Since the crash of the Pirates@Home hard disk on monday this week (which also cost me 400 turk-credits) I have continued problems connecting to the server. I keep getting this error message:

[size=+2] Database unavailable[/size]

Unable to connect to database - please try again later
Error: 1045
Access denied for user 'apache'@'localhost' (using password: NO)

I hope to get them back to you sometime.

The database problems are due to our current round of testing: trickle messages. It seems they put a very large load on the database.

Now part of that is due to the fact that you need to specifically enable sending messages to the hosts, and I have sometimes left that turned off. In that case they pile up, and when I turn it back on and the messages start being delivered the load goes way up.

But it may just be that trickle down messages always put a significant load on the database. That might be because of problems in the code, or even that trickle down messages bypass the feeder. Or it could be that I'm doing something wrong.

It may also be that keeping messages around after they have been delivered is the problem. After all, even though we are done with them, the database server has to sort through them all when looking for which message to deliver. There is nothing in the sample trickle handler code to delete messages once they have been handled. I'll add something to do that and we'll see what effect that has.

So hang on, it may be a bumpy ride, but again we are testing BOINC to see how well it works, and the result may be finding some bugs, or at least improving documentation and sample code. Thanks to all who stick with it. And appologies to those who's time on the Turk is interrupted. ;-)