Having run one project for a very long time I recently decided to run another in parallel. At the same time I upgraded to v6.12.26.

It seems that there is no way of managing which units get run first or in parallel, though I don't suppose this is new, only just become apparent to me. They randomly start then stop from different points in the job queue, one project has 66% of the resources and the other 33%, can't find out where to change these.

We have no way of changing the queue order or priority. There seems to be no way of reporting issues or concerns to the software authors other than through this third party system, leaving us all a bit detached. I seem to remember before this universal boinc gui the old command line SETI could be run with several instances independently and controllably. I also remember lots of concern at this potential loss at the time of transition to the new system. It seems that nothing has been done after all this time.

...one project has 66% of the resources and the other 33%, can't find out where to change these.

That would be on the project preferences page of your account at each of your projects, namely the "resource share". I've copied the following from my Einstein@home preferences:

Determines the proportion of your computer's resources allocated to this project. Example: if you participate in two BOINC projects with resource shares of 100 and 200, the first will get 1/3 of your resources and the second will get 2/3.

We have no way of changing the queue order or priority.

Why would you want to do that (appart from setting the resource share)? It's the responsibility of the BOINC software to do that.

There seems to be no way of reporting issues or concerns to the software authors other than through this third party system, leaving us all a bit detached.

What do you mean by "third party system"?

Gruß,
Gundolf

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Computer sind nicht alles im Leben. (Kleiner Scherz)

It seems that there is no way of managing which units get run first or in parallel, though I don't suppose this is new, only just become apparent to me. They randomly start then stop from different points in the job queue, one project has 66% of the resources and the other 33%, can't find out where to change these.We have no way of changing the queue order or priority.

Why not let BOINC do the managing, instead of trying to tell it what to do?
What is it with the fascination of people that they think they know better than BOINC how to run things? Are you also shutting your CPUs/GPUs down and making the calculations yourself by hand or on a pocket calculator with slide rule? If not, why not? ;-)
Why are you trying to make decisions for BOINC? Sorry for the rant, but it's difficult for me to sit still when I read the complaints that the user can't tell BOINC how to do its work. Just leave it be, it can and will run perfectly fine, scheduling work to run in first in first out order, if you just manage to let it.

If you have many tasks starting for a bit, before they pause and the next tasks start, then you may have too much work. BOINC will try to finish all work by deadline, but if you set a work request that's just too much, spread over two projects, BOINC will not be able to cope. Not at first, at least. It'll learn, as long as you keep your fingers off of it and don't start deciding what's best for it. We call that micromanaging. It's unnecessary, BOINC will be able to run the tasks for your one project for 8 hours and the ones for your other project for 16 hours, on each 24 hours.

Parallel work can only be done by specific science applications. The only ones doing it on the CPUs are AQUA@Home and Milkyway@Home, which have socalled multi-threaded applications.
And then there are the GPU applications, where all the stream- or shader processors inside the graphics processing unit (GPU) will run the task in parallel, spreading the load, making work go so fast that most tasks will be done in mere minutes, rather than hours. Parallel processing isn't a BOINC thing, it's a project thing. The project will need to supply the science application capable of doing this.

There seems to be no way of reporting issues or concerns to the software authors other than through this third party system, leaving us all a bit detached.

You're at the BOINC Development forums, linked to from the BOINC web site, on the BOINC domain. How so is this third party?

Make a good point and I will forward your plight to the developers, who will then answer by themselves or through me.
Or else, why not do a look-see on the BOINC web site? There's email addresses to be found of the two main developers.

I seem to remember before this universal boinc gui the old command line SETI could be run with several instances independently and controllably. I also remember lots of concern at this potential loss at the time of transition to the new system. It seems that nothing has been done after all this time.

But your Seti command line program could only run Seti and then only one work-unit at a time. When the Seti project had hardware problems, you couldn't upload, download or do anything else. Your computer would then just dumbly sit there burning neutrons. With BOINC you have a whole array of other projects you can attach to, be it as main project or as back-up to Seti. You can set a (large) cache of work, in case Seti goes down and it's going to take several days for them to return. During that time your computer can continue doing science.

As an extra, the Seti program couldn't run Einstein, or ClimatePrediction.net, or Enigma, or Malariacontrol.net, or Pirates@Home, or LHC, or the Collatz Conjecture, or Milkyway, or Oribit@Home, or Primegrid, or... BOINC can do all that and more. It will even be able to run all those projects simultaneously, as long as you keep an eye on how you set the project resources (found at the projects) and the connect interval in combination with the additional work cache. It will run work on all CPU cores, it will use the GPUs for calculations when it detects them. Only on those projects that are capable of using the GPUs, of course.

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I have a similar question about the order BOINC chooses to do work. I understand that the system uses a FIFO ordering (in which it looks at the time the work unit was received in order to determine priority) but I often see cases where units that have a much more urgent deadline are not worked on, since it seems that other projects send out work units with deadline requirements further in the future. For example, I have a case where a set of six work units that are due in a day or so are now in wait state (having completed more that 70% of their work) and are awaiting completion of work that is now running which is not due for a few more days. I am confident that BOINC will increase the priority of the near-term jobs as the due date becomes close, but it seems crazy to 'pend' work in process in order to complete those units that are further out.

This may be due to the fact that I have additional work buffer set to 5 days. I did this to ensure that my system always has work enqueued, even when I am unable to connect for a while (I am often at customer sites where I cannot always connect to the internet.)

Add a day or two onto 'Computer is connected to the Internet about every' setting and take a day or two off the 'additional work buffer', Boinc will then try and do that a day or two earlier, and less close to deadline,

Claggy

Thanks Claggy. I have my system set with no restrictions on network and the 'connect every' value set to .1 days (1/10).

I was interested in running the LHC2.0 project so I downloaded and installed the virtualbox software as instructed I then installed the latest version of BOINC and got an access denied error message the C:\program files\boinc dir is now read only and can't be changed. I un-installed the virtualbox still no joy. I tried to un-install BOINC and got the access denied error I tried a system restore, that didn't work either.

BOINC will not run on my machine now. what happened?

what happened?

Mind giving some more information about your system, amongst things?

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Thanks Claggy. I have my system set with no restrictions on network and the 'connect every' value set to .1 days (1/10).

What Claggy was telling you is: set 'connect every' to 1 or 2 and the additional work buffer to 4 or 3 respectively. (The sum remains 5 days.)

That way, BOINC starts earlier with running 'high priority' (Earliest Deadline First).

Gruß,
Gundolf

Sorry,

HP dc7700p
Intel Core 2 CPU
6400 @ 2.13GHz
1.57GHZ 1.98 GB of RAM
250GB hard drive w/180GB free space
WIN XP pro V2002 SP3

I was running BOINC 6.10.58
Seti@home
Climateprediction
Milkyway

With 'latest version of BOINC', which version do you mean? 6.12.33, or any of the 6.13s?

Did you change anything about the installation paths of BOINC when you tried to upgrade?

That the directory is read-only is normal. All directories in Windows XP and above have the Read-Only mark activated and this cannot be undone. It doesn't mean that the files or sub-directories are read-only. You can check that on any file in the directory.

Have you checked that the permissions are still the same for the directory?
Have you checked that nothing else is taking a hold of the directory, like anti-virus or (other) anti-malware scanners?
Have you tried to reboot the system?

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I an running BOINC on multiple computers on any of them I can go to c:\program files\boinc\ and view all the files it the folder. If I try that on this system now I get the message "c:\program files\boinc is not accessible. access is denied" If I right click on the folder and look at properties on any of the other computers the read only box is not checked on this one it is. If I try to change it is acts like it accepts the change but doesn't really. I can't run BOINC If I click on the desktop icon I get the shortcut not found searching for box. I can't rename or delete the folder, I can't uninstall BOINC. The new version I tried to install was 6.12.33. This was my fastest machine I was getting a lot of work done with it.

any ideas?

What error message do you get when you try to install BOINC?
Please start the BOINC 6.12.33 installer, then in the third screen in the installer, click Advanced.


In the window that opens, click Change next to the Programs directory...


Set the path for the BOINC programs to something different. Let's say to C:\BOINC_Programs\

Leave the path for the BOINC Data directory (by default C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BOINC Data\ ) alone, do not change anything here.

Click Next.

Will that install BOINC?

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Note that the original location that you asked about, c:\program files\boinc\, has different uses in different versions of BOINC.

In BOINC version 5 (very old, now), absolutely everything got shovelled in there - programs, data and all.

In newer versions of BOINC, that folder is reserved for BOINC's programs (executable files) only. It is, on some versions of Windows, locked against modification by anyone except BOINC's own user group, as a secutity measure against malware.

All the files you would normally be interested in modifying should be in a separate data directory.

I tried that already it starts to install but eventually I will get the same access denied message box. The installer still wants to install files into the BOINC folder even though I change the destination folder

The installer still wants to install files into the BOINC folder even though I change the destination folder

How do you deduce that? From what is showing in the installer?
Here's what the installer does in normal cases:

1. Check that BOINC is installed on your system.
2. Add/adjust the user groups and BOINC limited user accounts.
3. Remove the old BOINC program files from the old BOINC Program files directory. (Merely a delete *.exe option)
4. Add the new executables to the BOINC Programs directory chosen in the path set in the Advanced option.
5. Offer you to start BOINC Manager and exit itself.

I think what you see is 3, that it will delete the files already there.
But hey, we can for now make BOINC 'forget' that that's there, so you can install the new BOINC to your system, then at a later time, at your leisure remove the other BOINC directory.

To make BOINC forget where it put the previous version open the registry:
First off, did you make that C:\BOINC_Programs\ directory I said you should do in my last post? If not, do so now. Windows Explorer->C: drive->New->Folder, name it BOINC_Programs ->Enter.

Next do: Windows Start button->(Accessories->)Run, type regedit and click OK.

I do want to warn, do not change anything other than what I tell you to change, as else your system may go even more haywire.

Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Space Sciences Laboratory, U.C. Berkeley\BOINC Setup
In the right pane you'll see all these key names. Select INSTALLDIR, double-click on it, and change the Value data from C:\Program Files\BOINC\ to C:\BOINC_Programs\, then click OK.
Do the same for the MIGRATIONDIR key (just to be sure).

Next exit the registry, File->Exit.

Now start the BOINC 6.12.33 installer. When you get to the 3rd screen in the installer, and you click Advanced, you will see that the BOINC Programs directory already shows as C:\BOINC_Programs\
Continue the installation. This should get your BOINC working again.

When you're this far, let me know.

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Ok,I did all that and the destination showed the the new folder in the advanced screen but I still get the same error. The installshield wizard box says "Status: copying new files" with 1 green square in the progress box and I get a BOINC installer information box that says "error 1310.error writing to file c;\program files\BOINC\boincmgr.exe. verify that you have access to that directory" with abort retry ignore buttons. This is the same error I keep getting.

Sounds more and more as if you have a corrupt installer.
Can you please download BOINC 6.12.34, save it to disk and then start it? Just to see what that one does.

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same thing happens. I have tried a couple of different versions with the same result.

In the mean time, here's other options to follow:

1. If you have an iDrive, uninstall or disable the application, then try the reinstall and see if that fixes things.

2. Disable your anti-virus and firewall (only 3rd party such as Zone Alarm, Symantec etc.).
Next right-click on the C:\Program Files\BOINC\ directory and choose properties. Go to "Security" tab and give FULL permissions to "Authenticated Users" & "Users (XXXX\Users)". Click OK to close everything, then try the reinstall and see if that fixes things.

3. Download the Microsoft Installer Clean Up utility and use it to remove the previous BOINC.MSI file. (Or if there's more than one, all BOINC.MSI files). Make sure to only remove the BOINC.MSI file9s), not any other .MSI file!
Then try to reinstall BOINC to see if that fixes things.

4. Check that system with an up-to-date virus scanner.
Check that system with multiple up-to-date anti-malware scanners, such as Spybot: Search and Destroy, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (free) and the Sophos anti root-kit tool.
Check that system with a registry cleaner to clean out your registry.

After all that, reboot the system, then try the installation again to see if that fixed things.

5. it is possible that certain system files are broken or corrupted.
To fix that, click Windows Start button->Run->Type cmd and click OK. In the Dos box window that opens, type sfc /scannow and press Enter. Make sure to keep your Windows installation disk ready, as it'll be needed. This will fix all bad, corrupt and missing system files. When this process is done, you'll be asked to reboot again, so do so.

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