I'm not sure if the project is set up to fully mimick the Rosetta enviornment, but why not release the RALPH work units to many users? it seesm the people here willing to beta test are always begging for work. I joined the day the 64bit client was released, - and got no work.

Why not give work units to multiple users to collaborate and verify? giving 1 WU to 5 different users quituples the number of testers

Would this be an opportune time to remove the Q&A message boards and add a new board or two to the message boards?

- The more common usage of dual core processors today
- The increased level of comlexity in the graphics (the sidechains), this part of the 'theory of graphics crashes' coincides quite happily with the release of the docking program and the increased graphics deisplay.
- More active people reporting things on the forum (due to more R@H members overall)

K, but is it only dual core processors that are having this problem? I have noticed a low rate of work unit failure on another computer, which is a single cored 64-bit AMD processor, but I'm never watching closely enough to see if it is this same graphics failure, or some other problem (though I'll admit the problems did seem to stop with 5.43, but I also don't have any work unit history for this computer, it has been concentrating almost exclusively on CPDN for the last week or so, I'll go see if I can crash work units on it later).

Also, previous versions of rosetta were stable on my Athlon X2, or at least the crash rate was low enough that I didn't notice it. I believe the last stable release was 5.37 or something like that. If memory serves you could rotate and zoom on a molecule in 5.37, with no problems. Essentially, you've now reduced the level of the graphics complexity to below that of 5.37, and my computer is still crashing almost all of its work units. Right now I have one which hasn't done anything for about 40 minutes, but the time counter continues to increment, it is like the science code has stalled. I'll leave it to see if the watchdog kicks in. The important point is that I don't think (I'm not certain on this point) the graphics had been displayed at all. I'd noticed that the time remaining estimate was going up, not down, and decided to check on it.

My point is that I didn't start noticing work unit failures until release 5.41, and these failure occur on computers other than my dual cored X2.

In case anyone is curious I have stress tested my computer using Prime95, both cores (separately) with no problems. I've also tested my RAM using Memtestx86, the most recent version, again, no problems.

Another thought... One of the posts by Chu was mentioning that there is no locking mechanism in place to prevent the science thread and the graphics thread from trying to access the same memory at the same time, which can cause a problem if it occurs (or at least that is what I understand the post to mean).

If it is the case that the current problem is caused by the graphics and science threads conflicting in this manner, wouldn't we have started seeing this problem a long time ago, like when graphics were first introduced? Why has the problem only started cropping up now?

Just a thought...

Andrew, it sounds like you have a task that has slipped away from BOINC's control. We see this happen once and a while on Windows. It is almost like BOINC doesn't realize it is still running. And this may be why it's running during non-scheduled hours, cuz it doesn't respond when BOINC says "whoa!".

But you say it has been running for 157hrs. And THAT sounds like a task that has slipped away from the Rosetta (or Ralph) watchdog. Because it appears your run time preference is only an hour. The watchdog should have kicked in some time ago.

Ralph shows you've only got one task that is not yet completed and it was sent on Thursday. And by my math, 157hrs have not elapsed since Thursday, so now I'm really confused. In fact, with a Ralph 4 day deadline, times 24hrs... the deadline is 96hrs. I did see a case on Windows where a task managed to tally up more then one second per second of wall-clock time. This was due to the screensaver problems, and a hyperthreaded CPU.

Suggest you take note of the process ID at a minimum and that way you can tell for certain if it does end and another starts up. If the task really has run for that long, I'd abort it. Or at least suspend it and resume it again. But, since BOINC doesn't seem in contol of that task... I guess I'd end BOINC for 5 minutes, the task should then end. If it doesn't then reboot or end that process. Then restart BOINC.

My two docking WUs both ended prematurely (watchdog...20 credits). When I awoke this morning the screen saver was not hung, then I moved the mouse to take the ss down and it froze. Task manager shows one task getting 65% of my hyperthreaded CPU, and the other getting 35%. Odd thing is the WU that was getting the 35% was the one the graphic was being displayed for (you could tell by the elapsed time on it as shown in the graphic and in the CPU time shown in task manager).

Now that I ended the application that was not responding, I crashed a WU (- exit code 1073807364 ...a positive number?), but it was the one that was getting the 65% of CPU. The threads seem confused about who is doing what.

it reports error code as - exit code 1073807364 (0x40010004).

I hope someone rectifies this soon, you should certainly not have an account deleted for posting public information. Yes hide the post by all means (if the mod was unsure and wanted to protect something until he could get hold of the Administrator/David Baker)
Bad, Bad ,Bad managment.
Especially as they're new mods, they certainly shouldn't be doing that!

David Kim deleted the account of Aaron Finney which was absolutely necessary. He first deleted a few flaimbaits of him, than Aaron started to post the email and phone number of Dr. Baker together with a call to complain to David Baker by phone. This post was also removed and after he repeated it, his account was deleted. It was long after David Kim wanted to go to bed and in order to avoid more damage while he was at sleep the account was deleted. Had the ban feature be available over on Rosetta he might decided to just ban him, but the deletion was certainly justified.

Guys, please don't trust all the accusations which are thrown towards the project management at the moment.

I left rosetta too. 28k credits a month I was giving to Rosetta.. now 0.

I tried vocally to argue against the credit system on the rosetta boards - BOY WAS THAT A MISTAKE.

The german mod deleted my account because I posted David's email and the # to wash U (both of which are on his webpage.) SORRY - DIDN'T KNOW POSTING PUBLIC INFO YOU ARE GIVING FREELY AWAY ANYWAY WAS AGAINST YOUR RULES.

Don't expect me to reattach.

I have also removed my endorsement for this project from the International AIDS Conference. It's clear that your moderators have lost control of the project for you.

mmciastro, maybe I'm reading your graph wrong (thanks for posting it btw). . . but it looks very consistant on a credit/hour basis for a given computer.

Is this the case? And if so, how do you feel about the credits/hour for the various machines (is machine 2 really about 2.5 faster than machine 1)?

With what I've seen so far in one day with up to a 168% difference from lowest to highest credits for one single computer it's nowhere near ready to roll out on Rosetta.

You're moving to a cherry picking heaven at the moment I would guess.
Wouldn't be hard for some of the larger teams (or bord individual) to create a program grab the stats, see what the initial credits claimed are for that type and tell the team.

Fluffy, dcdc, tralala, I think you are mistaken: Cherry-picking is NOT possible !
The variability you are seeing in the credits is not between different WU types but because of the different completion times of the models _within_ the WUs. Even if, say, the first model of a WU takes a long time to complete this doesn't tell you anything about how long the following models will take. This is a completely random process. So terminating WUs that start with a 'slow' model won't help you either.

Fluffy, instead of 168% difference you could also say +/-45% difference with respect to the average. Example: average=10, 10-45%=5.5, 10+45%=14.5, 164% difference between lowest and highest. I think this is acceptable, considering that most values will be much closer to the average.