Folding Forum

Hi all. I hate to post this, but I haven't found a satisfactory answer in my search of the forum site. Is there a way to skip a project or projects from certain investigators that take too long?

Hi and welcome to the forum

There is but it is frowned upon by PG. Why do you need to skip a project - i work on some that can last upto 4 days?

By skipping do you mean dumping the unit? There is but as Nathan_P said it is very frowned upon.
How long is "too long"?

24 hours to 36 hours without appropriate points compensation.

Why is it frowned upon if I"m the one that is donating my CPU time and want to maximize my points per day?

Who is PG?

Which project is that? Are you running SMP or uni?
Because you will be slowing the project down and cause more harm than good if you keep dumping units.
Here you can read this http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-BestPractices
PG = Pande Group

I"m running SMP on an i5 machine using all 4 cores at 100% of CPU power when I"m not on it.

I mostly have problems with one persons projects taking forever. I"m not sure if the coding is bad or what, but they take a long time for the amount of points I"m getting out of it.

There isn't a way to select the projects to fold?

But you are compensated appropriately, at the END of each work unit.

For example, if a work unit takes 1 day to finish, you get 1000 points. If a similar work units folds for 4 days, you get 4000 total at the end. That still averages 1000 points a day.

NO Difference.


It's frowned upon because removing a work unit hurts the project. Work units are sent out in a specific order that they need to be completed to help the science of Folding move forward. Each work units builds on the previous work unit. They are serial in nature, unlike other projects.

PG is Pande Group, the Research Lab at Stanford that runs the project. And by the way, PG AND most people donating to the project, like me, also strongly discourage it.

1. It hurts the project.
2. It hurts your ability to get bonus points.
3. It's against the project guidelines.

Hopefully you better understand how the points system works now so you can see longer work units are not a problem.

P.S. If you still think there is a problem, please post descriptions of work units that you think are okay, and which ones are not okay. Length of time may not be the problem...

yojimbo197 wrote:I mostly have problems with one persons projects taking forever. I"m not sure if the coding is bad or what, but they take a long time for the amount of points I"m getting out of it.

Different projects have different completion times. You may receive a unit that completes in under 1 hour, and a unit that completes in over 40 hours. The points given will be different and reflects the amount of time needed.
Make sure you're getting bonus points. To get bonus points you must have a successful return rate of 80%, so you can't keep dumping work units.

yojimbo197 wrote:There isn't a way to select the projects to fold?

You can use client/core options but it's not a guarantee, and you can't explicitly select a particular project.

iceman1992's statement about using a client setting to change the client behavior is doing you a disservice without a fuller description how those settings work. Changing the settings might actually cause the client to download longer and less stable work units.

For example: http://fahwiki.net/index.php/How_do_I_k ... advmethods

7im wrote:iceman1992's statement about using a client setting to change the client behavior is doing you a disservice without a fuller description how those settings work. Changing the settings might actually cause the client to download longer and less stable work units.

Alright I should have explained a bit more. (If I make a mistake in my statements, feel free to correct it, 7im)
Client settings is the only "approved" way of somewhat selecting projects, and it may not always work.
If yojimbo197 wanted to have shorter units, I would suggest using "max-packet-size = small" to avoid the bigger ones.
That option won't cause the client to download less stable work units, will it?

There is no such thing as "small" for SMP work units. As I recall, SMP work units are hard coded for Max Packets = Large.

And since that client option changes nothing, I assumed you meant client-type settings, like "advanced" which will download late stage beta work units.

yojimbo197, please read how work units are benchmarked so that they should get the same daily points whether you fold for 1 day or for 10 days...http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-Points

Yojimbo197, do you have a passkey? To get bonus points, you need to use a passkey, complete 10 SMP WUs with it, and then maintain an 80% sucessful completion rate.

I too suspect that's something is up on your end, because some WUs take longer to complete than others, but the points should be awarded just about the same.

7im wrote:And since that client option changes nothing, I assumed you meant client-type settings, like "advanced" which will download late stage beta work units

Actually no, I did not mean that. I know that client types "beta" and "advanced" is just the project stage, and nothing to do with size.
And that advanced is most likely less stable than full FAH.

yojimbo197 wrote:Hi all. I hate to post this, but I haven't found a satisfactory answer in my search of the forum site. Is there a way to skip a project or projects from certain investigators that take too long?

yojimbo197 wrote:24 hours to 36 hours without appropriate points compensation.

Let's focus on the change you made to your original question. Taking "too long" is strictly a matter of preference and there is no approved way of expressing that preference except in very limited cases.

Not getting appropriate points compensation is an entirely different issue associated with WU benchmarking. The points are supposed to approximate the time spent processing the WU (at least on the designated benchmark hardware). How about being more specific about your hardware and what you consider "appropriate compensation" and how you decided what was appropriate.

I have the same question. I just restored from a backup on one of my folding machines (the drive went bad). Now the system will run for 4 days on a project that is months past due... How do I "skip" it?