Goofyxgrid Marathon

[UBT - Chris]

Hi all,

I know I've brought this up before, but I will again... Goofy is a great one for getting 'cheap' (if you would) credits - 10/application/hour with 4 applications = 40/hour/machine... We are currently 14th in the marathon, with ~ 10 million credits currently needed to be in 10th. That sounds like a lot, but when you consider that Goofy is NCI and you can theoretically have infinite instances of BOINC running Goofy, then it becomes a lot easier. I, for one, have 250 clients (soon to add more) on one machine alone - 250*4*10 = 10,000 credits/hour easily. With me alone crunching, that would take 1000 hours (~40 days) of solid crunching to achieve that 10 million. If, let's say, 5 of us all had 250 clients, we would have 1250 clients gaining roughly 50,000 credits per hour (1.2 million/day) with NCI work alone! That means it would only take about 8 days to get into 10th (where our rivals - Poland - are currently) or better, and we will then be earning more marathon points So it's definitely worth it - cheap credits AND an advancement in FB!!

I hope this has given everyone some food for thought - let me know what you think of the idea of you doing this

Thanks everyone,
Chris


EDIT: The only limiting factor (other than host memory, etc) is the availability of tasks - Goofy has had a few problems recently with this, but it should be fixed soon. And either way, when the work is here, it's good work!

[UBT - Mikee]

Hi

Another limiting factor is the fact I can't get any WUs due to server error! Can't add machine!

Mike

[UBT - Chris]

Yes, looking at the forums, that does seem to be a common problem today... The server has been up and down constantly over the past week or so :/ It seemed to have coincided with the re-release of 2 of the apps... Hopefully all is fixed soon, but the admin keeps taking it down for 12 hours or so and restarting the server with ~200,000 tasks (Usually lasts about 8 hours) and then the same thing occurs. What it needs is to really just be taken down for a few days and fully fixed, but hey ho!

Chris

[Woodles]

I might give it a go when I have a few minutes. The old Goofy used to run on my Raspberry Pi's, I wonder if I can get 250 instances running on each of them, they've never earned 10k credits an hour before!

[UBT - Chris Suddick]

Am I missing something here? Free-dc doesn't even show this project and Boincstats shows it as a dead project.

Chris.

[Woodles]

Hi Chris,

It used to be called GoofyxGrid, then became Grid Computing Centre and has now ended up as GoofyGridx NCI.

There was a falling out among the project operators and it disappeared for a while but the original programmer is trying to bring it back to life again. There's been intermittent work for a month or so but they're still having problems with it and I don't think they're exporting stats yet. It is really a work in progress at the moment.

Free-DC still has it listed under Grid Computing Center.

Originally it was purely an NCI project but has now split into two projects, one NCI and the other a regular project taking cores. The beauty of the NCI work was that it took very few CPU cycles and didn't use much memory or disc. Fixed (low) credits and long WU times meant it didn't pay particularly well but the project owner has said he has no problems with running more than one instance per host. As Chris has pointed out, you can quite easily run a large number of instances on any host to generate some respectable numbers while still not using much resource.

The NCI website is here - http://nci.goofyxgridathome.net/

The 'normal' website is here - http://cpu.goofyxgridathome.net/

Mark

[UBT - Chris]

Running it on the Pis would be good As I say, I have 250 at the moment but they are running without any sign of strain... Might up it in lots of 10/20 and see how it goes - as soon as it slows down too much, that's the limit per host But I'd say it's definitely worth doing! Atm, there are rather limited WUs, but I see that this will be sorted soon and we'll be back with a steady supply If you have 10 hosts and the maximum is say 300 instances on each... That's 120k/hour!! That would be amazing for the team on the project and in general, as well as for the individual!

Happy crunching,
Chris

[chriscambridge]

If anyone wants a PI to setup up on this I have a spare one sitting round not being used anymore.

It's a Raspberry Pi Model B (512MB RAM, UK Model).

It has raspbian installed, and has a SD Card (I think its SD) as well as PI Camera.

I would also guess it has a PI power supply also.

It has only been used for a few hours so its as new.

Free to any good home that can use it on UBT BOINC etc.

[UBT - Chris]

Hi Chris,

Is that Pi still up for grabs? If so, could I possibly be the one to grab it? Been meaning to get a new Pi up and running on BOINC, so if you have one going spare, that's perfect Just let me know

Thanks,
(Other) Chris

[chriscambridge]

** updated **

Hi Chris,

That is fine, it was on a first come, first serve basis - and you were first

To make things easier, how about I be referred to as Kris or CC, which then leaves Chris for you, and Chris S for the other Chris.

So I have:

1x Raspberry PI (model B)
1x 32 GB SD Card
1x PI transparent Case (model A, I think?)
1x PI B Camera transparent housing case
1x PI B (micro USB?) Power Supply.

Unfortunately at this time I cannot seem to find the PI Camera however it will turn up at some point and is useless without the PI, so because its so small I could just pop it in a envelope at a later date (when it turns up).

What I would say is to reinstall the OS, as I used the PI for an embedded AI project that I was playing about with. (Python app that does face tracking via the OpenCV API).

It has the following installed, hence why I would wipe it to free up storage and get rid of un-necessary stuff:

Python
OpenCV
Raspbian
Old version of BOINC
Some other Linux stuff

In terms of cost like I said it is free however I have no idea how many stamps to put on it? Anyone?

Also, you will need to PM the address to me that you want it sent to; do not worry about postage costs, I will cover that (as long as it does not cost loads).

How does that all sound?

[UBT - Chris]

I like CC I'll go for that!

Thank you, that all sounds amazing! You sure you don't want any payment at all for this?? No worries about that camera - if it turns up, it turns up, if not, I'm fine without

In terms of stamps, I'm not sure... I'm in Cheshire, so I doubt you'd need too many to get it to me

I'll PM my address to you now, thanks again!

Chris

[chriscambridge]

No payment is fine as its a freebie; however if you wanted to donate a small amount to the running costs of this website then that would be okay too, but not strictly necessary in order to get the PI.

app.php/donate

I just checked on the royal mail website and 2nd class postage for a small parcel is only £3 ish so that is fine.

The only thing is can you give me a week or two to actually get it sent as its a little difficult to get to the post office at the moment.

However the package is boxed and ready to go; all I have to do is pay and print a label and drop it off at the post office.

I will PM you once sent to confirm its on its way.

[UBT - Chris]

I'd be more than happy to donate to the forum I'll do that in the next few days (PayPal's misbehaving for me at the moment so I need to fix that first).

Take all the time you need - no rush here I'm just happy to be getting a Pi after my old one died

Thanks again!!!
Chris

[UBT - Chris]

UPDATE:

Lots of work has just been made available

[UBT - Mikee]

Hi

Actually managed to attach yesterday. Got 4 WUs running and all seemed well til I looked this morning and saw 4 WUs waiting to upload. Looks like the site is down.

Mike

[Woodles]

I got four tasks almost an hour ago so all was well then but yes, no sign of the project now.

[UBT - Chris]

Yeah, this keeps being an issue - about every 48 hours, the project is down for about 6 hours :/ a little annoying but at 10k an hour when the project is up, I can't complain too much! Shame I'm just missing out on a few more (Nearly on 1 million! )

[Woodles]

Seems to be running again .... and just over 3 million WUs available!

[UBT - Chris]

Yep! Better get some VMs up and running as it's NCI, you can have many instances AND still do your CPU/GPU work with very little impact, so if a few of us do this and get a couple 100k/day each, here we come top 10!

[UBT - Chris]

In other news, Goofy is (finally!!!) back on BOINCStats Now my RAC is slightly more accurate