I have used BAM as my account manager for years. I've been dormant with BOINC lately due to a move. I just launched BOINC (an existing installation of 7.6.33 that I did not allow to run for a few months), and I wondered why it didn't suspend while the machine was in use. So I pulled up the Computing Preferences and noticed that it said "Using web-based preferences from www.worldcommunitygrid.org". WTF?

I then went to Tools --> Synchronize with Boincstats BAM [notice that BAM was prepopulated in the drop-down menu]. After syncing, it accepted the preferences that are set in BAM, and BAM was returned to its rightful spot in the "using web-based preferences..." text of the Computing Preferences dialog box.

After letting it run untouched for 2 hours, I returned to the computer to find the WCG had again usurped BAM as the source of my computing preferences.

I have never used WCG as an account manager, and I even had to request a password reset when I went to their website to try and find out what was going on. I can't find anything on their site that even offers the possibility of using WCG as an account manager.

What gives?

WCG won't be acting as an account manager, but just as custodian of your most recent set of preference changes. Anything you (or perhaps BAM) set using any project website is passed from site to site as your computer contacts each project in turn: the timestamp and location of the most recent change is passed as part of this process, so that the collective group of projects you're attached to knows what is a change, and what is simply a re-confirmation of what it knows already.

Then why would the BOINC Manager display WCG as the web-based preference manager? Shouldn't that text field be off-limits to anything other than the actual web-based manager that I configured during the installation of BOINC (when it prompts you either attach to projects or use an account manager)?

Does it really say exactly that? I don't use an account manager, so I can't reproduce exactly, but I've looked in two places:

My Event Log says

30-May-2017 13:05:30 [Einstein@Home] General prefs: from Einstein@Home (last modified ---)

(there should be a date-stamp in there, but because of a long-standing bug in BOINC, it gets eaten during the transfer process)

And the local preferences dialog says

Using local preferences.
Click "Use web prefs" to use web-based preferences from http://einstein.phys.ewn.edu/

In both cases, the word is 'from' - that's where my chosen preferences must have been changed most recently. But it doesn't say 'managed by' - and I don't see any of the management tools like 'synchronise'.

If you feel that the dialog header should be modified when Account Manager tools are activated (i.e., when you have successfully attached your BOINC client to an Account Manager), I suggest you open an issue at https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/issues.

From BAM's website: World Community Grid only supports reading data from the project. BAM! can't update settings! meaning that if you set the preferences at WCG, that BAM can only read them, but if you then set preferences through BAM, they cannot be updated on the WCG website.

But to get to the bottom of that, you best ask this at either the World Community Grid forums or the BAM forums, as they're better of answering these things than we are.

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Does it really say exactly that? I don't use an account manager, so I can't reproduce exactly, but I've looked in two places:

My Event Log says

30-May-2017 13:05:30 [Einstein@Home] General prefs: from Einstein@Home (last modified ---)

(there should be a date-stamp in there, but because of a long-standing bug in BOINC, it gets eaten during the transfer process)

And the local preferences dialog says

Using local preferences.
Click "Use web prefs" to use web-based preferences from http://einstein.phys.ewn.edu/

In both cases, the word is 'from' - that's where my chosen preferences must have been changed most recently. But it doesn't say 'managed by' - and I don't see any of the management tools like 'synchronise'.

If you feel that the dialog header should be modified when Account Manager tools are activated (i.e., when you have successfully attached your BOINC client to an Account Manager), I suggest you open an issue at https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/issues.

I would post screenshots, but the forum does not seem to have the capability to upload images. (If you can tell me how, I will do it. No results when I search for "upload image" or "post "image".)

Yes, the Computing Preferences window really says "Using web-based preferences from http://www.worldommunitygrid.org/", just to the right of the yellow bang and just below the window title bar.

My event log, upon launching BOINC from a dead stop, has the following lines in sequence (nothing omitted in between), after the hardware benchmarking and project URL run-down:

05-Jun-17 06:43:35 | World Community Grid | General prefs: from World Community Grid (last modified 27-Jan-2017 14:43:27)
05-Jun-17 06:43:35 | World Community Grid | Host location: none
05-Jun-17 06:43:35 | World Community Grid | General prefs: using your defaults
05-Jun-17 06:43:35 |  | Preferences:
05-Jun-17 06:43:35 |  | max memory usage when active: 2876.17MB
05-Jun-17 06:43:35 |  | max memory usage when idle: 3451.41MB
05-Jun-17 06:43:35 |  | max disk usage: 10.00GB
05-Jun-17 06:43:35 |  | don't use GPU while active
05-Jun-17 06:43:35 |  | suspend work if non-BOINC CPU load exceeds 25%
05-Jun-17 06:43:35 |  | (to change preferences, visit a project web site or select Preferences in the Manager)

From BAM's website: World Community Grid only supports reading data from the project. BAM! can't update settings! meaning that if you set the preferences at WCG, that BAM can only read them, but if you then set preferences through BAM, they cannot be updated on the WCG website.

But to get to the bottom of that, you best ask this at either the World Community Grid forums or the BAM forums, as they're better of answering these things than we are.

I have never used WCG's website to modify any preferences. It has been a long time, but I'm pretty sure I signed up for the project through BAM. I have used BAM exclusively for 6+ years. Pretty much the only time I even view a project site is usually when I want to modify subprojects, mostly PrimeGrid.

I asked this question here because the problem appears to be with BOINC Manager itself. Before popsting, I searched the BAM and WCG forums to see if anyone else had a similar issue, with null results.

I have never used WCG's website to modify any preferences.

From Account managers in the BOINC WIki: World Community Grid does not support updating preferences through an account manager. On site profile changing remains needed.

Your last returned task for WCG is 31/Jan/2017, very close to the date it says on the WCG date for preferences.

If you set the preferences at WCG at a later time than the preferences at BAM, the preferences from WCG are used.
You can fix that by editing the preferences at WCG and saving them to a later date, like today, then resyncing with BAM.
Or perhaps that BAM lost your preferences, or lost the venue.

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You still have preferences from a project regardless if you ever touched them. They may be the default settings, but they always exist.

If you want to shift it to another project, modify the preferences at another project site, such as Einstein. Just slightly change something such as from 100 to 101 and then it' should shift off WCG.

WCG incidentally is a non-standard BOINC project. They only use BOINC for handling the work and then they have their own custom interface for everything else. They started off as a non-BOINC project and then started using BOINC. They later shifted the backend entirely to BOINC. They still have their old scoring system in place which is entirely separate from the BOINC credits.

There was some hope with the 'upgrades' that they would standardize things but so far 3rd party interfacing is still pretty much limited to joining up and getting your stats. I don't know if you can use special characters in your password yet. They may be hosted by IBM, but that doesn't mean it's a priority for IBM.

Best,

~Yav

You still have preferences from a project regardless if you ever touched them. They may be the default settings, but they always exist.

If you want to shift it to another project, modify the preferences at another project site, such as Einstein. Just slightly change something such as from 100 to 101 and then it' should shift off WCG.

The whole point of using BAM is to control preferences centrally. If I do what you suggest, will BAM eventually (through its periodic polling/updating) reset the change to conform with the preferences I have set in BAM? Now that I think about it, I guess I could change something like a PrimeGrid subproject, which BAM doesn't control...