1) To have a sticky in this forum for wish lists and comments on each item (e.g. saying under consideration, in next version, will not be done due to reason xyz, etc.). I suspect many of these items have been noted before, but without spending a significant amount of time, I'm not sure (and perhaps the official response is elsewhere).

There are a few message boards (BOINC client, manager, etc) so I'm not sure where these should be placed, but will put them here as the BOINC manager could be part of the solution. Let me know & if any comment shoud be in another appropriate message board, I'll repost that comment.

2) I'm very surprised to see that the ability to adjust CPU utilization is missing from BOINC! This is something that is fundemental and needs to be added. And no, having some 3rd party patch (that doesn't always work) is not a solution.
There are many reasons why this is needed. 100% CPU utilization can be quite undesireable. e.g. For desktop computers, this could mean extra noise (due to fan control speed). For notebooks it often means getting quite warm to work with (e.g. hot keyboard on some models) plus noise. etc.

3) The pop-up box when going over the BOINC Manager icon in the system tray is not proper windows functionality and is annoying! Unlike just about all other icons in the system tray it needs to be manually closed! This needs to be corrected (or at least have an option to disable that "functionality".

4) Network access occurs every second from the BOINC manager, even if all projects are suspended. This is not acceptable behaviour for this application.

Item 2
from David Anderson on the Dev list

I added a "maximum CPU usage" preference.
If you set it to 50%, BOINC will use half your CPU time
(one second on, one second off).
This feature will appear in the 5.5.1 client
(which we'll start alpha testing soon).
The BOINC alpha web site has this new preference;
it will appear on other sites when they upgrade their PHP.

-- David

Thanks for the reply! Is it possible to reduce the 1 second on/off to something much smaller? (e.g. 1/200 of second) or does that cause problems?
Ok - for item 4 (using ZoneAlarm - doesn't list 127.0.0.1 as a zone). Interesting though (is that how it communicates to the client?)
____________

Thanks for the reply! Is it possible to reduce the 1 second on/off to something much smaller? (e.g. 1/200 of second) or does that cause problems?

Ok - for item 4 (using ZoneAlarm - doesn't list 127.0.0.1 as a zone). Interesting though (is that how it communicates to the client?)

For item 1)
I guess this needs both the forum admin and someone (preferably related to BOINC dev) that is responsible to keep it up to date.

For item 2)
"If you set it to 50%, BOINC will use half your CPU time (one second on, one second off)." (for the Alpha version)
Hopefully they will consider faster switching for the released client.

For item 3)
"Hovering over the BOINC icon will display a status balloon which contains the project it is currently working on, how far along it is, and which computer it is connected to (Windows only)."
Is it just me or it takes only a split second before it appears and then it doesn't disappear unless I hit the close X.
Is there a way to disable this?

For item 4)
Thanks again - I tried Zone Alarm setting that IP range for 127 to no firewall - no change. Anyway, it does seem local as you have mentioned. Strange behaviour (haven't seen it with other programs & services).

For the other questions/comments, hopefully we'll have additional posts!
____________

3)...and then it doesn't disappear unless I hit the close X.

3)...and then it doesn't disappear unless I hit the close X.

How long do you give it to disappear?
I'm using Win XP, and BOINC 5.2.8, and the balloon disappears in approx 30 seconds.

How to disable ballon tips in XP.

Or look here for more registry changes to really disable them all.

Btw, I just timed the balloon tip for Boinc 5.4.9 in Windows 2000. It only stays up for 10 seconds.

Btw, I just timed the balloon tip for Boinc 5.4.9 in Windows 2000. It only stays up for 10 seconds.

Depending on what I do, how long the balloon tip stays up varies, but rarely for less than 1/2 minute (just experimented - seems to go away faster if I type).

Ah - ok. Sadly it mentions "These steps disable all Notification Area balloon tips for this user. There is no way to disable balloon tips for specific programs only."
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When I open the BOINC Manager, I sometimes see a task that was preempted shortly before it would have completed. I have one SETI task sitting at 99.251% with other projects going ahead.

For those of us that like to earn credits briskly, how about considering the following?

1) Modify the way Suspend-Resume works so that Resume actually makes that task the running task.

2) Add a "Run to Completion" preference to specify that any task that passes XX% (or has less than XX minutes left) will run to completion without being preempted. I would use 95% (or 15 minutes).

It also provides cheap insurance to protect work almost done against an unforeseen network or computer outage.

V/R,
Walt

____________

I would strongly suggest to use minutes. Some Boinc projects (such as climate prediction) can take months to complete so would starve other projects for weeks if it went to unsupendable at 95%.
____________

I would strongly suggest to use minutes. Some Boinc projects (such as climate prediction) can take months to complete so would starve other projects for weeks if it went to unsupendable at 95%.

OK, I'll chime in here.

- A "suspend all but" button would be a nice shortcut to force one project to run.
- When the screensaver starts up, start working immediately.

These two would help when previewing the screensaver for a given project. To do that now, I have to suspend all but the one I want to see, then click preview and wait for the idle timeout to expire before the project starts cooking.

In addition, I use a third party program to kick into the screensaver on demand, so I can lock my screen to walk away. It would be nice to have visual confirmation by having the project start immediately upon going into the screensaver.

BTW, I really like the new stats graphs in BOINCmgr 5.4.9. Only thing is, using the "one project" button, I haven't found a way to see the graph for any but the first project in the list to the right.

Thanks for the ongoing efforts!
Tom
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BTW, I really like the new stats graphs in BOINCmgr 5.4.9. Only thing is, using the "one project" button, I haven't found a way to see the graph for any but the first project in the list to the right.

Thanks for the ongoing efforts!
Tom

using the "one project" button, I haven't found a way to see the graph for any but the first project in the list to the right.

BTW, I really like the new stats graphs in BOINCmgr 5.4.9. Only thing is, using the "one project" button, I haven't found a way to see the graph for any but the first project in the list to the right.

Thanks for the ongoing efforts!
Tom

When One project (Mode view) is selected it activates the Previous and Next button (Project).

Have you checked the second link?

If you want your opinion heard by the developers, email to the Boinc developers email list. This list needs email registration.

Go at a batch of them, if you have a batch. :)
But still keep adding to this list. I'll be weak and make it a sticky. :)

Just an update of what was posted so far.
So far had one reply from jm7
"The polling loop is one second. So, it goes into a state, and then one
second later is the first opportunity to change it. This has the
effect that a 1% CPU share will have the CPU off for 99 seconds followed by on
for 1 second (found this due to a bug in the initialization code which
has been fixed)."

[Suggestion were]
1) Add an option to disable the ballon pop-up in BOINC manager.
The pop-up balloon when going over the BOINC Manager icon in the system
tray is quite annoying as it often can stay for quite a while (I've
timed it to see it sometimes go up to 90 seconds) hiding windows below it.
But every 3 seconds can be too long for some.
Although there is a registry hack to remove it (it also has the
undesireable side effect of removing the balloon popup from other
apps).

2) CPU utilization option.
I noted from David Anderson on the Dev list "I added a "maximum CPU
usage" preference. If you set it to 50%, BOINC will use half your CPU time
(one second on, one second off). This feature will appear in the 5.5.1
client (which we'll start alpha testing soon). The BOINC alpha web site has
this new preference; it will appear on other sites when they upgrade their
PHP."
I am happy to see that this sorely missing capability is being added to
BOINC natively (instead of a hack).
Is there a reason why it is only 1 second cycle on/off instead of
something much faster (e.g. 1/200 of a second)?
____________

Any chance the CPU utilization will be configurable based on the computers idle state?


____________

Hi!

I would like to see possibility to download more packages on-demand.
My work PC stays on, but network in company is offline during weekend, so CPU stays idle when all work is done, and there is no possibility to download more or send results till monday.

Is this possible?

Wishes,
Emil
____________

Anyone wanting to post questions relating to BOINC Developments can just go to

E-mail lists

feel free to sign upto them and just read the messages that come through the lists or even make suggestions yourself through there, but no tech support questions as they will be ignored
____________
Join us in Chat (see the forum) Click the Sig

Just an update of what was posted so far.
So far had one reply from jm7
"The polling loop is one second. So, it goes into a state, and then one
second later is the first opportunity to change it. This has the
effect that a 1% CPU share will have the CPU off for 99 seconds followed by on
for 1 second (found this due to a bug in the initialization code which
has been fixed)."

2) CPU utilization option.
I noted from David Anderson on the Dev list "I added a "maximum CPU
usage" preference. If you set it to 50%, BOINC will use half your CPU time
(one second on, one second off). This feature will appear in the 5.5.1
client (which we'll start alpha testing soon). The BOINC alpha web site has
this new preference; it will appear on other sites when they upgrade their
PHP."
I am happy to see that this sorely missing capability is being added to
BOINC natively (instead of a hack).
Is there a reason why it is only 1 second cycle on/off instead of
something much faster (e.g. 1/200 of a second)?

Two things I would like to see, both on the "Tasks" page:
(i) The different status descriptions be in a colour depending on what is happening to the task. For example, "Running" could be in green and "Preempted" in red.
(ii) The ability to sort on the project column (preferably automatically!). On switch on, the projects are all nicely sorted in alphabetical order. I currently run seven projects on my machine and within a few hours of starting, after downloading new tasks as work is processed, the page becomes distinctly untidy!
____________

Something that I would like to see added if possible.

A selectable option in one of the menus to report finished results immediatly upon completion of upload.

Something that I would like to see added if possible.

A selectable option in one of the menus to report finished results immediatly upon completion of upload.

They won't do this, as reporting is taking a lot of server overhead.

Read this thread on Seti which explains this in great detail.

i have some very noisy computers i would like to have run boinc. i also want to be able to have a conversation or sleep as an example.

"Do work only between the hours of" is a very nice option but i would like this option moved to the preferences for home/school/work.

then, i think, i can have different boinc-worktimes for every computer i have even if they are all on the same location.

this way i can run boinc allways on silent systems and run boinc on noisy systems when it does not disturb anyone.
____________

I'd like to see a tab that describes visually what the long-term debt is for any projects I'm running. Perhaps a simple bar graph showing each project either above or below the "line".
____________

I'd like to see a tab that describes visually what the long-term debt is for any projects I'm running. Perhaps a simple bar graph showing each project either above or below the "line".

I'd like to see a tab that describes visually what the long-term debt is for any projects I'm running. Perhaps a simple bar graph showing each project either above or below the "line".

it would be nice if the linux version had a tray icon like in windows, and had all the features that the tray icon does in windows, (as in it minimizes to the tray when you press X (close) instead of just closing the program.
____________

i would love to see an auto copy feature so that every time you update boinc you dont have to manually renter the projects again. it gets old real fast.

i would love to see a limiter added that prevents projects from monopolizing the system by making the due date 24 hours later than the file is sent

also there needs to be a way to force the project to have a finish time.
i joined a project and it ran for 48 hours with no end time when i wrote to the project manager he said it should only have run for 40 minutes

the scheduler should look to see when the last time a project was updated in case a project does monopolize the system, i havent seen seti run in almost a month now because of other projects running
____________

I would like to have an override option to current application switching (switch between applications every XX minutes) that would force the projects application to calculate one whole work unit at a time from the beginning to the end before switching to another project. This way I could disable the 'Leave applications in memory while preempted?' option and save memory. Currently rosetta and wcg's human proteome folding uses lots of memory, but the work units are quite small (about 8 hours).

Example: Let's say the resource share for SIMAP is 50, for Rosetta 100 and for WCG 100. Then it would first compute one whole work unit for SIMAP, then one whole work unit for Rosetta, then WCG, then Rosetta again and then WCG again and then back to SIMAP, always doing the whole task/work unit and clearing the memory before switching to another project.

The option could be called: Switch between applications only after finishing task (yes/no), and if this was enabled it would change the Switch between applications every xx minutes text to disabled.

____________

i would love to see an auto copy feature so that every time you update boinc you dont have to manually renter the projects again. it gets old real fast.

i would love to see a limiter added that prevents projects from monopolizing the system by making the due date 24 hours later than the file is sent

also there needs to be a way to force the project to have a finish time.
i joined a project and it ran for 48 hours with no end time when i wrote to the project manager he said it should only have run for 40 minutes

the scheduler should look to see when the last time a project was updated in case a project does monopolize the system, i havent seen seti run in almost a month now because of other projects running

I would like to have an auto-update function, the ability to sort items in a list, a "combobox" in the attach dialog to choose the project easily whitout entering the project url, and an optional splash screen.

this may or may not have been asked and it was quite confussing to find. There are two suggestions/questions I have:

1) Will the "Boinc Manager" ever support viewing of more then 1 project or multiple computers for the same project, Such as BoincView for windows. I.e. I have at my disposal 8+ computers that are capable of running the BOINC client at any given time (this includes my own workstation (which runs Linux Full time so boincview isn't an option cause it doesn't run very well in linux (not in windows on my wife's computer either))) and I would like to be able to check on all of there status' at once .... and the native boinc manager seems the very logical choice to do this .....

2) as much as I know the folks at Berkeley are into developing there own software .... ever here of a real web based forum such as phpbb2 or other paid for ones .... they will allow for better searching capabilities ......
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I would like to have an auto-update function, the ability to sort items in a list, a "combobox" in the attach dialog to choose the project easily whitout entering the project url, and an optional splash screen.

Ageless, I think you missed my point. I am looking to do it in *one* app .... not open 20 BOINC managers to man 20 BOINC projects .....
____________

20 BOINC projects, or 20 computers running BOINC? Let's be clear about that, before I "miss a point" again.

20 Computers running SETI@Home w/ the BOINC Client



- 20 BOINC projects can be run from any one computer running BOINC.

I've already acomplished this.


- To keep track of 20 different computers, using one BOINC Manager is possible, but you need to "Select computer" each time, then fill in the right IP address or the name of the computer. If you are set up correctly on the remote controlling of computers.

This can be vry confusing over time

- Another way is to open 20 Boinc Managers and set them all to one computer in your group of 20 computers.

This would be an incredible waste of resources ..... but it is still an option non the less.

- If a 3rd party program like BoincView has the option, use that.

BoincView is a very poorly designed application that behaves like a bad java applet .... I give the auther(s) some credit but not enough to have fixed some glaring bugs in over a year.

The next BOINC will get a new GUI. It's possible it'll be able to do what you ask, but since no one has seen a working version of the new simple GUI yet, we don't know. You can always request something like this on the BOINC developers email list. Describe it well, then.

I beleive I will try this avenue ......
____________
____________

Try BOINCstudio
____________
Join us in Chat (see the forum) Click the Sig

The simple GUI will be just that. SIMPLE. It will be an overlay to hide all the nut and bolts so that it will present a simplified display so as to not confuse the casual user. An advance button will reveal a variation on the current Boinc manager.
At the moment the developers seem to be concentrating more on cleaning up the scheduler and giving a few tools to the intermediate users. I don't think the farmers are likely to find anything new to make it easier for them with the next release.
____________
Questions? Answers are in the BOINC Wiki.

Boinc V6.10.18 Recommended
WinXP C2D 2.1G 3GB

The simple GUI will be just that. SIMPLE. It will be an overlay to hide all the nut and bolts so that it will present a simplified display so as to not comfuse the casual user. An advance buttom will reveal a variation on the current Boinc manager.
At the moment the developers seem to be concentrating more on cleaning up the scheduler and giving a few tools to the intermidiate users. I don't think the farmers are likely to find anything new to make it easier for them with the next release.

got a link for BOINCStudio? Is it Linux friendly?
____________

got a link for BOINCStudio? Is it Linux friendly?

I would like to see the boinc manger changed to keep trak of passwords for remote client computers and insert them automatically when a particular remote client is attached. Like it does for the LOCALHOST.
____________

I would really like to see columns to be sortable again (like in old versions 4.xx) to sort for progress or report deadline for example.
____________

I would really like to see columns to be sortable again (like in old versions 4.xx) to sort for progress or report deadline for example.

I would really like to see columns to be sortable again (like in old versions 4.xx) to sort for progress or report deadline for example.

After trying to do something and getting (paraphrased) "you are already attached to that project" message, I would like to suggest what unfortunately is a MAJOR alteration.

On the Project tab, there are 3 columns that led me to try this... Project, Account and Team. I immediatly knew the Team column was just data on a 1-1 with Account. However, I thought (hoped) that Project and Account was a one to many relation allowing me to attach to the same project under multiple accounts on the same BOINC instance to allow me to lend cycles to multiple teams in the same project.

This I'd like added to the implementation of BOINC. Sadly, I also know that unless someone thought of this and built it into the original code long ago and only bypassed it, this is NOT a tweak or minor change (except possibly on the server side, but even there a change in primary key change in the dbase is NEVER a 'minor' thing)... as it affects at least (and probably a WHOLE lot more) project prioritization, cpu project rotation, directory structure on clients (different WUs), 3rd party coding for cross project stats ... I know there are some other BIG issues I'm missing.

As for cheating possibilities - how so? Zero sum game - actually possibly gives a penalty due to overhead: on a single machine- account(prime)>=account1+account2 where account(prime)=single account.

As for a secondary suggestion, as it is already partially enabled... allow localized prioritization of projects in he same server level preference... I have a few machines that I'd like to tailor their specific project/network/cpu usage independently... I'd also like the group tailoring to allow more specific settings based instead of only hours of the day but on day of the week and hours of day - e.g. M-F do this during these hours, Sat&Sun do this during these hrs... or any combination of days/hours...
____________

My wish list item would be to have the ability to disable the nagging "Network Connection" reminder. I use dial up and connect once a day or so. So, I *know* I have files to be uploaded. I have not upgraded the manager since 5.2.13, since after that they have added not one, but multiple "network connection" messages that each must be closed separately to clear the screen. A truly stupid idea that should have never made it past alpha testing.
____________

I would really like to see columns to be sortable again (like in old versions 4.xx) to sort for progress or report deadline for example.

Seconded. It would be nice if BOINC would remember the most recent 4 or 5 sorts, too - and preserve them as much as possible in the new sort. This way I could - for example - sort projects alphabetically, then by resource share. The result would be an alphabetic listing of my 800 share projects, followed by an alphabetic listing of my 100 share projects, followed by... you get the idea.

Heck, even if that's too much, just being able to drag-n-drop the projects into order would be okay.

Another suggestion: Once sorted or moved into a particular order, that order should be preserved and displayed on every tab of the manager.

Its already been discussed and the answer was it will appear someday there are other more important things to do at the moment
____________
Join us in Chat (see the forum) Click the Sig

A menu item and text box would be nice to let you specify what drive/directory you want to use for the project files. After input,the manager would then look for files in the new directory and/or move any current files from the old to the new directory.


Another helpful item would be a test during project updates that traps the AMD-64 linux error (platform 'x86_64-pc-linux-gnu' not found)when there is no native 64 bit app, and automatically requests the 32 bit linux app instead. I see this as something that would be pretty high bang-for-the-buck fix. It should be a relatively easy piece of code to write for one person, instead of the multitude of AMD-64 users each having to manually download the x86 files and manually edit configuration files, and then have to do the process all over again every time a new app version gets released.
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A menu item and text box would be nice to let you specify what drive/directory you want to use for the project files. After input,the manager would then look for files in the new directory and/or move any current files from the old to the new directory.

You can specify where to install BOINC to through the BOINC installer. Then all other files are always with the BOINC directory at that drive.

I would like to have something like this:

One PC can download max. 5 (or so, depending on the time it will take to crunch) workunits at a time. After reporting a workunit it can download another unit but to the maximum of 5 workunits at a time.

This will help against "everything-grabber" but will not slow down the crunching of the workunits if one PC is out of work. :-D

let me call it "maximum number of workunits per time"
- no grabbing of everything, better distribution of work
- no slowdown for the project if PC is out of work
- the PC can hold the deadline because it does not have to much WUs

An additional (already implemented) daily quota will help when a PC returns many WUs with errors.
____________
Ick snack platt - Du ock?

I would like to have something like this:

One PC can download max. 5 (or so, depending on the time it will take to crunch) workunits at a time. After reporting a workunit it can download another unit but to the maximum of 5 workunits at a time.

This will help against "everything-grabber" but will not slow down the crunching of the workunits if one PC is out of work. :-D

let me call it "maximum number of workunits per time"
- no grabbing of everything, better distribution of work
- no slowdown for the project if PC is out of work
- the PC can hold the deadline because it does not have to much WUs

An additional (already implemented) daily quota will help when a PC returns many WUs with errors.

At WCG it's regulated... u can get 10 at the time and max 120 a day (for the really fast machines, but there is the work buffer function of X days on each project website, so each DC can regulate how much u get once the buffer is filled it starts trickeling new work on the bases of WU's completed, for each one returned u get one back, or none if the project has used up it allocated time like TANPAKU has at the moment on my machine...they send 3 at the time...... so what's your point again?

Question about the screen saver.

At home I have a dual core CPU and dual Monitors; and I figured with that kind of power going to waste for 18 hours a day (Sleep at midnight and wake up for work and return home around 6:30ish) that I'd install boinc here as well. However I noticed now that when the screen saver engages that it just enables monitor 1 and flips back and forth, while not doing anything on monitor 2. Would it be possible to show each task of my dual core on each screen when dual monitors are detected?

Thanks,
I really hope this is an appropriate place to post a wish list / request item like this.

~RSA

May be someone else has wished it before, but let me allow to wish it an additional time.


1. I would like to have an "Update"-Button on the Task-Tab to report finish results without switching the tab.

2. Also I would like to have an "Update all"-Button on the Project-Tab. One click, all projects will be up to date.

3. It is unnecessary to mentoined the Sort-function for the columns. ;)

Is anything feasible?
____________

Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please add sorting to the advanced view. allow sorting by project, resource%.
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Process dependent suspend/resume.

I have a media PC (Windows XP MCE) that is used as a DVR. When a BOINC process is running while recording TV, the video gets jerky. If BOINC is suspended while recording, the video is fine. This is all regardless of the priority of the DVR recording process (BOINC crunching process is "low", DVR recording process is "abovenormal"). I understand that it is probably due to both BOINC and the DVR trying to write to the HD at the same time.

If I could set BOINC to go into suspend mode when a particular process starts and then resume it's previous state when that process stops, that would be very useful (to me anyway). I imagine that it would be useful for any number of other automated "time critical-streaming data recording" tasks that someone might have on their PC, maybe. I know it would be useful for me though.

Thanks,

Mac
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If boinc was configured to suspend or even exit when particular applications start up, you might still get immediate workunit crashes because boinc takes sometimes several seconds to react to these commands. This is why we have to suspend or exit BEFORE starting other programmes that can cause conflicts.
____________

My wish list... Forced EDF Button!

Would it be possible to implement such a function? I frequently don't have internet access at the weekends, but my computers are still actively crunching. Partially due to the fact that I am running multiple projects, I find myself having to manually suspend longer deadline w/u in order to get the ones that need to be reported before Monday morning completed by Friday afternoon.

Obviously I can continue as I am, but it would be so much easier if I could just turn the EDF on for a day (or whatever) when this happens.

Cheers,
MacDitch

Please note that I don't have a problem with the current software, but this topic is 'my wish list' and a 'Force EDF' function is something I think could be of use. :-)

What version of BOINC are you using?

What do you have your connect every X set to?

Which projects are you attached to?

Answer from John McLeod 7:

3 petites choses à améliorer :

1) sur Boinc, il y a peut etre un probleme lorsque le DD sur lequel il est, arrive à saturation de son espace, et que 2 WU climateprediction (entre autre) tournent dessus.

Lors d'un accés sur l'onglet disque, cela provoque :
un ralentissement voir une etreinte fatale du process, car ces WU sont très chargées en fichiers. J'observe qu'il n'y a plus moyen de sortir de l'onglet, meme en rebootant le PC. En relancant boinc on peut se retrouver bloqué au meme (?) endroit. Le temps de calcul de l'espace dd etant prohibitif, et/ou de relance de boinc pour ces lourdes WU.

==> sugestion mieux threader le boinc manager et boinc.exe ou bien
modifier boinc manager pour lorsqu'il est relancé pour qu'il aille sur le premier onglet projet.
==> Améliorer la routine de calcul d'espace disque occupé, qui me semble buggée.
voir 2)

2) J'ai esayé une nouveauté, de monter un disque sur "C:\\Program Files\\BOINC" un disque pour lui tout seul pour résoudre mon probleme de saturation du disque c:,
en ayant pris soin de sauver le contenu du répertoire boinc
et en le placant sous la racine du nouveau Disque j: que j'ai monté en
"C:\\Program Files\\BOINC" .

- J'ai remarqué qu'une nouvelle version 5.4.11 écrase le lien sur c:
et s'installe en C:\\Program Files\\BOINC (sur le dd C:) pas sur le nouveau dd en j:\\ .

- L'onglet disque provoque la meme chose et plante, peut etre que la limite en préférence d'espace aloué à Boinc dans la routine de calcul de l'espace disque restant ne prend pas en compte l'espace du bon disque dur (ici j:) restant correctement, mais prend c: .

==> sugestion : il faut tester que C:\\Program Files\\BOINC est un lien (vers j:) vers un disque monté, et non un répertoire sur un même disque (c:).

3) Concernant les WU terminant en erreur, ne serait il pas judicieux de faire en sorte qu'elles ne soient pas perdues:

Quand une Wu sort en erreur, ses repertoires et données sont effacés ! Or
les Wu climateprédiction notament sont énormes (2 WU ~= 8Go sur mon dd), on peut perdre tout le bénef du temps de calcul qui peut atteindre des miliers d'heures.

==> option pour ne pas effacer en sortie sur erreur une WU,
et laiser le choix du traitement.

==> Prévoir un nouvel onglet 'Sauvegarde'.
à chaque fin de temps de calcul d'une WU,
la sauver que si son code de sortie n'est pas en erreur lors de la permutation de WU en prenant que les fichiers modifiés ou crés de la WU entre deux passes.

proposition pour l'onglet 'Sauvegarde' :
Commandes:
- Activation ou non d'une sauvegarde des WU,
l'Activation ajoute un champs supplémentaire dans l'onglet 'Taches'
et un bouton Sauvegarder la Wu dan s la zône Commandes de Taches.
- Choix de l'espace de sauvegarde (commun ou au choix),
- Liste des WU sauvegardées,
- Recharger/Récuperer une WU sauvargée,
- Effacer la sauvegarde de la WU.

Etat:
- Etat de la WU (en cours | en erreur | terminée ok),
- nom WU,
- programme de calcul de la WU,
- espace occupé et nombre de fichier.

____________

Bonjour

A propos de votre 3e proposition, ca m'etonne que deux unites de travail occupent 4Go sur le disque dur. Je me demande si pendant un certain temps vous avez mis en marche l'enregistrement du module graphique. S'il s'agit d'une unite de travail en cours, je crois qu'il y a moyen d'effacer les restes d'un enregistrement. Si par contre il s'agit d'une unite de travail morte/terminee en erreur, la fiche entiere de l'UT peut etre efface car toutes les donnees utiles restent sur le serveur a Oxford. Il n'y a donc pas d'UT perdues.

Celles qui ne demarrent pas ou qui achevent peu de calculs sont redistribuees par le serveur a d'autres ordinateurs.

Toutes les UT qui ont acheve au moins 10 annees de calculs fournissent des donnees que les chercheurs peuvent utiliser; il est probable que lorsque les programmeurs a Oxford auront fini d'ecrire le petit programme qu'il faut, les UT qui ont acheve 40, 80 ou 120 annees de calculs pourront etre terminees par d'autres ordinateurs. Ce sera pour l'annee prochaine.

En ce qui concerne la sauvegarde des UT en cours, pour le moment on est bien oblige de le faire soi-meme. La sauvegarde hebdomadaire est recommandee. On a ici 4 collections de liens utiles README. Dans la collection Crashes and other problems, le premier lien mene a des instructions ecrites par Les ou il explique la sauvegarde et restauration du fichier boinc entier. La sauvegarde des UT telles quelles est impossible - lors de leur restauration, elles ne se remettent pas en marche.

http://www.climateprediction.net/board/viewforum.php?f=36

Je vais demander a Arnaud de verifier ce que j'ai ecrit. Il voudra peut-etre repondre a vos autres propositions.

Zut, il a fallu que je supprime tous les accents. Je n'arrive pas a faire fonctionner les chiffres-code - ni une serie ni l'autre!

ALT + number lock + 130 donne é
ALT + number lock + 0233 donne é


____________

Hi Mo.v

I've done a quick translation on the Boinc-loc list:
I think one of the Wu of that user is a sulphur Wu (last trickle today), that's why the size of the CPDN folder is so big.
http://climateapps2.oucs.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/hosts_user.php?userid=97447 (3rd machine: a lot of crashed models and a sulphur Wu that could explain the size of 8 Gb: if it's another machine, the viz is recorded as there are only coupled models)
And AFAIK, you can choose the disk when installing BOINC (no sure as I'm using Linux), so all this stuff with the mounted j disk is a complication, isn't it.


____________

I did forward points one and two to one of the developers. Just in case we need to test these options (fool proofing the software).

Now for my own little 'wish'. The internet is supposed to be getting ready to display the letters and symbols of all human languages (I know ICANN isn't ready yet).

In my post up above in French, for the accents I used Alt + number lock + my usual short codes eg 130 for e acute. It didn't work (é) and the result was unreadable.

So I went back and substituted the long codes eg Alt + number lock + 0233 for e acute (é). That didn't work either, though these codes work on the cpdn forums.

So I went back and edited the post again to an accentless version. Am I doing something wrong or is there some function that this forum lacks?
____________

test: é è ö û (Alt+0233 is working for me: é)
there is probably a table of characters in Windows: you could just copy/paste the accented letters
Your french is so good that I'm surprised that you don't have an azerty keyboard (you can probably find one on ebay.fr for almost nothing)
test in UTF8: é é (Alt+130 and Alt+0233): it's working...:o)

____________

To have the forum software updated to the latest version so it stops sending me a email for every reply to a message
____________
Join us in Chat (see the forum) Click the Sig

As we are moving into the multiple cpu age on our computers, would it be possible to have a local option to set number of cpu's to use rather than 'run always'/suspend.

Andy

To have the forum software updated to the latest version so it stops sending me a email for every reply to a message

Unsubscribe from the thread or threads then. The forum software here won't be updated for a while yet.

As an interested bystander, what DOES the latest software do?
Send an email every x messages?
Wait for a reply before sending another?

As an interested bystander, what DOES the latest software do?
Send an email every x messages?
Wait for a reply before sending another?

Thanks for that.
Hope the upgrade isn't toooo long, then. :)

To have the forum software updated to the latest version so it stops sending me a email for every reply to a message

I asked again and ta-da, the forum software is now updated to the latest version. :-)

It'd be extremely nice to have the "Message board posts: nn" link on the http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/home.php page. To find (the list of) my posts, I have to find any of my posts ( :-D see the Catch 22 ) and get through my "Account data" page to the list.

Sure not that hard to add...

(Or is it meant as an excercise for lazy users?)

Peter

No, I have not. Actually it's anyway not that easy to find it :-D

Peter

I'd like the ability to name my computers in such a way that it overrides the normal name given by BOINC. I have machines with really weird names created from the actual name, the domain name, some other names collected along the way. I want to say this machines name is "Bob" and see that on all sites regardless of the pseudo names BOINC seems to create.
____________
Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.

I'd like the ability to name my computers in such a way that it overrides the normal name given by BOINC. I have machines with really weird names created from the actual name, the domain name, some other names collected along the way. I want to say this machines name is "Bob" and see that on all sites regardless of the pseudo names BOINC seems to create.

My wishlist for BOINC:

1) The ability to, on the project website, to turn on and off the getting of workunits, on a host by host basis. Some people might be worried some unsavory types might use it to stop them from getting work, but the security system should take care of that. Maybe having to enter a PIN or a secondary password.

The reason for this is in case someone's remote host starts sending out a lot of grundged results, you have only 2 choices right now. Detach the host via an Account manager, which might take up to 24 hours, or just wait until you get to the host, which also might take more than 24 hours. If you had a way of turning off the getting of new work for that host, it would quickly deplete the grundged results, and that would be that. You then can check on it when you can. This also could help in case a project has a mis-configured scheduler, and starts sending out a ton of work that just can't be completed on time. (But, I heard the new clients are better at handling that than the v5.4.11 client.)

2) In a user's results page, the table isn't sortable. It would be nice to be able to sort on what you want to see. Right now, I believe the dafault sort is the date the work was sent to the user.

The reason for this is many users might have a varied mix of hosts. Some might be very fast, and others might be very slow. On teh same project, the slow host's work will quickly slip off the first page by the faster hosts. And, as they say, oyt of sight is out of mind. It might be good to sort to see what's still in progress, and you might see that a machine needs a bit of micro-managing to get a WU finished. If it's buried in several pages, you might overlook one that keeps getting pre-empted by a shorter deadline job. Anyway. It's human nature to look at things a different way. I understand sortable columns in the GUI is being worked on, which is good. But, this is the website side. I have seen, on other websites, where they have used Flash to display in a scrollable window, a large amount of data from a database. They even had the columns sortable. Might that be an idea, as I've heard that between 88 to 98$ of all computers have Flash installed on them.

There are a few others, but they tend to start long-winded, circular "discussions". I won't go into them here.

[EDIT: Actually. One last thing. Ensure that the slots folders actually get cleared out after a WU crashes, or grundges. It might just be a BURP thing, but I'm not sure.]
____________

Hi all: When will the new version of boinc manager be released ) it was announced on 11/07/06)? I would like to be able to sort all columns as in a regular folder (ex: click on the heading and it sorts up or down).
Thank you: Mark Reiss

[/img]http://www.boincstats.com/signature/team_2403_banner.gif[/img]

____________

Hi all: When will the new version of boinc manager be released ) it was announced on 11/07/06)? I would like to be able to sort all columns as in a regular folder (ex: click on the heading and it sorts up or down).
Thank you: Mark Reiss

[/img]http://www.boincstats.com/signature/team_2403_banner.gif[/img]

Hi all: When will the new version of boinc manager be released ) it was announced on 11/07/06)? I would like to be able to sort all columns as in a regular folder (ex: click on the heading and it sorts up or down).
Thank you: Mark Reiss

[/img]http://www.boincstats.com/signature/team_2403_banner.gif[/img]

Why aren't my stats showing - what am I doing wrong? See below:

[/img]http://www.boincstats.com/signature/team_2403_banner.gif[/img]

Hello,

that "allow installation as a SYSTEM service" has been mentioned quite often, I think. ;)

But regarding some actual projects, I'd like to have "testing" and "production" projects together, but selectable.

At this point, there's e.g. "SETI" and "SETI-BETA" as two separate projects.

My proposal would be that workunits/client software could be flagged as "alpha state", "beta state", "stable".

In my preferences I could then select if I wish to participate in alphas an/or betas - globally and on a per-host-basis as an override.

This way I can connect to any project I'm interested in and eventually help in development automatically. When I decide not to do so, I simply get no work while there's only testing (like QMC, Predictor or Proteins at this time). The project managers on the other hand don't need to create separate project only for testing purposes.

____________
cu/2
Torsten

It's up to project managers, how to handle it. world community grid goes the way you like - they supply one project and you can choose per selection, which project applications (like "SETI", "SETI-BETA", "alpha state", "beta state", "stable", etc.) for which host (or group of hosts, a.k.a. venue) you'd like to get and crunch.

I assume that the sample Boinc server suite, as is supplied by the Boinc devs, does not yet contain the functionality to allow the user to select, which applications (s)he would like to get. If I'm right, then it might be simpler for project devs to spin another project for tes apps than implementing such user selection functionality into the server suite.

Actually it's only how you look at it. From the user's point of view, it is possibly nicer to have the different applications grouped into one project. I hope that when Seti's Astropulse application will come out of the beta stage, such user selection functionality will be made available for the Seti project and will subsequently flow into the sample Boinc server suite. (Whereas I may be wrong and such functionality is already available, in such case it's really only up to the project devs.)

Peter

I assume that the sample Boinc server suite, as is supplied by the Boinc devs, does not yet contain the functionality to allow the user to select, which applications (s)he would like to get. If I'm right, then it might be simpler for project devs to spin another project for tes apps than implementing such user selection functionality into the server suite.

BOINC server supports beta testing applications, that can be enabled or not by users. More info here. (Note it was added in October 2006).

@pepo: That's where I got the idea. ;)
But WCG is not a native BOINC-app, so I thought it could be a good idea.

@nicolas: Cool, haven't seen this before. So basically it's already there. Too bad it's not in use, apparently...
____________
cu/2
Torsten

Sometimes crunchers see the boinc manager message "Error on file upload: can't write file /home/boinc/data/*workunit number*: No space left on device".

Some crunchers worry that the 'device' may be their own computer's hard drive. Could the word be changed to 'server'?


____________

Some crunchers worry that the 'device' may be their own computer's hard drive. Could the word be changed to 'server'?

Hi,

this is my first post, so please be kind ;-)

I have answered the susrvey a few times, hoping that one feature a would like to see in boinc manager is added. However, I upgraded yesterday to the new manager, and still this feature is not in.

So, I'd like to have the option to SORT the columns, specially under the Tasks tab. The normal MS-Windows behavior, of clicking on a column title, like "Progress" or "To Completion" or "Status", and sort the list accordingly, either ascending or descending. Also the Projects and Transfers tabs.

Hope to see this feature soon.

Regards,

Leo

Sorting feature exists, kind of half-finished. It was accidentally included on a release version and it worked quite bad, proving it's not ready yet.

On the boinc website page called 'Choosing boinc projects'

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php

the BBC Climate Change Experiment should be completely removed as it's no longer possible to attach to it.


____________

Thanks Kathryn.
____________

I am running BOINC on a Macintosh. Here are a couple user interface suggestions:

1) In the menu bar there is a BOINC icon and when I click on it one of the options in the menu that pops up is "About BOINC Manager..." When I select that option, a dialog opens that reports the version number and offers a link to the main web page. I think the dialog should close when the user clicks on that link, in addition to closing when the user hits the "OK" button. Once you click on the link, the dialog disappears behind the web browser's window, and you can't get back to it by clicking on the menu bar icon again--that menu is inactive while the dialog is open. You have to hide the browser, or minify its window or something to bring the dialog back to where you can click on its "OK" button. That's a nuisance. I'm assuming that 99% of the time after jumping to the web site the user has no further use for the dialog. If the user wants to see the version number again while at the web site, they can always open the dialog again.

2) BOINC does not really need to be represented in the Dock. Dock space is precious, and BOINC is a "set it and forget it" application--it can be set to do its thing while the computer is otherwise inactive, and in that mode it gets out of the way immediately when the user starts to work. I can't speak for other users, but for my part I don't need to open BOINC Manager every three minutes to check whether the space aliens are sending me private messages. (Besides that, if they are not smart enough to post directly to my occipital cortex, I'm not interested in making their acquaintance. ;) So I think BOINC Manager should have a preference option to stay out of the Dock. The aforesaid icon in the menu bar serves perfectly well to open/switch to the application. If not appearing in the Dock torpedoes the application's menu bar (due to a quirk in OS X), the functionality of the menu bar should be transfered to buttons within the window.

Sometimes crunchers see the boinc manager message "Error on file upload: can't write file /home/boinc/data/*workunit number*: No space left on device".

Some crunchers worry that the 'device' may be their own computer's hard drive. Could the word be changed to 'server'?...

That would need modifications on the server kernel, as that's an error message returned by the system.

BOINC could search for that specific string and change it to 'server', but I'm wondering if it's really needed.

It was already changed:

- file upload handler: say "out of space on server" instead of
"out of space on device"; users get confused by the latter,
think it refers to their disk

When our computers trickle to the server, we now get the message 'Scheduler RPC succeeded'. This isn't worrying, because what happened was clearly successful. But I'd guess that many crunchers don't know that RPC means 'remote procedure call'. Could the message please be made clearer for non-geeks eg

'Request to server succeeded' or

'Scheduler request succeeded' (as before)


____________

I would like the Statistics and Disk displays to be changed to allow more than 35 projects. I presently run 37 different projects. It looks like the charts support more than 35 projects, the the adjoining ledgends don't.
____________

Hi all.

If not been requested before...

I would like a checkbox saying: Make fixed assignment of BOINC jobs/tasks to one CPU/Core each.
That is, any BOINC computing process would run on one speciic CPU and only that, avoiding the processes to hop between CPUs, and thus being a bit more efficient on CPU cache use.

Thanks.

Hi all.

If not been requested before...

I would like a checkbox saying: Make fixed assignment of BOINC jobs/tasks to one CPU/Core each.
That is, any BOINC computing process would run on one speciic CPU and only that, avoiding the processes to hop between CPUs, and thus being a bit more efficient on CPU cache use.

Thanks.

Somebody posted a message on the mailing list showing how making it run on a single CPU gives really tiny extra performance, that is, the difference is quite small compared to leaving it on its own.

If your operating system lets processes hop between CPUs, then it's a problem with your operating system. It has been proved Linux kernel 2.6 is good at NOT doing that.

And it's not just adding a checkbox, it's QUITE hard to make the client actually do what you want when the checkbox is enabled :)

I would like the Statistics and Disk displays to be changed to allow more than 35 projects. I presently run 37 different projects. It looks like the charts support more than 35 projects, the the adjoining ledgends don't.

Don't know if this is the place to suggest this, but for what it is worth, the next time changes are made to the design of the BOINC Manager, under the TASK descriptions, I'd like to see a column available that would show time remaining for the current project running. I'm not talking about time remaining until completion of the current project, but rather the amount of time that remains until the project that is currently running will switch to the next consecutive item on the list which will begin to run.

Don't know if this is the place to suggest this, but for what it is worth, the next time changes are made to the design of the BOINC Manager, under the TASK descriptions, I'd like to see a column available that would show time remaining for the current project running. I'm not talking about time remaining until completion of the current project, but rather the amount of time that remains until the project that is currently running will switch to the next consecutive item on the list which will begin to run.

Don't know if this is the place to suggest this, but for what it is worth, the next time changes are made to the design of the BOINC Manager, under the TASK descriptions, I'd like to see a column available that would show time remaining for the current project running. I'm not talking about time remaining until completion of the current project, but rather the amount of time that remains until the project that is currently running will switch to the next consecutive item on the list which will begin to run.

I think the client can't predict when it will switch, it depends on way too many factors.

A button to Clear the messages would be nice.
I have enormous buffers that use up ram and I have to restart BOINC to clear them.
This has caused issues when running sensitive projects like Rosetta and would be nice to avoid.
____________
The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.
--Paul Fix

One of the important rules of project switching is, that it will continue to where a checkpoint is reached for the work unit in progress. I believe that rule is ignored until the 1st checkpoint has been saved for a work unit.... reasoning being that else those with checkpoints far apart would never make progress.

____________
Coelum Non Animum Mutant, Qui Trans Mare Currunt

A button to Clear the messages would be nice.
I have enormous buffers that use up ram and I have to restart BOINC to clear them.
This has caused issues when running sensitive projects like Rosetta and would be nice to avoid.

A button to Clear the messages would be nice.

Even if the manager had a button to clear messages, the core client would still be keeping them all in memory. The way the manager asks for them is "give me all messages with ID > X", that way if it stops asking for some seconds, it won't miss any. [...] Clearing those wouldn't be as simple as it sounds to program, and it could cause other problems.

A button to Clear the messages would be nice.

Even if the manager had a button to clear messages, the core client would still be keeping them all in memory. The way the manager asks for them is "give me all messages with ID > X", that way if it stops asking for some seconds, it won't miss any. [...] Clearing those wouldn't be as simple as it sounds to program, and it could cause other problems.

As the Manager knows, that the most recent message's ID was e.g. 3765, it would be no problem at all to use this number for subsequent request like "give me all messages with ID > 3765", even after discarding them fully from memory ;-)

BTW, BoincView (which is doing it the same way) maintains only last few (currently 1000 per host IIRC, sometimes a bit low number for me) messages in memory and lets the user specify, how many of them to display.

The ability to prioritize tasks in the order in which they will run would be a REALLY nice feature. This way I may be able to re-arrange how tasks will be finished.

Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please add sorting to the advanced view. allow sorting by project, resource%.

I agree!

I suggest that serious members here are wasting their time replying to Markj. He's done the same thing on the Predictor forum - quoted an old post as an excuse to display his spam sig. At least this time he's taken the trouble to type that he agrees.

http://predictor.scripps.edu/forum_thread.php?id=851
____________

I suggest that serious members here are wasting their time replying to Markj. He's done the same thing on the Predictor forum - quoted an old post as an excuse to display his spam sig. At least this time he's taken the trouble to type that he agrees.

The big bot programs like XR*m*r are so expensive that as well as the 1000 forum registrations and multiple posts thereon, they could throw in Vista Ultimate, boinc and a month of unlimited BURP workunits worth $50.....
____________

The list of project URLs in 5.9.3 makes it so much easier.

Perhaps we could have a drop down list of email addresses used to register with BOINC projects so that you wouldn't have to type in the email address each time you attach to a new project if you use the same email address for all projects

I was assuming the email address was stored in client_state.xml but it doesn't seem to be.

I would like to see a search or find function added to the messages display as my computers are up 24/7 and the message list gets very long between reboots.

This would help greatly when trying to track down a particular problem and reporting it to the project involved. Just a simple find like used in windows, nothing elaberate. Find on project name would be good.

Thanks for listening. Love the sort on columns as I run about 39 projects.
____________

A couple of requests for the Statistics tab: the ability to change the scale and to choose a selection of projects to display in the "All projects (sum)" views.

When I look at all my projects together most of the curves start within the past couple of months -- which is fine -- but I have one project whose data go back to when I first attached the host last autumn. As a result the other curves are all squeezed over to the right-hand side of the display. If I could make the graph start around the first of March, say, or suppress the 'long-memory' project, it would make much better use of the available window real-estate.

Likewise, where the projects have a wide range of average or (especially) total credit, being able to change the vertical scale, or to deselect some of the projects, would greatly improve the resolution of a comparison between projects whose stats are in the same part of the range.

____________

A couple of requests for the Statistics tab: the ability to change the scale and to choose a selection of projects to display in the "All projects (sum)" views.

A couple of requests for the Statistics tab: the ability to change the scale and to choose a selection of projects to display in the "All projects (sum)" views.

What BOINC version do you have? Both of your requests are already done, relatively long ago.

OK, I just installed BOINC v5.8.17 on my Mac G4/733, and the graph-related functions appear to work as advertised. Excellent!

But now I have something else for the wish list: put back the rubrication in the Message tab.

But now I have something else for the wish list: put back the rubrication in the Message tab.

sorry, the what?

I searched around but couldn't find an answer... I have Boinc opening at startup, but I want it to stay just in the sytem tray. It also opens a button on the task bar and I don't want that. How do I keep it from showing there?

See this thread on Einstein: http:// einstein.phys.uwm.edu/forum_thread.php?id=3409
Take out the space in the link... I can't post it in another way as the stupid anti-spam software thinks Einstein is SPAM. ;-)

Feature request..

I want to be able to manually request work from project. For example I have two notebooks, buth just one ethernet wire... so before I go sleep, I request for one notebook about 7 hours of work, from specified, manually selected project, switch wire to second notebook and go satisfied to sleep...

Please this is my problem for about 2 months, which Iam using boinc...


Second feature:

Why is configuration on web? I want to have all my pc's to have different settings about using ram, about resource share and so on. Why it isnt possible? ("just" expand settings for home, for school to settings for computer with id 1234, 1235, 1236....)

If is my second request somewhy stupid, sorry, just explain it to me, and than ignore it.

V5.10.x Advanced view will have local override of most of the General preferences settings.
There is nothing regarding resource share as yet since these are set in the project preferences and would require much more complicated programing to control locally. Forced downloads are also problematic as they could mess up both resource share debt balancing and deadline observance of the scheduler.
____________
Questions? Answers are in the BOINC Wiki.

Boinc V6.10.18 Recommended
WinXP C2D 2.1G 3GB

I think that is not the alghoritmic problem to compute, which wu to run, also when I manually download some work. When I want to download somethink, than I know, that my pc will serve all wu's till the deadline. I just probably want somethink like local settings of how much wrk to download. I think it is computed from how often to connect to net. (that setting I have at 0.1 per day)

Will it be possible in new boinc client, to override that settings, and cause to download more work to all project, respecting resource share?

PS: where I can learn how about scheduler? (resource share and done work -> from which project to download) I want to know, if my done work is computed by RAC, or total credit. (if scheduler is regulate RAC to fit resource share proportion, or somethink else.)

PPS: thanks for explanation post.

Sorry about the delay in answering. I keep loosing my net connection.

Most of the information about Boinc and the various projects can be found in the unofficial Boinc Wiki.
More specifically
Work Scheduler
Work-Fetch Policy
Resource share is calculated by CPU time allocation.
Resource Share
Version 5.10.x will add a new parameter to control the cache which is presently controlled by the 'Connect to network about every'.
This second parameter will allow setting additional cache of XX days and will be set on the web General preferences as well as the Boinc manager local preference override.
____________
Questions? Answers are in the BOINC Wiki.

Boinc V6.10.18 Recommended
WinXP C2D 2.1G 3GB

Sorry about the delay in answering. I keep loosing my net connection.

The Work-Fetch Policy has three modes: no download, download OK, and download required.

I think, that I want to force set on some project the state to "download required".

Hi, me again :-)

What about shoving short and longterm debt in projects tab in boinc manager? (I think that it probably is already in new version)

Second idea:

I am crunching also in pc in work. :-) and after leaving the office, I run something like "shutdown -s -f -t 45000". This shutdowns PC after some hours, before new day starts (I dont want to make my chief angry ;). Some projects are than "cuted" in half of work, and if the project havent checkpoints (which should be shown somewhere in manager also) the cpu time is wasted. Some settings like "shutdown pc at 6:00 AM" could help, that the scheduler can plan which wu to run and when.

Just idea with low priority, I think, that the boinc manager have a lot of missing features, which have higher priority...

Hi

I've got a request, although it might already be available(?) Is it possible to have BOINC only switch between projects once the running project checkpoints? I don't believe it does that at the moment, and I know about 'keep in memory' but a large proportion of the computers must get switched off while a project is part way between checkpoints but still held in memory.
____________

Feature request:
Suspending one upload file, not all, example if a project has a problem with upload you can stop it manually

When cpdn recently had a prolonged server problem when the servers could not accept intermediate or final file uploads, we advised members to suspend network activity because failed or rejected file uploads can lead to problems later. But this put multi-project crunchers in a difficult position as they were then unable to fetch new work from their other projects. If it had been possible to suspend/disallow selected uploads, it would have been much easier for these multi-project crunchers to keep their computers fully occupied during the problem period.

You might like to quote this sort of situation as an example of why the feature would prove useful.
____________

Thanks Kathryn, I've done that.

When I drafted my addition to Mike's ticket I was astonished to see that I could apparently have submitted my extra comment under the name 'Anonymous'! As we all already have the option to choose a forum name that anonymises our real-life identity to the extent we want, I see no need for anonymous Trac requests.

If members wish for whatever reason to dissociate their Trac request from their forum identity, I think they can already register for Trac using a different nickname. Surely this provides sufficient freedom and protection?
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Project switching.
Not reading all of this thread to see if it has been asked before.
Is possible to get project switching delay when project running is over 99% complete AND less than 10 minutes to completion.

Fed up of present situation where I have: 02:49:38 | 99.468% | 00:00:47 | Waiting to run.

Andy

Is possible to get project switching delay when project running is over 99% complete AND less than 10 minutes to completion.

Fed up of present situation where I have: 02:49:38 | 99.468% | 00:00:47 | Waiting to run.

Is possible to get project switching delay when project running is over 99% complete AND less than 10 minutes to completion.

Fed up of present situation where I have: 02:49:38 | 99.468% | 00:00:47 | Waiting to run.

Or more advanced version: a possibility to mark (e.g. per RPC) few single WUs to be prioritized for crunching (unless some other project/WU have deadline miss).

This would mean adding priority property to each WU (or result). Currently all WUs sort of share the same priority, WUs with deadline miss can be considered as having higher priority.

Peter

Is possible to get project switching delay when project running is over 99% complete AND less than 10 minutes to completion.

Fed up of present situation where I have: 02:49:38 | 99.468% | 00:00:47 | Waiting to run.

Or more advanced version: a possibility to mark (e.g. per RPC) few single WUs to be prioritized for crunching (unless some other project/WU have deadline miss).

This would mean adding priority property to each WU (or result). Currently all WUs sort of share the same priority, WUs with deadline miss can be considered as having higher priority.

Peter

That's also what I miss the most. I end up suspending projects everytime by hand just to get almost finished WUs out.

Is possible to get project switching delay when project running is over 99% complete AND less than 10 minutes to completion.

Fed up of present situation where I have: 02:49:38 | 99.468% | 00:00:47 | Waiting to run.

Or more advanced version: a possibility to mark (e.g. per RPC) few single WUs to be prioritized for crunching (unless some other project/WU have deadline miss).

This would mean adding priority property to each WU (or result). Currently all WUs sort of share the same priority, WUs with deadline miss can be considered as having higher priority.

Peter

That's also what I miss the most. I end up suspending projects everytime by hand just to get almost finished WUs out. It would be very helpful to have some kind of user configurable "threshold" for WU switching. E.g. WU's that are X % finished and end within Y hours should keep crunching.

I would also love to see in BOINC manager an overview with most data on one single tabulator:

- project progresses from tabulator "Tasks" (progress, status, to completion)
- statistic charts from tabulator "Statistics"
- last messages from tabulator "Messages"

"Force" Task.

Equivalent to "Resume" suspended tasks, tasks in state "Waiting to run" should be able to be "forced" to continue. Reason: almost finished work units can be finished faster when the user tells. My workaround so far: suspending all other running tasks until the specific task continues - and when it's finished resuming the suspended tasks. But this requires the user to resume the other tasks. A single function "Force" would do this without any further intervention.

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Ubuntu 9.04 (64 Bit), BOINC 6.10.17, NVidia GPU

More task informations:

1. Progress of the scheduled time (e.g. if each of the tasks can calculate for 1 hour, the progress should start at 0% on each task switch end end with 100% when the hour is over (and the task gets to "Waitung to run").

2. Indicator: which "Waiting to run" task is next? Or even better: an order number of the tasks to come next (selection "priority").
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Ubuntu 9.04 (64 Bit), BOINC 6.10.17, NVidia GPU

"Force" Task.

Equivalent to "Resume" suspended tasks, tasks in state "Waiting to run" should be able to be "forced" to continue. Reason: almost finished work units can be finished faster when the user tells.

My workaround so far: suspending all other running tasks until the specific task continues - and when it's finished resuming the suspended tasks. But this requires the user to resume the other tasks. A single function "Force" would do this without any further intervention.

1. Progress of the scheduled time (e.g. if each of the tasks can calculate for 1 hour, the progress should start at 0% on each task switch end end with 100% when the hour is over (and the task gets to "Waitung to run").

As a separate column or replacing the current progress bar? I think if it replaced the current progress bar it would be extremely confusing. End users may think that the task is continuely restarting.

"Force" Task.

Equivalent to "Resume" suspended tasks, tasks in state "Waiting to run" should be able to be "forced" to continue. Reason: almost finished work units can be finished faster when the user tells.

Wrong. They will crunch at the same speed, not faster. I think you mean sooner. When you think about it, if task A finishes sooner then task B has to wait until later. Over the long run the work gets returned at the same rate. The only purpose it serves is to reduce the number of waiting tasks on the list. Does that serve any useful purpose? Is there any real need for it? None whatsoever. You can avoid having to look at all those messy unfinished tasks cluttering up your list of tasks by simply going out for a nice long walk. If the tasks get returned before the deadline then that's soon enough. If that is not soon enough then the projects have the option of shortening the deadline.

My workaround so far: suspending all other running tasks until the specific task continues - and when it's finished resuming the suspended tasks. But this requires the user to resume the other tasks. A single function "Force" would do this without any further intervention.

Your workaround serves no purpose. It's not a workaround, it's just a make work project to solve a problem that does not exist. To automate the needless work you're doing would be a bad waste of some programmer's valuable time.

"Force" Task.

Equivalent to "Resume" suspended tasks, tasks in state "Waiting to run" should be able to be "forced" to continue. Reason: almost finished work units can be finished faster when the user tells.

Wrong. They will crunch at the same speed, not faster. I think you mean sooner. When you think about it, if task A finishes sooner then task B has to wait until later. Over the long run the work gets returned at the same rate. The only purpose it serves is to reduce the number of waiting tasks on the list. Does that serve any useful purpose? Is there any real need for it? None whatsoever. You can avoid having to look at all those messy unfinished tasks cluttering up your list of tasks by simply going out for a nice long walk. If the tasks get returned before the deadline then that's soon enough. If that is not soon enough then the projects have the option of shortening the deadline.

My workaround so far: suspending all other running tasks until the specific task continues - and when it's finished resuming the suspended tasks. But this requires the user to resume the other tasks. A single function "Force" would do this without any further intervention.

Your workaround serves no purpose. It's not a workaround, it's just a make work project to solve a problem that does not exist. To automate the needless work you're doing would be a bad waste of some programmer's valuable time.

Well, some projects have small WUs and some have very long (e.g. climateprediction WUs use several months!). The normal BOINC scheduler switches to the long running climate prediction WU (12% finished) even though a small WU from another project (90% finished) could be finished within the next hour. With many tasks this is an unnecessary pause for such small WUs.

Which is why CPDN (and all other Climate projects) tell you not to attach to their project together with other projects, no matter how fast your PC is.

I can't remember reading that advice on cpdn for any computer however fast, though we've sometimes had to tell the owners of slow computers that they need to make a realistic choice. Even if you're running one of the mammoth 160-year models on a slowish machine, you can occasionally stop it and get get short workunits from other projects. But in such cases it may be best to switch projects or tasks manually and do a few days/weeks on the other project.

If you let boinc do the task switching and you're running a cpdn SAP model, you need to ensure that the time switch interval is longer than the SAP checkpoint interval. Otherwise the SAP might never ever advance.....

Anyway, cpdn members are now getting the option of choosing relatively shorter models instead of the mammoths if they want, so multi-projects crunchers may prefer these.

But please, everybody, finish your current cpdn models first!


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So much for a 'wish list'. Never had the client that has CPDN on it to not give way to short jobs.... it follows the same STD rules as any and certainly makes way when there are deadlines to be met, be it SIMAP, Tanpaku, WCG or or or.

PS, the CPDN model passed 18-4-1967 today.... Lol.... hearsay is, there is no deadline long as trickles continue, but if the scientist have enough data, it would be nice to tell it quits and redirect that time to other useful projects.

Oh, i saw Ageless making a quote and someone else doing an 'Amen' on this story about "... heck freezing over before lifting a finger again".... did it? LOL

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Coelum Non Animum Mutant, Qui Trans Mare Currunt

That's right. I don't think any project can override the rules.

It's true that the cpdn servers don't enforce the workunit deadline.
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