Folding Forum

Dear bruce, Dear PantherX, Dear toTOW, ...
First: Thank you so much!
Please, understand that the following suggestions aim at easing your burden.

Observations from an outside dinosaur admin:

A) Server Stats:

- Many WS "grey" in a round-robin-manner

- All "white" WS refer to CS which are "grey" themselves

- The typical uptime of current "white" WS is between hours and 3 days

B) "Issues with a specific server":

- IMVHO, the current flood of unspecific "can't upload"
- and iterated "mee too" does not help that much.

- To me, it seems to originate from a lack of context.

- Sticky Topic "Troubleshooting Server Connectivity Issues (Do This First)"
- from 2009/2010 seems to be un-maintained.
- "Descriptions Of Columns In Server Status Page" is completely out-of-sync.

[] Suggestion:

- Add (and maintain) a second STICKY topic "Current Situation"

- Maintain some few lines about current problems and work in progress
- on server side / network infrastructure, giving people a hint what to expect.

- This information should supersede the necessity
- for multiple redundant answerings in singular topics.

- The participating Labs could contribute and maintain their "Current Situation" themselves.
- This should condense information exchange form single IP/WS instance to location level.

- Netiquette:
- - All new topics should start with the IP of the server afflicted
- - - - at beginning of Subject (unless not appropriate);
- - citation of corresponding row in "Server Stats" (straight, without headers)
- - - - from https://apps.foldingathome.org/serverstats would be
- - - - welcome and helpful to enable comparison of <status at time of OP> to later readings.
- - Users are kindly asked to search for non-SOLVED topics concerning their WS IP
- - - - before opening/posting a-new;
- - - - most beneficially, there should be only one non-SOLVED open Thread per WS at a time.
- - Users are kindly asked not to iterate "Same here" ad libitum,
- - - - unless containing helpful additional information or pointing out 'situation changed';
- - - - otherwise, one cannot see the wood for the trees.
- - Remediated cases should be marked as SOLVED in the subject.
- - The OP owns the possibility to edit the SUBJECT of his Topic himself.

- Extend "Server outages and limitations"
- pointing to this STICKY info:
- - It is not only about "work unit shortage",
- - but also about limitations of infrastructure.
- viewtopic.php?f=106&t=33193#p317298

C) "Issues with a specific WU":

Similar reasoning applies.

- Netiquette:
- - All new topics should start with "project:run:clone:gen"
- - of the WP afflicted (unless not appropriate).

D) Folding@home -> News:

I am pretty sure that even a very short News article
could ease the pressure upon F@H project members a lot.

Just my 2 cents of thought.

Stay safe and sound!
Kind regards
Manfred

Those are some great ideas!

I have spent the last few days re-writing the "Troubleshooting Server Connectivity Issues (Do This First)" and I do have a draft version ready... hopefully I can update it later this week or early next week

I do have plans on updating the other threads and the good news is that since there's only one client to support (V7), the new information will be a lot cleaner and hopefully, easier to understand

Great! Thanks for your very quick reply.

BTW: (Having had a look at GitHub) Is there anywhere a thread about client development (7.6.2) ?

For those of use who are visual:

Three weeks ago we got 10 times more volunteers:



As the F@H team gets more servers online, we donate more computing resources:



If the amount of points levels off, they have caught up with demand.

@PantherX:
Going to update my OP (edit) as ideas follow-on, if that's o.k. for you?

WARNING:
Searching topics from "Issues with specific server",
I found multiple posts advertising to cancel any WU assigned from WS the donor has lost trust in.
Somehow understandable: "No fun to burn energy to heat and noise for nothing, indeed"
(viewtopic.php?f=18&t=34116&start=30#p324481).

As far as I could understand the proceedings of FAH projects,
the lack of confidence into "keep and upload later" results in aborted WU
which will result into "expired" and finally "timeout",
thus hazarding the consequence of a whole generation of WUs being condemned to wait
for a member WU being stalled by purpose, right?

Perhaps, WS that iteratively failed might be taken off-duty, at least from "Public Jobs",
until their restored reliability has been thoroughly proved again?