09/05/2022 19:22:49 | Universe@Home | Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
09/05/2022 19:22:49 | Universe@Home | Requesting new tasks for CPU
09/05/2022 19:22:51 | Universe@Home | Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks
09/05/2022 19:22:51 | Universe@Home | Project has no tasks available
09/05/2022 19:22:51 | Universe@Home | Project requested delay of 11 seconds

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Same here. I’m on Windows.

Had the same problem until a minute ago, I just updated and it downloaded a lot of WU

Same Here On Linux.

I've noticed quite a lot of strange hosts without credit but with around 1000 tasks in progress

I've noticed quite a lot of strange hosts without credit but with around 1000 tasks in progress

There are two likely explanations for this:
1. Folks participating in the Pentathlon who have never contributed to Universe before. They may be holding the tasks in reserve to release them at a certain point (three days out of the two week event have bonus points for results returned).
2. Some individuals use underhanded tactics: they create BOINC clients, load up the client with as many tasks as they can, and then simply hold the tasks until timeout. They have no intention of ever returning the tasks; they are trying to preclude validation of the work units for those tasks during the competition to reduce the overall credits earned by participants, thus increasing the relative value of credits within the competition timeframe. Personally, I think if that behavior is caught and confirmed that they should be banned. Clearly, the number of credits means more to them than the science, so hit them where it (presumably) hurts them. Turn their BOINC account and all its credits to anonymous.

Hi !

Retention (figure 1) is a real thing, but the work units must be returned "in time", so this may sound strange to non-competitive users, but doesn't hurt the project, nor the server in any way (beside the fact that a large number of WUs returned in a short time *could* rise the i/o charge on it).

But what you describe in figure 2 is nonsense : what could be the benefit ?
Doing such thing, you'll blockade every user that waits for a validation, including your own teammates, as there is no way to "choose" the WUs you're getting.

I invite you to talk about the Penthatlon (and the other Boinc competitions) with any participant, from any team : you'll soon discover we all are getting fun crunching on various projects, but generally with the permission of the projects owners/developpers, because, as we like to give some CPU/GPU power to science, we do not want to do any harm to the projects.
You'll also see the major projects owners are generally happy to see their apps selected for "runs", getting major power boost to their researches.

I've been crunching on Boinc for years now, participating in some competitions. I've never seen people trying to "play" with unfair or destructive tactics, such as "holding the tasks until timeout" : we all first want to help projects to get more results.
The only "bad" thing you'll may face is a machine crash with hundreds of WUs still on it... That happens. Fortunately, not often. Obviously not on purpose.

Have fun.

I've noticed quite a lot of strange hosts without credit but with around 1000 tasks in progress

There are two likely explanations for this:
1. Folks participating in the Pentathlon who have never contributed to Universe before. They may be holding the tasks in reserve to release them at a certain point (three days out of the two week event have bonus points for results returned).
2. Some individuals use underhanded tactics: they create BOINC clients, load up the client with as many tasks as they can, and then simply hold the tasks until timeout. They have no intention of ever returning the tasks; they are trying to preclude validation of the work units for those tasks during the competition to reduce the overall credits earned by participants, thus increasing the relative value of credits within the competition timeframe. Personally, I think if that behavior is caught and confirmed that they should be banned. Clearly, the number of credits means more to them than the science, so hit them where it (presumably) hurts them. Turn their BOINC account and all its credits to anonymous.

Option 2 I think
https://universeathome.pl/universe/show_host_detail.php?hostid=623038[/url]

I've noticed quite a lot of strange hosts without credit but with around 1000 tasks in progress

There are two likely explanations for this:
1. Folks participating in the Pentathlon who have never contributed to Universe before. They may be holding the tasks in reserve to release them at a certain point (three days out of the two week event have bonus points for results returned).
2. Some individuals use underhanded tactics: they create BOINC clients, load up the client with as many tasks as they can, and then simply hold the tasks until timeout. They have no intention of ever returning the tasks; they are trying to preclude validation of the work units for those tasks during the competition to reduce the overall credits earned by participants, thus increasing the relative value of credits within the competition timeframe. Personally, I think if that behavior is caught and confirmed that they should be banned. Clearly, the number of credits means more to them than the science, so hit them where it (presumably) hurts them. Turn their BOINC account and all its credits to anonymous.

Option 2 I think
https://universeathome.pl/universe/show_host_detail.php?hostid=623038[/url]

The Admin said he's on the limit of what he can do, the problem is each transaction takes time and there's only so much time per day on the Server.

I have been unable to get any tasks for days on my 16 Raspberry 4's. Currently I have four tasks on one machine but all the rest can't get work.

c1

67 Universe@Home 10-May-22 1:51:18 PM Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
68 Universe@Home 10-May-22 1:51:18 PM Requesting new tasks for CPU
69 Universe@Home 10-May-22 1:51:33 PM Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks
70 Universe@Home 10-May-22 1:51:33 PM Project has no tasks available

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Proud Founder and member of BOINC@AUSTRALIA

Option 2 I think
https://universeathome.pl/universe/show_host_detail.php?hostid=623038[/url]

Here’s another
https://universeathome.pl/universe/show_host_detail.php?hostid=559799

Option 2 I think
https://universeathome.pl/universe/show_host_detail.php?hostid=623038

I have checked that this user have quite big RAC and loads of hosts connected (with recent credits).

Edit:
But obviously I see "bunkering" process...

---

Krzysztof 'krzyszp' Piszczek

Member of Radioactive@Home team
My Patreon profile
Universe@Home on YT

My Raspberry machines can now get work, I am a happy camper.

---

Proud Founder and member of BOINC@AUSTRALIA

Hello experts, if I try to get workunits I get the message:
11.05.2022 11:40:44 | Universe@Home | Project has no tasks available
At the same time I can read on the server status page:
Status der Berechnung
Arbeit
Tasks ready to send 2513069
So what is right now and how could I get new work units ?
The last unit I returned was
task 204418781 work unit 96425135
Please send help soon
J. from Germany

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So what is right now and how could I get new work units ?

Apart from hitting Update for the project every so often- there's nothing you can do.
The servers are presently overloaded due to the Pentathlon stupidity.

Another week and a bit and then things should be back to normal.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

I believe that on this project, a computer running linux is going faster than a windows one. If this is the case, if the silly Pentathlon group as many linux computers
than they would have an advantage over slower windows ones. Thus sending work request more often creating a load.
Can't believe the admins agreed to this. on the long run I don't think it's beneficial
Keep getting no task available, can't reach server for a few days now..... I don't see anything wrong on the server page.( unless it's slow to update)
I can hardly reach this site. Please don't tell me I have a slow computer or slow internet connection.

Option 2 I think
https://universeathome.pl/universe/show_host_detail.php?hostid=623038[/url]

Here’s another
https://universeathome.pl/universe/show_host_detail.php?hostid=559799

Update: both of the above computers submitted all the tasks they got on the 7th today, the 12th. So, option 1. The pentathlon website is giving 150% extra points for tasks submitted today, the 12th. Note that the 6th was the previous day that got extra points.

Hi !

Retention (figure 1) is a real thing, but the work units must be returned "in time", so this may sound strange to non-competitive users, but doesn't hurt the project, nor the server in any way (beside the fact that a large number of WUs returned in a short time *could* rise the i/o charge on it).

But what you describe in figure 2 is nonsense : what could be the benefit ?
Doing such thing, you'll blockade every user that waits for a validation, including your own teammates, as there is no way to "choose" the WUs you're getting.

I invite you to talk about the Penthatlon (and the other Boinc competitions) with any participant, from any team : you'll soon discover we all are getting fun crunching on various projects, but generally with the permission of the projects owners/developpers, because, as we like to give some CPU/GPU power to science, we do not want to do any harm to the projects.
You'll also see the major projects owners are generally happy to see their apps selected for "runs", getting major power boost to their researches.

I've been crunching on Boinc for years now, participating in some competitions. I've never seen people trying to "play" with unfair or destructive tactics, such as "holding the tasks until timeout" : we all first want to help projects to get more results.
The only "bad" thing you'll may face is a machine crash with hundreds of WUs still on it... That happens. Fortunately, not often. Obviously not on purpose.

Have fun.

Finally got a chance to get back on here and reply:
Part of your reaction may be to my poor choice of wording. I meant that it was likely one of two options, not that those two options were both likely. That is, it is almost certainly bunkering, but it could also be this underhand behaviour I describe in option 2.

The only benefit of option 2 is if you are a jerk and want to play the probabilities, and are treating the whole thing like a game instead of a fun way to get more science done. At major competitions, there will always be more tasks returned by other teams compared to your team. I have heard of some folks engaging in the behaviour during these competitions that they pull down as many extra caches that they can with no intention of crunching them, the only purpose being to avoid validation of those work units during the competition. It is highly more likely that those tasks will belong to work units assigned to other teams compared to your own.

I, too, have been around BOINC for a number of years (closing in on 8) and have participated in multiple competitions. I agree with you completely that essentially all participants are here to advance the science and would have no part in option 2. That, however, doesn't preclude that there are some bad actors, and I was simply presenting two potential explanations to what pawg was seeing. As noted above, these turned out to be bunkering systems, as expected.

For the ignorant here (meaning, at least, me), could you explain what "bunkering" and "bunkering systems" are?

Thanks.

Hi !

"Bunkering" is used in a tactical way for competitions : some teams like to gather Boinc users during a limited time period, asking them to "race" on specific projects.
There is no *real* prize to win, this is mainly a fun way to use Boinc and how to optimize your machines/clients to get the most out of them.

As the winners are sorted by the credits they gain in a limited period of time, you can try to maximize your score by "bunkering" results. Here is how it works :

Let's say there will be a competition between the 1st and the 15th of june.

1. You first have to learn how the choosen project behaves on your machines : is Linux faster over Windows ? Does it help to use multithreading ?, etc.
Then you'll configure your machines/Boinc clients accordingly, spending (a lot of) time on forums and testing things to get maximum efficiency.

2. As you want to get the maximum possible credits in a limited period of time, you can "bunker" them.
The credits are given on work units validation by the server, so you can ask your machine to get work units *before* competition starts, calculate them all, then hold the results to be sent back to the server until competition starts and get the credits validated during competition time.

3. You have observed the server is configured to wait for a result for 7 days after the work unit has been sent to the machine.
On the 24th of may, you ask your machines to get as many work units as they can.
Depending on projects and machines, you may get thousands of workunits to calculate.
Then you'll prevent your Boinc client to use network : the results are "bunkered".

4. On the 1st of june, you allow your Boinc client to use network again : all the "bunkered" results are sent back to the server.
You get a major kickstart in the credit race !
Then you let your machines calculate as usual, sending the results as soon as they are available, till the end of the competition.

... This may sound a little childish :) Let's say it's like sports : absolutely non-essential, but fun to play and watch :)
Bonus : these competition times help Boinc users to know and talk to others fellow competitors. We all are involved in Boinc because we like fiddling our computers and give some computing power to science projects... Since I've started to crunch on Seti, more than 20 years ago, I met cool people sharing the same passion from almost every part of the planet :)