[Bonus] Account not found

[Maeda]

Hello,

User since years now, but first post here .

I cannot see my bonus state and based on contacts I have (on Boinc), my Bonus seems to be gone.
I tried to check on the Bonus web page but my account is not found at all (:!:)...
My estimated PPD per GPU on the FAHclient (V7) is stable and like I always had. But on the website donor page, it is different and looks like low rate.

How can I check the Bonus status?

Account name: [AF>Libristes]Maeda
Passkey never changed (expected!).

Thanks.

[Joe_H]

From using the Recent CPUs - https://apps.foldingathome.org/cpu - lookup the last WUs shown as turned in did not get a bonus. That can come from the passkey not being entered into the client, or entered incorrectly with leading or trailing spaces. If you used a passkey you made up yourself, that also will not work. They need to come from using - https://apps.foldingathome.org/getpasskey. There was a time when the system would accept made up passkeys, but that ended some years ago.

Beyond that if the passkey is valid and entered correctly it would appear at some point your completion percentage dropped below 80%. That is one of the qualifiers for the Quick Return Bonus. You may find the reason in the older logs kept by the client, by default the previous 16 are kept in v7.

Your username goes beyond the recommended use of just alphanumeric characters and a few special characters. So many have not paid attention to that the stats system has been coded to accept most anything, but your username appears to not work with the stats API used by the Bonus Status app. I will bring that to the attention of the developer. But for now I also can not look up your bonus status.

About the only means of getting bonus again if your completion rate is far below 80% due to some temporary reason is to get a new passkey. Use a different email or username when you apply for it. The username does not need to match the username you use in the client.

[Maeda]

OK then which of the below step is the best least effort/risk approach to keep current account statistics?

• 1- Change the passkey using your link and set it in the config.xml? What about the username with special character (as the bonus API has trouble with those ones)?

• 2- Change name in the config.xml and keep the current passkey?

• 3- Change both username and passkey?

Thanks.

[muziqaz]

OK then which of the below step is the best least effort/risk approach to keep current account statistics?

• 1- Change the passkey using your link and set it in the config.xml? What about the username with special character (as the bonus API has trouble with those ones)?

• 2- Change name in the config.xml and keep the current passkey?

• 3- Change both username and passkey?

Thanks.

Option 2 has the less chance to lose your previous points.
Changing passkey will definitely separate your points from old passkey and points from now on on new passkey.
Even option 2 has a chance that fah stats server will split the points.
Joe made a request towards the dev, to see what is going on.

[Joe_H]

I don't know if the bonus part of the statistics has a problem with your username, it could just be the API for the lookup app. The stats server seems to have no problem storing and reporting the WU results from your client with the current username.

To keep current account stats, do not change the username. Points in the stats database are permanently tied to username, team, and passkey. They do not reassign points to a new username. Though the client report stats based on the username and passkey set, the official stats does lookups based on username and/or team.

So I would recommend changing the passkey. After returning 10 WUs successfully you should get the bonus points. The client will report estimated points while working on a WU as if the passkey is qualified, it has no way of checking that status. But as a reminder, qualifications for getting bonus points are completing 10 WUs with the same username and passkey set, having a valid passkey from the passkey generator, and maintaining a 80% or better return rate of completed WUs from those assigned to you.

At least your username doesn't have any unicode characters. Recently it was determined that for some reason no longer known all WUs recorded for usernames with unicode characters were being assigned to Anonymous.

[Maeda]

I just finished the remaining WU's and stopped the activity.

So I tried to put the username and email but I got a "ERROR: error" as a result on the web page.

I tried both "[AF>Libristes]Maeda" and "[AF>Libristes]Maeda" (latest is what is in config.xml) but got the same answer.

What does that mean? Any idea

I am not sure I provided any email at the time I created the account. Additionally I do not remember how I generated the passkey, could be manual I guess.

[muziqaz]

Passkey is generated by the server, and is impossible to get without an email address, since server sends that passkey to your provided email address

[Joe_H]

What I told you before about the username not needing to match, it does not matter what username you use to get a passkey. So use anything you want for username in the app, but the passkey app probably is trying to use just the recommended alphanumeric characters. You can also use any email, the passkey app is not registering an account. It just creates a database record with the username entered and the email address use.

As for whatever passkey you have in your client, if obtained using the app it will be a 31 digit hexadecimal number. If you use the same username and email address, you will get the same passkey sent back to you. So if that passkey in your client is not a 31 digit hexadecimal number, you created your own and it will not be recognized.

[calxalot]

Newer passkeys are 32 hex characters

[Joe_H]

Oh, an extra digit was added at some point then. I hadn't noticed the change. My 15 digit passkey still works, and my test of the passkey app today to check that it was working sent it to me once again.

[Maeda]

Indeed, my current passkey is NOT a 32 digit (less) hex. And it is alphanumeric. Definitely, I must have generated this one for sure.

So what about generating a new passkey on my own (I know the webpage should generated one for me, I'm searching for another option) but with 32 char (hex to match backend requirement)? Will my FAHclient register the same database record keeping stats and just replace the passkey by the new one? Or is the passkey app webpage really mandatory to generate a valid passkey? If this is mandatory, why the passkey webpage does not recognize my account? Bad email?

If I use any new username in the passkey app webpage, it will generate a new record for that new username, then my completed work so far will be kind of lost in an orphaned database record, am I right?

Changing the username is not an option if I want to keep the data (must match the database record). Changing passkey is not a problem but getting a new valid one is.

As far as I remember, generating our own passkey was accepted (years ago probably). So if I can use my config.xml to send a new passkey to the same database record matching the username, my data will remain.
I must not be the only one with this issue, I'm sure people do not start from scratch just for that.

Note: as per the passkey FAQ, changing the email address will generate a new passkey (and match the account), I'll try this option

Result: same error (I tried from two different systems) whether I use the normal username or the one which is in my config.xml. For me something in the app does not match the database username record (probably because of the special characters) And that could be dangerous if the special characters are badly interpreted (injections, etc.).

[calxalot]

By hex I mean hexadecimal, which is A thru F and 0 through 9. Which is a subset of alphanumeric.

[Maeda]

Yes a subset, mine does not only contains hex

[calxalot]

The error in the passkey generation page is almost certainly due to special characters in the name used. Use a name without []>. It doesn’t need to be the same name used when configuring the client.

[Maeda]

That is a solution but I'll lose the data. Not an option! Except if a database admin can migrate the data.