I am not sure if I am missing something but two months without synchronizing my CPID is too long. I joined up with 16 projects two months ago and added another three in the last few days. The interesting point is that all my projects use the same Email Address, the same User Name and in all respects the same even to the project preferences. I use 5 nodes use identical projects as managed by BAM. RieselSieve seems to be the main project that refuses to reallign apart from LHC from which I Detached resently as it had no work for some time and is another one that refused to align. Any suggestions that I should try? I ran out of ideas. I tried detach and reattach with no success..How long should I wait?

The CPID is based on your email address. Make sure that all projects have the same email in all lowercase letters. Another possible issue is if your email has special characters in it, in that case the projects may be escaping them differently.

Please update your client to the latest 5.10.28 version there was a fix for one problem with CPID syncing.

Have been using client 5.10.28 since its release.
Email address checked time and time again. They are all in lower case , do not contain numbers,gaps or special characters. I give in...

Is there one computer that has all of the projects on it? From looking at your stats, it looks like their is a battle going on in your CPID.

It's not like the CPID won't sync, but that it keeps syncing between two or more sources.

If you do not have at least one computer with all projects on it, do that first. It doesn't matter if the computer can run all of them or even any of them.

If you have several, try and narrow down which machine the CPID's are coming from. (Whereas the CPID's are based on e-mail, they sync based on co-habitating a machine.) Once you know which machines are battling for CPID rights, it might help you to solve the problem.

(And now that I have helped you I guess that makes me a Devil's Advocate )

No worries, I am just a little Devil... ) I have 5 computers synchronized with Bam so that they all have same projects on it. I have been watching the culprits and although some projects are going backwards and forwards, LHC@Home seems to want to keep the wrong CPID. I checked all projects to ensure that they are identical in all respects, including user name and project preferences.

I wonder if I Detach from LHC for a couple of days would help? Or Delete all hosts bar one in bam? or the projects. I am not particularly fussy about which host is performing better than the other.

Hello,

Same problem with CPID battle since october the 20th. All FAQ and explanations conditions are green: email ok, BAM ok, client 5.10.28 ok, never change my email address, etc.

Could you clarify this point please:
I tought CPID were creating from a hash of email, so why a local machine which have always been sync with BAM will generate or disturb CPID??? I don't get it!
Actually, too many of them if I follow BoincClient report on hosts... They all alternate between two CPID.

Could the renewing of the CPID, proposed in BAM settings, be a response in my case?
Is there a way to actually stop the clients, modify manually in all projects conf files the correct CPID, and restart clients? Would it be effectiv?
Or may be there is an option in the command line of the client to do so?

Thanx and regards.

The place to start is do you have at least one machine that has all of the projects on it, even if there are projects that it can't run?

Hi,
Yes! When I read this thread, I re-attach from all (my) projects on my main machine. In BoincView, on the "project" pane, I can tell CPIDs are not equal.

I am sorry to say that after reading the FAQ's and all the posts with CPID problems I am none the wiser and it seems that a user can not do anymore but wait and hope that one day the CPID's will eventually synchronize. I have not seen any helpful suggestions what to do if you have made a mistake somewhere, in fact I can not even find where my mistake is if any. I just like to add this to the wish list that something could be done to make this CPID issue a bit more understanding and helpful. I have been crunching 24/7 for the last three months and I have never seen just one CPID for my projects. (I need to add that during this time I had no choice but to change my email address in all projects, however kept the same user ID. but that was a couple of months ago and still no cigar)

I feel that there is more to this issue than what has already been said as a new user using the same email addess, the same user name in all projects and using BAM as a manager should not have to wait so long to see what is his or her total score and how does it fit into their team score etc. In other words, I am wondering what is an acceptable time to wait for things to change.

One thing that I have noted that has not been mentioned much that might have some bearing on this issue. I am running 5 machines and four of those have been upgraded in the last three months. I thought that I could keep the same names for those machines but it seems that this can't be as a P2 which is now a quad shows the host name twice and obviously different CPID.

I wonder if this could work.? Delete all hosts in BAM and physically rename all machines. Merge in each individual project the old and new machines. I suspect that BAM will pick this up in time and synchronize all project CPID's quicker than at present.

Thank you for being patient in reading this frustrated old guy's moaning but I am looking for some sort of answer that will rectify whatever problem I have...

Thanks a lot Peter for this post!

You express in a correct english (that I'm not capable of!) all my different feelings about CPID problems and against the different solves proposed. I suppose that makes two for the "old guy's moaning"!!! ;-)

As for you, I'm looking for some answer. I clearly understand that BAM administrators do all their possible to solve problems, to listen people, to building fine stats, etc. I already said that you people have all my consideration and my regards.

But, as System Engineer and former developper, some questions remain with no satisfying answers.

1) I crunch since march 2007 using the same BAM account.
2) I never change my email address, nor my password, nor my BAM login.
3) I (almost) always attach or detach project through BAM.
4) My stations are in "sync with BAM" mode.
5) I pilot them through this great site.
6) I try to keep my clients as update as possible, and to not go into beta versions.
7) I try to keep my clients with the same client version, even if they're on different OS.

So, clearly, my CPID battle problem are not due to what is moslty explain here around and in FAQ. That is: what newbie like me could do by mistake.

All of this doesn't explain at all why these CPID battle came around october the 22th... Client version change? BAM server maintenance or update? Attach or detach to some projects? Which one?

WyerByter came with new interessant explanations about having all projects on at least one station, because CPID syncing occurs localy too. OK. I did this. It doesn't evolve yet, but I'm willing to be patient and to observe.

But all of this doesn't explain what is BAM for, if project servers have the ability to not follow BAM account mechanism!!! We have a great system to centralize ID, and it is not followed at its most basic level: attach to a project with BAM account doesn't give the correct CPID?????!!!!!

Worst: clients attached to BAM are able to mix up the local CPID?????!!!!!!

At my side, if questions remains and if I "moan", it's not for having a perfect ascending curve in my stats!!!!!! It's just because, from my point of vue, these CPID battles don't have any sense. Specially because I've been told to use BAM for avoiding this kind of problems!

But who am I to complain?!!!! So, nevermind, as I said in an other post, crunching for great project is the main interest of all of this. There are glitchs, there will always have. But it's a pity that the basic gears are not oiled as they should be!

Regards.

I'm sorry if I caused any confusion, but, to the best of my understanding, CPID is solely controlled locally and with the projects, BAM has nothing to do with it. I had a problem once (fortunately I only had one computer at the time) where one of my projects wouldn't sync to the same CPID. In that case the casing of my e-mail address was different for my account on that one site. (WyerByter versus wyerbyter) I corrected that and everything was fine.

Note: Some projects seem to automatically lowercase e-mail addresses, so if you put in your e-mail address with uppercase letters they may not still be uppercase at every project.

The only other thing I might suggest is to detach all projects at all computers except one (that one should be attached to all projects and remain so until a new lead computer is chosen). Within two days (according to theory) the CPID's should all be synced (sooner with judicious use of update, but that might irritate some project admins).

Then attach the other computers back in at a pace you feel comfortable with. And watch BoincView to make sure they come up right.

If your CPID's don't sync quickly this way (or come unsynced when you start attaching new computers and projects) this may be able to help you determine if it is a computer issue, a client issue, a specific project issue or just the universe out to get you (the geek gods?).

Also, you may want to double check your e-mail address at WCG (that was the one I had had problems with earlier).

Rvp_LAN This might be nothing, but I noticed that one of your project is listed as International and all the others as French. Worth a try and check that sites profile. Good Luck in fixing it...

Hello everyone,

I try to further investigate...

I dig into my conf files on my different hosts:
1) On BAM and other stats sites, my CPID is 11668670a017d219d9875e78877fde83. This the one I had since my inscription. Another one is there now cf5809e35177da988445f65aa5b9e6a3.
2) The CPID are not attached or linked to a project, or a host: they rotate each day... (making it REAL easy to investigate...)
3) Consequentely, I'm not able to designate what site, or what project, or what computer, cause these CPID to rotate, because they all rotate!!!
4) Another point which seems quite confusing for me (when you're not part of the sanctuary and you don't have the big plan): CPID on hosts in XML files are not the same values than those reported in BAM??????????????????????

So how may I check whatever I should check if values aren't the same at server and client sides??? The initial goal of an hexa hash number is to have one unique value for a given purpose, why there is another translation of this number in the client's XML files????

Actions taken:
1) Stop all clients on all my local hosts (remote ones aren't accessible for files investigation)
2) Compare and replace "correct" (?!) CPID in all XML files in the BOINC directory.
3) Restart client one by one and check what happen on BoincView.
4) In BoincView, in the project pane, summarized by CPID, I can see than after a few minutes, some projects turn back to the other CPID. Chic! May be these projects are the "bad" ones?
5) Wrong: If I go to the project page which switch and check my account, it shows me the "correct" BAM CPID 11668670a017d219d9875e78877fde83. Frustrating...

Even if I don't relaunch all clients, if I just keep one alive with all local CPID equal, after a few minutes, CPID change and not from a particular project. Many projects cause CPID to change.

So, at the end, is anyone able to tell me where are located the SOURCE of these f***ing CPID?

What part of the chain (project server/client/BAM servers/all of them) is the source generator of the CPID? If it's hash generated from email/password, it should definitively be the BAM account server the leader. And the project's servers has nothing else to do than FOLLOW! At the client's side too...

What is our intervention's latitude here? As I ask before: what's the purpose of using BAM centralized account, if CPID's values aren't followed and well recorded into each project's account, and into each host's client?

Thanx Peter for the warning. I actually don't know if it's something to matter. This has already happen in the past for other projects. It came back in order after a while without any action of my own...

But what you underline is what I'm considering to be another part of the whole misinterpretation of the role at each side: if there's a main BAM account server, which give project's server the whole user identity and parameters, why are some project's server able to store what they want?

BAM! only records the CPID, it can not change it and may not even be able to get it from your hosts, but only from the stats exports by the projects.

There is an internal and external CPID so the one shown in your xml files is supposed to be different from the one shown on the web sites.

The CPID is created by hashing a random number with your email address. It is propagated in different ways depending on the version, I forget witch versions the changes were made in. Origianally the largest numeric CPID was propagated. This was later changed to the oldest. There were some refinements in the 5.10.28 client.

Thanx for this explanation, it's a new info for me. I though that, as an account manager, a kind of centralization was performed by BAM. But what you explain make sense, since client and project's servers are intend to "tchat" without a BAM manager.

So, it means that all this thread doesn't belong to BAM forum, but to BOINC forum?!!!!!

Say no more!!! You mean: aren't they mathematicaly related in a way or another??? They should, no? Else, how the both sides link a user, a user's host?

Is there a way or a tool that allow us to convert (or show) what is the correspondence between the XML file's CPID and the project one? I mean, I would like to know what CPID BoincView shows me, to rely it to my main CPID, listed on BAM. This would be useful for determining which host or site generates an erroneous value.

Think I understand more and more of the big plan here! Due to recent explanations and further reading on other posts. Thx to all participants!

Same experiment's method, which seems relevant to me:
1) Stop BOINC client on host having multiple CPID;
2) Replace wrong CPID values in XML files (client*.xml;sched*.xml);
3) Restart BOINC client;
4) Watch CPID switching through BoincView project pane.

It appears that the most active projects in CPID switching are those from which I recently attached.
On some sites, in the "Computers on this account" page, I was able to merge duplicate computers (typically crashed computers which have been reinstalled).
On Predictor@Home, this permits to instantly recover the correct CPID!!! On the hosts too, after an update command.
Some other sites doesn't present this merge function... (APS, Milkyway, Spinhenge, WCG, Malaria, µFluids, QMC)

Is the disponibility of the merge function just a matter of BOINC server version?
If yes, are we able to contact project's admins to warn them and ask for an upgrade?
If this is one of the source of multiple CPID (crappy computers trapped in host's list), wouldn't it wonderfull if we have some centralized way to manage our computers? In addition to what BAM already offers in this kind of functions.

I had this same problem, CPID's were split, and realigned and split again and so on. I found this was due to a very weird internal CPID HASH("something" ). I mailed David and he said he was working on that, but apparently it is still not fixed. I got it realigned again by completely removing BOINC from my (2) hosts and installing it again.

BTW There is indeed a relation between internal and external ID, the external ID is the internal one, hashed with your email address to prevent spoofing.

Was a little bit tired on this one!!! They got the merge function, but doesn't work the same way on each site. Some let merge by the name without care about CPU and OS, others don't. Anyway...

This morning, all my hosts on Preditor@Home came back to the wrong CPID...
On their site, on my account page, I got the wrong CPID too...
So... The truth is elsewhere...
So, I guess the best way to plan this is:
1) put all projects in "no needed work";
2) wait for all WU to finish;
3) uninstall boinc and delete whole directory;
4) reinstall client from scratch and link to BAM.

There's a new version from Boinc downloads: 5.10.30. Didn't read anything about CPID bug in changelog.
OK. Thanx for this info. Any chance that there's a tool here around which could help to manipulate values? In order to determine and eliminate the "wrong" CPID from the "good" one!

Hi everyone,

Morning check and morning news!

Status: all my local hosts are now in "no needed work" for ALL projects. Remote hosts have been set on the same state through BAM (hope they follow orders!)

Few more WU are still crunching.
Many projects are now sleepy and waiting.
On some of these projects, some present the wrong CPID.
When I go to project's site, CPID is OK (I've been able to merge a lot of crappy remaining computers).
If I update this wrong project (through BoincView or BoincManager), the project goes back to the correct CPID, since the project site is OK.

So, even if not crunching and not contacting the project server for ping back or update or new work, CPID change locally (randomly?), on a host, on some project (not all).

And the winner is: CPID wrangling does belong to BOINC CLIENT!!!

So, all this thread is to be copied on BOINC's forum!!!

As said S@NL - FilmFreak:
I'm waiting for the end of remaining crunchs and I'll try the whole reinstall.

Thanx for all for your patience!

Hi All,

I have been having the Multiple CPIDs Problem since 2006-11-08 (as many as10). The problem that I've seen all along is that I have 14 host running all the projects (which have multiple CPIDs) which change the project CPID back and forth as they connect to project servers. My Email, Username and Password are all the same. I have come to believe that the control/destiny of my CPIDs is done by my hosts, not Projects, Email & etc. The only projects not letting the CPIDs to sync are the ones that are unable to contact, which stay the same as the last connected CPID. All others change as a different host connects.

The big question that I have is why are we using CPIDs in the first place? Any site using CPIDs for stats never have the stats correct for Users or Hosts. Since each project has the same username and email, why not just use either of them? The stat sites that are using them have correct stats.

I've been tracking them Here for over a year now as they come and go. There are Projects listed with 2 CPIDs at times.

The bottom line is other than not really knowing where you stand in the World and Country in the BOINCStats, having duplicate host that cannot be merged and multiple CPIDs the projects are going on and The work being done by the whole BOINC Projects and Teams are outstanding! The team stats are right on.

Keep up the good work

Bill

The destiny of the CPID is controled by both the servers and your hosts. The one thing in your control is your email address; it needs to be the same on all projects, in all lower case letters, and not include any special characters other than "@" and ".".

The reasons CPIDs are used instead of usernames is that you may have different usernames on different projects, some projects allow duplicate usernames (search administrator) and the projects are designed to be independant.

Although you have had serious problems overall the CPID system works well. I hope that that eventually whatever is causing your issues will be found and fixed.

My Email address is simple and since they were copied and pasted in each project I doubt that is the cause. I would be willing to change my Email Address in all my project etc if I was certain that this was the cause. Indeed, a couple of months ago I was forced to do just that as I changed my ISP. The problem was there before and is still there.

I do think however that my hosts might have something to do with it as I have 6 machines each with dual boot to Linux and Windows and most of those have been upgraded in the last three months.

The frustrating bit is that we have no control over this. It would be a nice feature if one could have a choice of merging the two CPID's similar to merging two hosts if the project server duplicates a host.

I have read and reread all the FAQ's and related messages on this and on all my project sights but have not found a way of fixing the problem. Indeed, I have not even been able to pin down the cause of the problem..

Never mind, I can live with it and the science community will still get my support irrespective of statistics. It would be interesting to see just what is the real cause of the problem, how many people are effected and an effective fix.

Thanks Keck_Komputers,

I know all the Emails are the same. I have been attached to 70+ Projects and only attached to 67 now. All 67 are on all 14 hosts. I think the problem is that each has more than 1 CPID. I'm not sure how they got them but they do.

This hosts BIL-PC14 when it sync with BAM have it's BOINC CPID: 2d06a5cb01a94a645445e2e9eccbeda0 and BOINCStats BAM ID: 73137 . If I change the name to Bill-PC14 it'll start a new BAM Host ID and it'll have a different CPID. How I noticed this is when Win XP Pro crashed beyond repair on BILL-6E395D0925. When I re-installed it I named it BILL-PC11 and it changed it when I reattached to BAM. The BOINC directory wasn't changed. Of course, I had to merge them in all the projects.

I started out running 4 hosts almost 2 years ago and all hosts were attached to about 33 Projects at most. Then in November 2006 I had one of the crash XP Pro also. I hade to slave the hard drive to get all I could off of it, formated it, and re-installed XP again. That's when I first noticed the CPID problem even though I had 3 others attached to all the projects. The one thank crashed must have started changing the others instaed of the others changing it.

Then, since then I've added about 40 projects and 10 hosts. I was up to 10 CPID at one time but I've been running right around 5 for about the last 4 months. I have one CPID that been coming and going all this time so it's 4 one update and then 5 another. One or 2 of the CPID aren't going to sync because the projects are unreachable so technically I really only 3 CPIDs battling back and forth.

Depending on when I check my user stats, I'll have 400K+ Current Credits then the next update I'll have 200K+ . My detaild stats CPID has gone down to zero and then came back. Check out my Charts to see what I mean.

Like I said earlier, It's not that big of a deal. I'm sure the programmers are busy with more inportant problems to worry about the CPIDs. It's just the user stats. The teams stats are OK. The duplicate nodes are a result of Individial Projects (e.g. can't merge or don't allow to merge}.

Thanks for the help. I'm just riding it out. Patience is Prudence.

Finally after three months I managed to fix my CPID problems to at least 99% satisfaction. I am saying 99% as I can not do anything about a project that is down and unreachable. Spinhendge is still on its own on my second CPID.

What I did was as follows:

1. Set all projects to No New Work in BAM.

2. Finish as much of the WU's as possible (forget CPDN as it takes a year)

3. Reset all projects.

4. Rename all Hosts.

5. Allow New Work in BAM and run one WU in each project in all hosts.

As I was certain that the problem was not related to my Email Address I suspected that my hosts had something to do with this as most of my machines have been rebuilt in the last three months.

I hope that from now on I will be able to see my results as intended...