I've seen this twice now on the same client.

I have BOINC installed as a service on a Win2003 server and using only one of its two cores to run R@H. It's set to run based-on-preferences which is set to 'when no user is active'. It thrashes. Second by second, it switches between

5/7/2006 5:04:02 PM|rosetta@home|Resuming result JUMP_ALLBARCODE05_1tul__468_10532_0 using rosetta version 507
5/7/2006 5:04:02 PM||Suspending computation and network activity - user is active
5/7/2006 5:04:02 PM|rosetta@home|Pausing result JUMP_ALLBARCODE05_1tul__468_10532_0 (left in memory)

over and over again. When I set it to 'run always' it runs fine. Plenty of RAM, etc. Only rarely is a user on the machine and that is via terminal services.

Two X (remove and reinstall) hasn't fixed it.

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Set up your general preferences under the Rosetta Project to resemble this:

Do work while computer is in use? yes

Save settings.

Open Boinc Manager, Projects tab, highlight the Rosetta project, press the Update button. Check in the Messages tab that it downloaded your new preferences correctly. Then put BOINC back on "Run based on preferences".

That should do it.

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Set up your general preferences under the Rosetta Project to resemble this:

Do work while computer is in use? yes

I don't want to do work while computer is in use.

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OK, but you do know that by setting BOINC to run always, it now runs whether the machine is in use, yes or no? You also know that the science applications running under BOINC are set to a very low priority, meaning that if anything else requests the CPU cycles, that it will get those?

Anyway, the trahsing could well be a side-effect of Rosetta. Have you asked on their forums if anyone seen something like it before?

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OK, but you do know that by setting BOINC to run always, it now runs whether the machine is in use, yes or no? You also know that the science applications running under BOINC are set to a very low priority, meaning that if anything else requests the CPU cycles, that it will get those?

Anyway, the trahsing could well be a side-effect of Rosetta. Have you asked on their forums if anyone seen something like it before?

Yes, I do know. Yes, I also know. And I read the R@H boards every day.

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David, does this happen all the time, or just sometimes? do these times correspond to any puter event? Task scheduler event, norton scans, etc?
have you tried leaving the task manager up and open to see what's using cpu time when this occurs?

It ran for a couple of weeks with no problems and then started. Since it started, it happens all the time. The HW is a 2.8GHz Xeon, 1G RAM, 2G swap, with no signs of any contention for resources. I can watch it in the taskmgr...the performance graph justs starts 'sawtoothing'. There're no scans going on or anything else that might show up in the process list. If I leave it alone and come back in 24 hours, it's still doing it and has not made any progress on the R@H. It started doing it around 5.01 (Rosetta) and is still doing it on 5.07. It may have something to do with a two-core Xeon (even though I'm only using one) on WinServer 2003. I'm running the same R@H on an 800MHz P4, WinServer 2003, and a 2Ghz P6 Win XP with no problems.

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I sent an email asking for help with this, hang on.

tony

I sent an email asking for help with this, hang on.

tony

Thanks. Since I used the Boinc Mgr to set it to 'run always', it's not thrashing. But, as I'm borrowing cycles from a server, I'd like it to return to 'Not while users are active', unlikely though that is.

Tomorrow.

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I sent an email asking for help with this, hang on.

tony

Thanks. Since I used the Boinc Mgr to set it to 'run always', it's not thrashing. But, as I'm borrowing cycles from a server, I'd like it to return to 'Not while users are active', unlikely though that is.

Tomorrow.

Which version of the client software are you using?

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----- Rom
BOINC Development Team, U.C. Berkeley
My Blog

Which version of the client software are you using?

5.2.13.0


Computer information
IP address Show IP address

Local Standard Time UTC -7 hours

Created 27 Apr 2006 17:48:25 UTC
Total Credit 2,894.52
Recent average credit 183.21
CPU type GenuineIntel
Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.80GHz
Number of CPUs 2
Operating System Microsoft Windows 2003
Standard Server Edition, Service Pack 1, (05.02.3790.00)
Memory 1023.49 MB
Cache 976.56 KB
Swap space 2472.79 MB
Total disk space 19.53 GB
Free Disk Space 13 GB
Measured floating point speed 1464.53 million ops/sec
Measured integer speed 2788.35 million ops/sec
Average upload rate Unknown
Average download rate Unknown
Average turnaround time 1.29 days
Maximum daily WU quota per CPU 100/day
Results 20
Number of times client has contacted server 66
Last time contacted server 9 May 2006 16:29:56 UTC
% of time BOINC client is running 99.9878 %
While BOINC running, % of time host has an Internet connection 100 %
While BOINC running, % of time work is allowed 96.0984 %
Average CPU efficiency 0.883737
Result duration correction factor 1.025137

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Are you using in a terminal server configuration?

If so, boinc manager would have to be running on each user account in order for the idle detection stuff to work correctly.

The system is deemed idle when no user has touched the keyboard or moved the mouse for a specified period of time. Windows doesn't expose a system wide keyboard/mouse activity timer without going kernel mode, only one per user.

So is each user running the BOINC Manager?

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----- Rom
BOINC Development Team, U.C. Berkeley
My Blog

Are you using in a terminal server configuration?

If so, boinc manager would have to be running on each user account in order for the idle detection stuff to work correctly.
...
So is each user running the BOINC Manager?

boinc.exe is running as a service (-daemon) and has my userid, not SYSTEM. The Rosetta application also has my userid. For 99%++ of the time, no users are logged into the system, not even myself. From my personal PC, I use boincview (preferred) or boincmgr.exe to check up once in a while. What alerted me the first time was one of my checkups told me that boinc/Rosetta has only been running .03% of the time. I signed on to the machine via terminal client and observed the thrashing behavior. Setting the run-mode to 'always' stopped it from thrashing. Setting it back to 'when no user is active' restarted it, etc. Stopped the service, restarted it, same behavior. Uninstalled, reinstalled, same behavior. The MS FIX (rebooting) is not an option.

email me at david_geiser@agilent.com if you wish.

dag

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