Another Challenge website - BOINC Games

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi all

Following some dissent and complaints in the formula-boinc forum (and before I volunteered as an admin there), another website was set up by a couple of teams, in order to create both annual Marathons and Sprint Challenges, but following slightly different methods and with the same aim of creating a competitive infrastructure so that teams can crunch for specific projects and rank themselves on their total "CPU/GPU horse power".

I knew this was being set up, but I was not personally invited to join but a recent posting from SRBase (within BOINC Manager) confirmed that this was now fully active.

I am happy to register a UBT presence on their website, if anyone wants it or thinks it is worthwhile...though as few people (at present) seem interested in formula-boinc, so I am not sure if anyone would want to get involved with BOINC Games?

But feel free to take a look - the website does look pretty impressive, and the forum and stats are integrated into the same website (whereas formula-boinc uses phpBB for the forum and a separately created python-based website).

https://www.boincgames.com/

Any feedback about joining would be welcome.

And I doubt there is any issue with having teams on both websites...as all that BOINC Games are doing is extracting BOINC credits data from each projects "exported XML" files, as well as collecting individual members stats, via registered CPID code.

Some useful "joining up" info is here:

https://www.boincgames.com/blog/confirming-your-cpid/

regards
Tim

[ChelseaOilman]

Trying to sign up now but a little confused.

Your CPID is not validated yet. Please find your unique name generated below. Please update this name in Boinc

Unique Name: ******

Below that is a list of projects asking me to update team ID

With what?

[UBT - Timbo]

Trying to sign up now but a little confused.

Your CPID is not validated yet. Please find your unique name generated below. Please update this name in Boinc

Unique Name: ******

Below that is a list of projects asking me to update team ID

With what?

Hi Carl

You need to change the "username" on any one of the projects supported by BOINC Games to the "unique name" that they have given you.

It's a security thing to ensure that someone else has not used your (publically available) CPID to register - as only the owner of an account on a project can change the username on the specific project website.

Once this has been "validated" by BOINC Games, in a few days you can change it back to your chosen BOINC username.

Hope this helps
Tim

[ChelseaOilman]

Oddly without doing anything several of those projects now show they are verified. None of them are projects I've done recently.

[ChelseaOilman]

Is there a team ID?

[UBT - Timbo]

Oddly without doing anything several of those projects now show they are verified. None of them are projects I've done recently.

Hi Carl

I would be guessing but I assume they are just taking a "snapshot" of your stats at the point when the account (on each project) was verified..as that will be your "starting point" for how they calculate how many credits you've earned since.

regards
Tim

[UBT - Timbo]

Is there a team ID?

Hi Carl

I've not yet registered the team on their website, so if you want to take part, I'll get it sorted and I'll let you know.

UPDATE:

The UBT team is here:

https://www.boincgames.com/team_details.php?id=24

But if you "Edit" your profile on their website, you can see the team in the drop down section - so just select it and away we go !

regards
Tim

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi Carl

We're both registered now, but not verified yet:

https://www.boincgames.com/team_members.php?id=24

regards
Tim

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi all

The first BOINC Games Sprint started yesterday (27th Jan at 01:00 UTC) and lasts for 2 days (until 29th Jan at 01:00 UTC).

Sadly, it seems they did not give any advance warning about this project being chosen, according to the message on BOINC Manager, as well as on the SRBase website, if one reads this from the SRBase admin:

BOINC Games has published the sprint project, SRBase was choosen, unfortunately no one got an[y] info at the right time. Nevertheless we have enough work. Preparing more later.

But such is life !

(Since being FB admin, I have PM'd or emailed (in advance) an admin at the chosen project to give them a heads-up, and to then switch the chosen project, if the project admin says the project will be down for maintenance or will not have any/enough tasks available).

regards
Tim

[ChelseaOilman]

FYI, BOINC Games is being run by a former team mate of mine who also left [H] and switched to TAAT.

[UBT - Timbo]

FYI, BOINC Games is being run by a former team mate of mine who also left [H] and switched to TAAT.

Hi Carl

I have to say that I am very impressed with their coding and website skillz (sic)...although it does seem a little bit slow when trying to switch around the different pages of stats?

I assume most pages are generated "on the fly" from their live database of data.

regards
Tim

[ChelseaOilman]

Skillz has been pretty active in Discord/BOINC lately.

I just joined BOINC Games Discord.

[ChelseaOilman]

21 verified so far. 6 to go.

[stephenhunter]

Tried signing up, but it looks like the site is down at the moment

[ChelseaOilman]

Site came up for me just now.

[UBT - Timbo]

Tried signing up, but it looks like the site is down at the moment

Hi

I tried to log in this morning and the BOINC Games site had a "504 Gateway Time-out" fault.

Tried it a few minutes ago and it is now running OK...but still slow to respond when you try to access different sections

UPDATE: And just tried to view our Team stats on their website and the "504" fault is back !!

regards
Tim

[ChelseaOilman]

I asked Skillz over in Discord about this.

His response: Skillz — Today at 7:06 PM
Yes, the site is having issues. The development team is looking into it.
[7:06 PM]
Tell him to keep trying, it will eventually load up.
Skillz — Today at 7:07 PM
I restarted the mysqld process which is what's causing issues. It should work fine for a little while until it goes AWOL again.

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi Carl

Thanks for the info.

I'm pleased he has responded so quickly and positively. Hope they sort it out ASAP for their own integrity's sake.

And I am equally pleased that, when certain individuals (who are now involved with BOINC Games) started complaining vociferously, about the FB stats website failing or about the issues surrounding the 2021 Sprints, that I actually "archived" all of their negative posts...

And checking those posts now, it is interesting to see how much negativity was spewing from "certain" named members back then...and now their website has issues...is this karma perhaps?

(I'm not wanting to start up a "flame war" here - but when "the shoe is on the other foot" and all that....).

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dicti ... other-foot

regards
Tim

[ChelseaOilman]

Skillz — Today at 10:35 AM
The web site is experiencing issues. I suspect it's from all the new members checking their stats. Please, continue to check the site as often as possible even though it may not respond.
[10:35 AM]
The development team is monitoring the database to check for issues.
[10:35 AM]
Keeping the site "down" in that manner should help them find the problem so they can fix it.

[stephenhunter]

Just tried again and I managed to register. Just waiting for the projects to verify

[UBT - Timbo]

Just tried again and I managed to register. Just waiting for the projects to verify

Hiya

Excellent and well done

It took less than a day for my account "over there" to be verified and then over a couple more days, more and more projects were added...so it is a gradual process as their "web-bots" scours the various project websites, in order to then be added to their database.

regards
Tim

[stephenhunter]

How can you tell, when the projects have been verified?

[UBT - Timbo]

How can you tell, when the projects have been verified?

Hiya

Take a look here:

https://www.boincgames.com/team_members.php?id=24

So, once your CPID is verified (which it has been) it'll then take a day or so for the BOINC Games website to itemise the credits you earn everyday on each project - and that is simply down to the timing of when the "stats collecting" scripts are run and of course, assuming that the project has made available its most recent stats sometime after that.

Some more "background info" here >> https://www.boincgames.com/blog/confirming-your-cpid/

regards
Tim

[stephenhunter]

I think it's pulling in Amicable now, but not iThena. Which is a shame, I'm doing quite well with iThena

[UBT - Timbo]

I think it's pulling in Amicable now, but not iThena. Which is a shame, I'm doing quite well with iThena

Hi

I think you are earning credits on "Ithena.Measurements" and not on "Ithena.Computational" !!

Here's the stats on the latter project:

https://classic.boincstats.com/en/stats ... t/0/0/24/0

and unless your username (on this project) is "paul", then your credits are not showing up.

But your stats (on the first named project) *are* here:

https://classic.boincstats.com/en/stats ... t/0/0/21/0

Currently, BOINC Games only lists "Ithena.Computational" as part of their Marathon !

regards
Tim

[stephenhunter]

OK, that makes sense. I didn't know there were two iThenas

[UBT - Timbo]

OK, that makes sense. I didn't know there were two iThenas

Hiya

Don't worry about it.

I had exactly the same issue with a member of the Formula BOINC forum, who was wondering why his teams credits for one specific Ithena project were not being "collected" and included on the FB stats pages:

https://formula-boinc.org/forum/viewtop ... 3125#p3125

It transpired that he also did not realise there are TWO separate Ithena projects.

regards
Tim

[stephenhunter]

I'm now getting results on ithena.comp. You don't get much credit but, I noticed that that you won't need much, to start getting points on BoincGames. So, I will give a few days, perhaps a week, then go back to Amicable

[ChelseaOilman]

A Sprint just started. SiDock is the project.
https://www.boincgames.com/sprint_details.php?id=11

[stephenhunter]

I'm crunching, slowly! Looks like the tasks are going to take about 20hrs, so I should get 2 runs in.

[ChelseaOilman]

I recently got this project past 10 million. The tasks back then I think were much shorter. There's 3 different apps and I recall getting CurieMarieDock on BOINC + zipped input, checkpoints and progress bar tasks. This time I'm getting all of the long tasks. IDK, maybe because projects were warned they might be chosen for the sprint SiDock decided to give out the long tasks so their server didn't get overwhelmed.

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi all

Thanks for the post on this - I'd actually forgotten it was starting today

OK, I'm in with one multii-core CPU host so I should bring something to the party...my second host doesn't really have the CPU performance on SiDock so it cannot really contribute anything.

We currently have 4 members registered for these Challenges:

https://www.boincgames.com/team_members.php?id=24

Hopefully we can put in a half decent performance...and if any other members want to join in the fun, then check this link:

https://www.boincgames.com/blog/confirming-your-cpid/

regards
Tim

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi all

re: 2nd Sprint Challenge on BOINC Games

It seems that, as of this moment, UBT is in 3rd place !!

sprint2-16-feb-23.jpg

https://www.boincgames.com/sprint_details.php?id=11

Sadly, it appears that not many teams are taking part...only 10 of the 20 registered teams have actually earned credits since the start of this Sprint....and I'm guessing that some of the credits are just individual members normal daily tasks, rather an concerted effort by the whole team to take part.

regards
Tim

[stephenhunter]

With an average runtime of 28 hours, it may be that more results will flood in over the next few hours. But I think many people will have thought that it wasn't worth tying up their CPU for so long, given the meagre returns.
Most of my first lot are done, fingers crossed I will finish all of the second lot before time runs out.

[ChelseaOilman]

These tasks are really long unless you have a very fast computer. I have a bunch of computers that haven't even finished their 1st task yet. My fastest computer, Ryzen 7950X, takes about 13 hours to complete a task. My slowest, Xeon server, takes 48 hours. I would guess some bunkering can be going on.

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi both

I've had issues with my multi-CPU host, trying to connect to SiDock and to download some tasks...and in simple terms it failed.

So, I allowed my (slow) home PC to download some tasks and it got some straight away - so I checked the project website and there's plenty of tasks available.

I therefore assumed that maybe my multi-CPU host had an issue and I reset the project (within BOINC Manager) but it didn't help. So, I removed the project with the idea of re-adding SiDock to the host...but it fails to connect to their website and so I cannot add the project.

(Other tasks are being downloaded from other projects without issue, so this is not a general internet access fault, but a project specific one).

I will try again a few times and hopefully it'll connect at some point.

PS: UBT now up to 2nd place

Code: Select all

Posn	Team			BG Pts	Credits
1	TeAm AnandTech		25	338,491
2	UK BOINC Team		18	253,857
3	Planet 3DNow!		15	223,642

regards
Tim

[ChelseaOilman]

So, I removed the project with the idea of re-adding SiDock to the host...but it fails to connect to their website and so I cannot add the project.

I don't have any issues going to their website. What address are you using to rejoin the project?

From the message board to someone that wasn't able to join the project:
"Download the latest version of BOINC (7.16.20) and you should be able to attach."

Although my Linux boxes are running 7.16.6 and a few of my Windows boxes are running 7.15.0 a modified version for people running the Milkyway project.

I suspect hanging on to 2nd place in the sprint may be difficult unless we get a few more people to help out. We don't have much of a lead and it shrunk a bit last update.

[ChelseaOilman]

Tasks so far. The errors consist of 6 tasks I aborted, 1 task cancelled by server and 1 that errored out.

[wbiz]

We currently have 4 members registered for these Challenges:

Make that 3.0001 members, I doubt I'm going to get any points in the marathon let alone a sprint.

I'm in the process of moving house, I'm sure I spotted an NVidia card while packing but I haven't got a motherboard/case to put it in. When the dust has settled I might knock something together to power up for sprints or as the whim suits me.

[UBT - Timbo]

I don't have any issues going to their website. What address are you using to rejoin the project?

Hi Carl

Thanks for the feedback.

I can access their website without any issue at all - but using BOINC Manager on the multi-CPU host just ended with failures of not being able to connect...

Failed to add project
Please try again later
Click Finish to close

and I was trying to attach using:

Code: Select all

https://www.sidock.si/sidock/

(which is also the one stated on their website and also what is listed on the "Add project..." drop down list of projects in BOINC Manager).

16/02/2023 10:35:18 | SiDock@home | Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
16/02/2023 10:35:18 | SiDock@home | Requesting new tasks for CPU and NVIDIA GPU
16/02/2023 10:35:19 | SiDock@home | Scheduler request failed: SSL connect error
16/02/2023 10:35:33 | | Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site
16/02/2023 10:35:34 | | Internet access OK - project servers may be temporarily down.
16/02/2023 10:36:34 | SiDock@home | Fetching scheduler list
16/02/2023 10:36:49 | | Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site
16/02/2023 10:36:50 | | Internet access OK - project servers may be temporarily down.
16/02/2023 12:59:49 | SiDock@home | update requested by user
16/02/2023 12:59:50 | SiDock@home | Fetching scheduler list
16/02/2023 13:00:05 | | Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site
16/02/2023 13:00:07 | | Internet access OK - project servers may be temporarily down.
16/02/2023 13:00:15 | SiDock@home | update requested by user
16/02/2023 13:00:16 | SiDock@home | Fetching scheduler list
16/02/2023 13:00:19 | | Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site
16/02/2023 13:00:20 | | Internet access OK - project servers may be temporarily down.
16/02/2023 13:19:14 | SiDock@home | Resetting project
16/02/2023 13:19:18 | SiDock@home | Fetching scheduler list
16/02/2023 13:19:20 | SiDock@home | update requested by user
16/02/2023 13:19:24 | SiDock@home | Fetching scheduler list
16/02/2023 13:19:33 | | Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site
16/02/2023 13:19:35 | | Internet access OK - project servers may be temporarily down.

The above is a few sample entries from the BOINC Manager error log...

From the message board to someone that wasn't able to join the project:
"Download the latest version of BOINC (7.16.20) and you should be able to attach."

Although my Linux boxes are running 7.16.6 and a few of my Windows boxes are running 7.15.0 a modified version for people running the Milkyway project.

The host is running v7.20.2 (x64) on Windows -

And looking at their website shows that the "CurieMarieDock 0.2.0 short tasks" are only available on Linux, but there are apps for both Linux and WIndows OS for their LONG tasks - and those tasks are apparently plentiful (when checked 2 minutes ago).

I suspect hanging on to 2nd place in the sprint may be difficult unless we get a few more people to help out. We don't have much of a lead and it shrunk a bit last update.

As long as we finish in the Top 10, will be a good result...as we'll get at least ONE BG point...and they all count in the end !!

But it does show that there are not many people interested in BG Sprints...plus I never got an email from the BG website that the Sprint was starting either - this failure also occurred on the last Sprint

regards
Tim

[UBT - Timbo]

Make that 3.0001 members, I doubt I'm going to get any points in the marathon let alone a sprint.

I'm in the process of moving house, I'm sure I spotted an NVidia card while packing but I haven't got a motherboard/case to put it in. When the dust has settled I might knock something together to power up for sprints or as the whim suits me.

Hiya

No worries and thanks for the heads-up.

Hope the move goes smoothly - I did the same about 6 months ago and I still have some stuff in boxes and packing cartons...

The GPU card is only going to be useful on projects where GPU apps are available, so do not worry about pressing it into service as there's only a 6 out of 9 chance of the chosen project supporting GPUs (on the BG Sprints) - plus there are only 6 BG Sprints taking place during 2023 - one has already finished and the second ends on 19th Feb !!

regards
Tim

[ChelseaOilman]

And looking at their website shows that the "CurieMarieDock 0.2.0 short tasks" are only available on Linux, but there are apps for both Linux and WIndows OS for their LONG tasks - and those tasks are apparently plentiful (when checked 2 minutes ago).

Where did you see that? I thought the short tasks were for ARM.

Dear participants!

We created new applications named as "CurieMarieDock 0.2.0 long tasks" and "CurieMarieDock 0.2.0 short tasks", both based on CmDock 0.2.0 release. Algorithm of both applications are identical, but for "short tasks" we created only ARM-version and we plan to generate a special, smaller in 5 times tasks that covers one of part of entire tasks set. We advice all owners of small single-board computers like Raspberry Pi, to switch to "short tasks" application.

I tested deleting the SiDock project in BOINC Manager and I was able to add it again without issue.

[UBT - Timbo]

Where did you see that? I thought the short tasks were for ARM.

Hi Carl

Oops - sorry I should have been more explicit in what I said - the short tasks are "Linux, but running on ARM hardware".

as per:

https://www.sidock.si/sidock/apps.php

I tested deleting the SiDock project in BOINC Manager and I was able to add it again without issue.

Cool...I'll try again, but from the error logs I saw (and posted a snippet of them previously) it seemed to be an SSL error on their server side...

UPDATE: I tried again and still it failed...so I've posted on the SIDock message board and let's see if an admin notices it and replies?

regards
Tim

[ChelseaOilman]

UPDATE: I tried again and still it failed...so I've posted on the SIDock message board and let's see if an admin notices it and replies?

regards
Tim

You seem to have issues with running BOINC on your work computer from time to time. You weren't able to get multiple instances of iThena going it seems and now this issue. I could be wrong but I wouldn't be surprised if it's something on your end causing issues with that computer.

On a side note, any chance you could interest ncoded.com, Chris?, to join BOINCGames and help us out with the next challenge? He has a lot of computing power and seems to be running BOINC projects a lot. He might of been able to get us to number 1 on this challenge.

[stephenhunter]

Great result, especially for a one person effort. I was there in spirit I take some comfort in the thought that, with 36k I would have come 7th
I'm going to try and grab a few marathon points now, by going for the low hanging fruit, YAFU, LODA

By the way Tim, I have been having a problem with Boinc recently as well. The Client keeps stopping, notably when I use other apps. FreeCad and PixInsight are the main offenders. But, sometimes it just stops. Just done a full system upgrade, see if that solves the problem.

[UBT - Timbo]

You seem to have issues with running BOINC on your work computer from time to time. You weren't able to get multiple instances of iThena going it seems and now this issue. I could be wrong but I wouldn't be surprised if it's something on your end causing issues with that computer.

Hi Carl

The multi-CPU host uses a 16-core Xeon E5-2670 CPU (clocked at 2.6GHz) that came out of an ex-Google "S-2600 motherboard, dual-CPU combo" that ncoded, Woodles and I all bought as a job lot from a reseller in the US of A, maybe 4+ years ago.

Sadly the mobo failed and the CPU now resides in an X-79 series mobo, which supports the same Intel socket (LGA2011) that the CPU requires. This is then loaded with 8Gb of RAM and a GTX2080i GPU (courtesy of Homefarm on this forum).

So the CPU is quite old, but it does work on all cores...and it works fine as a workhorse PC when I'm at work. Plus there's not a lot of "superfluous" or redundant programs clogging it up.

Therefore I surmise that it should be good for most basic operations including BOINC tasks.

The issue with SiDock does appear to be partly related to their website, as I've now set some extra "error log" flags on the cc_config.xml setup file and hopefully this might help sort out where the issue is.

On the Ithena side, I think it was just a time factor (for me, trying to set it up), and not have the crunching interfere with my actual work needs, plus a limit of the amount of RAM.

On a side note, any chance you could interest ncoded.com, Chris?, to join BOINCGames and help us out with the next challenge? He has a lot of computing power and seems to be running BOINC projects a lot. He might of been able to get us to number 1 on this challenge.

I will ping Chris a PM and ask him...but I think he has a specific set of projects he prefers to donate resources towards. But we'll see.

regards
Tim

[ChelseaOilman]

My two servers have dual processor Supermicro motherboards. The CPUs I have in them are XEON E5-2697 V2 12 CORE 2.70. So 24C/48T per box. I have 64GB of memory in each box. Took almost 48 hours to do these SiDock long tasks on those servers. They're old and slow but get the work done.

Chris has been hitting Denis pretty hard lately just like me.

[stephenhunter]

Oops, I thought the sprint had finished Back on it

[ChelseaOilman]

3rd place. Not bad. I managed to get "Valid (1289)" tasks in during the challenge.

[UBT - Timbo]

3rd place. Not bad. I managed to get "Valid (1289)" tasks in during the challenge.

Hi Carl

Well done and thanks for your great contribution too.

Having failed to get SiDock working on my multi-CPU host, instead I let my slower home PC crunch some tasks, and I could only finish 3 long tasks within the Sprint period.

And in the end, my contribution made little difference:

Code: Select all

Posn	Team			BG Pts	Credits
1	Planet 3DNow!		25	2,516,513	
2	TeAm AnandTech		18	2,399,132
3	UK BOINC Team		15	1,355,203
4	BOINC.Italy		12	417,019
5	Rechenkraft.net		10	249,819
6	GPU Users Group		8	138,280
7	AMD Users		6	134,160
8	In Science We Trust	4	34,009
9	Ukraine			2	28,225
10	Czech National Team	1	20,126

But it's nice to get some points on the board from this Sprint...and maybe we might do better on one or more of the remaining 4 Sprints this year?

PS: Thanks also to stephen for his contribution

regards
Tim

[stephenhunter]

Rosetta is good for some quick points at the moment

[wbiz]

The GPU card is only going to be useful on projects where GPU apps are available, so do not worry about pressing it into service as there's only a 6 out of 9 chance of the chosen project supporting GPUs (on the BG Sprints)

Ok, thanks, I didn't realise that, I lost track of video/graphic card stuff somewhere around the Vesa/Paradise EGA era when I used to program 3D in assembly, the term GPU goes right over my head.

I had a quick play with boinc client using debian on WSL using my core2duo but I don't want to mess with that machine as its my main backups so I've got a £40 i5 3/3.7GHz PC on the way which I'll have as a pure debian machine mainly for sprints - or is boinc better with Windows?

That will be nine computers at my desk but still a net saving as I've just disposed of six very old PC's (I'm practising my excuses for when it arrives - when I say disposed, I manged to hide two in tote boxes).

[UBT - Timbo]

Ok, thanks, I didn't realise that, I lost track of video/graphic card stuff somewhere around the Vesa/Paradise EGA era when I used to program 3D in assembly, the term GPU goes right over my head.

Hiya

No problems.

Basically BOINC (Manager) can be run on various types of processors: Intel and AMD for instance make CPUs, which virtually every project supports and then some project also support ARM CPUs.

Fewer projects support GPUs, as a Graphical Processor is designed to obviously display images on your monitor...but higher performance GPUs can be used mainly on mathematical-based projects (as GPUs are very good at making many, many calculations per second) and can do this more efficiently than CPUs.

I had a quick play with boinc client using debian on WSL using my core2duo but I don't want to mess with that machine as its my main backups so I've got a £40 i5 3/3.7GHz PC on the way which I'll have as a pure debian machine mainly for sprints - or is boinc better with Windows?

Which OS is better on BOINC? That's the $64,000 question, but, in general, tasks do seem to take less time on a Linux host than a WIndows host - but it does very much depend on the programmer (who creates the project application) as to how well they have optimised the processing of tasks on Windows and Linux as each OS needs its own specific application, in order each OS to crunch the task...and some programmers (who all tend to be volunteers) might be better at coding for one platform compared to the other). So it boils down to which host you have available that can be used for BOINC...and for some, they will use a host for other duties and that may be the deciding factor as to which OS is used.

And of course, Microsoft have started a process (over the last couple of years) to include a Linux "subsystem" within the newest editions of WIndows, such that Linux tasks could run natively, within Windows.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install

That will be nine computers at my desk but still a net saving as I've just disposed of six very old PC's (I'm practising my excuses for when it arrives - when I say disposed, I managed to hide two in tote boxes).

I'm now down to 2 PCs...simply as my older hosts just do not have the grunt in them anymore, plus they are less efficient (energy wise).

regards
Tim

[ChelseaOilman]

The latest BOINC Games Sprint just started, 04/06/2023 12:00 (UTC) - 04/09/2023 12:00 (UTC). Milkyway is the project.
https://www.boincgames.com/sprint_details.php?id=12

[UBT - Timbo]

The latest BOINC Games Sprint just started, 04/06/2023 12:00 (UTC) - 04/09/2023 12:00 (UTC). Milkyway is the project.
https://www.boincgames.com/sprint_details.php?id=12

Hi Carl

Thanks for posting this.

I've got one of my hosts crunching MilkyWay now - the second host (at my office) has lost its internet connection so I cannot "remote in" and get control of it, so that host cannot take part.

Anyone else taking part?

regards
Tim

[ChelseaOilman]

Anyone else taking part?

regards
Tim

Crickets!

Why doesn't SBT have any trouble getting people motivated to crunch for these challenges? What are they doing differently?

[wbiz]

Me and Milkyway just don't get on, both boinctstats and freeDC stats are not showing my MilkyWay points. Boincgames are only showing some of them - not that there is a lot, its a GPU project.

No arm app on Milkyway so Raspberry Pi's are working elsewhere. I've got 6 cores on milkway, the I5 on linux is doing as expected, the core2duo on Windows is about 24 times slower than the i5 which is unexpected.

Edit: Biasing towards the "separation" jobs rather than "simulation" ones has improved my points rate substantially.

[ChelseaOilman]

Me and Milkyway just don't get on, both boinctstats and freeDC stats are not showing my MilkyWay points.

Your here: https://stats.free-dc.org/user/mil/3820300

[UBT - Timbo]

Crickets!

Why doesn't SBT have any trouble getting people motivated to crunch for these challenges? What are they doing differently?

Hi Carl

Historically, TSBT have benefitted from members having a "crunching farm" (of multiple hosts) as well as quite a few internationally-based members (who may have Scottish family roots) and these members have stayed the course, perhaps due to significant efforts by the team founder(s) to generate interest in each project and the various challenges. So, I think it boils down to individuals remaining enthusiastic about BOINC and the contributions they want to donate to the projects.

And I have tried many ways, such as direct emails, or messaging via projects websites and of course via this forum to follow their lead and generate interest across the board for BOINC and the many Challenges the team has been entered into, but my efforts have not been so successful

And in more recent years, despite having (at one time) over 5,000 members - this was in the time BEFORE GDPR, but now members have to agree to share this project statistics on 3rd party websites - but nowadays, our membership appears to have shrunk somewhat.

Our current team membership is 2,449 (according to BOINCstats) but some of these are multiple accounts of individuals where the stats from closed down projects have not been merged with members other accounts with ongoing projects:

https://classic.boincstats.com/en/stats ... /0/0/214/0

And of course, for many and various reasons people lose interest and they stop crunching...so we have 173 active members who have earned BOINC credits in the last month, which is 7.06%.

By comparison, TSBT have 594 members but only 55 have returned credits in the last 4 weeks...about 9.25%.
And other teams have similar percentages of actives:

Team - Total Membership - Current Actives
SETI.Germany - 7,125 - 539 (7.56%)
Planet3D Now! - 1,992 - 147 (7.37%)
L'Alliance Francophone - 6910 - 541 (7.83%)
TeAm AnandTech - 824 - 76 (9.22%)

Ultimately, I think TSBT have been very lucky to recruit some highly enthused members who continue to support the various projects.

We too, have had some significant members who have contributed massively to our team totals, but for whatever reason(s), they are not contributing nowadays.

regards
Tim

[wbiz]

Me and Milkyway just don't get on, both boinctstats and freeDC stats are not showing my MilkyWay points.

Your here: https://stats.free-dc.org/user/mil/3820300

I knew it would prove me a liar.

I got my first points before 21:00 on the 6th but at 19:54 on the 7th they were both still showing zero points, I guess it must have only update once a day around 20:00 for Milkyway? Other projects appear to update multiple times each day.

But even then the points achieved at 19:54 on the 7th (validated on Milkyway) were over double what you found on FreeDC at a later time.

I'm just impatient, waiting nearly 24 hours for digital data in this day and age is like chiselling hieroglyphics in stone. I'm trying to remember that film where somebody was flipping backwards and forwards in time and was trying to figure out if it was deja-vu or foresight, which was his "real" timezone.

[ChelseaOilman]

Yeah, I think MW only updates once a day on Free-DC. At least my Validation inconclusive tasks went way down from over 40,000 to around 5,000 right now. I don't know if MW fixed their server or this BOINC Games challenge straightened out things.

[stephenhunter]

I'm here Crunching out a few meagre tasks.

Yeh, it's a shame there are only 4 of us registered on BG. 10 or 20 would make a massive difference

If anyone reads this, come and join your team on Boinc Games, it's an easy sign up

[UBT - Timbo]

If anyone reads this, come and join your team on Boinc Games, it's an easy sign up

Use this link:

https://www.boincgames.com/register.php

You could also sign up to the Formula BOINC website too, if you want:

https://formula-boinc.org/admin/team_registration.py

Note: This does not mean you HAVE to take part in any of the Marathon or Sprints on either website, but it does mean that your stats are added to our total team stats and at NO COST to you !!

regards
Tim

[wbiz]

Boinc Games still needs sorting out.

Stephen has 16.8k BG points but the team only has 13.2k BG points

Noticed this anomaly when I found I had over one third of the team's BG points which is ludicrous.

[stephenhunter]

I think the Team and individual stats are calculated separately. So the top placed team gets 375, whilst the top individual gets 1000

I have been trying to get on the board on a lot of projects, whilst there are not that many playing. You can pick 300+ points for just a few results on most of the projects at the moment. Well, since the scoring changed.

So my individual score far outstrips my actual performance

[wbiz]

I think the Team and individual stats are calculated separately. So the top placed team gets 375, whilst the top individual gets 1000

I've been trying to find the rules for both Boincgames and FormulaBoinc, I'm sure I've seen the ForumalBoinc ones before.

[stephenhunter]

https://formula-boinc.org/regles_v2.py? ... &year=2023

Don't know about the rules for BG

[UBT - Timbo]

I've been trying to find the rules for both Boincgames and FormulaBoinc, I'm sure I've seen the ForumalBoinc ones before.

Hiya
The BOINC Games points system has been changing over the last few days/weeks.

https://www.boincgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=43

https://www.boincgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=44

and in simple terms, there are new BG points being awarded to a wider number of teams and individuals than previously.

But it, like the rest of the BG platform, is still in BETA and hence they are still fine tuning some parts of it (when they can afford to pay the site developers).

regards
Tim

[UBT - Timbo]

The latest BOINC Games Sprint just started, 04/06/2023 12:00 (UTC) - 04/09/2023 12:00 (UTC). Milkyway is the project.
https://www.boincgames.com/sprint_details.php?id=12

Hi Carl

Looks like you did extremely well in this Challenge: 2nd place out of 79 active members (although a total of 132 are actually registered on their site so 53 members returned ZERO MilkyWay credits during the Sprint !!).

UBT stats are:

Code: Select all

Posn	Member		Team			BG Points	BOINC credits
2nd	ChelseaOilman	UK BOINC Team		933.30		38,483,684 

56th	Stephen Hunter	UK BOINC Team		362.70		74,327
57th	UBT - Timbo	UK BOINC Team		360.00		62,190
59th	UBT - wbiz	UK BOINC Team		354.70		52,700

So, well done to all as UBT finished in 5th place:

Code: Select all

Team			BG Points	BOINC Credits
UK BOINC Team		322.50		38,672,901

regards
Tim

[stephenhunter]

iThena.Computational are giving out tasks again. easy way to grab a few points

[wbiz]

iThena.Computational are giving out tasks again. easy way to grab a few points

That didnae last long. Very stingy on credits but of course that in itself makes no difference to the challenges. I cut it off early because I thought it was going to be another site with never-ending validation but they did start to come through so I'm kicking myself now for not grabbing more credits while I could.

[stephenhunter]

Yeh, a lot of work for not much return. But you only need a few tasks to get a score on the board

[ChelseaOilman]

There's a sprint going on right now at BOINCGames, Universe@home. Looks like wbiz is keeping the team in the running.

[wbiz]

There's a sprint going on right now at BOINCGames, Universe@home. Looks like wbiz is keeping the team in the running.

That was accidental, Universe is my points-grabber for my Raspbery Pi's when no other work is available.

As srbase is refusing to give me tasks I've switched the x86's onto universe as well now.

[UBT - Timbo]

Hiya

The BOINC Games Sprint ends tomorrow at 19:00 (UTC), and Universe@home was their selected project. Sadly, I missed seeing any advance notification about this so I did not get involved.

But there'll still be some time to earn some credits on the FB Sprint that started earlier today, for which SRBase was chosen !

Best of luck on whichever Sprint you support !

regards
Tim

[UBT - Timbo]

As srbase is refusing to give me tasks I've switched the x86's onto universe as well now.

Hiya

SRBase has had some DNS issues with their provider which is noted on the Notices section of BOINC Manager and on their website messageboard...but I've got lots of GPU tasks without any issues.

No SRBase CPU tasks available for me, so I'm just crunching latinsquares tasks as my backup for CPU tasks.

regards
Tim

[wbiz]

My latest PC's is erroring out on Universe so that's on SRBase, its complains that libstdc++.so.6 is not available but it is in place and ldconfig knows about it.

Spent a few hours trying to sort the Universe problem, doesn't appear to be a common one, given up for the moment. Middle of sprints is never a good time to fix problems.

The same PC won't talk to my central boinctui, I can't find anything to give me a clue what that is about. I can ssh into the computer, boinc-client runs fine, local boinctui runs fine, no firewall problems, it was working last time I used it a week ago, it was running the sprint and controlled centrally back then :defeated:

[UBT - Timbo]

No SRBase CPU tasks available for me, so I'm just crunching latinsquares tasks as my backup for CPU tasks.

Hi all

Since I posted the above, my lone host has now got quite a few SRBase CPU tasks, so it's happily crunching away on them as well as the GPU tasks.

regards
Tim

[wbiz]

Doing well Tim, its not productive for me to throw everything at GPU projects to only gain a few crumbs.

Good to see Mikee has jumped in on the FB sprint again as well.

Solved my Universe problem, I forgot that one computer has 32-bit linux, I'll be changing that after the sprint.

BG appears to have gained some popularity again. I didn't realise the two sprints overlapped, I thought BG happened in a FB gap this time.

[UBT - Timbo]

Doing well Tim, its not productive for me to throw everything at GPU projects to only gain a few crumbs.

Good to see Mikee has jumped in on the FB sprint again as well.

Hiya

As always, one has to gauge which project is worth volunteering your hosts for...as many will have preferences for specific projects.

And yes, it's nice that Mikee has joined in - so thank you Mikee !!

Solved my Universe problem, I forgot that one computer has 32-bit linux, I'll be changing that after the sprint.

Excellent...it's always nice to be able to fix stuff when issues arise.

BG appears to have gained some popularity again. I didn't realise the two sprints overlapped, I thought BG happened in a FB gap this time.

BG and FB are both based on the times of 3rd party sporting events which are obviously fixed in place by the relevant organisers and the overlap for this weekend was for 37 hours - but different projects were chosen for each Sprint so it should not have caused any issues in terms of task availability.

regards
Tim