Total points = 0

M
Marc ID: 3079 Posts: 5
14 May 2021 01:55 AM

I have points when I look at my details broken down by machine.

But I have 0 lifetime points, average points and total for this jackpot.

Why am I not earning points for the jackpot?

Andreas Andrews ID: 7097149 Posts: 3
14 May 2021 07:49 PM

*following* I'm also seeing 0 points, however I've read somewhere that it might take a few days to update in some cases (I believe) but I could be wrong. If I'm still on 0 points in the coming weeks and months I'll surely check back here and also update. I'm planning to install on multiple machines in the future too, so I will in the future have a similar use case to you.

e
entity ID: 7097150 Posts: 29
17 May 2021 01:59 PM

After 5 days, I still have 0 points and the points associated with each machine don't get updated everyday. I would think at least once a day would be appropriate. I also still only connected to one project (WCG). I'm beginning to think this project is a ghost project. I don't see any benefit to attaching here. There was some comment somewhere about things not being updated or attached to other projects right away because they wanted to see who would stay before attaching to the other projects but this lack of updates, or even a statement indicating why the updates are sporadic, is causing me to leave. All the effort that went into building a dashboard the shows zero for days on end seems like a waste. Nice concept but lack of execution will doom the project. I'm out...

Andreas Andrews ID: 7097149 Posts: 3
17 May 2021 02:29 PM

Can confirm I'm seeing points now in my dashboard in the cloud for my first machine it just took a few days or so, I'll be adding a second machine soon now I'm happy with how everything is working on the first one. I imagine all the points will also be added to the next draw.

M
Marc ID: 3079 Posts: 5
18 May 2021 03:56 AM

My points are still missing.  As you can tell by my ID number, I have been around for a  long time.  Still 0 points.

AJ
Andrew Jolly ID: 7096912 Posts: 14
18 May 2021 02:59 PM

I have been doing this now for a couple of weeks, and I can see the tasks being run and completed but I too get no points.  If I don't get any soon I'll stop allowing my computer to be used!

Tristan Olive ID: 22 Posts: 387
19 May 2021 02:50 AM

We're looking into this issue, which might be a variety of issues:

  • Points not being awarded by the Charity Engine project
  • Identifiers not merging between projects (causing cumulative point totals to be off)
  • WCG being the only project assigned (currently stats are not exported for WCG due to a GDPR compliance issue in the API that we're working with them to address)

If you see points being awarded in your desktop software, then we will find them. It can take a day or two, as research projects export stats on a daily basis, then we aggregate stats from all projects in another daily batch process. If identifiers are not merged, different projects effectively report a single account as being multiple accounts, so we have to find the hang up and fix it (merging normally occurs automatically) so that all of your points are recognized. 

The work you're doing isn't wasted, we just need to get to the bottom of this. Thanks for your patience so far.

M
Marc ID: 3079 Posts: 5
19 May 2021 03:37 AM

I greatly appreciate your help. If there is any more information from me that would help just ask.

I have Rosetta and WCG projects.

Thanks!

Tristan Olive ID: 22 Posts: 387
01 Jun 2021 05:50 AM

Marc, your account seemed to be affected by an cross project identifier (CPID) problem. This ID does not usually change, but it can change. Yours did, but your Charity Engine account did not catch on. I think this is fixed now, but please verify that it looks right.

Entity, your account has now been attached to a couple of additional projects. It was stuck on only WCG, but we're having some issues there...

Andrew, likewise you should have more projects now. You were seeing the same WCG issue.

For those with WCG, what are your thoughts about keeping the WCG contributions going for now? There's good work being done and it's a very popular project. But until a few updates are made to their API / server code, your points will quietly accumulate there and show up as zero here. They'll all come in as soon as the changes are made, but I can't say when that will be; all we can do is check in from time to time and wait for a developer over there to have a chance to get into it. We can disable it for now or let it ride.

e
entity ID: 7097150 Posts: 29
01 Jun 2021 01:05 PM

I would disable it. Perhaps a considerable drop in completed work units would coax them into fixing the problem. Neglect has it's consequnces

AJ
Andrew Jolly ID: 7096912 Posts: 14
01 Jun 2021 01:51 PM

So I now have the ability to choose WCG which I have and up pop my points.  I still show no points for Charity Engine even though I have been with them for all the time.  So I'll switch to WCG and wait for CE to catch up sometime.  So my view is keep WCG as I am getting my points; but suspend CE as they are not awarding points!  Technology, eh!?

M
Marc ID: 3079 Posts: 5
02 Jun 2021 12:00 AM

AWESOME!  Thanks Tristan!

I like WCG and  keep it going and wait for the API update.

Thanks again!

Graham Jenkins ID: 1626 Posts: 163
13 Jun 2021 01:59 AM

Tristan, can you please confirm that the WCG points we have accumulated during the last few months will all be credited when the update is applied.

e
entity ID: 7097150 Posts: 29
13 Jun 2021 01:53 PM

I would stop the OPN sub-project. They are trying to trim the workload back to 500 batches per day. They have more than enough GPU capabilites to meet that goal and are asking for CPU folks to run other projects.

Tristan Olive ID: 22 Posts: 387
24 Jun 2021 04:12 PM

That's right, Graham. This has become one of the biggest reasons why we are doing all we can (waiting patiently?) to see the WCG API fixed. You could say we are in too deep to turn back now, with all the credit that has accumulated.

Entity, that sounds like a good idea; and one that also works through the API, ideally. There are fallback options that we have put together, including for getting the credits released, we're just holding out hope a little longer that it all comes together without going that direction.

Graham Jenkins ID: 1626 Posts: 163
14 Jul 2021 08:16 AM

Any further progress on this?

Tristan Olive ID: 22 Posts: 387
21 Jul 2021 04:55 AM

I've been consumed with developing some new functionality to support computation on very large datasets. It's an exciting development, but apologies for not keeping up here.

Last word from WCG was to hold off a bit longer, if we can, as they work through some internal barriers in getting to this task. Of course, we can't do this forever... the question is where the tipping point is and whether they get there first. It has been a while.

e
entity ID: 7097150 Posts: 29
30 Aug 2021 08:14 PM

I still have zero points showing on the dashboard even though there is almost 900,000 points showing in the My Computers display. I have absolutely no control over what projects I get sent and therefore cannot pick projects that export stats. What is going on with the stats on this site.

Additionally, why am I only getting sent work from one project (Rosetta). Is Charity Engine connected to any other projects? Can someone explain to me how a member gets assigned to projects and why only one project? Can that be changed? Why can't I get work from multiple projects? If I can, How? Definitely not intuitive...

Graham Jenkins ID: 1626 Posts: 163
31 Aug 2021 10:27 PM

Tristan, are you able to manually apply the WCG points we've earned so far to our respective totals?

e
entity ID: 7097150 Posts: 29
03 Sep 2021 02:15 PM

Points have now started to show on the dashboard. Still only contributing to the Rosetta project though

Tristan Olive ID: 22 Posts: 387
03 Sep 2021 03:45 PM

Graham, I am not able to adjust point totals, as those numbers are maintained by the different projects. There is an argument to be made for giving additional jackpot entries to users who opt in to beta testing and put up with this stuff, though!

entity, I'm glad you finally have points showing up. We took a shot at fixing it in June and apparently it didn't work, as the CPID still never managed to merge between projects. There's still an issue with the CE project for your account, so I'm going to detach that and see if I can get it to sync properly with Rosetta and LHC. For the record, all of this mess began with a major project attachment issue we had, that you originally noticed was keeping you from attaching to anything other than WCG. We didn't realize what the real problem was, and your ongoing issues are all stemming from that, so your contributions and perseverance in it thus far have been very much appreciated.

Also, speaking of the issue with the CE project, I think you aren't getting jobs for that because you're running Linux hosts. I'm a Linux user, myself, and know that we can run the main app on Linux systems, it's just a matter of packaging. I'll ask around and see what we can do. (Though after fixing the syncing issue, otherwise you'd start earning points for the CE project and they would be under a different CPID and yet again not show up in your totals...)

e
entity ID: 7097150 Posts: 29
03 Sep 2021 04:19 PM

Tristan, thanks for looking into the issue. I'm not really concerned about the CE project as I doubt there is much work to do there. I could be wrong. I would like to be able to run a variety of other BOINC projcts if possible. I'm feel like I'm thrashing around in the dark as I don't understand how the assignment of projects to a user by the CE engine works. My understanding is the CPID is based on the email address that was used to create an account in each BOINC project. As long as that email address remains the same across projects the CPID should be the same and data should be shared. I can see this when logging in to the BOINC project sites individually and can see my activity at other projects displayed correctly. So, the data is being shared. You are correct, I am LINUX only. I don't even own a Windows machine. As far as the app goes, I wouldn't be interested in running it under Wine. If the LINUX version of the app runs natively, I would be willing to try it.

e
entity ID: 7097150 Posts: 29
06 Sep 2021 09:16 PM

As mentioned earlier, I'm only attached to two projects (Rosetta and LHC) through CE. LHC is set to No New Tasks by default probably due to the Vbox requirement. I tried to get Vbox to work on my hosts but due to a bug in Vbox it won't activate with the 4.18.0.336... kernel. Vbox has fixed the erorr but the release that has the fix hasn't been  released yet. So, no vbox for now. Rosetta ran out of work so I'm here attached to CE with nothing to do. Once again, how does one get attached to other projects. I had to attach to projects outside of CE to have work to do.... Do participants have to ask to be attached to other projects? 

Tristan Olive ID: 22 Posts: 387
13 Sep 2021 06:53 PM

Thanks for adding those thoughts about the CPID. The email address being inconsistent across projects was contributing to the problem with your CPID. Normally this would never happen, but back in May we made a tweak to get your hosts attached to more than just WCG. This led to the discovery of a bigger problem with Rosetta and LHC, which has since been fixed. We have now made the email address consistent across projects, as it should be, which I expect will fix those cross-project issues for good. It will cause your CPID to change one more time, which could cause stats to look off for a day. 

To help with running out of work, we're setting up a fallback project and will also check into the issue with LHC.

Graham Jenkins ID: 1626 Posts: 163
15 Sep 2021 07:46 AM

I've noticed that I can hit the "Allow New Tasks" button for LHC, and a couple of such tasks will then be scheduled .. after which the project will automatically revert to "Won't Get New Tasks".

Is this an expected behaviour? Are points for LHC tasks that we process actually being accredited, or are they falling into /dev/null like the ones associated with WCG tasks?

Graham Jenkins ID: 1626 Posts: 163
21 Oct 2021 06:31 AM

Umm .. same question:

I've noticed that I can hit the "Allow New Tasks" button for LHC, and a couple of such tasks will then be scheduled .. after which the project will automatically revert to "Won't Get New Tasks".

Is this an expected behaviour? Are points for LHC tasks that we process actually being accredited, or are they falling into /dev/null like the ones associated with WCG tasks?

AJ
Andrew Jolly ID: 7096912 Posts: 14
21 Oct 2021 07:23 AM

Since it's so useless I've now stopped using.  Get it sorted or you'll lose many more.

AJ
Andrew Jolly ID: 7096912 Posts: 14
21 Oct 2021 07:23 AM

Since it's so useless I've now stopped using.  Get it sorted or you'll lose many more.

Graham Jenkins ID: 1626 Posts: 163
21 Oct 2021 10:22 PM

Andrew, I get that you've stopped using WCG because usage points aren't being accrued.

But have you also stopped using LHC? And Rosetta? And if so, why?

AJ
Andrew Jolly ID: 7096912 Posts: 14
22 Oct 2021 07:05 AM

Yes, basically because it's all so complicated!  Maybe I'll try again?

AJ
Andrew Jolly ID: 7096912 Posts: 14
22 Oct 2021 07:06 AM

Yes, basically because it's all so complicated!  Maybe I'll try again?

Tristan Olive ID: 22 Posts: 387
01 Nov 2021 05:57 PM

Sorry for missing this, Graham. LHC is paused for now, yes. You can override the "no new tasks" setting, but it will keep coming back automatically.

Andrew, I understand that it seems complicated. In general, it it is all automated and requires no user intervention. I think there might have been a bit of a glitch in your case that caused points to not show up. This happened to a couple of other users, also (worth noting is that the points were earned, they just weren't showing on the dashboard--once fixed, they did show up). I can look into it, but I thought you uninstalled (no computer has made contact for ~45 days), which would prevent me from being able to fix it. If you reconnect, I'm confident that we can get the problem sorted out for you.

Graham Jenkins ID: 1626 Posts: 163
01 Nov 2021 07:45 PM

Thanks Tristan. Is it OK for us to keep overriding the "no new tasks" setting for LHC (and will we still accrue legitimate points for LHC jobs)? Or should we avoid it completely?

AJ
Andrew Jolly ID: 7096912 Posts: 14
02 Nov 2021 11:50 AM

OK, Tristan, I have re-connected.  Please do what you have to to get it all to work properly.  thanks, Andrew

Graham Jenkins ID: 1626 Posts: 163
04 Nov 2021 09:54 AM

Is it OK for us to keep overriding the "no new tasks" setting for LHC (and will we still accrue legitimate points for LHC jobs)? Or should we avoid it completely?

Tristan Olive ID: 22 Posts: 387
04 Nov 2021 04:55 PM

Graham, overriding the setting coming from CE is going against the purposes of CE to a small degree, so I would suggest just letting it go. Then again, we should have detached LHC by now, rather than leaving it in the "no new tasks" state for so long (that is intended to be a transition state, to let clients finish the work they have prior to detaching), so if you're using these conditions to squeeze a few more points out of your devices, it's hardly a cause to blame anyone (well, except for me) or say the points are somehow illegitimate. So I suppose feel free, if that's what you want to do.

Andrew, I think I see the issue; if so, it will be fixed soon.

Graham Jenkins ID: 1626 Posts: 163
17 Nov 2021 06:59 AM

Seems like I've suddenly lost a whole lot of points. Check out the screenshot on my machine .. which shows lots of points over the last few days .. and the website image .. which shows nothing for several recent days.

The machine in the first image has been online most of the time this week, and has been able to upload results and synchronise during those times.

Tristan, can you please check what's happening here ..

Tristan Olive ID: 22 Posts: 387
17 Nov 2021 06:56 PM

Very good catch, thanks Graham. There are multiple issues at play, here, but I think I have them sorted out, so I'll be curious to know if you see a big boost in points over the next 24-48 hours (I think there might be quite a backlog of points that show up for you).

If so, this will mean a general fix is needed to help other users, too. Thanks for being a beta tester!

Graham Jenkins ID: 1626 Posts: 163
19 Nov 2021 08:39 PM

Yes!  Look at this :)

Tristan Olive ID: 22 Posts: 387
19 Nov 2021 09:42 PM

Looks good -- I predict another one tomorrow. This one was from the NumberFields project, to which beta testers were recently attached. Once I looked further, it turned out to be the same story for LHC, so those points are likewise headed down the pipeline.

Graham Jenkins ID: 1626 Posts: 163
20 Nov 2021 10:36 PM

Yes again! Question: Does an LHC task using 8 CPUs for an hour accrue the same number of points as 8 Numberfields tasks using 1 CPU each for an hour?

Tristan Olive ID: 22 Posts: 387
20 Nov 2021 10:52 PM

In theory, they should, but in reality, projects each give credit as they deem appropriate for a given task. I think NumberFields tends to be a bit heavy on the rate of points rewarded.

Tristan Olive ID: 22 Posts: 387
22 Nov 2021 09:56 PM

The fix has been made more generally, so other users (primarily beta testers) should likewise see a big boost in points.

Graham Jenkins ID: 1626 Posts: 163
23 Nov 2021 12:44 AM

Next task .. apply a similar fix for WCG! :)

Tristan Olive ID: 22 Posts: 387
23 Nov 2021 12:18 PM

Right you are! After that project was sold, there was potential for an introduction to the new team and some momentum to get the needed changes made for a more complete API on their end. That didn't materialize and so really we've just lost our contacts with WCG... and so it seems we get to do that fix the hard way that I've been avoiding. :)

AR
Adam Radocz ID: 22746 Posts: 76
05 Dec 2021 08:12 AM

I'm not getting too much points lately, and my daily average is -1,157 (yes, negative), even tho my average work done is higher than ever in the BOINC app.

Tristan Olive ID: 22 Posts: 387
08 Dec 2021 07:04 PM

Adam, I don't see what you're seeing, but that you are indeed getting more points than ever. Can you describe where you are seeing the negative average? I'm guessing it was a temporary condition. Occasionally, there can be something of a half-baked stats update that is corrected the next day at a project. Hopefully all is well now, in any case.

AR
Adam Radocz ID: 22746 Posts: 76
09 Dec 2021 05:04 PM

All looks good now.

Graham Jenkins ID: 1626 Posts: 163
11 Dec 2021 09:49 PM

Sometime in the last 24 hours all my projects (and their half-completed tasks) vanished on my main Boinc machine, along with statistics history. I did a "Synchronise with Charity Engine" and discovered that WCG (and its statistics history!) had vanished; new tasks were then downloaded and started from scratch. What's happened, and does this mean that all our WCG points have been binned?

Also .. I keep getting NumberFields notices like:

This project is using an old URL. When convenient, remove the project, then add http://numberfields.asu.edu/NumberFields/

Is this something CE will eventually do for me, or do I need to do something on my machines?

 


 

Tristan Olive ID: 22 Posts: 387
13 Dec 2021 08:21 PM

Graham, this only makes sense to me if your ProgramData/BOINC directory was deleted somehow on that machine. I don't see anything out of sorts with your account on this end. 

Does the Projects tab on the affected machine show the usual list of projects and accounts after you synchronized, or does it show different accounts? Perhaps you could compare the list on another system. By your description, it's like the machine is connected to a different account, which is quite perplexing... so verifying that would help.