Merging duplicate records quandry
13 Jul 2016 5:58:01 UTC
Topic 198686
(moderation:
Computer 12173330 Windows 10 3561 million ops/sec floating point, 9180.91 million ops/sec integer
Computer 12319894 Windows 7 1000 million ops/sec floating point, 1000 million ops/sec integer
I have the above computers listed on the Tasks page.
I've had the former computer number for at least one year, the length of time my OS was Windows 10, but probably for many years. But a few days ago I had to reinstall Windows 7, due to my computer's incompatibility with 10. That's when my computer was assigned the latter number. The computer specs are identical, but the computation speeds are different.
I used the same email address and password to add the Project to BOINC. My total credit and RAC as displayed on the Your account page are accurate. Can I merge the records of the 'two' computers? Would they even merge, given the difference in reported computation speeds? Should I click on Merge on the Windows 10 page or the Windows 7 page? Is this what 'merging duplicate records of this computer' even means? TIA
"Remember, nothing that's good works by itself, just to please you. You have to make the damn thing work." Thomas A. Edison
Merging duplicate records quandry
)
The fact that you have different benchmark results for the two instances of the same set of physical hardware should have no influence on your ability to merge the two instances. If you look at the 1000/1000 values of the Win7 version, doesn't it strike you that these two numbers look quite artificial? Have you tried forcing a new set of benchmarks to be performed? Those numbers look like 'made-up' values that might be used if benchmarking fails for some obscure reason.
Benchmark numbers are not used at Einstein so 'silly' values won't have any bad effect. They might have some effect on runtime estimates but that should be corrected by changes to the DCF. Bad benchmark values won't change the actual crunching performance of that machine. In fact, despite the low benchmark numbers, the Win7 version seems to be crunching BRP6 tasks a little faster than the Win10 version.
You should attempt to merge the two instances since they really represent the same physical hardware. The merge procedure will leave you with the most recent ID after the merge - the Win7 version - irrespective of whichever details page you use to launch the merge. I should warn that I'm commenting without any recent experience on the subject. The last time I did a merge was probably 8-10 years ago so I have no first hand knowledge of how the current server software handles the operation these days.
I have no use for merging. If I do a complete reinstall for any reason where I can't preserve the previous ID (eg. hard disk failure), I just populate the BOINC directory with the Einstein account file and create a client_state.xml template for the new install which includes the previous ID and how many times that previous ID has contacted the server. That way the previous ID is retained without any new ID being issued or any need to do a subsequent merge operation. Computer ID 63256 is a classic example. It first started crunching here on 6 Mar 2005, 3:54:50 UTC, when it was a humble, single core Athlon XP running 32 bit Windows. The hardware is quite different now (including a GPU) and it runs 64 bit Linux, but the nice low ID lives on :-).
Cheers,
Gary.
When I clicked on Merge I
)
When I clicked on Merge I learned that I had a surprisingly long list of computer numbers. I selected all of them and merged. That brought me to the option of merging computers by name. Only two of them, in 2011, had the name Dell; the rest were named XPS-8300. But on the Merge computers by name page, the text reads:
This operation merges computers based on their domain name.
For each domain name, it will merge all older computers having that name with the newest computer having that name. Incompatible computers will not be merged.
I have two questions: What is meant by domain name here, and will the only listed computer following the merge operation be XPS-8300?
Thanks,
Steve
"Remember, nothing that's good works by itself, just to please you. You have to make the damn thing work." Thomas A. Edison
RE: When I clicked on Merge
)
When I first responded, I looked at your current active computers only and saw the two IDs - the Win10 one and the Win7 one. Looking again now, I only see the Win7 entry so you have successfully merged those two.
I have also now clicked the 'show all computers' link and can only see two in total - the current Win7 machine and what appears to be an older version of it minus the GTX750Ti GPU. That previous ID last had contact with the project on 11 Apr 2012, 2:02:19 UTC. So I conclude that you have also managed to merge all the old IDs - perhaps all the ones you refer to as XPS-8300.
In some ways, if you are at all nostalgic about your past crunching history, it's not desirable to merge everything in sight. It's actually quite interesting to browse back through the full list of old IDs because it tends to remind you of particular events that happened on your crunching journey. Maybe you don't really want to be reminded :-).
If you are crunching at 'home' on a simple LAN, your domain name will probably just be a simple host name like "dell" or "XPS-8300", etc. If you are part of a group under the control of DNS, you may have a fully qualified domain name such as hostname.example.com. If you run your own DNS you could even have something like dell.steveplanetary.local, for example. If you are not sure exactly what applies to you, the string that BOINC is using as your 'domain' can easily be found by clicking the 'details' link for any of your computers listed on the website. Please be aware that you can only see the 'domain' for a host that actually belongs to you. Nobody else can 'see' your hostnames because 'sensitive' information like that and IP address, etc, are not shown to others.
As I tried to indicate in my previous message, I don't know any details about the current merge process. Seeing as you now have just two entries on your full computers list, I suspect you will be able to see two different names, "dell" and "XPS-8300". Why don't you have a look and tell us if that is the case and if the merge process managed to do the correct thing for you - such as proper credits being associated with each entry?
Cheers,
Gary.
Thank you for all your help,
)
Thank you for all your help, Gary. My main concern was with not being given all the credits I have earned. If I understood your last post I have taken care of that. I'm not particularly interested in milestones (or millstones) or domains, so I think I will leave well enough alone. :-)
"Remember, nothing that's good works by itself, just to please you. You have to make the damn thing work." Thomas A. Edison
On my Your Account page my
)
On my Your Account page my total credit is on the order of 10^6, but before I reverted from Windows 10 to Windows 7, and merged my accounts (or did I merge computers?) my total credit was on the order of 10^9. If I'm not mistaken.
What happened? Can I get it back?
"Remember, nothing that's good works by itself, just to please you. You have to make the damn thing work." Thomas A. Edison
I can't see exactly what you
)
I can't see exactly what you see on your account page but if you look to the left under your icon you see a total credit ~25 times larger than 10^6. You have close to 25M so I don't know why you think you only have 1M??
As to the figure of 10^9 (100 million credits), unless you had a number of GPU crunchers running for a considerable time in the not too distant past, it would be a bit difficult to get to 100M. At your current RAC of around 60K, it would take of the order of 5 years of 24/7 operation to reach that figure.
I've moved your latest message into this thread since it's really a continuation of the discussion about merging duplicate hosts. You can't merge accounts - it has to be about what happened when you merged hosts so you can easily go back and review the discussion and perhaps re-think whether or not you have any missing credits. I really suspect that you don't.
However, you do seemingly have duplicate accounts. If you use the user search link on the home page, you will find two 'Steveplanetary' users, one with a capital 'S' and one with a lower case 's'. Your current account is the former and the latter doesn't seem to have been used for quite a while. It has a very low total credit and dates from the period where you had a single core Athlon XP computer.
If, after reviewing all this, you still feel there are missing credits, please don't hesitate to post the details of why you think it is so. Please don't ask for accounts to be merged because BOINC doesn't have a mechanism to do that. In any case, the lost credit is so small in comparison to your current amount that you wouldn't notice the difference - about 6 hours of current crunching :-).
Cheers,
Gary.
I guess I was mistaken.
)
I guess I was mistaken. After all, I am now #14 in total credit on The Planetary Society team, since I acquired an Nvidia 750 Ti. I used to be #17 or 18 due to five years crunching with an Nvidia 420.
"Remember, nothing that's good works by itself, just to please you. You have to make the damn thing work." Thomas A. Edison