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Profile mvoicu
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Message 1325 - Posted: 5 Jun 2018, 11:54:10 UTC

Hi everyone,

I have noticed that I have two tasks that ended up in a "Validation Inconclusive" state.

What does this mean? It's quite sad to have eleven hours of CPU time wasted without a clear status...

mmonnin
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Message 1326 - Posted: 6 Jun 2018, 1:42:13 UTC

It means you returned results compared to someone else. The task will go out to another user to see which of the two is most likely correct.

I see one task from you where your wingman is returning pretty much all junk. Another gridcoin user. I have one where they are the wingman that is inconclusive as well. That one's most likely not your fault.

http://gene.disi.unitn.it/test/results.php?hostid=32432

The client should be banned. More invalid than valid and more inconclusive. It's completing tasks faster than about anything I can find. Some at 1.2k seconds. More gridcoin cheating.

Profile valterc
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Message 1327 - Posted: 6 Jun 2018, 11:20:20 UTC - in response to Message 1326.

I've just checked that host and I agree that it's behavior is quite strange (a lot of invalids with very short computation time). However, I checked some of the valid returned results, they were returned very fast, nevertheless they seem 'good'. For any workunit, sent to at least two different users, we check the results, the two output files are compared byte by byte and declared valid if identical (this should definitely avoid any kind of cheating).

The BOINC server has also some kind of mechanism that should stop sending workunits to hosts that produce errors or invalid results. I will continue to monitor that host.

Be also aware that we have some kind of a bug in the application (and we weren't able to find it), in some cases when a workunit is started, stopped before the first checkpoint and re-started again the output file will become garbled and the final computation will be eventually declared invalid. However, this is a very rare event.

mmonnin
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Message 1328 - Posted: 6 Jun 2018, 11:35:55 UTC

The valid results look to be inline for a non-HT 4 thread system. 4 results returned every couple of hours. The others completed 'successfully' somehow 5-8x faster than the other tasks.

mmonnin
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Message 1335 - Posted: 30 Jun 2018, 18:46:02 UTC

Please check this host. All invalid and completing much too fast.

http://gene.disi.unitn.it/test/results.php?hostid=33598

mmonnin
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Message 1336 - Posted: 1 Jul 2018, 11:18:25 UTC

Another
http://gene.disi.unitn.it/test/results.php?hostid=32435

Profile valterc
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Message 1337 - Posted: 2 Jul 2018, 10:10:01 UTC - in response to Message 1336.
Last modified: 2 Jul 2018, 12:42:50 UTC

Both hosts belong to one of the gridcoin pools, so it's impossible for me to just warn the owner. The hosts seem obviously completely un-managed (no one cares about them). The uploaded output files are somewhat 'garbled' and clearly invalid, so rejected by the server. It's a waste of computational power but if the number of such hosts remains low this should not be a big issue.

There is a large number of hosts that download a lot of workunits and return them (correctly computed) after weeks (too late for validation). This is also a waste of power, probably a side effect of having such a large number of hosts that are not managed.

Anyway, thank you for the information, it's a 'behavior' that should be monitored.

mmonnin
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Message 1338 - Posted: 2 Jul 2018, 23:06:48 UTC

Sometimes the pool owners respond to messages at projects. I messaged the pool owner account here about the previous host, 32432. It hadn't received payout nor attached to the pool any more.

How do tasks even complete so fast. They aren't marked as computation errors so the BOINC client thinks they ran and completed just fine. Is there a way for you to see if the exe and data files are still intact? It's like as fast as a GPU, compared to CPU times, running these.

Profile valterc
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Message 1339 - Posted: 3 Jul 2018, 16:38:11 UTC - in response to Message 1338.

The computational speed is strange indeed. It could be because of many reasons, the exe or the data files, the input and the big one (in this case hgnc_data_mat.csv) that have been modified. As far as I know BOINC should prevent tampering with those files but I'm not sure about this (there are some strange config options like that I do not fully understand). Why someone would like to intentionally do this (just waste computational power for zero credits)?. The output file is a big document and there is no way to guess it without doing the computation.

If a user would like to find a way to speed up the calculation (like Daniel did in the past) he can just play with the source code and then use the anonymous platform, but, first, he have to be sure that the calculation is correct, otherwise there is a very very low probability of getting a match at the validation stage and get some credits.

biodoc
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Message 1340 - Posted: 14 Jul 2018, 16:16:58 UTC

Here's another host with no valid results and fast computational speeds.

http://gene.disi.unitn.it/test/results.php?hostid=33492


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