FAQ - read only

[Miep]

Q: I can't upload/download/report - I don't get any tasks

A: Check SETI is up at all: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu
Check the Server Status Page 
Is the Status page up to date? [As of in top left corner current]
Are the upload/download/scheduler server entries green?
Are there 'Results ready to send'?

If the answer to all above is yes:
Check the cricket graph
blue is uploads, green is downloads. If they are flat something (server/net) is broken.

[Richard Haselgrove]

Q: I clicked something in BOINC Manager, and now my tasks are in a funny order - how do I put them back to normal?

A: (Windows) You need to edit the registry.
Close BOINC Manager (you can leave the client running)
Run 'regedit', or whatever you usually use for registry hacking.
Expand HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Space Sciences Laboratory, U.C. Berkeley\BOINC Manager\Tasks
Select Tasks in the left-hand pane - ignore the subkeys.
Select SortColumn in the right-hand pane.
Right-click and edit the value. Make it ffffffff
Close regedit (saves automatically, no save step needed), restart BM.

A: (Linux) The Manager settings are in a hidden file called ".BOINC Manager" in your home directory.
Close BOINC Manager (you can leave the client running)
Open the file for editing, using either of these naming conventions:

Code:

".BOINC Manager"
~/.BOINC\ Manager

Find a section like

Code:

[Tasks]
SortColumn=6
ReverseSortOrder=0
ActiveTasksOnly=0

(or whichever tab you want to un-sort)
Change the SortColumn to -1
Save your changes and restart BM.

[William]

Q: I have tasks in my task list, that timed out with an impossibly short deadline!

A: Those tasks are VLAR and therefore won't be sent to a NVidia GPU.

The following happened:
Your host asked for work. The CPU got assigned some VLAR tasks (marked as .vlar in the task name). Due to a communication hiccup your host never received the server reply with the tasks. After a while it asks again for tasks. It also sends a complete list of what tasks it already has. The server compares this to what you got assigned. It finds those .vlar tasks you never got and - with 'resend lost results' active - wants to send them again. Only this time your host is asking for NVidia GPU tasks. As the .vlar tasks can't be send to NVidia GPU they expire instead - showing as time out with impossibly short deadline.

NB This can also happen to AP tasks, if there is no GPU app.

[William]

Q: I've upgraded to 295.xx/296.xx drivers and now my Cuda tasks are erroring and my RAC is dropping.

A: There is a Sleeping Monitor Bug with the 295.51, 295.73 and 296.10 drivers, once a DVI or HDMI port connected Monitor goes to sleep, the Cuda device becomes unavailable,
the next time a cuda workunit starts, the Stock Cuda app will jump into CPU fallback mode and run very very slow and eventually error out, while the latest Lunatics Cuda app
will attempt to start the workunit a number of times before erroring out, the solution is to upgrade to 301.xx or later drivers, or downgrade to 290.53 or earlier drivers.

NVidia drivers can be found at http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us

If anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway.

- Murphy's Law