Covid-19

[Sebastian]

Hi,

Sorry for cluttering the forums with yet another Covid thread but I hope in times like these it will be someone accepted anyway.

I just downloaded the software to start helping out with finding a cure for Covid. I couldn't find any Covid in the dropdown list and so I started googling for an answer. The answer I found was that as long as its set to "Any disease" the software will start computing for Covid. I have had it set for 2 hours and just now I found out I could check what it is Im helping out with, and its not covid, its cancer?

How do I change this so I can target Covid explicitly?

Kind regards - Sebastian

[Joe_H]

Subject: Temporary server outages
is part of what you were experiencing. The full answer that you may have missed when googling is that the COVID-19 WU's are set on the servers at high priority, but that if out of the highest priority work, a WU from another lower priority project will be assigned.

[objecttothis]

I'm in the same boat. I saw the articles and forum posts and specifically signed on to help with COVID-19 projects. My CPU slot is on a COVID-19 project, but my GPU (GP102) is working on 14310. Not that cancer isn't serious, but that's not what I signed up for. given that my GPU is pumping out 1.1m PPD, I'd like my extra electricity bill to be going to COVID-19. If the answer is "maybe you'll get it, maybe you won't" or "you can't guarantee to get COVID-19" workloads, then that is fine, but I'll be shutting down WU that aren't COVID-19 related in the meantime.

I'm sure you guys are seeing a spike in new users from all the press you are getting because of COVID-19, so I can't imagine that I'm the only one in this camp.

[muziqaz]

As Joe mentioned, we are extremely overwhelmed by massive generosity from new folders. People who are setting up COVID jobs did not expect that, on top of that folding@home assignment servers cannot handle so many users. There are new COVID related projects in the works, but being weekend, and having server issues, folders have to be patient.
You are more than welcome to finish current WU on your GPU and stop folding. You can do that by right clicking on your GPU slot and selecting Finish. This way, slot will finish the work, and will not download any other project until you restart the slot.
Look at it this way, initial prepared work regarding COVID has been finished or nearly finished, which is amazing, as it was not expected to run out overnight. And I tell you it was a lot of WUs, we are seeing unprecedented numbers.

[objecttothis]

I sent this to Bruce in a PM, but I'll post it here in case it's useful. @muziqaz some of below is already answered in your post, so disregard those parts. I'm mainly posting it as a possible solution to the people displeased with signing up for one thing and getting another.

Bruce, I read your post requesting politeness and you guys are certainly entitled to people being polite. While I haven't read the posts in question, I did want to share with you a frustration that I have, and I think might be generating some impoliteness.

You are no doubt experiencing a spike in users due to the COVID-19 research publicity that FAH has received. That publicity has been specifically marketed as "Help scientists research COVID-19!". So when new users come, most are specifically signing on for that purpose. Many are finding out that not only do you not have control over whether you get a COVID-19 work unit, but you can't set your CPU/GPU to not take the work unit if it isn't COVID-19.

I understand that you can't control the way the publication gets out there if you guys aren't the ones advertising it, but nonetheless it affects FAH and unfortunately it's going to mean backlash from people which probably leaves you feeling like people are pretty thankless around your office.

Might I suggest one or more of the following:
- Create a COVID-19 specific Purpose Selection in the FAH client.
- Allow users, who prefer it, to only donate CPU/GPU time to selected projects (perhaps have a list with checkboxes).

These are a win/win. You don't get hit with the backlash from people who find out they were contributing to cancer or other project when they thought they were signing up to help with COVID-19 and people, who want to only contribute to one project because that's why they are signing up, can do so.

[bruce]

understand your suggestions. I've answered the same questions several times today in various places and so have others.

It's not feasible to add of the COVAID19 option cannot be added to the list. The programmer estimates he can do it in 18 months. The list is hard-coded into the client and into the servers and creating and installing all of those for Windows/Linux/OS-X is a huge job. Sure, it should have been coded differently, but it wasn't.

FAH has been running for almost 20 years. The scientists have always made the decisions about which projects get priority and they're not about to change that. In the past we've had issues with what we call "cherry-picking" where one project happens to earn points faster that some other project and when a couple of the teams is having a competition, folks will dump one project in hopes of getting only a higher scoring project. (We can't trust the Donors to use their ability to choose specific project to be objective about the research needs of science. In any case, FAH isn't a game, it's about serious science/

This is my 18th hour of sitting at this computer today and there are a still a lot of unanswered question. FAH operates almost exclusively based on a limited number of volunteers and we're all stretched really thin on account of the tremendous inrush of new Donors.

By he way, I never answer PMs. You may not like the facts, but they need to be in a public forum for all to read.

[objecttothis]

Thanks @bruce. I won't take any more of your time. This is for the future, but you may consider making the source code open source. Developers like myself can contribute to the code set in that way too without your in-house maintainers losing control over direction of the code. I'm sorry if you got the impression that I wanted to make a game out of FAH, but the truth is that many of your donor slot owners are gamers who were recruited to make a difference. I also understand why the scientists wouldn't like "cherry-picking" but the truth is that when someone's parents are diagnosed with Alzheimers or kid is diagnosed with Leukemia they are really only going to concern themselves with wanting to make a difference in that area. You are seeing so many people signing up, not because of altruism, but because COVID-19 is close to home so to speak. I wish it were different, but it isn't. Sorry that you are stuck between the rock (scientists) and the hard place (some donors).

[bruce]

Most of the code is open source and we have plans to open the rest. (At this rate, it may be a long time. maybe after this novel virus is no longer the focus of everybody's attention.)

[Denisok]

we have plans to open the rest.

Great to see. That's definitely right way.

[JohnWest428]

Cheers. We all stand taller when we build on each others work. Any chance the other defined channels (alz, etc) were exhausted, and we could use those queues for covid work units?? The need seems pressing.

Most of the code is open source and we have plans to open the rest. (At this rate, it may be a long time. maybe after this novel virus is no longer the focus of everybody's attention.)

This is how open source scales. Many hands making light work. If i cant help here, what are other places to unleash my new rtx2060?

[muziqaz]

Cheers. We all stand taller when we build on each others work. Any chance the other defined channels (alz, etc) were exhausted, and we could use those queues for covid work units?? The need seems pressing.

Its not how it works.
Assignment server checks what disease fahcontrol is set to. It then tries to direct you to server with WUs for that disease if any available. If there is nothing available related to your selected disease, something else is picked up.
At the moment assignment server is overloaded and cannot keep up with so many requests, thus we see so many retries and fails to download.
At the moment there are 150k assignments/hr, which is beyond ridiculous. Labs are generating new WUs as we speak, but as soon as they post some (thousands) online, they are all gone within seconds.

[IvanPro84]

hello to everyone,

I've just read this topic and wanted to throw in my 2 cents. I really think that the system redirecting your resources to something that is not COVID really is not a problem: in the end you're helping the system to get tasks done, and then when a COVID task becomes available some other computer elsewhere in the world will be ready and free to take it immediately: a computer that otherwise maybe would have been busy processing something else.

We must think of it as a whole. I am typing this from Italy, today is my 7th day of quarantine and I've subscribed to Folding@home again (I was a donor during the first years of the project, 2004/2005 maybe) because I wanted to help with COVID. Now this thing is chunking job 13830 (about something called "myosins" which I never heard before) and I'm perfectly fine with that. I'm writing this because I wanted you to know that your commitment as a donor is important and much appreciated, regardless of the job ID your machine is chunking (it's just a number!).

Best regards and a big thank you to you all.

Ivan Semenzato.

[Bowi]

I've just read this topic and wanted to throw in my 2 cents. I really think that the system redirecting your resources to something that is not COVID really is not a problem: in the end you're helping the system to get tasks done, and then when a COVID task becomes available some other computer elsewhere in the world will be ready and free to take it immediately: a computer that otherwise maybe would have been busy processing something else.

That's pretty much how I think too.

Also, have a look at how the software works: "Low", "Medium", "High" presets, "On Idle", performances, thermals, etc. If this troubles you that much, do something else or consider launching Folding@home while sleeping and use your computer like your would normally do during the day. (Sorry, English isn't my native language.)