Hello Admin,

I notice that there is a task deadline discrepancy between what is shown in the server versus what's shown on my BOINC manager screen. Both are off by 3 days, so I'm sure it has nothing to do with local and UTC time difference. I'm running Windows client. My other projects such as Universe and Rosetta has task deadline that matches between the server and the client. Not sure if you do see this on your side.

I assume the deadline shown by the server is the correct one.

Thanks.

Hello Admin,

I notice that there is a task deadline discrepancy between what is shown in the server versus what's shown on my BOINC manager screen. Both are off by 3 days, so I'm sure it has nothing to do with local and UTC time difference. I'm running Windows client. My other projects such as Universe and Rosetta has task deadline that matches between the server and the client. Not sure if you do see this on your side.

I assume the deadline shown by the server is the correct one.

Thanks.

The 3 day discrepancy is the grace period. So after a task expires you have 3 days before the server sends it to another host. If you return it within the 3 days you still get credit for it.

I'm not sure how other projects do this. They either do not have a grace period or they are using a different version of the server that reports things differently.

The projects that I'm currently crunching for the pent are Universe and Rosetta. I don't see any grace period in these two projects in which the server and the client deadline matches up perfectly well. I'm guessing most BOINC projects have the same server-client deadline but have to run some tasks after the pent to confirm. If anyone could chime in, that would be much appreciated.

I believe this is up to you but some of the new/novice crunchers may not know the difference. Likely they will only monitor the obvious which is the deadline shown in the BOINC manager GUI. My preference would be to keep the server and the client deadline dates the same to avoid confusion.

The server always reports in UTC, whereas the Manager reports in your computer's local time zone. So there's still a small mental correction to overcome. But that's probably commoner for users to encounter and adjust for.

I think this project is the only one I've encountered to actually use the grace period, although it's available for all project administrators to use if they wish. I think it's quote a good idea, given the differing run-times of different batches of tasks. The local BOINC on volunteers' computers will do its best to meet the deadline displayed on the local machine, but when the runtime changes, it may get caught out. The grace period allows that to happen without wastefully sending a replacement task to another computer when it's not needed.

After hearing most projects don't even have a grace period, I think I will reduce it to 1 day. But I will wait until the current Pentathlon is over, just in case people are relying on the extra 3 days.

Sounds good to me. Thanks.

I'm not sure how other projects do this. They either do not have a grace period or they are using a different version of the server that reports things differently.

I've seen a few projects setting a grace period after a longer outage, so that not all tasks that hit the deadline are recycled before the clients get a chance to report them. The only other project I'm aware of that has a grace period all the time is PrimeGrid (25 hours). They went even further and dynamically increase the grace period as long as some progress is reported via trickle-up messages.

I agree with Richard that this is very useful at projects with varying and somewhat unpredictable run times like here. Projects with fixed or at least predictable run times may simply not see that many tasks returned after the deadline. While PrimeGrid has far more predictable run times, their different subprojects for CPU and GPU tend to screw up the run time estimates, creating basically the same problem for the client's work fetch and scheduling algorithms as unpredictable run times.

RNA World has extending deadlines as well.
While the deadline can be extended on the server side, this can't be communicated to the client.
So, only having a look at the project page will help finding out the real deadline.

---

Greetings, Jens