How should we do it?

Is RALPH running same WUs as R@H, with the newer executable code, in which case I set "No new work" for R@H and continue with RALPH-only?

Or is RALPH just test WUs with more or less "random" data, just to test things. In which case I'd keep RALPH with relatively small resource share?

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How should we do it?

Is RALPH running same WUs as R@H, with the newer executable code, in which case I set "No new work" for R@H and continue with RALPH-only?

Or is RALPH just test WUs with more or less "random" data, just to test things. In which case I'd keep RALPH with relatively small resource share?

Ralph is an Alpha test project. As such the Work units are not going to be available at all times and they are of a test nature. Credits are being awarded for Ralph, but credits are NOT a high priority for Ralph. As such if a work unit fails for any reason that prevents credit awarding, there will not be any adjustments made for that at a later date.

Rosetta is still the primary science project and you should run that if your interest is in Rosetta science.

If you want to help develop the next generation Rosetta application, then either run Ralph in tandem with Rosetta, or exclusively as you desire. But everyone should be advised, that Ralph is an ALPHA test environment. By definition things will not always run smoothly. Things like system aborted Work Units, application crashes, and even BOINC crashes may occur. You may have to spend a lot more time attending to your system with Ralph as well.

Many project issues that would be considered serious and require rapid action by the Project Team in a production environment, will not necessarily carry the same priority for the Ralph project, and users should realize that the only concerns for the Project Team relate to the stability of the Ralph Application the Work Units that it is designed to process.

Please take a moment to read This post concerning the Ralph project.

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How should we do it?

I run mostly Rosetta because that is the science research application, and put a lower resource share on Ralph. But it is a matter of personal preference of course. :)

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maybe is better to don't give credits at all :)

or maybe to not export stats, so the credit concern is no more.

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How should we do it?

I run mostly Rosetta because that is the science research application, and put a lower resource share on Ralph. But it is a matter of personal preference of course. :)

Sure, but if RALPH is supposed to also test against the 1% bug, we would need to run the PC WITHOUT the "Leave in mem when preempted" option, in which case the ordinary Rosetta WUs will bomb. After setting "Leave in mem when preempted" to "No", I just had a R WU bomb with "Computational error" after 7+ hr of CPU time...

So, if I understand correctly, running both Rosetta and RALPH on same PC with same BOINC settings would be counter-productive.

And btw, as far as I can tell, there is no way to change the "leave app in memory" per project or per PC or per location (home/work/school).

So, it seems to me at first glance, that the ONLY way to test RALPH for the "Leave in mem" issue, without killing Rosetta's WUs, would be to test RALPH on a PCs that only run RALPH (not R@H) and any projects unaffected by this setting, but which don't share Rosetta on other PCs (so I can set RALPH settings to "Leave app in mem" to "No", but this setting won't "propagate" to the R@H production PCs).

Maybe I am missing something?

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Just to clarify previous comments, I'm not talking about credits AT ALL.

It's only about the technical aspects of running RALPH and R@H side by side on the same PC or on PCs sharing some projects, so the "leave app in mem"=NO setting for RALPH can "spill-over" and break R@H WUs.

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And btw, as far as I can tell, there is no way to change the "leave app in memory" per project or per PC or per location (home/work/school).

"Leave in Memory" setting is under *General* preferences, not Ralph@Home preferences. You can set up different sets of preferences for Work, Home, School, ---. I set up "School" to have NO for Leave in Memory, and have 1 machine set to School. You should not run Rosetta on that machine, since it will error out. Other Boinc projects seem to be able to handle it, though. I have CPDN, Einstein, Seti, and Seti Beta on that machine, happily co-existing.

[edit]The [Work, Home, School, ---] settings apply to the entire machine, so all projects on that machine will run with those settings. Other machines can be set to different places, and will use different settings. If you only have one machine running BOINC, it really doesn't matter which location you use, just use the default. But you cannot then separate general preferences. They propagate to all projects. [/edit]

[edit]
I read this section more carefully, so I'll try to help clear up the misunderstanding:

So, it seems to me at first glance, that the ONLY way to test RALPH for the "Leave in mem" issue, without killing Rosetta's WUs, would be to test RALPH on a PCs that only run RALPH (not R@H) and any projects unaffected by this setting,

This is true.

but which don't share Rosetta on other PCs (so I can set RALPH settings to "Leave app in mem" to "No", but this setting won't "propagate" to the R@H production PCs).

This is not true. Set other non-Ralph PC's to a different location and the other projects will run according to that location. It goes by machine. You can even run Ralph on those, but you won't be testing the "leave in Memory" setting. You can test the run time there.
[/edit]

Enjoy.

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genes, thx for info, now that I had more time, I played with RALPH settings to find how to do separate configs, without having settings "spill over".

I've set the 1 PC which joined RALPH to "work" and "work"'s general settings include the "Leave app in memory when preempted"=NO. I'm not going to run R@H on this one for the time being (as long as I want to test if R v4.84 solved the issue we have with R v4.81)

Apparently a host (PC) can be in location "work" for project X and in location "home" for project Y (had to look in account_*.xml files, field "host_venue")

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genes, thx for info, now that I had more time, I played with RALPH settings to find how to do separate configs, without having settings "spill over".

I've set the 1 PC which joined RALPH to "work" and "work"'s general settings include the "Leave app in memory when preempted"=NO. I'm not going to run R@H on this one for the time being (as long as I want to test if R v4.84 solved the issue we have with R v4.81)

Apparently a host (PC) can be in location "work" for project X and in location "home" for project Y (had to look in account_*.xml files, field "host_venue")

Dimitris, I just had a 4.84 crash, so the outlook is not good.

This "work for project X and home for project Y" business has caused me no end of confusion since I am now running 8 PC's and a good assortment of projects. Managing all of their settings and deciding which project to update from is a *real pain*. I don't think Boinc was supposed to work that way, but it can end up that way, depending on the projects involved, and possibly each one's version of the server software. The projects are supposed to communicate with each other and propagate settings from the last one you changed. This assumes that you have joined *each one* with the same exact email address. (At least that's my understanding of it.)

BTW, I thoroughly enjoyed your web page with details on all the projects. Thanks!

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it's possible to configure a single host without the mess of home - work - school configurations.

simply stop the boinc app, make a backup copy of global_prefs.xml that is in the main boinc folder and remove or add this line if you want or not to leave the application in memory.

<leave_apps_in_memory/>

naturally if you change the general prefs again with a project website, in the next contact it will be overwritten.

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it's possible to configure a single host without the mess of home - work - school configurations.

simply stop the boinc app, make a backup copy of global_prefs.xml that is in the main boinc folder and remove or add this line if you want or not to leave the application in memory.

<leave_apps_in_memory/>

naturally if you change the general prefs again with a project website, in the next contact it will be overwritten.

The only way you can do that is if you only have one host.

There's been discussions about placing the prefs on the client side. Currently it's been decided to leave them on the server side.

There's been discussions about placing the prefs on the client side. Currently it's been decided to leave them on the server side.

*What is need them, is having more than "work home school" to play
*the optimum was if we had individual settings for each pc,
but at least a dozen off different names, to use accordding each group
of pcs is located, so we can set via web addequate preferences for each group
For example:
kitchen, bedroom, balcony, bathroom, terrace, back yard, garage, garden, hearth, dining room,
room of the employee, basement, covering, chicken coop, aquarium, orchard, vegetable garden, etc.

ps: how about ? "use separate preferences for _________" we name it

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There's been discussions about placing the prefs on the client side. Currently it's been decided to leave them on the server side.

*What is need them, is having more than "work home school" to play
*the optimum was if we had individual settings for each pc,
but at least a dozen off different names, to use accordding each group
of pcs is located, so we can set via web addequate preferences for each group
For example:
kitchen, bedroom, balcony, bathroom, terrace, back yard, garage, garden, hearth, dining room,
room of the employee, basement, covering, chicken coop, aquarium, orchard, vegetable garden, etc.

ps: how about ? "use separate preferences for _________" we name it

This is a BOINC issue not a Rosetta/Ralph issue. As for the number of venues, there are actually 4 venues. Default, Home, School, and Work. The fact that these have specific names by location is not really relevant in any way. They could be called 1,2,3,4. Your suggestion for user named venues is a good one, as is the ability for a user to make as many as he/she wants, but you should submit the suggestion to the BOINC development team.

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This is a BOINC issue not a Rosetta/Ralph issue. As for the number of venues, there are actually 4 venues. Default, Home, School, and Work. The fact that these have specific names by location is not really relevant in any way. They could be called 1,2,3,4. Your suggestion for user named venues is a good one, as is the ability for a user to make as many as he/she wants, but you should submit the suggestion to the BOINC development team.

BOINC v5.3.18 added support for using global_prefs_override.xml, this will override any of the global preferences you specifies on the computer you've added this file.

But, the BOINC Manager haven't yet got support to re-read this file, so only works by re-starting BOINC.


So, if example normally leaves application in memory but wants to override on the RALPH-computer, just make yourself a global_prefs_override.xml with:

<global_preferences>
<leave_apps_in_memory>0</leave_apps_in_memory>
</global_preferences>

HM, back to the first question of this thread:

I'm running RALPH on all my boxes instead of Rosetta. Are the results of the tested WUs real science or are they only for testing, if the application run's without errors and the results are trashed ?

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Supporting BOINC, a great concept !

I would assume all WU's are to test for bugs and fixes rather than science as Rosetta does the science and RALPH is set upto test things.

Have you got BOINC 5.3.28?? as that is needed for the new app of RALPH

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I would assume all WU's are to test for bugs and fixes rather than science as Rosetta does the science and RALPH is set upto test things.

Have you got BOINC 5.3.28?? as that is needed for the new app of RALPH

RALPH is not the primary science project. RALPH is an ALPHA test site that is designed to test new versions of the Rosetta application prior to release in Rosetta.

While your contributions of time to RALPH are not wasted, they are not used to perform the primary science functions of the Rosetta project. In addition, credit awards are of no concern to the RALPH project. While credits are awarded, that is simply an artifact of the mirroring of the standard BOINC environment that is required for testing. In short it is expected that you may not be awarded credits for many of the RALPH WUs that you process, and there will not be any effort on the part of the project to adjust credits for lost time or work on the RALPH project.

In short if you want to contribute directly to the science portion of the project you should be running ROSETTA not Ralph. If you want to help develop the next generation of the Rosetta application, then you should run Ralph.

You can run both, but if you do you will have to be a little more vigilant as it is possible for certain Ralph tests to have an adverse effect on Rosetta. This can cause Rosetta WUs to crash from time to time.

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I would assume all WU's are to test for bugs and fixes rather than science as Rosetta does the science and RALPH is set upto test things.

Have you got BOINC 5.3.28?? as that is needed for the new app of RALPH

5.3.28 is found here http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php?dev=1

Anders n

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And if you have a machine that regularly has errors while running Rosetta, then switching that machine to Ralph will help track down bugs in the client, or encourage methods of identifying which machines can't handle certain types of work units. (i.e. Memory issues - when the WU requires more ram than the machine has).

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