I started SETI@home back then in 1999 with quite a few computers, saw BOINC being set up then shortly after BOINC release uninstalled the whole until now.

I recently wanted to start again some tasks using BOINC, and I have to say that the whole has become ridiculously ineffective. To the point I uninstalled everything and won't devote any more time to this. This is just to say that if the project expects to gain more crunching power, things should be made *way* more straightforward to the user. It is no surprise to me that the whole platform is becoming less and less popular. Sorry for such a nonproductive post, but the idea back then in 1999 was so brilliant that I'm just ashamed to see how the whole has evolved, with conflicting projects: conflicting configurations, lots of manually maintained configuration files in several different directories, no GUI to edit required configuration settings, etc.

Just as an example, I started again beginning of August with two projects: Milkyway and climateprediction. Since then, I wasn't able to get a single work unit for climateprediction (besides the server issues). BOINC always reports either "not requesting tasks: don't need" or "not requesting tasks: project is not highest priority". I went through all configuration steps but no way to download a workunit: e.g. the priority for climateprediction is twice the priority of Milkyway, or even when Milkyway is turned off, with CPDN settings configured in order to fetch enough work to keep the computer busy long enough, a fast enough computer (i7 3770K + GTX 680), etc.

This is enough BOINC nonsense for me and I'm signing off from all this after 14 years. I feel sorry to see how the brilliant initial idea has turned into a sophisticated monstrous buggy thing.

Just as an example, I started again beginning of August with two projects: Milkyway and climateprediction. Since then, I wasn't able to get a single work unit for climateprediction (besides the server issues). BOINC always reports either "not requesting tasks: don't need" or "not requesting tasks: project is not highest priority". I went through all configuration steps but no way to download a workunit: e.g. the priority for climateprediction is twice the priority of Milkyway, or even when Milkyway is turned off, with CPDN settings configured in order to fetch enough work to keep the computer busy long enough, a fast enough computer (i7 3770K + GTX 680), etc.

This is enough BOINC nonsense for me and I'm signing off from all this after 14 years. I feel sorry to see how the brilliant initial idea has turned into a sophisticated monstrous buggy thing.

Those points have been made before for CPDN, but I think you won't have so much of a problem with the other projects available (though I have seen similar behavior, to a lesser extent on all of them).
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=8511

I think they worked hard to make BOINC as complicated as it is in order to accommodate everyone's needs (real or imagined). I agree it should not be over-engineered so much.

You need to install version 5.10.45 then. It's the last version that wasn't blighted by the work fetch and scheduler problems. For CPU projects it works as it should, but I doubt it does much good with GPU or VM projects.

Gives me plenty of projects to choose from, I never run dry of work, projects get a fair share rather than being blocked by others for obtuse reasons. I have to run 6.x.x for QCN and Radioactive one one machine though :(

Cheers,

Al.

I'm also getting a lot of "not requesting tasks: project is not highest priority", my question is where can you see (and hopefully edit) these priorities?

Whilst I had a couple of work units which themselves had high priority due to approaching deadlines I could understand this behaviour, but now they've finished I don't.

I'm also getting a lot of "not requesting tasks: project is not highest priority", my question is where can you see (and hopefully edit) these priorities?

Whilst I had a couple of work units which themselves had high priority due to approaching deadlines I could understand this behaviour, but now they've finished I don't.

You can see (but not edit) all the work fetch metrics by enabling the <work_fetch_debug> log flag in cc_config.xml.

For all questions like this, it's worth looking through client configuration to see if there's a suitable tool. [WFD] (as we call it for short) generates a lot of output very quickly, so you may wish to increase the default log file size. Details are in the same configuration documentation.

I'm also getting a lot of "not requesting tasks: project is not highest priority", my question is where can you see (and hopefully edit) these priorities?

When you're using Windows and the recommended BOINC version, open een command terminal and change your directory to your boinc data directory.
Enter 2 commands:

find "/master_url" client_state.xml <Enter>

E.g. output:
<master_url>http://boinc.fzk.de/poem/</master_url>
<master_url>http://boincsimap.org/boincsimap/</master_url>
<master_url>http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/</master_url>
<master_url>http://pogs.theskynet.org/pogs/</master_url>
<master_url>http://qmcathome.org/</master_url>
<master_url>http://svahesrv2.bioquant.uni-heidelberg.de/correlizer/</master_url>
<master_url>http://www.primegrid.com/</master_url>
<master_url>http://www.rechenkraft.net/yoyo/</master_url>
<master_url>http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/</master_url>

find "</rec>" client_state.xml <Enter>

E.g. output:
<rec>83.001954</rec>
<rec>600.936335</rec>
<rec>6.321996</rec>
<rec>1.755316</rec>
<rec>16.846063</rec>
<rec>9.625576</rec>
<rec>451.535050</rec>
<rec>5.560163</rec>
<rec>99.535427</rec>

In this example pogs has the lowest rec, that means the highest priority to run or to ask new work.

Thanks for that. My client_state.xml snippets are as follows:

C:\ProgramData\BOINC>find "</rec>" client_state.xml

---------- CLIENT_STATE.XML
    <rec>809.820495</rec>
    <rec>14108.543545</rec>
    <rec>3349.302859</rec>
    <rec>4788.753401</rec>
    <rec>427.391411</rec>

C:\ProgramData\BOINC>find "/master_url" client_state.xml

---------- CLIENT_STATE.XML
    <master_url>http://climateprediction.net/</master_url>
    <master_url>http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/</master_url>
    <master_url>http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/</master_url>
    <master_url>http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/</master_url>
    <master_url>http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/</master_url>

So world community grid should have the highest priority, but my Event log says:

27/08/2013 20:08:31 | World Community Grid | update requested by user
27/08/2013 20:08:34 | World Community Grid | Sending scheduler request: Requested by user.
27/08/2013 20:08:34 | World Community Grid | Not requesting tasks: project is not highest priority
27/08/2013 20:08:36 | World Community Grid | Scheduler request completed

Can anyone shed some light? Up until recently climate prediction was running behind on a few work units so they ran with the highest priority, but they've now either finished or are running on time and have dropped their high priority status.

So what Boinc version is this on?

Claggy

Overnight World community grid and Einstein have now got new work so it seems to have sorted itself out eventually.

This all on latest stable version 7.0.64