Docking Problems

[Dennis]

Have detached docking from my computer, seems that windows 7 64 bit doesn't like it.
The WU that I had ran for near 10 hours with 0% and kept restarting over a 2 day period.
Seems to be a ongoing problem from reading their forums.

I posted this in the AA forum but thought it would be better here.

Now my computer literacy is not all that good, but was wondering if my problem may be because i am running FreeHal as well, and it is a memory issue?

Have loaded docking again and will see what happens.

Dennis.

[Rob]

I have freeHal running alongside Docking on my Win 7 64 machine no worries. It must something else or a combination of that & something else, or maybe your just holding your tongue the wrong way ;D
What CPU are you using? Didn't someone in the AA thread say some problems with Docking were related to CPU family.

[kashi]

You're not running the computer intensive (ci) FreeHAL tasks are you?

The FreeHAL project is recognised by BOINC as non computer intensive (nci), which means if you run the computer intensive FreeHAL tasks your computer will be overcommitted while those ci tasks are running. For example this would mean that you would be running 3 CPU tasks at the same time on a dual core computer. If you were using a little bit of CPU resources as well to support GPU processing it would be quite possible that this could be the cause of instability with any CPU project and perhaps Docking is more susceptible to this.

I have experienced this incompatibility between different projects myself with certain CPU projects and GPU processing. Longer AQUA tasks cause my computer to freeze or crash with all GPU projects and more recently I found SIMAP causing the same thing but only with Collatz GPU processing.

[veebee]

I think Kashi may be onto the right path there....

[Dennis]

 I have 1 FreeHal running plus 3 others.
At the moment 1 FreeHal, 1 distirbuted data, 1 DNETC and 1 boincsmap, this is what is currently running from the list of jobs I have lined up.
I am running CPU intensive FreeHal.
Remember I am a klutz when it comes to computers, must be age related lol.

Dennis.

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[Dennis]

Have put FreeHal to "won't get new tasks", will see what happens with docking when it starts.

[kashi]

Right, so you were running 3 CPU projects and a GPU project at once on a dual core. Fair bit of contention there.  ;D

Possibly Docking was trying to write its checkpoint file every few minutes and couldn't get enough resources quickly enough to do it, so it kept restarting in a loop. The Docking CHARMM application when run on Windows 7 must cause a slower access to computer resources in some way as compared to other operating systems. High load and/or certain CPU types must be more sensitive to this. From reports it seems like it is the Core architecture (Core2 Duo, Core2 Quad) that is the most susceptible. The CHARMM version being used dates from 2007 and Docking started using it in August 2009, so that was before Windows 7 was available retail.

There are some differences in memory management between Windows 7 and Windows XP. I noticed that AlmereGrid tasks were more stable and completed much quicker on a Windows XP virtual machine than on my Windows 7 main OS.

Good luck with running Docking by itself.

[Dennis]

Have 2 docking wu's running and only these two.
One was a 5 hour wu that has been running for nearly 17 hours and is at 0% completed.
The other is a 5 hour WU that has been running for 13 hours and is at 0% completed.
Nothing else is running on my BOINC.
The two docking WU's are constantly restarting.

I tried, and I failed lol!

Am going to detach the project.

Dennis.

[kashi]

Ah well you gave it a your best shot, it was worth a try. +1 for your persistence.

[Dingo]

My laptop has two Docking running fo a long time.  I will let them run for a while longer to see what happens.

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[kashi]

Hmm, judging from the screenshot, I think nothing will happen they will stay at 0%, same as Dennis. T6600, that's the same CPU as Dennis I think, his must be a laptop also.

[Dennis]

It is a laptop Kashi.
Dingo, in your messages did they keep restarting over and over again?

Dennis.

[dyeman]

Just started a docking WU on my laptop (T7300, Win XP) and it seems to be running ok - over 8% after 20 odd minutes

[Dingo]

Well I just aborted them but I lost 60 hours of crunching so I have aborted all the taskes and detached on the laptop.  All the other PC's are running fine.

[Ian BBB]

Just wanted to report that I'm having having the same problem as Denis with a desktop PC running Windows 7 on an Intel E5300. I have run other BOINC projects on this configuration and I have Docking WUs running XP machines. All a bit of a mystery. Will experiment some more to see if I can find a work-around.

regards
Ian BBB