Hello altogether,

I have some big problems with BOINC and chrony.

First, let me describe the problem.

I am using SETI@Home for many years now, and since several years also with BOINC under Linux. Today, I do not use Windows anymore at all. :)

Since 6 month I use a Pentium-III 1.4GHz PC for Einstein@Home with BOINC.
I thought everything is OK, but when I had a look on the project page I saw that nearly all E@H packages threw "compute errors".

Long time I had no clue what could cause that, but I have a thought now.

As far as I could see on the web, BOINC is close to the system and RTC clock. Any changes there can lead to inaccurate results or even those errors - is that true?

If yes, I know the reason if the countless errors: my tool for keeping the clock to NTP time: chrony. It adjustes the drift of the RTC every few miliseconds and that MIGHT confuse BIONC.

So if the problem is really related to chrony changing the RTC's drift and thus the time, I have two options: either quit BOINC or stop using chrony.

It's a real dilemma, I love BOINC and I love chrony, but if one program is behaving badly because of the other I would have to drop one... and currently I tend to BOINC...


OR, and I would really really really prefer this, this bug could be even fixed in BOINC, if possible. :)



But first: is my guess also reality or is it just that - a bad guess?


I look forward hearing from you. :)


-Ionic

Problems with the clock should not be causing tasks to error. It may cause them to restart and show annoying but harmless messages "exited with zero status", "no heartbeat" for example.

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BOINC WIKI

BOINCing since 2002/12/8

If your clock suddenly changes by a few minutes, BOINC will have problems. But if it constantly adjusts the drift by at most a few seconds, you should be fine...

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I've had large changes in the system time cause BOINC to come to a halt, but not cause computation errors. This was on Linux.

Einstein has been having issues with their Linux apps. Have you posted over there asking about the errors?

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Kathryn :o)

Hm... okay... sorry, I've seen just another problem:

On http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu//results.php?hostid=996989 you can see that I am getting a lot of SIGFPE-Errors on Host deff, do you know what could cause them?

If not chrony...

Err yes, you are right, SETI is working really fine... mh so it might be just a problem with Einstein and I am at the wrong place here, I am very sorry for disturbing you. I will try to ask for help on their forums as well. :)

Have a nice christmas eve. :)


-Ionic