New PearlBOINC Project DepSpid

[Hermann]

Yet another project but still in alpha testing.
They are looking for alpha testers, so if you are interested you may pre-register now.

http://depspid.bjoernhenke.de/pre_reg.php

[gamer007]

Pre-registered. :)

[NeoGen]

Me too! :)

This seems like a kind of Majestic-12 but in Boinc.

[Evil-Dragon]

Pre-registered.

[Beerknurd]

I pre-registered as well...

[gatekeeper53]

Me too.

[AMD-USR_JL]

I registered :D

[Murray]

Registered...read what the programme is about in its forum...what is the aim of the project, it seems a bit like a search engine of sorts? Or have I completely got the wrong end of the stick...?

Regards
Murray

[NeoGen]

Yes... I think it's something like that. But we'll only be sure once it opens.

[gamer007]

The admin of the project has said the Alpha should start the end of next week. It was delayed due to some problems.

As for what this project is, it seems like Majestic-12.

[Evil-Dragon]

Here's the latest email from this project:


Hello


You're receiving this email because you've pre-registered for an account on the DepSpid project site.
I'm happy to announce that the alpha phase of the project started yesterday and you'll be soon one of the alpha testers, too. You'll receive an account email from the server as soon as your account is created. This email contains the account key which is needed to log into your account and set the account password. Once you've set the password for your account, you'll be able to attach to the project with your BOINC clients.



You may already have participated in many BOINC projects but this project is very different in many ways as it doesn't depend much on cpu time but on network (internet) time.
If you have not done it already, please read the rules and policies at http://depspid.bjoernhenke.de/rules.php and don't participate if you can't accept them.


Here are a few things which are different from other projects and need additional attention from the testers:

1) As stated before, the DepSpid project doesn't depend on cpu time but on network (internet) time. Please read the following forum post http://www.bjoernhenke.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=375 and don't forget to recognize the bold note under phase two.

2) As a result of the internet based kind of the DepSpid project, the DepSpid application needs connection to the internet. If you're using a personal firewall you'll have to give the DepSpid application access to the internet. Depending on the type of the personal firewall used, this may be either an easy or a hard task. Please share your experiences with personal firewalls in the DepSpid message boards (no matter if it was an easy or a hard task for you). The current version of the DepSpid application doesn't support non-transparent proxys. If you're using a non-transparent proxy, please post in the message boards what happens after the DepSpid task has been started (this is unsure at the moment) and stop DepSpid from getting additional tasks. Proxy support will be introduced in one of the next versions.

3) The special kind of the DepSpid project leads to a special kind of credit system, too. You can read more about it here: http://www.bjoernhenke.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=374.

4) DepSpid uses phpBB for the message boards instead of the BOINC message board system. This currently requires to create an additional phpBB account for postings. Solutions to get phpBB and BOINC to work together will be made in the future.

4) DepSpid uses PerlBOINC instead of the default BOINC server system and runs under windows. Many thanks to Rytis Slatkevičius for his great work at PerlBOINC. DepSpid uses a modified version of PerlBOINC to better fit some of its special requirements and additional modifications are supposed to be made in the future.

5) The DepSpid application is the first BOINC application compiled with FreePascal/Lazarus. The BOINC stuff is linked into it with an external DLL. The source is structured to be compilable alternatively with Delphi, too.

6) The DepSpid server will (at least in the first months) only run around half a day and will be completly offline every second or third weekend. The DepSpid tasks are supposed to run over a few days in most cases and therefore this should be no problem and most clients should not run out of DepSpid tasks.

7) The DepSpid server uses a dynamic IP address. This is a known problem for BOINC clients running 24/7 which will hopefully be fixed or at least work-arounded soon.

...and most likely some more things I forgot.



Thanks for your interest to participate in the alpha test of the DepSpid project.

- Björn Henke -

[gamer007]

I'm in! :D

[Beerknurd]

I'm in too!!! Should I put a PC on it, or continue with Tanpaku full speed???

[gamer007]

You can put it on any PC. It uses bandwidth instead of CPU so you'll have 2 projects running at once. I have RenderFarm/DepSpid running right now. :)

EDIT: Team has been created: http://depspid.dyndns.org/orig/team_display.php?teamid=14

EDIT 2: The work fetch policy of DepSpid (http://www.bjoernhenke.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=378)
In summary, you can have up to 20 DepSpid WUs running becuase it's using bandwidth.

[Beerknurd]

I am running it, but it doesn't appear to be doing anything... It is stuck at .245 percent complete and only ran for 1 second???

[Beerknurd]

Ok, it's up and running on all PC's

[Beerknurd]

Heck yea this project uses bandwidth... I have all computers running 20 WU's... I may have to lower it to 5 per cpu... :lol:

[NeoGen]

I never got my account after pre-registering... :icon_sad:

[Beerknurd]

If you want to help the team out you can run it under my name or gamer007's or Evil-Dragon's...

[Steve Lux]

Probably cannot run this and Majestic-12 at the same time as each would basically want to use all the bandwidth, but I wonder about Dimes?

[vaughan]

I got the e-mail.
I joined our team.
I cannot get it to let me attach to the project using BOINC 5.4.9 :angry7:

[Evil-Dragon]

vaughan: looks like the project server has gone down.

Steve Lux: From my hardware firewall it looks like it doesn't use hardly any bandwidth so you should be able to run it with MJ12 quite happily.

[NeoGen]

Are you sure your firewall isn't blocking it? :lol: :p

[gamer007]

I'm using 5.5.0 (Crunch3r's) and I got in fine. And I finally got 1 WU done. :)

[Evil-Dragon]

They are very slow WU's aren't they.... thought it would go faster to be honest.

[Hermann]

I never got my account after pre-registering... :icon_sad:

Me too. :icon_surprised:

[Beerknurd]

I can't beleive i'm ranked 2nd overall....

[gamer007]

How many computers did you put DepSpid on?

I only have this and my brothers.

[Beerknurd]

I have it on all 3

[gamer007]

Congrats beer, you are now 1st overall! What's your secret? Do you have friends in Sweden w/ their super-fast bandwidth compared to us in North America?

[Beerknurd]

I have no idea what I am doing... I just know that I'm doing something right. So I am not changing anything. My Tanpaku scores are suffering a little though... I guess this thing does use some processor power...

[gamer007]

How many DepSpid WUs are you running at the same time? You can have a max of 20, but RAM and bandwidth suffers.

The project does use CPU for the 2nd half of the WU. One of the forum threads discuss about how it works.

[Beerknurd]

I think I have it set at 15 per PC. I think they are out of work right now...

[Beerknurd]

Ok, I stopped running it. The project is down twice as much as it is up. Plus my Tanpaku scores are getting crippled. I lost 1200 points yesterday. I may try this again later, but right now I am going to concentrate on Tanpaku.

[Evil-Dragon]

The project is down twice as much as it is up.

Agreed, the guy could at least keep the project up for a day. Getting fed up of keeping restarting BOINC when it comes back online too.

[NeoGen]

Go spidey go!!

Just caught a few of those spiders on my boinc! :)

[gamer007]

Got some as well! :)

Finally too.

[NeoGen]

Is it normal that after 18+ hours my 5 workunits are still between 25% and 60%? :icon_eek:

[gamer007]

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 --- A happy WELCOME to all new users
The tests of the new application versions 5.03 and 5.04 were very successful. The project should now be ready to expand the user base. Pre-registered users will receive an account email from the server as soon as the account is created. Accounts are created in chronological order. Please note that it'll take some time until all pre-registered users get their account.
Link: http://www.bjoernhenke.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=426

---

If anyone here pre-registered for an account here but didn't get one, you will. :D

[meshmar]

I got my acct info; tried to 'attach to project'; kept getting errors and Boinc "Fetching configuration file". I have set password, etc. - Boinc just can't talk to DepSpid from my end ...

[NeoGen]

That's really odd... other projects have no problem, right? Maybe detaching and reattaching, or resetting depspid helps? Can't vouch that it will work though, never had a similar problem.

[meshmar]

After restarting Boinc multiple times; stopping other projects (MJ12 and Dimes); yada yada ... it FINALLY attached. I fiddled around over an hour to get it up and running.

Now to see how it affects other projects ...

[gamer007]

It shouldn't really affect the other projects. The 1st half of the WU uses bandwidth. The 2nd half uses the CPU.

You can also set how many WUs you want running, I currently have mine set to 10.

On another note, for the 1st time, I'm in the top 10 participants. :)

[meshmar]

All that effort to get attached ... and now no server to upload the completed WUs to. :2gunsfiring_v1: Does that happen often?

[NeoGen]

meshmar, I think I found the cause and a solution.
I think DepSpid has a dynamic IP and boinc doesn't handle those very well. I saw something similar happening on Pi Segment and the solution was to restart the client. It happened because the IP of the server changed and only after restarting the client, it would fetch the new IP.

I had 10 DepSpid WU's not wanting to upload and boinc saying that it couldn't connect time after time. I shut down and restarted boinc, and guess what? All my pending uploads are gone, 10 new downloads have arrived and it's back on and crunching again. :)


EDIT: I'm guessing this problem isn't new and the solution must be written down already somewhere, but you and me didn't read the manual meshmar... :lol: :lol:

[meshmar]

I did try shutting down and restarting Boinc - several times. No joy. After hours, the WUs did upload, but I have yet to receive any more to crunch - even though the DepSpid website says the server is up and WUs are available. Who knows ...

EDIT: Now I'm getting the "No work from project" message. I sure hope they get this worked out soon. I realize it's alpha, but Firefox 3 Alpha1 Minefield is a lot better than this ...

[gamer007]

Also, the servers like to go down for 1/2 of the day. Specifically around 12:00AM - 9:00AM PST (my time). A pain since I want to get some work before I got to school.

[meshmar]

I finally got some new WUs ... and three of them immediately choked with 'Unrecoverable errors'. Oh well, the rest can run along with the other apps ...

[NeoGen]

I got the final solution now... If you go to the site and click "Top Teams" for example and you get the message...
"The project server is currently offline. Please try again later."
then the server is really offline and we can't upload WU's or do anything else.

But if you go there and everything works, and the top teams tables show for example, then shut down and restart boinc and everything will be fine.

The site is giving me the message now, and I have a few WU's needing to upload. (but failing to do so...) As soon as I see that the site/server is up again I'll do this procedure and I'm pretty sure it will work like yesterday.

[PoorBoy]

I received my Account Key today but so far I haven't been able to attach a computer to the Project. I'll give it a try tomorrow, they may be down for the weekend ... ???

[Scooter]

i got mine a few days ago never could get it to attach

[meshmar]

Make sure the server is up;
Use the Account Key to log into your Account;
Set your E-Mail address and passwords ... again;
Try attaching in Boinc then;
If it doesn't work, restart boinc.
Repeat the last two steps as necessary ... it took me a long while to get it to attach ... then a long time to get WUs and ...

Don't you LOVE alpha projects ...:bs:

[PoorBoy]

I finally did get 1 PC Attached to the Project, but I think I'll pass on this one for awhile, I don't have all day trying to coax WU's into actually running. The BOINC Manager says their running but the Process Manager says their not running & I'm at 99% Idle.

I see people in the Forum with the same problem ...

[NeoGen]

That's normal... I think depSpid is a kind of project like Majestic-12. It spends most of the time just crawling on the net, and on the last bits of time uses some cpu to compress the results and send them back to home base.

It's classified as non-cpu intensive, you can't even suspend it. It runs along with other cpu intensive projects on boinc if you set up depspid along with some other projects.

[dAVE]

For those of you running depSpid you can go here http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php) and download the latest BOINC alpha. Currently 5.8.3.
It has had the IP caching changed and should follow the IP address changes in depSpid a lot better. It seems quite stable too.
dAVE

[gamer007]

Nooo.. I don't wanna lose Crunch3r's 5.5.0. :P
Another drawback of the latest releases are that you have to finish all the work before requesting more. W/ 5.5.0, I can report 1 WU, and request another. :)