I am having a little problem with one of my machines. It keeps losing messages(logs). I have an E6700 with 4Gig ram, 2x 250Gig HD running Win XP with BOINC 5.10.7 in the default directory (I:Program FilesBOINC) C: thru F: are Removable media slots, G: & H: are paired DVD-RW drives; so I: was the first logical drive during install.
PC information http://hydrogenathome.org/show_host_detail.php?hostid=74
OR http://boinc.umiacs.umd.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=138

Copy of the logs below:

6/25/2007 9:11:28 PM|BRaTS@Home|Deferring communication for 1 min 0 sec
6/25/2007 9:11:28 PM|BRaTS@Home|Reason: no work from project
6/26/2007 4:26:24 PM|The Lattice Project|[file_xfer] Started download of file 19262850.22804615606695777.60_2
6/26/2007 4:26:43 PM|The Lattice Project|[file_xfer] Finished download of file 19262850.22804615606695777_1

Next day:

6/26/2007 10:32:04 PM|SHA1 Collision Search|Deferring communication for 1 hr 12 min 43 sec
6/26/2007 10:32:04 PM|SHA1 Collision Search|Reason: project is down
6/27/2007 4:22:16 PM|Cosmology@Home|[file_xfer] Finished upload of file wu_062707_085414_0_2_1
6/27/2007 4:22:16 PM|Cosmology@Home|[file_xfer] Throughput 20703 bytes/sec
6/27/2007 4:22:16 PM|Cosmology@Home|[file_xfer] Started upload of file wu_062707_085414_0_2_4

As you can see by the logs, for the past two days I am losing 18-20 hours worth of messages. I know the PC is working because I check the PC in the morning before I go to work and see that it is working. Plus the projects say that it is working because results are coming across with credits being posted to my account.
This PC is on 24/7 with a 1500APC UPS. The only reason it shuts down is for a MS update.
I have BOINC 5.10.7 installed on all my pc's and this is the only one that is giving me this problem.

Is there a known issue or fix that I can try or is this something that will need further investigating.

Please advise,
Edit: added second link to PC info

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Did you post this on a project board before? Because I swear this is the second report I'm seeing of this behavior if it wasn't you that posted it.

Do the times of the disapparing logs seem consistent? Anything special happen around those times on the computer?

Honestly, I don't know where to begin to debug this one.

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Kathryn :o)

[quote]Did you post this on a project board before? Because I swear this is the second report I'm seeing of this behavior if it wasn't you that posted it.
[quote]
Yes Kathryn I posted it at BRaTS http://maxwell.dhcp.umsl.edu/brats/forum_thread.php?id=15 but there was no responses for the missing logs. I also posted it at BOINCstats http://www.boincstats.com/forum/forum_thread.php?id=2229 with no response either.

That is why I headed to this forum in hopes of finding what is going on. This is my best pc and I am using it on the alpha/beta sites. If I can not give back the error logs then I can not help the projects with bugs.

As far as anything special going on around the pc, all I can say is no. I mean a couple of those times I was using it to browse the forums.

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OK, here's a guess.

You have a cc_config.xml file in your BOINC directory, which has the <task> flag set to zero. In other words, it's not on. The only flags on are the <file_xfer> and <sched_ops> flags.

Just check.

Else post the whole contents of your cc_config.xml file here.

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OK, I come to work and check the boincmgr on my work pc and it is doing it as well. I go thru the file directory and look for cc_config.xml file in my BOINC directory. There is not one. I see the stdoutdae file and decide to look thru it. It only has the last 6 hours in it. I check the stdoutdae.old file and everything is there for the past week. All Messages are there.

Why do the messages not show up in BoincMgr? Starting to feel confused now.

Is there not a size restriction of entries in the message window? AFAIK it puts it away to *.old when reaching a max size of 2mb.

Yes, every 2MB of messages in stdoutdae.txt (and other .txt files) is written to its .old file. The .old file is now also bound by 2MB though. I'm not sure if that is on purpose, still have to ask that.

Edit: I have asked if it's possible to set a log file size through BM. The devs are looking into that. :)

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I could understand the file size limit causing a problem but that is not what I am seeing here. My stdoutdae.txt file is only 190kb and the *.old file is 2079kb. It is weird how the messages are listed in the GUI. I have three days worth in the GUI, but not all of the messages from each day. I would list the messages here for everybody to see but it would make this page too long. PM me with an email and I will send you a text file of what is in the GUI along with the two stdoutdae.* files.

Are the missing blocks of time the same on both computers?

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Are the missing blocks of time the same on both computers?

Looking at the logs from above compared to this pc they are not the same I just did a quick check on this pc and here are the time breaks where there are no messages in the GUI.

6/25/07 3:34pm
*missing*
6/26/07 12:59am
6/26/07 3:01pm
*missing*
6/27/07 2:23am
6/27/07 5:03pm
*missing*
6/28/07 4:03am

What is really wierd is that if I look at the stdoutdae files they show all the messages that are not being shown in the GUI. IS THIS A HINT?

Just a crazy thought. I wonder whether we all have messages being archived in the files that never appeared in the GUI?

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Just a crazy thought. I wonder whether we all have messages being archived in the files that never appeared in the GUI?

So does that mean that I am not the only one? Please say it is so. I do not want to be the only one feeling like a monkey here. :)

Simple view gives errors red, advanced view does not.

I do not know about you but I have red errors in both simple and advanced. I will have to let you know in 24 hours if the logs are messed up again. Norton updates forced this pc to perform a reboot, hence new stdoutae.txt file.

But, if the seqno argument is not correct then some entries would not be copied from stdoutae.txt.

I think you may be onto something. Earlier it was mentioned that the stdoutae.txt file is limited in size. I noticed that when the messages were messed up that there was still fragments of the previous days (maybe 8-10 hours worth) in the GUI message log. But, if I went and pulled up the stdoutae.txt in notepad I could see all of the messages for those days. Then of course the stdoutae.old file reflects all of the older messages.

Keeping digging Dagorath you may get a banana out of this yet.

Is anybody else seeing this on their machines? Please say that you are, I do not want to be the only one experiencing this.

Should I go ahead and grab 5.10.12 and see if an install will change anything?

Any ideas?

Is anybody else seeing this on their machines? Please say that you are, I do not want to be the only one experiencing this.

Should I go ahead and grab 5.10.12 and see if an install will change anything?

Any ideas?

Oh please *don't* grab 5.10.12. There are issues during the install.

Sorry. I can't say I've seen this. All of my logs seem to be intact. And I can't recall seeing it report by anyone else.

Have you tried a complete reinstall of BOINC including trashing the entire directory? Keep the relevent .xml files so you don't have to reattach to all of your projects.

I'm basically out of ideas.

You might want to enter it in Trac as well.

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Kathryn :o)

Is anybody else seeing this on their machines? Please say that you are, I do not want to be the only one experiencing this.

Should I go ahead and grab 5.10.12 and see if an install will change anything?

Any ideas?

5.10.8 I have a gap 7/3 10:35 7/4 6:52 in the GUI but stdoutdae.txt does contain the missing log messages. Problem with the GUI.

Submitted as Ticket #306 in Trac.

Dr.Rich and William, please add details on your system. I linked to this thread and included the two versions of BOINC that are affected.

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Kathryn :o)

@Kathryn, Thanks for creating the ticket.
@William, Thanks for speaking up that you are seeing it too.
@Dagorath, like William & I stated it is only in the GUI messages. The easy way to look is to look for the date change in the GUI. If it is doing it on your machine it will show that the date change happened somewhere else besides midnight.

The first PC I noticed this on is this one:
http://hydrogenathome.org/show_host_detail.php?hostid=74
OR http://boinc.umiacs.umd.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=138
BOINC 5.10.7 installed to I:\Program Files\BOINC
The next PC I noticed this on is this one:
http://hydrogenathome.org/show_host_detail.php?hostid=39
OR http://boinc.umiacs.umd.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=194
BOINC 5.10.7 installed to C:\Program Files\BOINC till July 2 2007because of issues with VISTA.
BOINC 5.8.16 installed to C:\Program Files\BOINC on July 3 2007

I hope this helps and we can get it resolved with the revision.

@Kathryn - let me know if you want a copy of any files.

Yours in Service,
Rich

I do not know if anybody else is seeing the same thing that I am, but I am still getting this. I recently upgraded to 5.10.20 and I am not sure if the missing messages [bug?] is getting worse or what.

- tons of log entries then
9/7/2007 8:26:29 AM|Hydrogen@Home|Deferring communication for 1 min 0 sec
9/7/2007 8:26:29 AM|Hydrogen@Home|Reason: no work from project
9/10/2007 1:29:37 AM|superlinkattechnion|Reason: no work from project
9/10/2007 1:29:43 AM|BRaTS@Home|Sending scheduler request: To fetch work
- more log entries till current time

This was copied straight from the messages tab in the advanced GUI.

It is quite annoying to go looking for error messages and not see 24 hours of messages. stdoutdae.txt is only 921kb and it contains all missing messages.

Is there a polling interface that pulls the logs from the stdoutdae?
Is it supposed to clear out the old data from the gui before it posts new entries into the gui?
There is a size limit to the stdoutdae.txt file, is there a size limit to how much data can be shown in the gui?

I do not know if anybody else is seeing the same thing that I am, but I am still getting this. I recently upgraded to 5.10.20 and I am not sure if the missing messages [bug?] is getting worse or what.

Is there a polling interface that pulls the logs from the stdoutdae?
Is it supposed to clear out the old data from the gui before it posts new entries into the gui?

There is a size limit to the stdoutdae.txt file, is there a size limit to how much data can be shown in the gui?

When stdoutdae.txt gets too big (2MB IIRC) it is supposed to be renamed to stdoutdae.old but since 5.10.18 (or so) stdoutdae.old gets deleted. Today I have just one hour worth of logs in the gui.