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Posts by Gibson Praise
1) Message boards : News : Drupal migration coming up! (Message 112827)
Posted 9 May 2014 by Profile Gibson Praise
Post:
Can we get an update on the migration? It's been a while...

I've been wondering the same thing, and I'm sure others have. However it is good to remember that:
"Most of the time Albert@Home will have no work to run at all, and when it has, the applications are experimental, might be unstable, unreliable and may even damage your computer. Validation might be unreliable and we may cancel workunits without prior notice." (from the home page of Albert).

This is especially true since Albert is generally only used by Einstein@home to test beta server code. Beta application code is usually tested on Einstein@home. There was a recent post by Bernd (responding to why such testing was not done at Albert) which I include below. It's very informative.

Sorry, but why this is not done at Albert@home?


Albert@Home was originally set up to test server side code, including changes that were necessary to support new applications (e.g. locality scheduling). Historically we were testing Beta App versions on Einstein as "anonymous platform packages" as long as we had only one search (i.e. application). With the introduction of a second search (BRP), maintainig app_info.xml files became a hazzle, so we switched to testing new app versions on Albert. This, however, has its own drawbacks:

- Providing the right amount of "work" of the right type (that belongs to the App version that we want to test) is getting increasingly difficult. We e.g. need to maintain a separate line of code for each workunit generator.

- The computing power and thus throughput on Albert is not very high, so you need to repeatedly reconfigure the system to not waste any on applications that you don't want to test right now.

- When you issue a new series of application versions and generate work for it, validation compares results of these only to that of versions of the same series. A comparison to the result of an established version - which is what we really want - happens only in very rare, accidental cases.

- the variation of different systems attached to Albert is not at all representative for what's running on Einstein.

- due to the low throughput, especially when tasks are assigned with additional constraints (locality scheduling), feedback (i.e. validation) is very slow, slowing down development.

- App version testing is not independent from the server code. Occasionally the need for testing application version prevented us from testing server side changes on Albert, or at least required us to postpone these.

For us these were enough arguments to shift testing of application versions back to Einstein. Server code and new applications will still be tested on Albert, and I think for some time at least BRP app versions, too.

BM


Cheers to all,
G
2) Message boards : News : Project time-out (Message 112794)
Posted 6 Feb 2014 by Profile Gibson Praise
Post:
Completed units have been accepted/credited, new units delivered.
:-)
3) Message boards : News : Project time-out (Message 112792)
Posted 3 Feb 2014 by Profile Gibson Praise
Post:
I can only echo the recent sentiments:

1. This is a beta project. Things happen. I see no reason to go backward unless that is the best way to do the beta work for Einstein.
2. Get yourselves well. That is way more important ;-)

and thank you for the update!





This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant PHY-0555655 and by the Max Planck Gesellschaft (MPG). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the investigators and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF or the MPG.

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