When to report an actual bad work unit?

[BobWilliams757]

Just a quick question regarding the when to or when not to report work unit issues.

I generally check the work unit status if any fail, just to see if it was something on my system or a problem work unit. This time I did the same, and the work unit had a LOT of failures, over a number of days. I would assume that when that is the case that the researcher is probably already aware, and using more runs to possibly learn something or figure out what is wrong. But I'm wary of assumptions....

So should we report such issues here, or assume the researchers know fairly quickly when work units have issues?

[BobWilliams757]

Nobody?

https://apps.foldingathome.org/wu#proje ... =167&gen=0

In this case it hasn't been issued again since the 24th, so I have to assume the researcher is well aware. The question was intended simply to clarify if there is any appropriate time to report it either here or via PM to the appropriate person. Maybe this is more common than I think and I've just never seen it, but 50+ is a lot of failures. I've seen instances during COVID era where the researchers were happy to know quickly, but at other times seen it noted that the failed work units give them information so just let them keep failing.

[Joe_H]

I will pass that on to the researcher. Usually WUs are set to be tried a maximum number of times, usually 5-10, and then they are marked as "bad". So if you see one issued more than that, report it here.

[BobWilliams757]

Thanks for the response Joe.

I've never seen one like that, and had to wonder if they were testing or something, but I have no idea what "alarms" might be in place to notify a researcher if such a thing happens. Combine that with not knowing their workloads, other project, etc, etc.... I wasn't sure if it was worthy to bring up or would just be another post that had no value if I did so.

[Joe_H]

The researcher looked into it and consulted with the developer of the server code. Some assignment settings were changed and should fix this.