Hi Fred, I'm eventually going to install a 1GB GTX460 in the case here after I've built the next PC with a pair of GT295 cards and to work on 6 wu's at once I'll need to do what Vyper did and install a 2nd Boinc install, My question is can Boinc Tasks run and manage two Boinc installs on the same PC?

Oh and BT 1.21 is running hot, straight and normal, as it were.

Set the second BOINC to another port with the client command: --gui_rpc_port N
Specify port for GUI RPCs

31416 is the default, so to avoid problems with TThrottle 31418 is one you could use. Or any other from the thousands to choose.

So far Vypers method is to start the 2nd boinc.exe from a shortcut and there is only a 2nd boinc data folder. He used port 9999, but port 31418 is just as good.

In the properties of the shortcut this would have to be done:
"D:\Program Files\BOINC\boinc.exe" –allow_multiple_clients –dir D:\Boinc-Files2 –gui_rpc_port 31418

I'm only setting up for a GTX460 and two GTX295 cards at the moment, As I need to prove something 1st with 3 aircooled GTX295 cards. Oh and I wish there was a way to start up a second boinc.exe without resorting to a shortcut, within BT would be nice, if It's possible...

Note1: Boinc-Files2 is My 2nd data folder as I don't like the hidden default location, the name of the data folder can be anything You want...
Note2: Oh and I have No C: drive and yes there is a data folder by the name of Boinc-Files...

Running a 2nd boinc.exe and a 2nd data folder is so two different architectures can run side by side, Or simply so the GTX460 gpu(1GB model in this case) can run 2 WU's per gpu and so the GTX295 gpus can run 1 wu per gpu, as Nvidia gpus older than the 400 series can usually only do 1 wu per gpu, while newer 400/500 series gpus can do 2 or 3 wu's depending on available memory. Yeah It's a kludge to do It this way, but so far the Boinc Devs haven't wanted to do squat on this subject.

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Play MULE, 42 is irrelevant

..but so far the Boinc Devs haven't wanted to do squat on this subject.

That's not too fair. Has it occurred to you that they may just don't have the time to work on this?

They're busy with programming the new BOINC with a whole new scheduler rebuilt from the ground up;
they're busy adding Virtual Box compliancy into BOINC;
they're busy preparing for adding Virtual Box into BOINC;
they're busy with adding all the new documentation to Trac/the Wiki;
they added the <exclude_gpu> element to cc_config.xml, although this is only added in the highly buggy 6.13s;

And that's only part of what they're doing. All 3 of them.
At times they drop everything to go squash a bug that anyone from in the field has found that requires a new BOINC 6.12 to be released for all platforms. So it's not really fair of you to say they 'haven't wanted to do squat' on the subject of running two clients on the same hardware. Besides... if you truly want it, you can always run one of them in VM. That option has been added.

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..but so far the Boinc Devs haven't wanted to do squat on this subject.

That's not too fair. Has it occurred to you that they may just don't have the time to work on this?

They're busy with programming the new BOINC with a whole new scheduler rebuilt from the ground up;
they're busy adding Virtual Box compliancy into BOINC;
they're busy preparing for adding Virtual Box into BOINC;
they're busy with adding all the new documentation to Trac/the Wiki;
they added the <exclude_gpu> element to cc_config.xml, although this is only added in the highly buggy 6.13s;

And that's only part of what they're doing. All 3 of them.
At times they drop everything to go squash a bug that anyone from in the field has found that requires a new BOINC 6.12 to be released for all platforms. So it's not really fair of you to say they 'haven't wanted to do squat' on the subject of running two clients on the same hardware. Besides... if you truly want it, you can always run one of them in VM. That option has been added.

Ok, I was led to believe this, My apologies, but still this approach is the only way currently and it is a kludge, which is why I haven't really wanted to go down Vypers road. A way to change the default amount of wu's a gpu gets to work on from a menu or with a mouse click would be nice, instead of the choice of all gpus get 1 or 2 or 3 wu's by default(shotgun approach, also kludgy to Me)... in the app info file, You get the idea I think, I hope, I can't program Myself, I just don't have those skills, but I do know what I'd like to see and I've been told no before.

I run Windows7 Pro x64 and the other OS is Windows7 Premium and right now is sitting idle on a 2.5" hdd, So I'm not familiar with a VM and yes I know what a VM is, I've been around for a long time in the PC world. And I don't have the resources to go out and buy the software as My income is really tight and Congress won't double the SSI FBR any, even If I knew where to look and yes I can Google It.

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Play MULE, 42 is irrelevant

Apologies accepted. Very sporty of you. :-)
Never believe anything you read on the interweb... ah well, but for when it comes from me, of course. ;-)

And I don't have the resources to go out and buy the software, even If I knew where to look and yes I can Google It.

Check out Virtual Box, being developed by Oracle. It's free.

I must say I haven't tested that myself that much yet (my tests normally end in error), but one of these days when I have more time I promise I will look into it, see how to do that and write about it in a thread around here (and probably a FAQ).

I know that the present --allow_multiple_clients thing is a kludge, I ran with it for a couple of days as a test for Charlie, before he didn't have any further time. Running the clients wasn't so much a problem, but running the individual Managers was for me.

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Apologies accepted. Very sporty of you. :-)
Never believe anything you read on the interweb... ah well, but for when it comes from me, of course. ;-)

And I don't have the resources to go out and buy the software, even If I knew where to look and yes I can Google It.

Check out Virtual Box, being developed by Oracle. It's free.

I must say I haven't tested that myself that much yet (my tests normally end in error), but one of these days when I have more time I promise I will look into it, see how to do that and write about it in a thread around here (and probably a FAQ).

I know that the present --allow_multiple_clients thing is a kludge, I ran with it for a couple of days as a test for Charlie, before he didn't have any further time. Running the clients wasn't so much a problem, but running the individual Managers was for me.

I'd rather run one manager at a time too, currently BT is what I like, It works very well for Me. As to kludge I wasn't referring to the switch specifically, just to the fact that to do what I want, Boinc has to have so many small things done here and there, instead of a mouse click or so in the manager, like individual gpu setting for how many wu's a particular gpu can handle in some drop down menu, the default being one of course. Triumvirate eh? Didn't know that, very interesting(Laughin Reference).

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Play MULE, 42 is irrelevant

I managed to make a VM of Windows XP, updated it fully and installed BOINC on it. It's now running Primegrid.
However, since I only told the VM to use one CPU, Windows is also only using one CPU. I will have to reinstall Windows, but now I know how to do all that, I'll make screen shots and a FAQ. :-)

In the mean time...
This machine runs the VM that runs this machine. :-)

Anyway, enough disturbing Fred's thread. I'll write my how-to elsewhere in the forums. @Fred, you're nearing 250 posts in this thread, how about making a new thread? :-)

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1.22 October 2011
New: Long term history.
Changed: The menu: Report all completed tasks, shows the number of tasks that are completed.
Changed: If the history files can't be read, try again 5 seconds later. Give a popup box with a warning.
Changed: If a user request the client to stop, mark the connection as lost. On start, try to reconnect at once.
Changed: On a user switch the client is only started and stopped, if it was started by BT.
Fixed: History file .cvs2 isn't used. It should try cvs, cvs1,cvs2 but it did cvs,cvs1, cvs1.
Fixed: The toolbar operation wasn't always grayed out.

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TThrottle The way to control your CPU and GPU temperature.
BoincTasks The best view of BOINC.
My other activities

OK, got 1.22 running, but before...

Had an accidental powerplug uncoupling, the one between the UPS and the PC, and on restart found whilst on v1.20, me task history was wiped clean for all devices. Thought there were backups to restore, but these too were blank, so as a feature would like an option to do a manual history save with name of choice. Just in case.

Seeing the fixes noted with 1.22, there's something odd going on. The history file gets immediately copied upon BT launch and a new empty one activated. When exiting BT and copying the history back to .cvs, on restart of BT, again the history was emptied, and the content added to the previous history. Now after 2 restarts have a history_long_Computer-2.cvs file with 3x the same history in it, but the one showing in BT shows no history and the history_Computer-2.cvs shrunk back to 1kB. i.e. empty.

Hope I did not loose you on this, but it boils down to restoring of a old history file after a crash ends in a restore being immediately send off to archive and starting with a clean slate.

As for history, would love to see a column that prints the "end of job" efficiency achieved. Would make it real handy to know which jobs / sciences run best on which host.

-- SekeRob

OK, got 1.22 running, but before...
Thought there were backups to restore, but these too were blank, so as a feature would like an option to do a manual history save with name of choice. Just in case.

You can check the BoincTasks logging to see what happened. C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\eFMer\BoincTasks\log

I fixed one bug that failed to read copy 2, only did 0,1,1.

BT uses 3 copies 0,1,2. 2 is deleted 0->1, 1->2 and 0 is the new one.

What I've seen is that all cvs files are locked, so BT is unable to read back any of the 3 files. But that should show up in the logging.

V 1.22 can use 2 histories (default), one short one long.
After a user definable time the short history is moved to the long history, typically after 6 hours.

But I will add some sort of backup for a day or 2.
Instead of deleting copy 2 I may move it to an archive and remove the archive after 2 days.

What do you mean by "end of job" efficiency

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TThrottle The way to control your CPU and GPU temperature.
BoincTasks The best view of BOINC.
My other activities

EOJ Efficiency, is in effect what is seen in the tasks view during a running job as a CPU % being the CPU time as a fraction of the Elapsed time. Got one now that has an elapsed of 9:30 hours, CPU of 9:03, netting to 95:03% efficiency for the run so far.

As for the logs, there are 3.

1. BOINC Tasks Startup.log (There is 3 seemingly following the history copy mechanism)
2. 06-10-2011.log (each day a new one)
3. rules 06-10-2011.log (not every day)

Neither show any file copying type of activity. Noticed that after having a few finish, the history does not wipe these off [fresh] when stopping/restarting BT, so maybe it's with the long history transit that something goes wrong. Took an extra copy to merge them back when fixed.

Noticed that the systray icon is blinking red-white, whilst I have permanently suspended all GPU crunching. For CPU/GPU snooze maybe another color might help to make the distinction.

--//--

Think the penny dropped. In the BT prefs there's a field I'd not seen before 1.22 (never loaded 1.21) which defaults to 1 hour store away to long term archive. Copying the long to current history, it effective moved everything again into long term history.

--//--

1.22 October 2011
New: Long term history.
Changed: The menu: Report all completed tasks, shows the number of tasks that are completed.
Changed: If the history files can't be read, try again 5 seconds later. Give a popup box with a warning.
Changed: If a user request the client to stop, mark the connection as lost. On start, try to reconnect at once.
Changed: On a user switch the client is only started and stopped, if it was started by BT.
Fixed: History file .cvs2 isn't used. It should try cvs, cvs1,cvs2 but it did cvs,cvs1, cvs1.
Fixed: The toolbar operation wasn't always grayed out.

I don't like 1.22 Fred, 1.22 erased My History of all My reported work, I went back to 1.21 which does not do that. I don't know If this is a big or not, but I don't like 1.22 doing this at all.

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Play MULE, 42 is irrelevant

I don't like 1.22 Fred, 1.22 erased My History of all My reported work, I went back to 1.21 which does not do that. I don't know If this is a big or not, but I don't like 1.22 doing this at all.

I will set long term history to off as default, for the next release.
Extra -> BoincTasks settings -> History, Remove the check at "Move to long term history"

The long term history is way more efficient on computers with a lot of history.

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TThrottle The way to control your CPU and GPU temperature.
BoincTasks The best view of BOINC.
My other activities

A quick bug fix.

1.23 October 2011
New: Backup folder for the short/long history. BoincTasks\history\backup.
New: Days to the "Move to long term history", to allow a longer short term history.
Changed: "Move to long term history" is disabled by default.
Changed: Delete crash, log and history backup files at startup, after 14, 120 and 14 days.
Fixed: A crash on some computers related to the history list.

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TThrottle The way to control your CPU and GPU temperature.
BoincTasks The best view of BOINC.
My other activities

Noticed that the systray icon is blinking red-white, whilst I have permanently suspended all GPU crunching. For CPU/GPU snooze maybe another color might help to make the distinction.

Is red for CPU/GPU and orange for GPU snoozing.

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TThrottle The way to control your CPU and GPU temperature.
BoincTasks The best view of BOINC.
My other activities

Say Fred I've got a got a good question for You, what will happen when there are 12 gpus in one PC running Boinc? I'm up to 6 now which are numbered 0-5, Thought You'd like to know. Pics and some details are in this thread here.
This might pic be better to illustrate what I'm trying to get at.

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Play MULE, 42 is irrelevant

Oh and I noticed TThrottle 5.10 only goes to 6 gpus currently and I'm filling up all 6 slots. Will TThrottle be able to go farther?

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Play MULE, 42 is irrelevant

A quick bug fix.

1.23 October 2011
New: Backup folder for the short/long history. BoincTasks\history\backup.
New: Days to the "Move to long term history", to allow a longer short term history.
Changed: "Move to long term history" is disabled by default.
Changed: Delete crash, log and history backup files at startup, after 14, 120 and 14 days.
Fixed: A crash on some computers related to the history list.

Think by extending the option to archiving to match the period history viewable timespan, you're 99% there. Now I can opt for instance to keep 120 life, but then what happens if one chooses 365 days for the archive? Guess nothing is moved, just dropping off. If I may suggest, simply selecting yes/no archive [LTH] without a retention time option. If one than changes for instance from 120 days 'live' to 60 days 'live' have the program push those 60 days reduced [120-60] into LTH. Then a seamless connect of live+archive history would be ensured and anyone fumbling the order of changing the options [I've noticed the effect is instantaneous i.e. before OK], would not accidentally loose live or archive data. Mind you, the dated backup files allows to recoup, so nothing appears now to be lost then.

Cheers and thanks for an ever more feature rich program... the best by far managing multiple clients.

-- SekeRob

P.S. Real hard squinting revealed orange [I think] with the GPU's permanently suspended, but when snoozing a CPU on top, see no color change. The pop-up continues to show tasks running, the counter running OK and the tasks view for the snoozed client showing all CPU operation suspended. Maybe in the pop-up change the "Running: 2" to "Snoozed: 2"?

Oh and I noticed TThrottle 5.10 only goes to 6 gpus currently and I'm filling up all 6 slots. Will TThrottle be able to go farther?

No not at the moment, but if needed I can add more.

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TThrottle The way to control your CPU and GPU temperature.
BoincTasks The best view of BOINC.
My other activities

BT 1.23 is withdrawn, it can cause repeated crashes, please go back to V 1.21.

Or:

1) Make sure the "remove history after" is set high enough not to delete anything from long term history.
2) Remove the check at "Move to long term history after"

In case of problems:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\eFMer\BoincTasks\settings history_remove_days , change the value to current value +14

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TThrottle The way to control your CPU and GPU temperature.
BoincTasks The best view of BOINC.
My other activities