Assignments Completed by Another User

[linament]

On August 3, 2014, I was autoassigned two double checks from PrimeNet, M32295581 and M32295713. Today, I noticed that when I did a query on Active Assignments, these two assignments do not show up. I then queried Exponent Status and it appears that another user completed these assignments on 2014-08-07. Am I misreading something?

Also, when I check the assignments on line in my account, these two assignments do not show up. However, they are still in my worktodo.txt file.

Seeing that these numbers are not in an area where one would think that poaching would be occurring, I wonder what is happening.

Should I abort my double check? If so, how do I do that?

[VictordeHolland]

Those are both Category 1 DC assignments:

First 1500 assignments
Exponents below 32983430
Assigned to users that promise to complete assignments quickly. Computer must be proven reliable, returned at least 2 results in the last 90 days for each LL worker thread, and "days of work to queue" <= 10
Must be completed in 60 days
Assignments are recycled when assignment is more than 60 days old.

Your computer should have had 60 days to complete the assignment before it should have been recycled. Did you queue a lot of work (and so failed to meet the "days of work to queue <= 10" criteria) ??

[Mark Rose]

He said he was assigned them on August 3rd, 2014. That's closer to 6 days ago than 60.

Is it possible that the original assignee completed the work just past the deadline?

[LaurV]

Went to see if the poacher wasn't me

It wasn't.

Looking to the status for these exponents, it seems like a PrimeNet blunder, or poaching. The original assignee never completed the assignments (or changed her name/assignment key, both assignments were anonymous), and the expiration was not over, that was "old fashion" assignment (December 2013?). The "expiration time" which you see (Aug 7) is the reporting date (when the results were reported, by a third party, or poacher, the exponents were done, so they were automatically "expired"). So, the date you see there is not the expiration day, but the completion day.

@OP: you can continue your assignment, especially if you have done some good part of it, so the work won't be wasted, it will count as TC and you will get your DC credit when reporting.

[TheMawn]

Thanks for coming here with this. There have been a few minor issues with the relatively newly implemented assignment recycling and distribution rules and feedback like yours is essential to finding and fixing any possible issues.

I don't know how to determine whether an assignment was "recycled" by Primenet. In this case, I am quite sure the assignment was rightfully yours, but the individual who had it before you (and ran out of time to finish it, or gave it up, or whatever) completed it despite it no longer "belonging" to him.

At any rate, nothing wrong was done on your end, so you have nothing to worry about. If it was assigned to you, it was supposed to be yours to do. The triple check is somewhat valuable and you will be credited for finishing it if you decide to do so.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by TheMawn

I don't know how to determine whether an assignment was "recycled" by Primenet. In this case, I am quite sure the assignment was rightfully yours, but the individual who had it before you (and ran out of time to finish it, or gave it up, or whatever) completed it despite it no longer "belonging" to him.

Yup, this is what appears to have happened. Not much Primenet can do about such situations.

20140223/32290000_32300000.txt:              32295581 D                   58      -32 2014-01-22 2013-12-28 2013-12-27 2013-12-27 ANONYMOUS        
20140604/32290000_32300000.txt:              32295581 D                   0       23 2014-06-27 2014-06-05 2014-06-04 2014-06-04 spradlin       compute-0-31
20140613/32290000_32300000.txt:              32295581 D                   9       22 2014-07-05 2014-06-14 2014-06-13 2014-06-04 spradlin       compute-0-31
20140623/32290000_32300000.txt:              32295581 D                   19      30 2014-07-23 2014-06-21 2014-06-20 2014-06-04 spradlin      
20140702/32290000_32300000.txt:              32295581 D                   28      30  2014-08-01 2014-06-30 2014-06-29 2014-06-04 spradlin      
20140717/32290000_32300000.txt:              32295581 D                   43      36 2014-08-22 2014-07-17 2014-07-16 2014-06-04 spradlin      
20140804/32290000_32300000.txt:              32295581 D                   0       19 2014-08-23 2014-08-11 2014-08-04 2014-08-04 linament   Micron733

20140202/32290000_32300000.txt:              32295713 D                   54      -43 2013-12-21 2013-12-11 2013-12-10 2013-12-10 ANONYMOUS     
20140604/32290000_32300000.txt:              32295713 D                   0       23 2014-06-27 2014-06-05 2014-06-04 2014-06-04 spradlin       compute-0-31
20140613/32290000_32300000.txt:              32295713 D                   9       22 2014-07-05 2014-06-14 2014-06-13 2014-06-04 spradlin       compute-0-31
20140623/32290000_32300000.txt:              32295713 D                   19      30 2014-07-23 2014-06-21 2014-06-20 2014-06-04 spradlin      
20140702/32290000_32300000.txt:              32295713 D                   28      30  2014-08-01 2014-06-30 2014-06-29 2014-06-04 spradlin      
20140717/32290000_32300000.txt:              32295713 D                   43      37 2014-08-23 2014-07-17 2014-07-16 2014-06-04 spradlin      
20140804/32290000_32300000.txt:              32295713 D                   0       19 2014-08-23 2014-08-11 2014-08-04 2014-08-04 linament   Micron733

[tha]

Hmm, I was assigned 32272943 for double check:

2014-07-29 Tha D expired on 2014-08-18

I have no idea why it expired. The machine reported daily about the three dc assignments it had. The machine meets all the criteria for cat 1. The triple check will be checked in in a few hours time.

For the record, on the 12th and 13th of August I completed an extra P-1 job on this exponent and another exponent the machine was doing a DC on. I was using another core of the processor to do that and had added the job by hand to the worktodo file. Nothing went wrong with the other exponent.

[TheMawn]

The "expiry date" you see there is actually the completion date by user spradlin. See http://mersenne.org/report_exponent/...2272943&full=1


I would like to bring the attention of the powers that be to the fact that it also expired for ANONYMOUS at the same time. It was assigned on January 19 2014.

Could spradlin have been an anonymous user at the time of them being assigned the work?

EDIT: Tha got the assigned just a touch over 180 days after ANONYMOUS got it assigned to themself. If ANONYMOUS never started it, it would have been recycled just shortly before being assigned to Tha.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by tha

I have no idea why it expired. The machine reported daily about the three dc assignments it had. The machine meets all the criteria for cat 1. The triple check will be checked in in a few hours time.

Something a little strange seems to be going on with the spradlin user, and/or Primenet's recycling rules.

I only spider the overall current status a couple of times a month, but this is what I have:

20140315/32270000_32280000.txt:              32272943 D                   55      -12 2014-03-03 2014-01-20 2014-01-19 2014-01-19 ANONYMOUS     
20140318/32270000_32280000.txt:              32272943 D                   58      -15 2014-03-03 2014-01-20 2014-01-19 2014-01-19 ANONYMOUS     
20140604/32270000_32280000.txt:              32272943 D                   6       15 2014-06-19 2014-06-05 2014-06-04 2014-05-29 spradlin       compute-0-35
20140613/32270000_32280000.txt:              32272943 D                   15      16 2014-06-29 2014-06-14 2014-06-13 2014-05-29 spradlin       compute-0-35
20140623/32270000_32280000.txt:              32272943 D        LL, 5.50%  25      20  2014-07-13 2014-06-21 2014-06-20 2014-05-29 spradlin      
20140702/32270000_32280000.txt:              32272943 D        LL, 10.70% 34      20  2014-07-22 2014-06-30 2014-06-29 2014-05-29 spradlin      
20140717/32270000_32280000.txt:              32272943 D        LL, 20.80% 49      22  2014-08-08 2014-07-16 2014-07-15 2014-05-29 spradlin      
20140804/32270000_32280000.txt:              32272943 D        LL, 14.30% 6       19  2014-08-23 2014-08-04 2014-08-03 2014-07-29 Tha            Riet-Ubuntu
20140813/32270000_32280000.txt:              32272943 D        LL, 55.70% 15      9   2014-08-22 2014-08-13 2014-08-12 2014-07-29 Tha            Riet-Ubuntu

[Madpoo]

Originally Posted by TheMawn

The "expiry date" you see there is actually the completion date by user spradlin. See http://mersenne.org/report_exponent/...2272943&full=1


I would like to bring the attention of the powers that be to the fact that it also expired for ANONYMOUS at the same time. It was assigned on January 19 2014.

Could spradlin have been an anonymous user at the time of them being assigned the work?

EDIT: Tha got the assigned just a touch over 180 days after ANONYMOUS got it assigned to themself. If ANONYMOUS never started it, it would have been recycled just shortly before being assigned to Tha.

I was familiarizing myself with the DB structure so checked into this a bit as a learning exercise... I'm still not totally familiar with how it's all organized, but I can see this:

- 32295581 was assigned to an anon user on 2013-12-27 and that was actually the last time the client reported anything for that exponent.

- User "spradlin" was assigned the exponent (or started work on it at any rate) on 2014-06-04 @ 1:46 UTC

- User "linament" was assigned the exponent (or started work on it) on 2014-08-04 @ 2:52 UTC

- User "spradlin" checked in a DC result at 2014-08-07 @ 14:10 UTC

- It was expired from that anon user on 2014-08-07 at 14:11 UTC probably because of the check-in from a different user that just happened a minute prior. The expiration reason entered in the database was that it was "expired/poached", because it had been checked in by someone else.

- User "linament" checked in the result at 2014-08-22 @ 2:39 UTC which was actually a triple check.

I don't know more than that as to why "spradlin" started working on it... I think maybe the assignments table where I could see that initial one back in December might not actually be a full history of assignments made by the server itself. It *seems* like it is, but I only ever saw the one assignment listed in there for that first anon user.

There was less than 180 days from that initial assignment and when 'spradlin' first got it. Close... more like 159 days or so.

It just makes it seem like for some reason the system didn't record that the exponent had been checked out to other users. Odd thing is, we have some old IIS logs from the old server going back to the beginning of August, and I didn't see any API activity related to exponent 32295581 until "spradlin" checked it in on Aug 7, and then some web activity a few days later to look up that exponent's status... probably "linament" trying to figure out what happened.

Someone else might have more insight on how a user could get an assignment without it showing up even in the IIS logs, much less an entry in the database. I doubt "linament" did anything wrong, I think something weird just happened along the way.

[Madpoo]

Originally Posted by Madpoo

Someone else might have more insight on how a user could get an assignment without it showing up even in the IIS logs, much less an entry in the database. I doubt "linament" did anything wrong, I think something weird just happened along the way.

Oh, I'll answer my own question now that I thought about it. IIS logs the request URL which would include a check-in for an exponent, but it wouldn't record the server's response that includes an exponent being assigned.

Derp... I knew that, just didn't get my brain up to speed before my last message.

It seems like somehow the server just lost track of some assignments, maybe, or something else I'm just not aware of.