RED X what to do?

scottscott Medina, Ohio Icrontian
edited February 2004 in Folding@Home
EmIII is displaying a red X for a WU on my really old and slow laptop. EmIII says it will be done on the 14th and the unit info log says it is due by the 15th ? What gives ?

From unit info

Current Work Unit
Name: p730_gsgs_sd_h2o
Download time: February 10 07:07:22
Due time: February 15 09:31:22
Progress: 7% [__________]

Comments

  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited February 2004
    Its trying to tell you that its guess as to finish time and date is not accurate enough to tell for sure(within limits of the data it sees to guess with) the WU will be done on the 15th or before. If you turn in after the 15th you may get no credit for work. Folding can still use results, but Folding also assigns a max time for credit.

    Basicly, what is happening is that it is guessing that current guess (estimate if you want) is not likely to be exactly right and that it thinks you might well turn in the WU late(past credit deadline, whihc is not the time when work will be accepted and used at Stanford). It is not saying you should trash WU, but is saying you might well not get credit in points sense. Also, I think EMIII was set up to calc based on a faster box overall. You can contirbute to cancer research on a real slow box by telling folding client to ignore deadlines. If computer clock is off and runs fast or slow by much, EMIII results will also be off.

    You can still contribute to research effort for cancer cures with that box, but not many WUS are calcable on that bos to get credit. What happens is this-- assignment servers have two major things they use to figure out what WU server to send you to. They used to use just benchmarks. Now they factor in how long it takes your particular box to turn in WUs versus credit or acceptance deadlines (usually deaedlines are for credit of points, the ones you see locally). BUT, benches for credit deadlines for WUs can be done by running that WU on a box that is 500 or ! GHZ CPU speed itself. Tinkers are benched on slower boxes, and your 233 MHz box is more likely to earn points if you let it take tinkers. They are simpler to calc and take less CPU umph and RAM to run right.

    Folding uses two things to figure out what box is doing what, as far as your setup or config end goes:

    Your folding name, and machine ID number. So, if you assign a different machine ID per box, you are more likely to get WUs which that box can do over long run. If you set up two boxes with same machine number on same folding name, you get a situation where folding servers get confused and can give a WU that will not get done on time to a box that servers think is a different box. Check and make sure by running the client with -config switch that the box does not have the same amchine ID number and name for folding that a faster box has, to prevent this kind of thing from happening as much as you can do that. Then you will over long run get WUs that fit that box more often than Wus that do not match the boxes ability to fold. In this case, let the WU complete, then config the client again adn make sure it has a unique folding name or machine number (set of both tracks box as individual computer).

    John D.

    John D.
  • scottscott Medina, Ohio Icrontian
    edited February 2004
    Thanks John

    This machine has cut it closer than this before and never had a red X . I checked the log and fames are all within a few seconds so I will let it run and ignore the "X".
    That is one "Smokin" folder ehhh... .11 points per hour... whew ...

    I have not used the old lappy for anything for a couple years now..at least this way it is doing some good. If it "smokes" oh well.

    Thanks again John

    Scott
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited February 2004
    scott wrote:
    Thanks John

    This machine has cut it closer than this before and never had a red X . I checked the log and fames are all within a few seconds so I will let it run and ignore the "X".
    That is one "Smokin" folder ehhh... .11 points per hour... whew ...

    I have not used the old lappy for anything for a couple years now..at least this way it is doing some good. If it "smokes" oh well.

    Thanks again John

    Scott

    If your EMIII starts telling you lots of Red Xs, look at my earlier post also, please. I added info on how folding tunes to each computer. also, since you use the lappy for nothing else, EMIII can be pretty good at tracking things. IF you run EMIII ON the lappy, you are making it run the program and dedicate some processor load to run program, though, and EMIII takes some box resources to run.

    John D.
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