Hi All (and bearnol!),

I just wanted to say hi and open a thread related to the Formula Boinc sprint.

@bearnol: I assume that you do know what's going on at the moment but, then again, maybe you want to ask a qustion or two

Looking forward to the competition guys. I get the sense that there is quite a bit of focus on this one!

Thanks,

Damien (UK Boinc Team)

Indeed, it seems that you have been chosen :) I hope that our crunching does some good things for your project objectives!

Thanks for your efforts keeping everything up. I'm sure that will be a lot of hard work for you over the next days.

@bearnol, the official start of the sprint is about 1h from now. 9pm BST if you're in the UK (which I think you are?).

You can expect a huge load of new task requests and also task reports I expect. Of course, you might already be tracking this ...

Good luck!

Hello,
Bearmol, perhaps i am wrong, but it seem you not know the sprint between all teams around the world !
Please visit http://formula-boinc.org/sprint.py?sprint=8&lang=&year=2020
All your servers needs to run.
But expect a huge load.
Happy crunch to everyone.

I think Bearnol needs a new server. :P

The project coped well with the bunkering phase of the sprint but not so well with the sprint proper. Uploads are almost impossible. At the last count I had just over 3000 completed WU that I'm stuck with and which are inching towards their deadline.

Please, please extend the deadlines (on all extant work if possible) as 48hrs seems unfairly low when server downtime can account for 24-36hrs of this entire period.


PS. Poor show that you don't get advanced notice of being selected for an FB sprint though

Hi all (and Damien)
So you guys have sprung a sprint on me, have you!!! :)
Don’t know how well the system’s going to cope... but I’m doing my best
J

Hi @bearnol,

I'm sure that there's a lot of pressure on your system. Sorry about that!

I would just like to add my voice to others here. Hopefully you are able to accept and process work soon, and I very much hope that tasks deadlines can be extended. Many of us will have work that was completed inside the deadlines but have not been able to upload / report.

Thanks for your consideration and good luck with your server(s)!

Uh-oh, looks like we might have done too much damage :(

Still, UK Boinc Team seems to be in the lead right now, so there's something right in the world :)

I do believe that I have LOST more points than I have ever earned on this project and all down to stupidly short deadlines which your own server cannot meet. Everything crunched in good time and yet still points lost at your end. I suggested on these forums back in January that 48hrs was not good.

There is no delicate way to say this but you are currently sitting on 15,000 completed WU from me & I will be less-than-chuffed if you flush these down the toilet. If they are not credited, I doubt very much if I will return to this project

All are still within deadline - indeed most were uploaded with 24hrs or more of deadline time remaining.

Hi all (including marsinph...)
Thanks for your concerns, folks, and good wishes
All I can really suggest atm is possibly this thread:
http://bearnol.is-a-geek.com/wanless2/forum_thread.php?id=287
J

Everyone knows this is a small project.

Send the hate to the FB project selectors for the sprints.

We all could be on WCG or Rosetta doing COVID-19 tasks instead, which CAN cope with the sprints.

Or, he could just take the multiple intelligent suggestions that have been made and actually do them to help this Sprint function.

Frustration, not hate, Steve. Two other occasions where project server downtime exceeded their own WU deadline were outwith any kind of a challenge. Extending the deadline IS under project admin control I believe.

And, yes as I said earlier, for FB to select a project without giving prior warning is outrageous

The reality is that our sprint loads are such a huge spike from 'normal' for a project like this one. I'm not sure that we can assume that every small project will be able to provision against 10x,20x,30x (or whatever) spikes in load like this. No point beating up poor bearnol here. Pretty sure it's more complicated than just turning his server back on ...

I agree that we would ideally attack the WCG Covid sub-project next time (not the whole of WCG - again)!

Not just this Sprint alone. I've lost tons of WUs not being credited due to either server downtime or "database could not open" OUTSIDE of challenges. Meaning on a regular basis, these errors would occurred from time to time and last long enough for the WUs to expired. I understand that it's a small project, and maybe a project that doesn't need anymore crunching. Just available for those who wants to hit milestones. But if it's a live project, then we need communication. We need to address the issues when they came up, even if it just a FUN project. Suggestions had been made, if you like/don't like it then just give an answer/response. Not too hard is it?

Yeah, I could simply abort the many hundreds of completed WUs stuck in the pipe if bearnol would simply indicate that they will expire without being credited. Being kept in suspense and having to keep trying to contact the server is just no fun.