Hi all, first off I would like to apologize in advance just in case this is a problem already covered in these forums. A search here within the forum as well as Google searches did not show a problem similar to mine. I am unfamiliar with the workings of Boinc, my knowledge goes about as deep as hitting "Update" once work units are completed on the various computers I have it running on. I am anxious to get back to crunching and stop losing positions in the rankings!

The computer which Boinc is having problems on is a 27-inch late 2012 iMac with OS 10.8.5 (which is 64 bit, and up to date), a 3.2 GHz Intel Core i5 processor with 8 GB DDR3 RAM, and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX 1024 MB graphics card (if that information is pertinent..) With Boinc I am running version 7.0.65. Unsure whether it is 32 or 64 bit, I suspect 64 as the OS is 64 bit.. showing my lack of knowledge here.. Have done an uninstall and reinstall with no solution.

Now... My WU's are freezing up, as described in the title. To expand further, Boinc itself is not freezing, but rather the work it is supposed to be doing stands still after a few minutes of running (the last few times of starting the computer it runs as normal for a few minutes then "freezes", however this time it is at a standstill upon startup.) This is true with all projects, whether it be PrimeGrid, World Community Grid, climateprediction, fightmalaria, rosetta, and so on..

The "time remaining" column will count down as normal, but once it reaches zero it goes to --- then restarts. For example, fightmalaria WU's typically take 3 minutes. Right now my fightmalaria WU is stuck at 0.466% yet the remaining time has reset twice since typing all of this (this has been going on the last 3 days or more.) Yesterday I aborted the list of WU's I had lined up, but it still continued with the new batch of work it downloaded. Then as I mentioned earlier my last ditch effort was to run the uninstall program that came with Boinc, reinstalled from the website, restarted computer, and still nothing.

With other forum posts I have read people posting their event log to help hone in on the problem, so..

Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | No config file found - using defaults
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | Starting BOINC client version 7.0.65 for x86_64-apple-darwin
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | log flags: file_xfer, sched_ops, task
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | Libraries: libcurl/7.26.0 OpenSSL/1.0.1c zlib/1.2.5 c-ares/1.9.1
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | Data directory: /Library/Application Support/BOINC Data
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | Processor: 4 GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3470 CPU @ 3.20GHz [x86 Family 6 Model 58 Stepping 9]
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | Processor features: FPU VME DE PSE TSC MSR PAE MCE CX8 APIC SEP MTRR PGE MCA CMOV PAT PSE36 CLFSH DS ACPI MMX FXSR SSE SSE2 SS HTT TM PBE SSE3 PCLMULQDQ DTES64 MON DSCPL VMX SMX EST TM2 SSSE3 CX16 TPR PDCM SSE4.1 SSE4.2 x2APIC POPCNT AES PCID XSAVE OSXSAVE TSCTMR AVX1.0 RDRAND F16C
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | OS: Mac OS X 10.8.5 (Darwin 12.5.0)
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | Memory: 8.00 GB physical, 842.58 GB virtual
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | Disk: 930.71 GB total, 842.34 GB free
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | Local time is UTC -7 hours
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | OpenCL: NVIDIA GPU 0: GeForce GTX 675MX (driver version 8.16.74 310.40.00.10f02, device version OpenCL 1.1, 1024MB, 1024MB available, 81 GFLOPS peak)
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | rosetta@home | URL http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/; Computer ID 1597802; resource share 1000
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | fightmalaria@home | URL http://boinc.ucd.ie/fmah/; Computer ID 14259; resource share 975
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | climateprediction.net | URL http://climateprediction.net/; Computer ID 1268876; resource share 1000
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | Donate@Home | URL http://donateathome.org/; Computer ID 5436; resource share 875
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | LHC@home 1.0 | URL http://lhcathomeclassic.cern.ch/sixtrack/; Computer ID 10280703; resource share 965
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | PrimeGrid | URL http://www.primegrid.com/; Computer ID 351844; resource share 960
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | World Community Grid | URL http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/; Computer ID 2292247; resource share 980
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | General prefs: from http://bam.boincstats.com/ (last modified 06-Feb-2013 17:10:30)
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | Host location: none
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | General prefs: using your defaults
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | Reading preferences override file
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | Preferences:
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | max memory usage when active: 4096.00MB
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | max memory usage when idle: 7372.80MB
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | max disk usage: 10.00GB
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | suspend work if non-BOINC CPU load exceeds 75 %
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | (to change preferences, visit a project web site or select Preferences in the Manager)
Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | Not using a proxy
Thu Sep 26 20:11:26 2013 | climateprediction.net | Restarting task hadcm3n_o0zy_1980_40_008388266_1 using hadcm3n version 607 in slot 10
Thu Sep 26 20:11:26 2013 | PrimeGrid | Restarting task llr321_202234567_1 using llr321 version 616 in slot 3
Thu Sep 26 20:11:26 2013 | rosetta@home | Restarting task Ploop1_Acestor_abinitio_design_c019_001_98294_129_0 using minirosetta version 346 in slot 0
Thu Sep 26 20:11:26 2013 | fightmalaria@home | Restarting task vina_4141_1380060718.009992-429-MAL13P1_345_2.pdbqt-111483-CHEMBL1076049_5.pdbqt-14p2flex-_0 using vina version 301 in slot 1
Thu Sep 26 20:11:26 2013 | rosetta@home | Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
Thu Sep 26 20:11:26 2013 | rosetta@home | Requesting new tasks for NVIDIA
Thu Sep 26 20:11:30 2013 | rosetta@home | Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks
Thu Sep 26 20:11:35 2013 | PrimeGrid | Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
Thu Sep 26 20:11:35 2013 | PrimeGrid | Requesting new tasks for NVIDIA
Thu Sep 26 20:11:37 2013 | PrimeGrid | Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks
Thu Sep 26 20:14:32 2013 | rosetta@home | Restarting task Ploop1_Acestor_abinitio_design_c019_001_98294_129_0 using minirosetta version 346 in slot 0
Thu Sep 26 20:14:35 2013 | fightmalaria@home | Restarting task vina_4141_1380060718.009992-429-MAL13P1_345_2.pdbqt-111483-CHEMBL1076049_5.pdbqt-14p2flex-_0 using vina version 301 in slot 1
Thu Sep 26 20:14:36 2013 | PrimeGrid | Restarting task llr321_202234567_1 using llr321 version 616 in slot 3
Thu Sep 26 20:17:34 2013 | PrimeGrid | Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
Thu Sep 26 20:17:34 2013 | PrimeGrid | Requesting new tasks for NVIDIA
Thu Sep 26 20:17:36 2013 | PrimeGrid | Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks
Thu Sep 26 20:17:44 2013 | PrimeGrid | Restarting task llr321_202234567_1 using llr321 version 616 in slot 3
Thu Sep 26 20:17:46 2013 | climateprediction.net | Restarting task hadcm3n_o0zy_1980_40_008388266_1 using hadcm3n version 607 in slot 10
Thu Sep 26 20:17:47 2013 | rosetta@home | Restarting task Ploop1_Acestor_abinitio_design_c019_001_98294_129_0 using minirosetta version 346 in slot 0
Thu Sep 26 20:20:50 2013 | rosetta@home | Restarting task Ploop1_Acestor_abinitio_design_c019_001_98294_129_0 using minirosetta version 346 in slot 0
Thu Sep 26 20:20:54 2013 | fightmalaria@home | Restarting task vina_4141_1380060718.009992-429-MAL13P1_345_2.pdbqt-111483-CHEMBL1076049_5.pdbqt-14p2flex-_0 using vina version 301 in slot 1
Thu Sep 26 20:20:55 2013 | PrimeGrid | Restarting task llr321_202234567_1 using llr321 version 616 in slot 3

There was more to post but I didn't want to make too huge of a post. The rest continues repeating itself with "Restarting task ..." from each project.

Your help would be greatly appreciated, and if there is any information I left out that can assist you please let me know!

Oh and I have not touched Boinc's settings or preferences at all whatsoever, to directly cause it to act funny. I began using this computer last February, installed Boinc, set preferences to my liking, and have not touched it since.

Nothing else, especially when trying to troubleshoot Boinc. Usually the most I will have running is Firefox, aside from the occasional use of Adobe Premiere but that hasn't been used at all during this. Here in a few minutes I will be able to get on the computer, I'll check the CPU usage and report back.

Checking on the CPU usage it did indeed spike every few seconds above 75 per cent, and still halting all progress with the WU's. After changing the figure to suspend work if non-Boinc CPU exceeds 75% to no restriction, it runs just fine.

I find it odd that after seven months of the same settings it would suddenly change like that, with no change/use of non-Boinc programs. Almost all of this computer's usage is strictly for Boinc, aside from the occasional use of Firefox and very infrequent use of editing programs. I am always sure to close unused programs to give Boinc the most CPU possible. The two other computers I have running are much more cluttered yet still run 100 percent of the time with the same 75% use restriction.

Spoke too soon I'm afraid.. Everything has froze up once again. The event log tells the same story with each project restarting every few minutes. I'll copy a few lines from it's time while working until it gets into restarting over and over again. I see no obvious error messages or anything...

Fri Sep 27 09:45:41 2013 | PrimeGrid | Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
Fri Sep 27 09:45:41 2013 | PrimeGrid | Requesting new tasks for NVIDIA
Fri Sep 27 09:45:44 2013 | fightmalaria@home | Started upload of vina_4141_1380059325.057647-111-2C07_A.pdbqt-111483-CHEMBL1076049_5.pdbqt-12p2flex-_0_0
Fri Sep 27 09:45:44 2013 | PrimeGrid | Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks
Fri Sep 27 09:45:49 2013 | fightmalaria@home | Finished upload of vina_4141_1380059325.057647-111-2C07_A.pdbqt-111483-CHEMBL1076049_5.pdbqt-12p2flex-_0_0
Fri Sep 27 09:48:54 2013 | rosetta@home | Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
Fri Sep 27 09:48:54 2013 | rosetta@home | Reporting 1 completed tasks
Fri Sep 27 09:48:54 2013 | rosetta@home | Requesting new tasks for NVIDIA
Fri Sep 27 09:48:55 2013 | rosetta@home | Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks
Fri Sep 27 09:54:07 2013 | PrimeGrid | Computation for task pps_llr_195021285_1 finished
Fri Sep 27 09:54:07 2013 | climateprediction.net | Restarting task hadcm3n_o0zy_1980_40_008388266_1 using hadcm3n version 607 in slot 10
Fri Sep 27 09:54:09 2013 | PrimeGrid | Started upload of pps_llr_195021285_1_0
Fri Sep 27 09:54:10 2013 | PrimeGrid | Finished upload of pps_llr_195021285_1_0
Fri Sep 27 09:54:11 2013 | PrimeGrid | Sending scheduler request: To report completed tasks.
Fri Sep 27 09:54:11 2013 | PrimeGrid | Reporting 1 completed tasks
Fri Sep 27 09:54:11 2013 | PrimeGrid | Not requesting tasks
Fri Sep 27 09:54:12 2013 | PrimeGrid | Scheduler request completed
Fri Sep 27 09:57:10 2013 | fightmalaria@home | Restarting task vina_4141_1380060715.176554-355-PF10_0420_1.pdbqt-111483-CHEMBL1076049_5.pdbqt-14p2flex-_0 using vina version 301 in slot 1
Fri Sep 27 09:57:11 2013 | PrimeGrid | Restarting task pps_llr_195021308_1 using llrPPS version 616 in slot 2
Fri Sep 27 09:57:14 2013 | climateprediction.net | Restarting task hadcm3n_o0zy_1980_40_008388266_1 using hadcm3n version 607 in slot 10
Fri Sep 27 10:00:17 2013 | PrimeGrid | Restarting task pps_llr_195021308_1 using llrPPS version 616 in slot 2
Fri Sep 27 10:00:20 2013 | climateprediction.net | Restarting task hadcm3n_o0zy_1980_40_008388266_1 using hadcm3n version 607 in slot 10
Fri Sep 27 10:00:21 2013 | rosetta@home | Restarting task tj_9_18_ab717_2l_4h_4th_2_2_.pdb_relax_SAVE_ALL_OUT_97780_393_0 using minirosetta version 346 in slot 4
Fri Sep 27 10:00:23 2013 | fightmalaria@home | Restarting task vina_4141_1380060715.176554-355-PF10_0420_1.pdbqt-111483-CHEMBL1076049_5.pdbqt-14p2flex-_0 using vina version 301 in slot 1
Fri Sep 27 10:03:24 2013 | rosetta@home | Restarting task tj_9_18_ab717_2l_4h_4th_2_2_.pdb_relax_SAVE_ALL_OUT_97780_393_0 using minirosetta version 346 in slot 4
Fri Sep 27 10:03:28 2013 | PrimeGrid | Restarting task pps_llr_195021308_1 using llrPPS version 616 in slot 2
Fri Sep 27 10:06:32 2013 | PrimeGrid | Restarting task pps_llr_195021308_1 using llrPPS version 616 in slot 2
Fri Sep 27 10:06:35 2013 | climateprediction.net | Restarting task hadcm3n_o0zy_1980_40_008388266_1 using hadcm3n version 607 in slot 10
Fri Sep 27 10:06:37 2013 | rosetta@home | Restarting task tj_9_18_ab717_2l_4h_4th_2_2_.pdb_relax_SAVE_ALL_OUT_97780_393_0 using minirosetta version 346 in slot 4
Fri Sep 27 10:06:38 2013 | fightmalaria@home | Restarting task vina_4141_1380060715.176554-355-PF10_0420_1.pdbqt-111483-CHEMBL1076049_5.pdbqt-14p2flex-_0 using vina version 301 in slot 1
Fri Sep 27 10:09:40 2013 | rosetta@home | Restarting task tj_9_18_ab717_2l_4h_4th_2_2_.pdb_relax_SAVE_ALL_OUT_97780_393_0 using minirosetta version 346 in slot 4
Fri Sep 27 10:09:43 2013 | PrimeGrid | Restarting task pps_llr_195021308_1 using llrPPS version 616 in slot 2
Fri Sep 27 10:12:48 2013 | PrimeGrid | Restarting task pps_llr_195021308_1 using llrPPS version 616 in slot 2
Fri Sep 27 10:12:51 2013 | climateprediction.net | Restarting task hadcm3n_o0zy_1980_40_008388266_1 using hadcm3n version 607 in slot 10
Fri Sep 27 10:12:52 2013 | rosetta@home | Restarting task tj_9_18_ab717_2l_4h_4th_2_2_.pdb_relax_SAVE_ALL_OUT_97780_393_0 using minirosetta version 346 in slot 4
Fri Sep 27 10:15:56 2013 | climateprediction.net | Restarting task hadcm3n_o0zy_1980_40_008388266_1 using hadcm3n version 607 in slot 10
Fri Sep 27 10:15:57 2013 | fightmalaria@home | Restarting task vina_4141_1380060715.176554-355-PF10_0420_1.pdbqt-111483-CHEMBL1076049_5.pdbqt-14p2flex-_0 using vina version 301 in slot 1


Any ideas?

This log line in the OP is puzzling, but I'm totally unfamiliar with OS-X:

1) Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | Memory: 8.00 GB physical, 842.58 GB virtual

What on earth does call for the whole free disk space to be allocated as virtual memory, per the next event log line:

2) Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | Disk: 930.71 GB total, 842.34 GB free

---

Coelum Non Animum Mutant, Qui Trans Mare Currunt

In doing a search through Google it autocompleted "Mac virtual memory size huge" when only typing in "Mac virtual memory", so there must've been quite a few others wondering the same thing. I hadn't ever known, at least.

The stopping and restarting problem persists though... It's the weirdest thing to me. Everything will run as normal on boot up but sooner or later (sometimes right away sometimes hours later) it comes to a sudden stop and all symptoms described previously continue.

That was my best computer for Boinc.. While it is running I have gotten up to 32,000 credits in one day, without it I am consistently below 1,000/day with my home and work laptop. Sad day.

---

The stopping and restarting problem persists though...

Could it be heat, that your hardware or OS kicks in a pause of all software because the CPU is overheating? Have you ever cleaned out that system, taken all the dust-bunnies down? If that's even possible on that model of an iMac. I see here it's a flat-screen model. Does that even come with a good CPU cooler?

Checking into that, I see iFixit did so with an older model. Uhm, you may want to take it to a retailer to see if it's dust/heat related. Warranty and all.

---

Well I feel numb in the cranial region...

When I did the uninstall/reinstall I did not delete the data files, I had thought those contained all of my information (points, projects, etc) but read in another thread that is all stored in the cloud. I did a proper uninstall and now everything seems to be working well at this point, about twenty minutes after install/reboot.

Thanks a bunch for looking into the possibility of temperature issues though!

I'll stick around this forum and put in whatever tidbits of knowledge I have into others' inquiries.

Thanks again!

---

This log line in the OP is puzzling, but I'm totally unfamiliar with OS-X:

1) Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | Memory: 8.00 GB physical, 842.58 GB virtual

What on earth does call for the whole free disk space to be allocated as virtual memory, per the next event log line:

2) Thu Sep 26 20:11:25 2013 | | Disk: 930.71 GB total, 842.34 GB free

This refers to how the memory is mapped, not necessarily how much disk space is taken up with the swap file.

Mac OS X allocates disk space as a larger swap file is needed, not all at once. It can virtually keep track of the larger figure, but does not necessarily use it at all times.