfortunately automatic reboots may or may not kill your work-unit.
Good luck getting around the further!

[Michael H.W. Weber]

The big test/concern is if it will survive a computer reboot. I generally keep my computers running 24/7, but Windows does sometimes force reboots for updates whether we like it or not, and I will have to shut the computer down for a while next week to replace a couple of dying cooling fans when their replacements are delivered.

You should never allow your OS to re-boot without your direct command to do so. In Win7 one could entirely disable this auto-reboot.
With Win10 I am not sure. To me it looks like you can pause updates for up to roughly one month - a setting I make use of regularly, because often the new Microsoft updates are buggy. So if you wait for a few weeks, any fix will already be implemented.

When rebooting with one of our Monster tasks (there is reasons for why we call them like this as you now know...), first gently shut down the BOINC manager and wait a minute or so until you do not see any relevant RAM & CPU activity anymore. Then re-boot and everythig should be fine.

Michael.

[Fardringle]

Thank you for the information. Windows updates cannot always be delayed or prevented in Windows 10. But I'll definitely encourage a graceful shut down when I am ready to install the new fans, and hopefully take care of any pending updates at the same time.

[Michael H.W. Weber]

Thank you for the information. Windows updates cannot always be delayed or prevented in Windows 10. But I'll definitely encourage a graceful shut down when I am ready to install the new fans, and hopefully take care of any pending updates at the same time.

Excellent.
To the best of our knowledge, thess sudden re-boots are the major cause of task abortion / failures (a result of Virtualbox usage).

Michael.

[Fardringle]

I followed your instruction to shut down the BOINC client first, then shut down Windows after all BOINC activity stopped in Task Manager. I had Windows install its pending updates and replaced the case fans at the same time. Progress on the task still only shows 0.100%, but the Elapsed Time counter on the RNA task resumed from right where it was when I shut down, so I hope that means it's OK.

[Michael H.W. Weber]

You can't give much on the progress bars with these long tasks, so it should all be fine.
And to avoid disappointments: Please check the ID of that task in your RNA World account so see how long your wingmen have already crunched on this type of task. They are really tremendously long, so please be aware of that.

Michael.

[Jacob Klein]

Offhand, it seems suspicious to me that the progress percentage isn't going up.
Perhaps it's not running as high-priority mode, and thus is barely ever running.
There are ways to force it to run as high-priority, but I will only disclose those privately.
If you'd like me to look at your task with you carefully, using TeamViewer, then PM me.

ALSO

I'm your wingman for your task, which failed on one of my PCs but I was able to complete it outside of BOINC.

It took me a combination of:
108.0 days on "Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU Q 740 @ 1.73GHz" running half threads, in BOINC
plus
238.2 days on overclocked "Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5960X CPU @ 3.00GHz" running half threads, outside of BOINC

Here's a very rough idea of how long it might take you to complete. It's difficult to know for sure, because you're using AMD and I used Intel.
I recall making sure I had half of my threads free so the CPU would boost its clocks... so the "Wingman Half" rows might be most relevant.
So ... Maybe 211 to 422 days, but possibly more since AMD sometimes takes longer if I recall

Code: Alles auswählen

Threads: You All, Wingman All:		20,036,482	231d 21:41:22
Threads: You All, Wingman Half:		36,513,877	422d 14:44:37
Threads: You All, Wingman Single:	38,782,340	448d 20:52:20
Threads: You Half, Wingman All:		22,210,481	257d 1:34:41
Threads: You Half, Wingman Half:	40,475,706	468d 11:15:06
Threads: You Half, Wingman Single:	42,990,302	497d 13:45:02
Threads: You Single, Wingman All:	10,047,599	116d 6:59:59
Threads: You Single, Wingman Half:	18,310,439	211d 22:13:59
Threads: You Single, Wingman Single:	19,447,994	225d 2:13:14
BOINC Measured FLOPS (million ops/sec):	20,109,843	232d 18:04:03

[Fardringle]

Interesting info, Jacob. The BOINC manager estimates about 51 days remaining on the task, but it's hard to say how accurate that might be since the progress counter isn't really changing.

RNA World is set to very high priority. The only time the task is NOT running was when I rebooted the computer yesterday.

[Jacob Klein]

Alright. Well as I said, I estimate it will take 211 to 422 days, or more. And it's a concern to me that progress isn't increasing. And if you want me to look at it, you may contact me.