I have an electricity plan that is very expensive (3x) during (modified) business hours: M-F 2PM (14:00) thru 8PM (20:00). The settings do not seem to be able to accommodate this. I want to be able to set it to NOT compute between these hours. The settings appear to require a time range TO compute only. The times must be between 00:00 and 24:00 with the start time less than the stop time. Thus, the closest I can come is to start at 00:00 and stop at 14:00 7 days, a reasonable compromise. Is there a better way to do this? FYI, the rates are (approximately) 1x between 10PM and 8AM 7 days, 1.5x between 8AM and 2PM 7 days, and 3x between 2PM and 8PM M-F, and 1.5x during those hours on weekends. (Also, the settings give a somewhat confusing error if you forget the colon:.)

The times are for a 24 hour clock, so you can set the first value to 20:05 and the second to 13:55, allowing for 5 minutes to shut everything down/clock incorrectness.
My times run from 21:05 to 06:00 and have done so for quite some time already.

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I will try your suggestion. I may have mistakenly thought the second number had to be greater than the first when the actual problem was I had omitted the colon. In the mean time, I had tried the "on" at 00:00 and "off" at 1400. The first day I checked at 15:00 and it was still running with no signs of stopping, so I suspended everything it manually. I suspected it either may have wanted to run a complete cycle or it wanted to drain the queue before it stopped. I am still completing the "complete cycle theory". I will begin testing with short cycles until I actually get it to stop computing. So far, It seems to be ignoring this setting altogether.

It might be that the client is using project settings that are overriding your local settings.

So far, I have not been able to get BOINC to stop processing regardless of the hours set in the local preferences. I went to the preferences web page and that setting displayed --- , indicating this preference was not set . The last update to that page was in 2010. I restored the defaults, then I set it to stop processing at 10AM, 8 minutes from now. I went to BOINC and clicked the "Use Web Prefs" button. I will await the results.

Make sure that your Activity is set to "based on preferences", as the "run always" will ignore prefs like this.
Local preferences override web preferences, not the other way around.


The above image shows my settings. This will run BOINC for me between 21:05 and 06:00 on Mon-Fri if my computer is on. Saturday and Sunday it can run 24 hours, again if my computer is on.

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Yup. That's more or less what I had (minus the weekend, which I will add when I get it working). I'm under the impression I also have to click "Read local Prefs file" to implement the new setting(s). I suspect restarting BOINC or rebooting the computer would also accomplish this. It is good to know that local Prefs override the web settings, which I reset to default anyway. I have put in a setting that should halt computing in a few minutes, in case I messed it up somehow before. ... Well, the set time has come and gone with no effect. It just occurred to me that maybe these times are supposed to be in UTC ? I believe that is +9 from PDT. I will test for that now. I put in10:00 to 20:15 which I believe is 1:00 AM to 11:15 AM PDT so it should stop in 1 minute. ... Nope. Nothing has happened. It is still cranking away. I will go back to the theoretically correct settings in case it miraculously starts working. I have a lot of HEPA filters so the TOD power saves me over $150 a month if I implement it effectively.

I have tried all the permutations of this setting, including those above, and can not get it to work. All 8 cores just keep running at 100%. I suspect that there is something obvious that I have overlooked. I am now looking for an application that will just shut down the computer at the designated time.

Can you please post the contents of the global_prefs_override.xml file from the data directory (default at the hidden directory C:\Programdata\BOINC\, so put the path in your Windows Explorer and hit Enter). You can open this XML file with Notepad.

Can you also please open client_stat.xml, scroll all the way to the bottom and copy the lines of <code>user_run_request</code> and <code>user_gpu_request</code> for me, post those here? After that you can close client_state.xml, if it asks if you want to save changes, click Cancel.

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Thanks for asking.

global_prefs_override.xml :

<global_preferences>
<run_on_batteries>0</run_on_batteries>
<run_if_user_active>1</run_if_user_active>
<run_gpu_if_user_active>1</run_gpu_if_user_active>
<suspend_cpu_usage>25.000000</suspend_cpu_usage>
<start_hour>20.000000</start_hour>
<end_hour>14.000000</end_hour>
<net_start_hour>0.000000</net_start_hour>
<net_end_hour>0.000000</net_end_hour>
<leave_apps_in_memory>0</leave_apps_in_memory>
<confirm_before_connecting>0</confirm_before_connecting>
<hangup_if_dialed>0</hangup_if_dialed>
<dont_verify_images>0</dont_verify_images>
<work_buf_min_days>0.000000</work_buf_min_days>
<work_buf_additional_days>1.000000</work_buf_additional_days>
<max_ncpus_pct>100.000000</max_ncpus_pct>
<cpu_scheduling_period_minutes>60.000000</cpu_scheduling_period_minutes>
<disk_interval>60.000000</disk_interval>
<disk_max_used_gb>100.000000</disk_max_used_gb>
<disk_max_used_pct>50.000000</disk_max_used_pct>
<disk_min_free_gb>0.000000</disk_min_free_gb>
<vm_max_used_pct>75.000000</vm_max_used_pct>
<ram_max_used_busy_pct>50.000000</ram_max_used_busy_pct>
<ram_max_used_idle_pct>90.000000</ram_max_used_idle_pct>
<max_bytes_sec_up>0.000000</max_bytes_sec_up>
<max_bytes_sec_down>0.000000</max_bytes_sec_down>
<cpu_usage_limit>100.000000</cpu_usage_limit>
<daily_xfer_limit_mb>0.000000</daily_xfer_limit_mb>
<daily_xfer_period_days>0</daily_xfer_period_days>
<day_prefs>
<day_of_week>0</day_of_week>
<start_hour>0.00</start_hour>
<end_hour>23.98</end_hour>
</day_prefs>
<day_prefs>
<day_of_week>6</day_of_week>
<start_hour>0.00</start_hour>
<end_hour>23.98</end_hour>
</day_prefs>
</global_preferences>

client_stat.xml: (found client_state.xml; no client_stat.xml present)
<user_run_request>1</user_run_request>
<user_gpu_request>1</user_gpu_request>

My current plan until I get this sorted out is to connect a timer to the UPS and set it for aggressive shutdown.
When the UPS senses the power is off, it will request an orderly shutdown.

client_stat.xml: (found client_state.xml; no client_stat.xml present)

<user_run_request>1</user_run_request>
<user_gpu_request>1</user_gpu_request>

Typo from me, I meant client_state.xml as you found. These values state that you have set Activity for GPU and CPU to Run Always.
Like I said before, for these preferences to work you will need to set Activity to "Run based on preferences". As long as you do not do that, tasks will run always, just as you want them to.

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Oops. I missed that above. I was preoccupied with the hours. Thanks for the help.