FreeHAL@home

[sentient_life]

New project dealing with... yep, artificial intelligence. Team page created and ready to switch foundership.

http://boinc.freehal.org

[vaughan]

I'm in. No work yet. Initiate Founder change activated.

[NeoGen]

I'm in too.

[sentient_life]

Founder change completed. Now they need to get us some workunits. Hopefully, there's no "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that.":)

[Danish Dynamite]

from what i have found out so far by looking around at results work units are taking 0.00 to 0.03 seconds to complete with "app exit status: 0x1" from stderr_txt
also had a look at forum came across this
How does the project grant credits? Fixed? Based on benchmark? Or...? (http://forum.freehal.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=66&sid=cfc6f641579d3b6df493808c9abdd8d7#p283) reply from site/project admin Tobias Schulz
Momentarily we do not give any credits, we will decide that later. (http://forum.freehal.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=66&sid=cfc6f641579d3b6df493808c9abdd8d7#p286)

it appears that we may need a good translator since most posts are in german

[Steve Lux]

I wonder if this series will be as moody as the 9000 series will be.

[Nflight]

I wonder if this series will be as moody as the 9000 series will be.

You mean irritable, self centered, over protective of itself, etc etc etc. :icon_razz:

Oh By the way I am in too...

[Nflight]

I just had a nibble of a work unit, it is stuck in downloading and won't complete the download. Arrgh ! :icon_mad:

[NeoGen]

I had that problem too a couple of times Nflight. Don't know if it was me or if the project admin fixed the bug but I resetted the project a couple of days ago and so far the download problem went away.

Anyhow, my other problem now is that any workunit that comes in for FreeHAL gets boinc stalled. Boinc manager says that the FreeHal workunit is running and shows it at 100% progress but no cpu is being used. Only way I found to workaround this was to go to Administrative tools on Windows, go to Services and restart the boinc service.
The workunit then starts working again and in a matter of seconds it finishes and is ready to report.

[AMDave]

They got hacked by a spammer through the UoTD, resulting in a complete database loss.
I just did a search and the same spammer is in AlmereGrid...and malaria...and others.

They have recovered the site http://boinc.freehal.org/

however, no stats files remain as far as I can discover.

All members will have to re-join this project as the member database got wiped.

[sentient_life]

It looks to me like everyone's account is still there. Any credits accumulated and workunits completed before the hack were wiped out. Some people just can't be satisfied with joining a project and using their computing resources for the betterment of mankind...

[NeoGen]

I still have my account, and I'm still #1 on the Team. :icon_mrgreen:

sentient_life and rest of the lot, are you just going to let me stay up there without a fight? Come on! It's no fun like this. :icon_twisted: :icon_lol:

[sentient_life]

It's not much of a "race" when someone keeps erasing the score and causing everyone to restart!:rolleyes: The workunits are a bit screwy. They claim 35 hours and take a few minutes. The credits aren't bad, though. And I realize they're based in Deutschland, but it would sure help to get a little more English on the site to discuss issues. Ibercivis falls into that category, too.

[NeoGen]

Yea... I know what you mean. There was a point when the credits were really messed up that I (and everyone else) was getting some 1,000 credits per workunit. That was really messed up, and thus they reset it.

I was just trying to get more people to join us in the project. We could use some help, at least to reach top 10.

[vaughan]

They had some work units today. Some are estimated to run for 72 hours on my Core Duo 1.67GHz lappy but they complete in about a minute. Initial downloads about 18MB, after that the tasks are small d/l.

EDIT:
First d/l ~12MB tasks ~7MB.

Site is here (http://boinc.freehal.org/projects/freehal_at_home/)

Ototero can you add this project to our stats please?

http://boinc.freehal.org/projects/freehal_at_home/top_teams.php

[AMDave]

Heh. I see you edited as I was about to point out the same thing.
Those 7MB units add up really fast at 1.5 mins ea. on a quad core!
I've backed mine off again.

[vaughan]

Yes Dave. I switched my laptop over to Dial-Up as my cable is 1.5GB over where it should be so far this month in Peak time downloads. I don't want to run our of bandwidth again this month; getting throttled across the whole pharm hurts the stats on my favourite projects. :icon_wink:

[vaughan]

FreeHAL@Home stats have been reset to zero. :(

There goes one of my >100,000 points projects. liuqin breathes a sigh of relief! Too bad, starting again now.

Translation from the forum German -> English reveals that the tasks are now set to maximum of 8 points per task and each task has 45 minutes maximum running time. There is also a delay so the max earning rate is 8 pts/hr. There is some rubbish about 8 being the BOINC Seti standard. I always thought it was in the 12-16 pts/hr range.

I wish somebody would tell RCN that 8 or more pts/hr is nice as they are very stingy at handing out points.

[liuqyn]

darn my luck, 783 points gone forever.

my concern now is that, is this going to happen again?

[liuqyn]

still not running right for me, downloaded 8 wu's, 4 ran less than a second, 2 ran 5-10 minutes, last two wouldn't run had to abort. indefinitely putting this one on hold.

[sentient_life]

Excuse me a bit so I can set up my soap box...

Sounds to me like a project that needs to be put on the backburner for awhile. This is the second time that everyone's credits have been wiped out at FreeHAL. The first time was related to a hacker messing around causing havok with the database. Now, the granted credits were too high, so the admin erases them all! There are so many projects out there that I feel are beneficial to human knowledge and possibly helping prolong lives. I use the credits to give each project an equal amount of my crunching power -- it could be 5 cr/hr or 50 cr/hr -- I don't care. But, when they keep erasing that credit, either through their fault or not, it just makes me think they don't really care about the help we are contributing to them. Couldn't they have retroactively adjusted everyone to the new 8 cr/hr? Alpha status or not, this is getting to be a bit much.:icon_mad:

Ok, I'm all better now:icon_lol:

[liuqyn]

This project seams to be running fine again (for now), runs in cpu non-intensive mode (which means in addition to other wu's running) and takes almost no cpu time (makes me wonder just what work is being done really).

so if any of you care to come back this might be a good time to check it out.

[Nflight]

Liuqyn: You are making some tremendous strides in that project way to go Champion Cruncher ! ! !... :blob3:

[sentient_life]

Hopefully, third time's the charm in regards to them not resetting the credits! I do like the non-CPU intensive part, but it seems the workunits are so short, that the BOINC Mgr is constantly looking for more work. I'll need to set to NNW when my housemates are home, so they can run their games, etc.

[vaughan]

I noticed it awards 8 points per task now instead of the absurdly low 5 points per hour that it used to.

Still downloads about 8MB per task so chews up the download allowance if you aren't careful.

[liuqyn]

actually, it only seams to download once, then the wus are little nothings after that.

[sentient_life]

I noticed it awards 8 points per task now instead of the absurdly low 5 points per hour that it used to.

If your ISP isn't download capped, then if you guys haven't done so already, you should consider attaching to the project. AMD Users were down in 37th place and we've already made it back up to 24th! I don't know if the admin will allow the current credit/hour to continue like this -- it was the whole reason the credits were reset the last time. Let's get 'em while we can!:icon_twisted:

[liuqyn]

ackkk, I just realized what this project has been doing to my home internet. going to have to scale back MASSIVELY. maybe down to a single box(at least for now).

[sentient_life]

Ditto for me. I hit 10k in credits and called it a day. I might return once the "network saturation" issue is fixed. Perhaps, that's why we were able to leapfrog so many teams. No one else wanted to crunch the workunits!:dontknow:

[Nflight]

News of the Day

All members of FreeHAL@home need to reattach to FreeHAL@home in the
BOINC Manager because we changed our code signing key.

Regards,
Tobias :blob3:

[Nflight]

6/6/2009 3:24:41 PM FreeHAL@home Message from server: First: It's not you fault that you can't get new workunits. It's mine.
6/6/2009 3:24:41 PM FreeHAL@home Message from server: We can't do it like this. In May, we had between 10000 and 30000 work units which were crunched at the same time.
6/6/2009 3:24:41 PM FreeHAL@home Message from server: Now, we have are almost 200,000. And the project server is not able to handle this.
6/6/2009 3:24:41 PM FreeHAL@home Message from server: Okay, you can say I failed as a manager. And you are right.
6/6/2009 3:24:41 PM FreeHAL@home Message from server: Now I decided to stop distributing work units for today to give server a chance.
6/6/2009 3:24:41 PM FreeHAL@home Message from server: Then, we have to find a solution. There are two possibilities:
6/6/2009 3:24:41 PM FreeHAL@home Message from server: 1.) We could lower the count of max work units at the same time to ~5 to ~10.
6/6/2009 3:24:41 PM FreeHAL@home Message from server: => less output, less credits, less server ressources
6/6/2009 3:24:41 PM FreeHAL@home Message from server: 2.) Or we need more server ressources, that would mean
6/6/2009 3:24:41 PM FreeHAL@home Message from server: either more donations or someone who donates a mirror, but i has to one with much bandwidth.
6/6/2009 3:24:41 PM FreeHAL@home Message from server: I ask you to discuss in your teams.
6/6/2009 3:24:41 PM FreeHAL@home Message from server: --
6/6/2009 3:24:41 PM FreeHAL@home Message from server: I also have to say another thing, even if I risk everything by saying it: I'm no adult.
6/6/2009 3:24:41 PM FreeHAL@home Message from server: // Tobias Schulz
6/6/2009 3:24:41 PM FreeHAL@home Message from server: No work sent
6/6/2009 3:24:41 PM FreeHAL@home Message from server: (Project has no jobs available)

Can You say Sys Admin Overload! :sad5:

[NeoGen]

That wins the prize as the most original "no work available" message. :icon_lol:

On a more serious note though, I can understand the problem, the project grew tenfold but the server is still the same.
But I would never have guessed he was 16 years old. (you're missing that part after the "I'm no adult" Nflight)

[velociraptor]

wow, i didn´t know someone could post that many text in the error messages.......
maybe he solved the heavy serverload by admitting he is 16....:icon_wink:
can anyone reach the project site? or are they also down?
greetings vel....

[Nflight]

The Project is back up and running once more! :blob3: That must have been the first frustrating post he made, then changed it to include the 16 year old mention.

[velociraptor]

Back up seems to be right, but running not......
nearly 75% of all wu´s fail to download......:sad5:
can i do something about that or is this a server thing?

[Nflight]

Vel; It is a server thing, we will just have to let it sort it out for itself for now, keep crunching!

[velociraptor]

Thanks for the quick reply.
Hopefully freehal gets it´s problems sorted out somehow......
I like the idea of this project.......

[vaughan]

I wish Tobias would add a Donation link to his project's homepage. Then people so inclined could help him with the server costs, similar to what Rytis did at PrimeGrid.

Also he needs to limit the number of tasks per core so the server doesn't take such a hammering.

All up its a pretty good effort for a 16 yr old. :)

[velociraptor]

There is a donation link....
he should only write it in english too......
you get there by clicking on the text in the blue box above the forums where it says:
Spenden an das FreeHAL-Projekt (http://freehal.org/donate.php)
Das FreeHAL-Projekt benötigt Geld für verschiedene Hardware, um FreeHAL 2009 schneller und besser entwickeln zu können! Helfen Sie bei der Entwicklung unserer küstlichen Intelligenz! (http://freehal.org/donate.php)

translated it means something like:
Donations to the FreeHAL-project.
The FreeHAL-project needs money for diffrent hardware in order to develop(hope it is the correct word) FreeHAL 2009 faster and better! Help with the development of our artificial intelligenc!

[velociraptor]

Where it says: Aktuelle Kosten: Aufrufen (http://boinc.freehal.org/geld.pl)
you can see his financial expenses....

[Nflight]

For the rest of us non German Speaking soles on this project I added this anonymously => http://www.freehal.org/forum/4

[vaughan]

Ah thank you velociraptor. I was not expecting the donations link to be so small and placed in the project's title. The "normal" place is in the paragraphs on the lower left of a standard BOINC home page.

So that annoying popup must be part of his advertising revenue. :icon_twisted:

I thought that Firefox was supposed to block popups, I wonder how this critter gets through?

[vaughan]

I hope some more of our team can join the fun here. This project doesn't use any CPU cycles and currently is limited to 5 tasks per download. Easy points on tap.

http://boinc.freehal.org/projects/freehal_at_home/

[Nflight]

Lets expand on Vaughan's Statement about 5 work units. You have a project your running on BOINC, its not FreeHAL, allow new work units to enter your task bin at the same time your running your favored project. Wow you now have FreeHAL working at the same time, two projects and two times as many points as just running one project. NO sharing of the processor/s they run at the same time.

Example: Right now I have 2 ibercivis running and 5 FreeHAL running with only a dual core machine! Just Imagine how fast and how far you can push your numbers if you sign up today?

[liuqyn]

actually, he upped it to 8 from 5. so yous guys better update your prefrences.

[Nflight]

Liuqyn - I was leaving that as a surprise gift of more points for the little work you do! And you blew the surprise right out of the water! :sad5: :blob3:

[mitchellds]

so what exactly is this project using for resources if not you cpu? Is it stressing your network with alot of traffic, or stressing your HD or memory? Whats the deal?

[Nflight]

Its not stressing it at all, It uses practically no resources to accomplish its tasks. The HD is not over worked, and the CPU are more interested in the Main Project then the FreeHAL work units.
If your after tons of Points from BOINC then this is the project to run along side the other projects that offer high points values!
Since early may I have been running the FreeHAL project along side at least 5 other projects with no problems. :blob3:
Its like a new topping for your favorite pizza, if it doesnt taste right spit it out and never eat it again! If you like it, you might not want to leave like Vaughan And I.

[liuqyn]

so, does that mean it doesn't thrash your internet like it used to? that's why I stopped running it awhile back, I couldn't do anything else online while it was running.

[Nflight]

It does not seem to thrash mine, that was when there were 25 work units at a time, he is now done to 8. Less thrashing I think in my own opinion!

[liuqyn]

actually, I'm referring back even farther. I never could get work after he changed to more then 1 at a time.

[Nflight]

Liuqyn I would think the best solution would be to detach and reattach for that equation. There are times and not many of them where the programs gets stuck in not requesting new work, at that point I just reset the project and off it goes. This Stuck bit does not affect the other projects you are running though so no fear there. Just figured I would bring that up though since you had trouble in the past it is not a perfect system, and I can't spell with out spell checker anymore! :sad5:

[liuqyn]

good advise, but my problem, at the time, was that there was either no work or the servers were always down, so I gave up on it. luckily that doesn't appear to be the case right now.

[vaughan]

Nflight is spot on target again! :icon_wink:

The only piece of infrastructure that seems to suffer is Tobias's Server. It is why the kid had to cut the number of concurrent tasks from the lofty 25 at a time.

Mitchell I have no idea what he's actually researching as the links seem to branch off into German but if you want some free stats this is the project to run. Maybe that is why its called FreeHAL. :)

[Nflight]

Liuqyn: Under your own account in the project there is a listing of [FreeHAL@home preferences] Click on that and set the {New maximal concurrent work units - selector to 25} Now you should get more then one at a time, it comes set at 1 when you sign up, you physically have to set it to something higher.

On my system work unit bunches take 35 minutes, then the system will recycle the work units and fetch me more to work on. over and over again, all day long. All on top of the other work units I am working on, pretty neat. :icon_mrgreen:

[liuqyn]

Nflight: your missing my point, way back when the project was new it would only run 1 at a time and when running on multiple computers it thrashed my ISP so bad I couldn't use it for anything else, so I stopped running for awhile.

Then sometime later he(Tobias) changed it so you could run more tasks at the same time. it was after this change that I was unable to test it again due to no work and server down-time issues, so I don't know if the internet thrashing continued or not.

I just started running again with the new 5-8 limit so again I don't know if the internet issue is still present, though I hope not. I put it on several of my comps but they're restricted to only connect at night(during my free connect time) due to bandwidth concerns on other projects I run.

[AMDave]

Ah yes. Now I getcha. We had those bandwidth problems back at the start (post #15,16 this thread)

I pulled the pin on it for the same reason some time ago (after testing and once I got my 10K milestone, of course).
"per-project" settings would be better since there are such variations in the projects available now.

Like you I have just re-attached 1 boxen for a 'look see'.
It appears that the network usage is now very low, but I will keep a check on that as I am on a much much more expensive and vastly reduced bandwidth limit these days.

[mitchellds]

Ok, I'm giving it a whirl now also on 1 droid.

[liuqyn]

well, it seems we're back to 5 tasks again.

[velociraptor]

there are new wu´s out if someone is still interested in this project.
my credit is shooting up like a rocket.....
it takes about 1 h and 40 min for a workunit to complet and you get 12 credits each.
vel

EDIT: I forgot to mention that i had to reattache to the project because boinc sad i used a wrong url.....

[NeoGen]

I'm in it too. I went to my account and set the preferences to run 25 instances in parallel. The credits are rolling like when you win at the slots in a casino! :)

[velociraptor]

:icon_mrgreen:
yep, and they keep falling and falling out of the machine.......

[NeoGen]

Hey vel... we dried out the server. :-(


29/09/2009 09:13:58 FreeHAL@home Message from server: (Project has no jobs available)


EDIT: no, they got more. :)

[NeoGen]

Well... I found out something about Windows Vista x64, with the help of FreeHAL. (Maybe the problem also happens on other versions of windows too...)

Upon crossing the 100+ running processes in the task manager, and having the cpu at 100% with several apps concurrently scavenging for cycles, some things start to not work.
Internet Explorer for one does not even open a window, the process gets stuck at startup and does nothing. (Thankfully I got Firefox who doesn't complain under pressure. :icon_mrgreen:)
Yahoo and msn messenger also show the same problem, I click to start it but nothing happens. I see the processes started on the task manager but they just won't work until I close down some of the running processes.

At over 1200+ threads running in parallel on the system I guess the Windows scheduler for the threads can't cope with the pressure. Thank god NASA never takes computers with windows to space. They just can't handle the stress! :icon_lol:

[Nflight]

I left my systems set at 18 each, and in the mean time I am running dynaping and two Work Units from Hydrogen, VTU, plus whatpulse and Dimes. SO really you can push it to 1200 wow, no wonder there has been some serious stats in the last couple of days!

[NeoGen]

SO really you can push it to 1200 wow, no wonder there has been some serious stats in the last couple of days!
No, not from FreeHAL. I meant global number of threads on Windows and running applications, as shown by the Windows task manager. :)
http://neogen.amdusers.com/taskmanager.png

[Beerknurd]

Ok... I will play... I got 25 going on 3 machines... Let's see if I can get my BAM stats up...

[Nflight]

Watch the thread usage, if it goes near 1200 it will lock up your systems...I am running 1153 threads with ease. :icon_razz:

[Nflight]

Nice Maneuver there Liuqyn, all of a sudden out of nowhere he zooms by me like a herd of turtles! :blob3:

[liuqyn]

just takin my spot back, seams you went by some time ago.

[AMDave]

Order Up!
1 herd of turtles:
http://www.gossipgamers.com/actually-there-were-10-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles/

/ed-
in retrospect, this is probably better
http://turtlefarms.com/herd_of_turtles.htm
-ed/

[Nflight]

FreeHAL is Dead, checking the web site you will notice that the site has been taken down. There have been issues of too much bandwidth and not enough on the donation factor for this young scientific mind to keep the site up and running. We may or may not see the site return... :( :blob3:

[NeoGen]

That's a shame... I liked that project. :-(
Gave good credits, and I could run up to 25 instances without impacting the CPU much.

I hope it returns.

[liuqyn]

Gave good credits, and I could run up to 25 instances without impacting the CPU much.


up until recently, changed to only 1 at a time that ran longer and it seams he forgot to adjust the credit so that dropped substantially as well. I had already detached earlier this week before it died.

[vaughan]

I donated to his site on 2 occasions but posted recently in the forum that I was annoyed how he kept messing with the project. He was trying to stop a small band of people who somehow worked out how to cheat the stats. Instead of zeroing their credits he penalised everybody by dropping the concurrent tasks from 25 to 1 and making the points drop dramatically and then he made the 1 task CPU intensive. No wonder it failed.

[Nflight]

Well Out of the Blue :blob3: the Project is back up and running again, I don't get this project Admins behavior but then again he is only 16 yrs. old!

[NeoGen]

Woohoo! :)

It seems there is a new version of the applications out and running... maybe it was because of that? But that's odd because no project ever needs to go offline to switch apps...

Oh well... the important thing is that it is running! :icon_mrgreen:

[liuqyn]

still think I'm going to hold off on attaching again for a while.