Posts by MikeMarsUK

21) Message boards : BOINC client : Problem with cpu use on HyperThreading & multicore app (Message 16890)
Posted 26 Apr 2008 by MikeMarsUK
Post:

You could (manually) set the use-max-num-of-CPUs. Note that this doesn't vary according to idle/busy.

It is really the operating system's job to deal with low-priority jobs appropriately since a user-level app shouldn't need to be responsible for knowing what type of multiprocessing is happening.
22) Message boards : BOINC client : DLL Initialization errors on Vista 64 (Message 16816)
Posted 24 Apr 2008 by MikeMarsUK
Post:

I think one has been put into V6.
23) Message boards : BOINC client : can't download new work units (Message 16806)
Posted 23 Apr 2008 by MikeMarsUK
Post:
...
I believe his suggestion was to modify the server too, to allow a "do you have any work?" request.
...



If the semantics are adjusted slightly to "Has any work been given out for this platform recently", then it could be cached by Apache and regenerated every hour or so. It isn't necessary to know if there is actually any work available right at this instant, just to know whether work was generally available or not.

So potentially the database hit would be one query per hour per platform, regardless of how many clients are connected to the project. No need to authenticate clients, or even to go anywhere near the DB except for these hourly refreshes. Such is the power of mod_proxy :-) (or alternatively mod_cache, mod_file_cache, etc.).
24) Message boards : BOINC client : can't download new work units (Message 16754)
Posted 20 Apr 2008 by MikeMarsUK
Post:
...
BOINC provides no way to "poll" a project like that. The only way for the client to know if a project has work, is by requesting work.


The WCG project polls back every week, I don't know what mechanism they use ... (there are no workunits from WCG on my computer, and it is set to 'no more work').
25) Message boards : BOINC client : can't download new work units (Message 16750)
Posted 20 Apr 2008 by MikeMarsUK
Post:
...
I would be really upset if the following happened:

S@H does not have work because of a Tuesday outage.
CPDN downloads a task and instantly goes into EDF for a year.
The LTD does not change because S@H was out of work during the last contact. This is NOT reflecting my resource allocation at all.


But if, for example, the Boinc client polled the other project weekly (in the same way WCG does), and each time it is out of work, then I think it would work quite well. There are a number of projects now which have been out of work for months or even over a year, and they're building up an incredible positive balance (which to my mind is just as bad as your example).
26) Message boards : BOINC Manager : screensaver not working after cpu upgrade (Message 16638)
Posted 13 Apr 2008 by MikeMarsUK
Post:

OK, that makes sense :-) Thanks.
27) Message boards : BOINC client : On my MacBook Pro SETI will not stop when I restart or shutdown (Message 16634)
Posted 13 Apr 2008 by MikeMarsUK
Post:

By latest version of Boinc, do you mean 6.1.14 or 5.10.45?

6.1.14 is an alpha test version and isn't intended for normal use.

If 5.10.45, can you tell if the boinc.exe process is running (that's the bit which runs in the background and does all the work, not the boinc manager).
28) Message boards : BOINC Manager : screensaver not working after cpu upgrade (Message 16633)
Posted 13 Apr 2008 by MikeMarsUK
Post:

That sounds like a bug - Ageless, is it a known issue?
29) Message boards : BOINC Manager : Turned off Fast User Switching, Broke Screensaver (XP) (Message 16632)
Posted 13 Apr 2008 by MikeMarsUK
Post:

Store an MPEG of the 'show graphics' screen, then run that as your screensaver :-) (OK, so that's cheating, but who'd notice? :-) )
30) Message boards : BOINC Manager : screensaver not working after cpu upgrade (Message 16604)
Posted 11 Apr 2008 by MikeMarsUK
Post:

If you change the screensaver FROM Boinc to blank, does it work better? (i.e., do you get control back?) The screensaver portion of Boinc does no scientific work, and you can show the same thing via 'show graphics' in any case.
31) Message boards : BOINC Manager : Problem with BOINC Manager 6.1.12 (Message 16490)
Posted 6 Apr 2008 by MikeMarsUK
Post:

Hi,

I'd recommend that you revert to 5.10.45 (just copy back your backup of the original installation). The 6.1.x version is for testing only, and is not recommended for use.
32) Message boards : BOINC client : BOINC Communication Bandwidth Question (Message 16355)
Posted 2 Apr 2008 by MikeMarsUK
Post:

Rosetta has an option to set the length of their workunits. Effectively this allows you to shrink the bandwidth needed. So if you set the option so that you get 24 hour workunits, you'll only need to download two per day rather than eight per day (assuming you have a dual core).


33) Message boards : BOINC client : Benchmarking bug - indefinite suspension of computing (Message 16326)
Posted 1 Apr 2008 by MikeMarsUK
Post:
...
But while - or preferably before - we discuss all these arcana, there's a bug to be fixed.
...


But that's exactly what we were talking about. If the time checking used in this benchmark processing used the offset+systemclock, rather than just system-clock on it's own, then the bug would be solved.


IF <weird time detected>
Update offset from project NTP server
SUSPEND computing for benchmarking
WAIT should now work since the system can work out the correct time from clock+offset
START <floating point benchmark>


It'd be a significant design change, and everywhere which referred to time would need to refer to the adjusted time instead.

If the benchmark bug was fixed in isolation, you'd then get the remaining problems which are just as bad - the DCF goes haywire, and processing gets suspended for a month or whatever, which we've seen several times before with older versions. The offset would solve these other bugs simultaneously.
34) Message boards : BOINC client : Benchmarking bug - indefinite suspension of computing (Message 16279)
Posted 1 Apr 2008 by MikeMarsUK
Post:

Basically your suggestion is:

* Store a time-offset for each project in client_state.xml (i.e., offset needed from system time to match project time)

* Periodically, and also whenever the system clock changes signficantly, Update the offset from a project ntp server.

35) Message boards : BOINC Manager : XP shutdown problems with BOINC 5.4.9 (Message 16146)
Posted 30 Mar 2008 by MikeMarsUK
Post:
5.10.45 has not given me any shutddown issues at allnot on XP or Vista, nor previous versions and started off with the recommended 5.4.13 on XP 2 years ago.

As for Vista here's the message: It, 5.10.35 and up is NOT causing any shutdown issues nor startup damage to work units for me and many. Go and sayeth it forth.


5.10.45 doesn't stop 0x40001001 errors from CPDN tasks, and no doubt there are others from other projects (as far as I know with the current design it'll only be able to ignore errors which the Boinc core client knows about). If there are errors caused by killing the science app which boinc doesn't know about then a Vista shutdown will still be terminal.

I did suggest ignoring *all* errors after a shutdown request is received, but I don't think that's how it works currently.
36) Message boards : BOINC Manager : XP shutdown problems with BOINC 5.4.9 (Message 16130)
Posted 30 Mar 2008 by MikeMarsUK
Post:

Firstly I'd recommend not running the screensaver (change screensaver to 'blank', and then try using the 'show graphics' instead when you want to see how projects are doing).

Secondly I'd suggest right-clicking on the Boinc icon and selecting 'exit' just prior to shutting down XP. While Vista is the most common source of problems with Boinc at shutdown, a small number of XP installations seem to also have trouble at shutdown.
37) Message boards : BOINC client : Bug Report: improper disk quota handling (Message 16074)
Posted 25 Mar 2008 by MikeMarsUK
Post:

What is the total space on your disk used by anything? (i.e., do the operating system, other applications, media files, plus boinc exceed 16GB?).

38) Message boards : BOINC client : STD and LTD go both to zero (Message 16073)
Posted 25 Mar 2008 by MikeMarsUK
Post:

Should the BAM resource page validate the figures to ensure they're > 0 ? (if they don't already - I don't use BAM so I don't know).

39) Message boards : BOINC Manager : no graphics after upgrade to 5.10.45 on Win2K server (Message 16043)
Posted 23 Mar 2008 by MikeMarsUK
Post:

The screensaver password has never worked reliably on all machines, there are some machines where it has worked on particular versions, and other machines where the same versions don't work. Try turning off the screensaver (set to 'blank' instead). It does nothing useful except wasting CPU time which the Boinc science applications could have been using instead.
40) Message boards : BOINC Manager : Graphical Linux Client alternating between 2 radio buttons without user interaction (Message 15841)
Posted 12 Mar 2008 by MikeMarsUK
Post:

I've seen this behaviour when two managers were controlling a single client (i.e., one local and one remote). One keeps telling the core client to suspend, and one to resume.


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