I can't speak specifically for TrainWreck@home, but I think you'll find that if 
it's running generic BOINC server code that's less than three years old (and if 
it's telling the client to turn off DCF, I think it must be), then the project 
server does *NOT* calculate its own DCF.

I invite you to review what happened to DCF in sched_send.cpp (server code), in

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/changeset/1d765245ed6ea666a46b2b5878371c4183accbeb/boinc-v2/sched/sched_send.cpp




>________________________________
> From: "McLeod, John" <[email protected]>
>To: Richard Haselgrove <[email protected]>; 
>"[email protected]" <[email protected]> 
>Sent: Wednesday, 3 April 2013, 15:43
>Subject: Re: [boinc_dev] The reason for a local DCF.
> 
>Currently the server calculates its own DCF.  And when asked for 43200 seconds 
>of work would inflate the fpops number to account for the difference.  This 
>would mean that the work that is received would have a sort of correct value 
>for time before being inflated again by the DCF calculation.
>
>No, this is a startup issue, but it can happen any time:
>
>1)       A new project is joined
>
>2)      A new application is pushed down
>
>3)      A new dataset that has a greatly different run time than expected is 
>pushed down.
>
>A possible way out:
>If a project has "do not use DCF" set, modify the meaning of this somewhat.  
>Instead of ignoring the DCF entirely, add a DCF modifier to each task of a 
>project which is 1/DCF at time of acceptance of the task (this counteracts the 
>fact that the DCF is calculated twice, once at the server and once at the 
>client).  Each time the DCF is used to calculate the remaining time to run, 
>multiply by this value.  When the DCF for the project is recalculated, 
>recalculate as normal ignoring this modifier.  This will eventually have the 
>DCF stabilize near 1, and allow the server to calculate what the fpops ought 
>and have the client responsive to massive miscalculations in initial state.
>
>From: Richard Haselgrove [mailto:[email protected]]
>Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2013 10:22 AM
>To: McLeod, John; [email protected]
>Subject: Re: [boinc_dev] The reason for a local DCF.
>
>Fully agreed. But remember that you have to follow the logic and also 
>re-instate the DCF code on that project's server.
>
>Say you set work fetch limits of 0.5 days minimum and 0.5 days additional - or 
>a target work buffer: 43200.00 + 43200.00 sec
>
>Once TrainWreck@home (eventually) becomes the highest priority project and 
>your client issues a work request, it will request 43200 seconds of work.
>
>The *server*, which currently ignores DCF in its calculations, will still use 
>the 1hr 17mn estimation - 4620 seconds. The server will assign 10 jobs to fill 
>the request.
>
>Once those 10 jobs arrive at the client, they will be re-estimated by the 
>client using DCF, which by then will be about 19.27
>
>And your client will announce that it has received 10 days 7 hours of new 
>work. And no doubt panic.
>
>[I am assuming that TrainWreck@home's previous batch of work for this 
>application was correctly estimated, and that John has volunteered for 
>TrainWreck@home for long enough to have an established and stable APR for 
>HitTheBuffers v1.01]
>
>________________________________
>From: "McLeod, John" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
>To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" 
><[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
>Sent: Wednesday, 3 April 2013, 13:40
>Subject: [boinc_dev] The reason for a local DCF.
>
>I am currently watching a train wreck that would not be happening if DCF was 
>turned on for a particular project.
>
>The initial estimate is a wall time of one hour seventeen minutes.  The actual 
>wall time is twenty four hour 44 minutes.  The problem is that work fetch and 
>the scheduler do not know that the problem exists for tasks #2 through #20 and 
>are downloading work from other projects, not realizing that the saturated 
>time is 20 days and not 20 hours.
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