Has anyone gotten any information from the folks at Aqua? That project has been quite reliable with fairly active admin feedback over the year, and this past weekend their database servers went offline and then their home page went to 'you can't ping me' mode on Tuesday and remains that way as I type this.

From Here.

Regards Odi

Thanks for that update -- looks like Aqua will be back up and running sometime next week.

I was kind of hoping to see an Aqua home page late today (not expecting to see the database restored for a few days), but no home page either -- guess things were well and truly munged over there.

Aqua is up now with good news:



Regards Odi

Yes, Aqua recovered from their outage -- but it seems in implementing the latest BOINC server software they re-visited a massive credit bug (in the BOINC server code) which has resulted in some VERY high credit scores.

Aqua admins state the problem is in the BOINC server code, though the problem *appears* to be Aqua specific. This looks like the same massive credit score problem that showed up one month ago (perhaps with the June BOINC server update) and was resolved with a BOINC server code 'hot fix' (I'm guessing here) a few days later. My *guess* is that the July BOINC server update 'un-fixed' the hot fix and so the problem resurfaced.

While the Admins are manually adjusting work unit credits, the Aqua server configuration drops results out of the database very quickly (seems like less than 24 hours after a result completion). Those work units with really high scores that didn't get adjusted before the auto-purge of the database remain with credits. Back in June that pushed my RAC rank from 12 to 87 since I didn't get any of the super credit work units. This time I got a handful of them and they went to autopurge before the admins adjusted them. So my RAC (which had been recovering to 26 as the averages cleared out over time) jumped from 26 to 7. My credits jumped by close to 400 MILLION. I don't know if the Aqua admins are going to clear these out (I'm certainly not the only one getting these super credit work units), but if they don't, I end up with a major stat report anomaly. I'd rather see the credits fixed (including the ones purged from the database) but it is one of those -- is what it is -- things.

From the Aqua project admins late this morning:

"In preparation for a credit rollback, I've emptied the queues of all work. Please feel free to cancel any tasks that you may be running.

Please run tasks from other BOINC projects till we sort out this credit mess."

Basically, aside from the message boards, consider Aqua to be offline -- best case -- some time next week.

Looks like the credit problem has to do with the BOINC centralized directorate trying to impose a single credit scheme for all projects within the Server code and disabling project specific credit systems.

Projects not implementing the 'latest and greatest' Server code don't encounter this problem. Perhaps an increasing number of projects are going into server code 'hold mode' to avoid the centralized scheme and the problems that come with it.

Do AQUA still grant those insane amount of credit, or is that fixed now?

Aqua is on hold - the Admin left DWave (would be wrong to connect assumed dots), and at present the future of the BOINC end of the Project is not clear. There are some test WUs still going through, but they will be all returned shoertly. No other WUs yet available, not yet known when or if that will be.

Its a wait and see job.

Here we can read an intrerview with the CTO of D-Wave Systems. in the FTD Deutschland Boinc is not mentioned