BOINC@AUSTRALIA FORUM

Retired BOINC Projects => DOCKING@HOME => Topic started by: Dennis on August 06, 2010, 03:29:37 PM

Title: Docking Problems
Post by: Dennis on August 06, 2010, 03:29:37 PM
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.
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: Rob on August 06, 2010, 05:30:43 PM
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.
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: kashi on August 06, 2010, 05:50:53 PM
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.
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: veebee on August 06, 2010, 06:05:44 PM
I think Kashi may be onto the right path there....
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: Dennis on August 06, 2010, 06:37:57 PM
 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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Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: Dennis on August 06, 2010, 06:53:27 PM
Have put FreeHal to "won't get new tasks", will see what happens with docking when it starts.
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: kashi on August 06, 2010, 08:20:45 PM
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.
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: Dennis on August 07, 2010, 04:46:44 PM
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.
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: kashi on August 07, 2010, 06:26:10 PM
Ah well you gave it a your best shot, it was worth a try. +1 for your persistence.
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: Dingo on August 07, 2010, 06:39:57 PM
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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Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: kashi on August 07, 2010, 08:01:47 PM
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.
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: Dennis on August 07, 2010, 08:08:41 PM
It is a laptop Kashi.
Dingo, in your messages did they keep restarting over and over again?

Dennis.
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: dyeman on August 07, 2010, 09:26:10 PM
Just started a docking WU on my laptop (T7300, Win XP) and it seems to be running ok - over 8% after 20 odd minutes
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: Dingo on August 08, 2010, 12:47:02 AM
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.

Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: Ian BBB on August 29, 2010, 10:29:55 PM
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
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: Dingo on August 30, 2010, 03:43:58 AM
I have stopped running Docking on the laptop I have with me in Canada.  The WU's run past the 100% mark and just keep running till they are killed.  I let some go for 17 hours, so I am not running the project any more.  I will run be running RNA World for the AA as I am still in Canada and won't be back in Aust till mid Sept.
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: Ian BBB on August 30, 2010, 10:38:32 PM
Quote from: Ian BBB on August 29, 2010, 10:29:55 PM
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.

A follow-up. I tried running up Puppy Linux on this same machine and ran Docking successfully. There was some weird behavior though; Both the "elapse time" and the "time to complete" would count up at the same time while the "% complete" remained frozen. At other times the display would freeze and changing to another window and changing back would update and re-animate the BOINC display. One thing though, no re-starts.

This shows that at the basic hardware is OK and it something complex. More to come.

regards
Ian BBB
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: WikiWill on August 30, 2010, 10:47:46 PM
No problems here on an E8400 (Win 7 & Win XP) or T5300 (Win 7).  Slow, but they work.  Good luck sorting out that issue tho.
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: Scott T on August 30, 2010, 11:20:12 PM
My E6750 (x64 Win7) was fine, however after my recent upgrade to a Q9505 I didn't have any successful workunits - tried every now and then for the last two weeks but every single one was sitting at 0% after 6+ hours. 

Out of curiosity, set up an x64 Ubuntu VM, and that hasn't had any issues (even managing to snare a few short high-pay WUs).  So for the AA, I'll have two VM cores on docking, one real core on another project, and the last core to keep the VM, Windows and the GPU all happy :)
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: Rob on August 31, 2010, 03:17:36 PM
It's strange how many people are having problems ???. I've been running it trouble free for years on various combinations of cpu & OS
Currently run it on a Q9550 on Win 7 64bit, and Q9450 on Kubuntu 10.4 64 bit, & recently had it running for a few days on a build I did for my sister, Q6600 on Win 7 64 bit.
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: teemac on August 31, 2010, 07:45:44 PM
I've been trying for a couple of days to sign up, but no work coming thru at all.

My existing projects caches (Simap & QuantumFire) are just about out of WU's for me, so if Docking doesn't sort itself out in the next 5 or 6 hours, I will have to give it a miss for a few days and reload my existing projects caches. I go into hospital for some cancer stuff early Thurday and might be locked up for the weekend.

Will try again when they release me next week.
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: WikiWill on August 31, 2010, 10:06:59 PM
Work is coming through for me.  I've picked up 20 WUs in the last hour on my Win 7 box.
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: teemac on September 01, 2010, 08:11:20 PM
Work now coming thru OK - must have heard us complaining  :yahoo:
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: BF on September 03, 2010, 04:04:51 PM
I'm also having major Docking problems..  All the WUs run fine on my Vista machines, but on the 64bit Win7 boxes I am getting 0% progress, and the WUs will just keep running and running.. Cannot find a solution on their forum, so I think I will have to detach with those machines.. (a Q9550 and a Q6600).
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: Agnew on September 03, 2010, 07:17:47 PM
I was getting the occasional bad compute on my i7 running 64bit Win XP, but it seems to be behaving better after throttling the beast back by 10%,,, fingers crossed :)
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: kashi on September 03, 2010, 08:30:27 PM
If you were getting the occasional bad compute it was possibly the batch of very short running 1hsg1dif tasks that were granting 102 credits. I think a fair proportion of those were erroring for everyone regardless of their clockspeed. I know I was getting 10-20% errors on that batch but other batches run with only a very occasional error on my computer. I didn't mind, the generous credit granted for the runtime more than compensated for the large number of "Compute error" experienced.  ;D

That was a different problem than some who are using Win 7 with pre Nehalem Intel CPUs who cannot complete any tasks at all because they keep restarting and so stay at 0% complete. From reading on Docking forum and experience of members here that problem affects only Win 7. Win XP, Linux or Linux on a VM appears to be unaffected.
Title: Re: Docking Problems
Post by: Agnew on September 03, 2010, 11:54:39 PM
It may have also been the "25% active cpu usage" setting in Boinc 6.10.58 whilst using other programs that contributed to the problems I experienced. I hadn't noticed THAT setting when I'd updated Boinc before starting on Docking. The lesson being READ through ALL of the setting after an update! Silly me. 

I'll be stay on Docking longer than the official AA anyway, as I'm still doing DDM work as well, to keep the wolves at bay and hopefully get up to the million mark over there.