Rename app_info.xml so it won't be recognised
Restart BOINC (service)
Update SETI - may not get through first time, but keep trying
Restore app_info.xml to original name
Wait until all transfers have finished
Restart BOINC (service)

Forgive my ignorance, but exactly how does one restart BOINC (service)? Do you mean restart the BOINC manager, or is this something different?

Forgive my ignorance, but exactly how does one restart BOINC (service)? Do you mean restart the BOINC manager, or is this something different?

Sorry, it was an abbreviation to save typing.

It depends how you installed BOINC. If you did a 'user' install - the default - you just need to do a complete exit from the BOINC Manager: File|Exit if you have it open on screen, right-click and exit if it's minimised to the system tray.

If you installed BOINC as a service (so it runs even when no user is logged on), you need to stop it using the Services snap-in under administrative tools.

If the second method doesn't make sense to you, you'll probably have installed BOINC as a user program, and you should use the first method. When you re-start BOINC, just check the message tab: you should see all the start-up and initialisation messages. If you don't see the start-up messages, then you didn't stop it completely and you'll need to try again.

Rename app_info.xml so it won't be recognised
Restart BOINC (service)
Update SETI - may not get through first time, but keep trying
Restore app_info.xml to original name
Wait until all transfers have finished
Restart BOINC (service)

Forgive my ignorance, but exactly how does one restart BOINC (service)? Do you mean restart the BOINC manager, or is this something different?

That is what he means Yes..and it does Work Eric if you read this. I just did this on three of my machines and it instantly allowed them to upload results and download real units for processing.

However, can someone tell me how to this under Ubuntu, I have had a look through the file system, but have no idea where to find the program files under Linux, and I don't want to play and break them either..Thanks.

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@ Richard / Eric...

Are you sure that this is strictly isolated to the anonymous platform? I thought I saw a couple of posts from individuals that I believe don't run the optimized apps. I could be wrong, so I won't name them by name at this point until I can get all my real life tasks done for the day (I'm only home for a quick stop at the moment).

Brian

Rename app_info.xml so it won't be recognised
Restart BOINC (service)
Update SETI - may not get through first time, but keep trying
Restore app_info.xml to original name
Wait until all transfers have finished
Restart BOINC (service)

Forgive my ignorance, but exactly how does one restart BOINC (service)? Do you mean restart the BOINC manager, or is this something different?

Just exit boink completely and then restart it up again.

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@ Richard / Eric...

Are you sure that this is strictly isolated to the anonymous platform? I thought I saw a couple of posts from individuals that I believe don't run the optimized apps. I could be wrong, so I won't name them by name at this point until I can get all my real life tasks done for the day (I'm only home for a quick stop at the moment).

Brian

I think there's enough evidence by now from people saying 'it worked for me' to confirm that there is definitely something broken in anonymous platform, and it seems to be consistently worked-round by reverting to automatic mode. (i.e. I haven't seen anyone report failure with the method - Kirsten had problems, but it worked after a bit of a delay).

But that doesn't mean it's the only problem! People who don't use anonymous platform may well still be having problems (different ones): but if we can isolate and remove problems one at a time, the causes of the remaining ones will become clearer.

Well, it didn't work.

But then my problem hasn't been getting work. It is getting rid of work:-)

Carl

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Skype = demiurg2

@ Richard / Eric...

Are you sure that this is strictly isolated to the anonymous platform? I thought I saw a couple of posts from individuals that I believe don't run the optimized apps. I could be wrong, so I won't name them by name at this point until I can get all my real life tasks done for the day (I'm only home for a quick stop at the moment).

Brian

I think there's enough evidence by now from people saying 'it worked for me' to confirm that there is definitely something broken in anonymous platform, and it seems to be consistently worked-round by reverting to automatic mode. (i.e. I haven't seen anyone report failure with the method - Kirsten had problems, but it worked after a bit of a delay).

But that doesn't mean it's the only problem! People who don't use anonymous platform may well still be having problems (different ones): but if we can isolate and remove problems one at a time, the causes of the remaining ones will become clearer.

I run 3 machines 2 run Simon's app and the other runs the stock app. The work around allowed the 2 with Simon's app to get new WU's although they both have ghost WU from the past couple days. The machine with the standard app has been connecting and getting work with no ghosts. As I stated in another post this problem appeared to coincide with the BOINC tree update that was done during the normal outage on Tuesday. That is when I started getting the Ghosts and new work stopped, Uploading and reporting at that time became spotty. Not sure if this will help you guys just my observations.

[EDIT] For the BOINC tree update I am referring to is in Matt's post from Tuesday:
"We also updated all the BOINC-side code to bring the SETI@home project in line with the current BOINC source tree and a few things broke, namely our validators and assimilators." [/EDIT]

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SETI Classic Stats:
Workunits processed 28,419
Total CPU time 216,314 hours

Hi Carl,

I also had lots of WUs failing to report before I did this workaround. They did get reported and new ones downloaded afterwards, though.

So it did work for me for the same problem, but it may take a bit of luck to get through to the scheduler (took an average of 3 tries for me, but some hosts never got lucky yet).

HTH,
Simon.

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Optimized SETI@Home apps + Information

Yeah, it worked smooth and fine, thanks for the hints folks....

Just one thing ... i would like to understand WHY it worked :)

Happy crunching

M.

[ADDED A FEW MINS LATER]

Is this procedure "mandatory" on each puter running seti client ? Or just on puters with ghost WU ?

On my laptop i have a few WU left, and till now it is not yet asking for new work ... just want to be "prepared" .. :)


Thanks
[END ADDED]

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So far it has worked on my iMac and on my Inspiron laptop. I have not tried it on the Dimension yet as I have a dial-up connection.

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Hi Carl,

I also had lots of WUs failing to report before I did this workaround. They did get reported and new ones downloaded afterwards, though.

So it did work for me for the same problem, but it may take a bit of luck to get through to the scheduler (took an average of 3 tries for me, but some hosts never got lucky yet).

HTH,
Simon.

I guess this is the case of everything hating me today:-)
I think I will quite literally step out of the computer I am sitting in and turn off the laptop I am using inside the computer to go out into the fine evening weather... and return on monday:-)
Carl

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Skype = demiurg2

However, can someone tell me how to this under Ubuntu, I have had a look through the file system, but have no idea where to find the program files under Linux, and I don't want to play and break them either..Thanks.

jim:

taken you use the client from the ubuntu repositories, you can find your app_info.xml under /usr/share/boinc-app-seti/ - and here /var/lib/boinc-client/projects/setiathome.berkeley.edu (the working directory) is a link to that one.

the ghost-wu-trick should work if you rename the link in the working directory - at least it did for me...

mic.

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mic.

SETI@home 17/05/2007 18:18:18 Message from server: Incomplete request received.

I think I've tracked down this problem. There seems to be something related to the outage that has corrupted the file "sched_request_setiathome.berkeley.edu.xml"
in your BOINC directories. Restarting BOINC or deleting the file and restarting BOINC should fix that problem.

SETI@home 17/05/2007 19:01:39 Scheduler request failed: HTTP internal server error
SETI@home 17/05/2007 19:06:49 Scheduler request failed: server returned nothing (no headers, no data)

This usually means the scheduler request timed out because we are still overwhelmed.

Eric

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@SETIEric@qoto.org (Mastodon)

worked for me thanks for the info,
just loaded up 4 pcs thats been stuck for work on setti for a good bit

thanks greenfinger

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For me, the renaming the app_info file trick has accomplsihed something.

I did get 3 WUs on one machine, but on the Results for Computer page, it also gave me 5 additional Ghosts. Note that the timestamp for the Ghosts are weird, while the good DLs are consistent with the time they downloaded.

Good DLs in Red

535624975 129448185 18 May 2007 16:56:38 UTC 5 Jun 2007 9:12:03 UTC In Progress Unknown New --- --- ---
535218668 128846780 17 May 2007 17:43:31 UTC 22 May 2007 1:53:31 UTC In Progress Unknown New --- --- ---
535051627 129476175 18 May 2007 16:56:38 UTC 31 May 2007 19:41:22 UTC In Progress Unknown New --- --- ---
535051564 129476162 18 May 2007 16:56:38 UTC 31 May 2007 19:41:22 UTC In Progress Unknown New --- --- ---
534945332 129442634 18 May 2007 11:47:27 UTC 22 May 2007 19:57:27 UTC In Progress Unknown New --- --- ---
534759659 129388850 18 May 2007 1:11:32 UTC 11 Jun 2007 23:44:31 UTC In Progress Unknown New --- --- ---
534758973 129388628 18 May 2007 1:10:06 UTC 6 Jun 2007 19:09:32 UTC In Progress Unknown New --- --- ---
534758708 129388540 18 May 2007 1:09:01 UTC 6 Jun 2007 19:08:27 UTC In Progress Unknown New --- --- ---

[EDIT]Infact, one of the Ghosts got a timestamp in the future, if I'calculating GMT correctly from MDT[/EDIT]

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That worked for me also. The question I now have is, once we go back to using app_info.xml will that break communications again?

[ADDED A FEW MINS LATER]
Is this procedure "mandatory" on each puter running seti client ? Or just on puters with ghost WU ?

On my laptop i have a few WU left, and till now it is not yet asking for new work ... just want to be "prepared" .. :)
Thanks
[END ADDED]

Mauro, if you have a SETI WU in progress you will probably have to wait for it to finish for this to work. That did it for me on the one machine I had with work remaining.

SETI@home 17/05/2007 18:18:18 Message from server: Incomplete request received.

< Snip >
I think I've tracked down this problem. There seems to be something related to the outage that has corrupted the file "sched_request_setiathome.berkeley.edu.xml"
in your BOINC directories. Restarting BOINC or deleting the file and restarting BOINC should fix that problem.

<Snip>

Eric

Thanks Eric,
Anyone tried this yet? a Possible permanent fix?
[ I see, addresses one of the probs....]

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

SETI@home 17/05/2007 18:18:18 Message from server: Incomplete request received.

I think I've tracked down this problem. There seems to be something related to the outage that has corrupted the file "sched_request_setiathome.berkeley.edu.xml"
in your BOINC directories. Restarting BOINC or deleting the file and restarting BOINC should fix that problem.

Thanks Eric. I think we'd worked out empirically that the BOINC restart was sufficient, but it's good to know that you've traced it right back and there aren't any further gremlins lurking in the woodwork, waiting to bite us on the....

SETI@home 17/05/2007 19:01:39 Scheduler request failed: HTTP internal server error
SETI@home 17/05/2007 19:06:49 Scheduler request failed: server returned nothing (no headers, no data)

This usually means the scheduler request timed out because we are still overwhelmed.

Eric

I agree that 'server returned nothing' is a typical overwhelmed server/timeout response, and not to be persued in the midst of all this. I just included it in case you wanted a reference point to double-check the logs.

However, the 'HTTP internal server error' seems to be related to the anonymous platform / ghost WU issue we've been wittering on about all day, and might still be worth exploring in that context if you've got nothing better to do. <grin>

Richard

For me, the renaming the app_info file trick has accomplsihed something.

I did get 3 WUs on one machine, but on the Results for Computer page, it also gave me 5 additional Ghosts. Note that the timestamp for the Ghosts are weird, while the good DLs are consistent with the time they downloaded.

Good DLs in Red

535624975 129448185 18 May 2007 16:56:38 UTC 5 Jun 2007 9:12:03 UTC In Progress Unknown New --- --- ---
535218668 128846780 17 May 2007 17:43:31 UTC 22 May 2007 1:53:31 UTC In Progress Unknown New --- --- ---
535051627 129476175 18 May 2007 16:56:38 UTC 31 May 2007 19:41:22 UTC In Progress Unknown New --- --- ---
535051564 129476162 18 May 2007 16:56:38 UTC 31 May 2007 19:41:22 UTC In Progress Unknown New --- --- ---
534945332 129442634 18 May 2007 11:47:27 UTC 22 May 2007 19:57:27 UTC In Progress Unknown New --- --- ---
534759659 129388850 18 May 2007 1:11:32 UTC 11 Jun 2007 23:44:31 UTC In Progress Unknown New --- --- ---
534758973 129388628 18 May 2007 1:10:06 UTC 6 Jun 2007 19:09:32 UTC In Progress Unknown New --- --- ---
534758708 129388540 18 May 2007 1:09:01 UTC 6 Jun 2007 19:08:27 UTC In Progress Unknown New --- --- ---

[EDIT]Infact, one of the Ghosts got a timestamp in the future, if I'calculating GMT correctly from MDT[/EDIT]

The WU with the 17:43:31 UTC timestamp is dated yesterday (17 May 2007), so I don't think we've encountered ghostly time-travelling ETs just yet. Shame, really.