The Official BOINC news thread

try right clicking on the project and clicking on Update. Make sure it's BOINC v2.28 and SAH v2.31.

Yeah, i update my account at least 3 times a day. It allows me to see how i'm doing daily in terms of average credit (which is more important it seems than actual achieved credits within the rating system). Number 5 now in the group! Woot. By the way, is there a place on the SETI BOINC board that lists the top members in the entire project? Cheers everyone.

SAH v2.32 has been released to the Alpha test for Windows and Solaris. This includes a fix for those access violations in the beta project. Changed the test workunit to one that triggers the access violation in pre-2.32 apps.

[Edited on 3-4-2004 by xn]

SAH v2.32 for Mac OSX and Linux has been released to the Alpha test.

[Edited on 3-4-2004 by xn]

A bug has been fixed that caused the same result to get sent to multiple hosts. The next version of SAH will have a new graphical feature where when viewing in a window, you can now use the mouse to rotate and zoom 3-D objects.

Some recent checkins:

- added a mechanism to handle situations where an app
appears to have exited successfully, but in fact didn't call boinc_finish() or exit(0).
This apparently can happen on various platforms.
The new mechanism:
boinc_finish() writes a file "boinc_finish_called" in the slot directory.
When an app appears to have exited successfully,the core client checks for the existence of this file. If it's not there, the result is placed "in limbo":it takes up a slot, but the app isn't restarted. If the core client is restarted, the app is restarted.
NOTE: when a core client with this feature releases, it's critical that all users reset the project, and that updated versions of all apps are released. Might be a good time for a major release increment.
- synchronize access to shared-mem work array by scheduler processes, with the goal of NEVER sending the same result to different hosts.
- Instead of a single bool present flag, there are now 3 states for an element in the array: absent, present, and "checked out" (being considered for sending)
- There's now a semaphore that a scheduler process must acquire before examining the state field of an array entry (note: the feeder creates this semaphore,but doesn't have to acquire it because of the producer/consumer situation).
- split out the work-sending part of handle_request.C to a new file (sched_send.C,h) because it was getting kinda big

The S@H WU splitter stopped working, so you won't be getting any new workunits, but the devs in charge of that tool are looking into this problem.

S@H v2.32 has been released for all platforms (beta test). This should fix the issue about a 0xc0000005 or SegFault during a checkpoint operation. The S@H splitter is having problems creating workunits. This is being investivated, you can go here for more info:
setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu...

It turned out that there was a hard drive failure on the master science database machine. When the splitter went to inform the master science database about the workunits it was creating it errored out. The bad drive has been replaced and things are working again.

A new major version of BOINC and S@H will begin being tested in the alpha test after the Easter weekend. This version will be 3.00. This will NOT be compatible with S@H v2.32. If you're in the beta test, it's recommended that you don't attempt to download and install this release of the core client until it passes from alpha to beta. For those who go ahead and download and install the new core client you can expect that the core client will ignore the old method of determining when a work-unit had completed processing, so it�ll just sit there waiting, and waiting. The client won�t attempt to request anymore work. You�ll have to revert back to the Beta client to get any new work and to upload the work you have already completed. For those of you who are rolling your own clients, you�ll need to roll both the CC and SAH applications in order to continue processing like normal.

A server bug was fixed that caused the last result from each group of 3 to not get any credit about half the time.

BOINC v3.00 and SAH v3.00 for the alpha test has been released. Please don't download and install BOINC v3.00 because it won't work the current SAH. It requires v3.00, which hasn't been released to the beta test yet.

Good news! With the release of v3.01, the debug code that has been slowing down the clients will be removed. On a machine that normally processes a WU in 20 hours will now be able to process a WU in 5-6 hours. It might be a week or two before v3.01 appears on the BOINC beta test site.

That is intersting. I had assumed the debugging had been removed in this last version because my times had dropped from 21 hour per wu down to 6 - 9 hours each. I am anxious to try this new version when it hits beta. Thanks again, xn, for keeping us up on the latest developments.

Due to some recent developments and discovering that the heap checking bugs were being covered by another bug, there has to be at least 2 more debug releases to beta.

BOINC v3.01 and SAH v3.01 has been tagged for release (Alpha test only).

BOINC v3.01 and SAH v3.01 has been released to the Alpha test. This release includes some changes and bug fixes since the release of v3.00 and the SAH app still includes the debug code. Beta testers please don't download BOINC v3.01. You can only get 2.32 workunits and this means it wouldn't work and the beta server will give you no work. Alpha testers should still use dedicated client installations for testing release 3.01. If needed, please detach from the beta test project. From 3.00 to 3.01 a 'smooth' update (over install) should work, but you're free to test a 'clean install' and a reset project too.

BOINC v3.02 and SAH v3.02 for Linux have been released, which should fix the power management seg fault.

The project will go down tomorrow (Apr.28) for an hour or two for system maintenance. The process queue of a number of old processes have been cleared and apache was restarted, which fixed the intermittent connection problem.

3.x has been released to Beta. They are aware of the problems running the CC and SAH apps on a Mac 10.2 machine and that issue is being worked on. The SAH application had taken a few bug fixes that required the deployment happen sooner rather than later so the SAH team could continue to track down and fix the issues. The failure rates for the SAH application in Alpha are about half of that in Beta.

-Finished the implementation of cross-project identification.

-With the v2.32 release, the failure rate was at 10-12%. With the current 3.0x release, failure rates are now between 2-4%. For release it has to be equal or less than 5%.

Tagged for BOINC v3.03 and SAH v3.03 (to Alpha test) for all platforms.

boinc.berkeley.edu...