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Stanford Makes Announcement On Shortage Of WU's - Updated 2x

LCB001

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This announcement was made by Bruce (Stanford Site Admin) yesterday about the shortage of WU's and means... it's not just you it's everyone, and from the looks of it will effect all the different clients soon not just CPU's.

It seems the net effect is, don't hold your breath waiting...


FAH has been pretty much out of work to be done for quite a few days now. (The word "few" depends on a number of different factors, including which client you run, which OS you run, what hardware you have, etc.)

This is not the usual situation, but it does happen. By policy, FAH does not distribute work unless the completion of that work is scientifically important so they do not replenish the servers with WUs that have already been successfully processed by someone else.

New projects are on their way, but there is quite a bit of preliminary work to be done before a new project is ready to start distributing WUs. In the meantime, there are a few things that you can try, but there's a pretty good chance that nothing will work except to be patient.

If you get a message about an invalid address (0.0.0.0) and your client was working previously, that's your problem. Unless your OS is an old version which prohibits you from upgrading to the latest client, do that first.

If you're getting the messages
+ No appropriate work server was available; will try again in a bit.
+ Couldn't get work instructions.
you've got the same problem except it's a more recent client.

If you have the latest client and you're not using "advmethods" consider adding it. That gives you access to a wider selection of WUs, but they also might be less stable, so this may not be something that you want to try. In rare instances, removing that option helps. In either case, remember that you may enable it either as a specific option in the Advanced configuration ("Set -advmethods flag always?"), by adding it to the command line, itself, or by entering it in the Advanced Configuration under "Additional client parameters? " and to disable it, you must stop using all three of those options.

In the configuration settings, if you are configured to accept SMALL or NORMAL WUs, you can reconfigure for larger WUs.

In the configuration settings, the default setting for Max Ram is obtained from your actual hardware. If you have restricted it to a smaller value, consider increasing it.

Some new projects are being released but not enough to fill everybody's machine yet so the recovery will take time.

:ban:

--------------------------
Edit/Updated 20 April 2010:

Prof. Pande posted the following on his blog today concerning the WU shortage;


We had some WU shortages over the weekend, but for the most part handled the biggest demands. However, we still have shortages for certain types of WUs, especially for pre-v6 clients.
We are working to add more A3 WUs as well as more staff members to prepare A3 WU projects.
Several new classic WUs came on line. Also, once the protomol core (B4) gets more broad code applicability to older hardware (eg pre SSE), those WUs will be able to roll out more broadly as well.

Edit2/

Bruce (Site Admin) posted this update on the WU shortage on the F@H forums;

A number of new projects have been released for some clients so the shortage condition is improving but I wouldn't call the issue isn't solved yet. (It's certainly not solved if you happen to be running one of the client types that is still experiencing shortages.)

Last year, FAH had WU shortages because the servers couldn't handle all of the load. The servers were upgraded and that's no longer the issue. Today it's more a question of taxing the scientists.

FAH only issues WUs from projects that have scientific value. Stanford will not intentionally reissue work that has already been completed successfully, but they do start new projects from time to time. Before a new project can be started, there's a significant amount of research that needs to be done to make sure the project is likely to produce useful results. Then the project must be configured and evaluated so they know it's going to be a successful project. Only then will a project be released for processing.

(Of course once a project yields results, the scientist has to analyze the data and either devise a new project based on what has been learned or prepare a journal paper to publish the results.) In many cases, the same scientists who are doing this pre- and post- work are the same ones that are managing other aspects of FAH. (It's relatively recent that FAH hired a professional programming firm, and resources are still rather limited.)

I don't know how many new projects are being prepared or for which clients or when more will be on-line, but it's a never-ending process. All you can do is be patient if your type of client is not receiving new assignments.
 
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geokilla

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Either Folding's growing that quickly, or Stanford is just done the work required and they can't interpret the data in time. I say it's both.

Either way, I haven't been affected..... yet.
 
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boggtrotter59

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Kingston Ontario
I was having trouble getting small wu's for the smp clients so I added the advmethods flag and have had much better luck. Couple clients were stalled for a while but eventually got work. No problems getting gpu wu's...
 

crazyhorsejohnny

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Ottawa
Geez that sucks. Gonna be bad for that contest. Guess I'll keep my two 955 BE running Poem and Rosetta instead of switching them over to F@H. Two gts250s and a 9800gtx+ will have to do for my share.
 

Fox

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If you get a message about an invalid address (0.0.0.0) and your client was working previously, that's your problem. Unless your OS is an old version which prohibits you from upgrading to the latest client, do that first.

If you're getting the messages
+ No appropriate work server was available; will try again in a bit.
+ Couldn't get work instructions.
you've got the same problem except it's a more recent client.

Just so I'm clear if I'm getting:

[05:00:38] + Attempting to get work packet
[05:00:38] - Connecting to assignment server
[05:00:38] + No appropriate work server was available; will try again in a bit.
[05:00:38] + Couldn't get work instructions.
[05:00:38] - Attempt #3 to get work failed, and no other work to do. Waiting before retry.

This is an error on my end? I just reciently fired up the VMWare again and I'm having issues, the GPU works fine but I keep getting that error when I check my log file in my virtual machine.
 

Lpfan4ever

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Sep 5, 2008
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Calgary
I was getting that when trying to fold "normal" size WU's with SMP. As soon as I went to big and put -advmethods, I could get work.
 

Fox

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Apr 6, 2008
Messages
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Location
Vancouver, BC
Ya, I had normal and advmethods, just switched over to big and left advmethods on, hopefully I'll grab a wu soon.
 

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