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Message boards :
Questions and problems :
How can I find out whether the graphic card is being used for computation?
(Message 59192)
Posted 31 Dec 2014 by Jazzop Post: In Boinc Manager just look at the application name, if it says CAL, Cuda, OpenCL with Nvidia or ATI/AMD or Intel mentioned then it is a GPU task, Wouldn't it also be correct to say: If your computer has downloaded GPU tasks, then you have a BOINCable GPU? The projects won't send out tasks to machines that can't crunch them. |
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Message boards :
BOINC Manager :
Suggestions For New Or Updated Features
(Message 59168)
Posted 31 Dec 2014 by Jazzop Post: A "Go into suspend" mode that complete the current running tasks, but does not start any new tasks after that. This sounds similar to my proposal for a "Run BOINC dry" mode, which would be a simple GUI selection that tells BOINC to stop obtaining new tasks and exhaust all tasks with non-zero progress. It's a common phenomenon that people who have planned down-time on their machines have to babysit BOINC and make a lot of setting changes which have to be undone after the machine is back online. Other proposals: 1. Put the event log back as a tabbed item instead of a separate window. I have hated this ever since it was deprecated a couple of years ago. The only justification I recall hearing was that it made BOINC less "scary" for casual users. Hogwash. 2. Allow the user to set a different time period for the snooze function. Every antivirus program has this simple option; it is not rocket surgery. A simple set of predefined intervals would suffice: e.g., 0.5, 1, & 2 hours. 3. For computers with infrequent internet access: a setting that tells BOINC only to request tasks with deadlines greater than some number of days. I used to run BOINC on a bunch of lab computers that were on a network that conserved total throughput/bandwidth by kicking off computers that didn't access the WWW for 2-3 hours. Every Friday I would have to manually abort short-deadline tasks that I knew would not be able to report completion until Monday and thus be overdue. (Yes, I was authorized to run BOINC on the machines, I just didn't have control over the internet policies.) I tried using "keep alive" self-refreshing webpages, but they didn't always work. 4. [Tricky to design, I admit; but I guy can dream] Along the lines of exclusive applications, how about "exclusive websites" within a browser application? It would be lovely to have BOINC automatically snooze and awaken around websites like Netflix, Hulu, etc. I don't want it to snooze when I'm browsing low-bandwidth sites like Craigslist, but if I list the browser under exclusive apps, that's what I get currently. |
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Message boards :
Questions and problems :
Task ____ exited with zero status but no 'finished' file
(Message 59167)
Posted 31 Dec 2014 by Jazzop Post: I believe the problem with my most offending machine had to do with the wimpy onboard VGA adapter (a crummy ASPEED 2-D chip on this server mobo) being overwhelmed and stealing other system resources. I just installed a GTX 750Ti card and the problems went away. I should have done this years ago, but the last time I tried a video card it conflicted with my RAID adapter and the computer wouldn't boot; so I had been a little gun-shy for too long. This still doesn't explain why the other machines had a surge in the same error, but they have all settled down as well. The only recent change was a major overhaul/resync of my BAM settings and changing email addresses & passwords on all my project accounts. Oh well... |
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Message boards :
Questions and problems :
how use 2 threads of a 1-core multi-thread processor?
(Message 59165)
Posted 31 Dec 2014 by Jazzop Post: Too many variables; please help narrow the problem down: 1. Look at Tools-->Computing Preferences-->Processor Usage tab. What does it say near the bottom after "On multiprocessor systems, use at most _____%..."? Remember, BOINC generally treats hyperthreads transparently as CPUs (I think you can get clever in the back-end settings and distinguish physical from virtual CPUs, but that's for later discussion.) 2. Are you using a web-based account manager like BAM? There might be a discrepancy between your local preferences and web-based settings. 3. Are you running a project that uses multiple threads for one task? (e.g., Milkyway@Home) Look at the running task and see if the application name has "(mt)" at the end. Those tasks will only show up as a single running task while actually using all available cores/CPUs. 4. There could be other combinations of settings that might be forcing BOINC to throttle back based on your system load. There are other possibilities that a more knowledgeable person can help you tease out, but I thought I'd try to make a rough stab at it first so that the resident experts can take a breather. |
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Message boards :
Questions and problems :
Task ____ exited with zero status but no 'finished' file
(Message 59040)
Posted 28 Dec 2014 by Jazzop Post: The machine with the most errors is used as a media fileserver along with some general web browsing and document management. I usually snooze or exit BOINC when I play media because it is too jittery otherwise. Is the failure of the time stamp function likely to be associated with bottlenecking of disk access? If so, would adjusting the checkpoint interval in my BOINC preferences help? I currently have it set to 20s. |
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Message boards :
Questions and problems :
Task ____ exited with zero status but no 'finished' file
(Message 58971)
Posted 24 Dec 2014 by Jazzop Post: I do not have indexing turned on (i.e., Windows Search is disabled). I do not use any antivirus software other than Windows Defender, and it is not set to run any automatic scans. I only run a manual scan a couple of times a year. It appears that this problem is much more significant on my Server 2012R2 machine. It is happening with about 10% of all tasks, across all projects. Is there a potential connection to the fact that these errors spiked a couple of days ago after I reconfigured my preferences on BOINCstats, attached/detatched from several projects, and cleared all the local computing preferences on all my hosts? |
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Message boards :
Questions and problems :
Task ____ exited with zero status but no 'finished' file
(Message 58896)
Posted 23 Dec 2014 by Jazzop Post: I am getting this message from multiple projects, that's why I am asking it here and not on an individual project forum. It has happened a lot in the past few days after I opened up my machines to other projects now that SIMAP is dead. The projects so far include: 23-Dec-14 00:27:58 | climateprediction.net | Task hadam3p_eu_h5ur_2013_1_008861412_1 exited with zero status but no 'finished' file 23-Dec-14 00:14:29 | WUProp@Home | Task wu_v4_1419226725_17366_0 exited with zero status but no 'finished' file 22-Dec-14 22:32:46 | Einstein@Home | Task LATeah0045E_80.0_420_-2.97e-10_2 exited with zero status but no 'finished' file 22-Dec-14 01:38:17 | EDGeS@Home | Task 7bead5f8-1cfa-468f-9b62-e7137cf7fddd_612b9788-2781-4010-8e81-fa19752ad9e7_32d9ba32-48ce-4218-bee7-548f26db5174_0 exited with zero status but no 'finished' file 21-Dec-14 22:32:18 | rosetta@home | Task tj_12_16_frag2012_v2_X_64_h17_BBGB_19_DDD_wD_abinitio_SAVE_ALL_OUT_232271_609_0 exited with zero status but no 'finished' file I am using BOINC v7.4.27 on all machines. OSes include Win7x32, Win7x64, Win2008R2, Win2012R2. |
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Message boards :
Questions and problems :
BOINC website is displaying in multiple languages at the same time
(Message 57661)
Posted 16 Nov 2014 by Jazzop Post: Here's an example from the homepage: Gebruik de ongebruikte tijd van je computer (Windows, Mac, Linux of Android) om ziektes te genezen, de opwarming van de aarde te onderzoeken en voor andere wetenschappelijk projecten. Het is veilig en makkelijk: I'm seeing English, Spanish, and Dutch intermixed throughout the site. My system language is set to English, although I have the others available as keyboard maps and secondary display languages (since I can speak them). I suspect this has something to do with a conflict between your website's attempt to guess my language and my desire for location-anonymity. |
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Message boards :
Questions and problems :
boincmgr.exe crashes randomly on Server 2012R2
(Message 55303)
Posted 9 Aug 2014 by Jazzop Post: I frequently find the BOINC manager has crashed on my machine, although the core program and project tasks are still running. Relaunching boincmgr.exe seems to return to business as usual. But I don't like the idea of applications crashing, no matter how harmlessly. The OS event log shows nothing. Any clues? Windows Server 2012R2 (running as a workstation), BOINC 7.2.42 |
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Message boards :
Questions and problems :
Windows Server 2012R2 issues
(Message 51911)
Posted 5 Jan 2014 by Jazzop Post: Here's another problem to add to the list: Every time I right-click on the BOINC tray icon to snooze, it crashes BOINC and the Windows desktop manager. When I say it crashes BOINC, this includes all workunits, boinc.exe, and boincmgr.exe. Curiously, I can't find boinctray.exe even when BOINC is running normally. Perhaps this process is not used with the Win8/2012 GUI? I noticed its absence because, from past experience, any time BOINC would crash/die/exit normally, boinctray.exe would always stay alive in the running processes. EDIT: Why is someone else's signature graphic in my post? |
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Message boards :
Questions and problems :
Windows Server 2012R2 issues
(Message 51889)
Posted 4 Jan 2014 by Jazzop Post: I just upgraded (clean install, actually) from 2008R2 to 2012R2 after discovering that 2k8 doesn't like native 4k HDDs. I reinstalled BOINC (7.2.33) and have had some issues. 1. VirtualBox 4.2.16 won't install at all. When I launch the combined BOINC/Vbox installer, I get a dialog box that says "BOINC optionally uses [*]. Would you like to install it now?", where [*] represents a long set of Chinese characters, ranging from approx. 250 to 1000 characters. The number of characters appearing is different each time I relaunch the installer. I assume that the dialog box is asking me about installing VirtualBox, so I click "Yes", and it indeed attempts to install Vbox. The install fails and moves on to installing BOINC, which is successful. I do not have Hyper-V activated, but I do have virtualization (VT-x & VT-d) enabled in the BIOS. The server has no roles/features enabled yet other than storage services and desktop experience. The event log shows the following error: Faulting application name: MsiExec.exe, version: 5.0.9600.16384, time stamp: 0x5215e4b5 2. When I allow BOINC to run, using the preferences set in my BAM account, it frequently causes my desktop to "freeze", which is to say that the taskbar, start menu, and any icons on the desktop are unresponsive. I lose right-click functionality as well, although the mouse pointer moves freely. The only thing I can do to regain control of the GUI is to ctrl-alt-del to pull up the task manager and kill BOINC. The machine has no suitable GPUs that BOINC could even recognize or access, and GPU computing is disabled for this machine in the BOINC settings. Nothing is different about my hardware or the BOINC settings from when it was running fine under 2008R2; I'm simply using 2012R2 now. I am a total virgin when it comes to Server 2012 or Windows 8. I've never even touched a computer running Windows 8 before (this GUI is making me want to vomit). So there may be some new "features" that I am unaware of. Questions: 1. Can anyone give some insight into the two problems above? 2. Does anyone have advice for running BOINC under Server 2012R2 to improve performance and/or mitigate against future problems? 3. I will expand this server's roles to include Exchange Server 2013 and possibly a domain controller. I know there are some funny things about BOINC and domain controllers, which I will learn about when I get ready to do it, but should I be aware of anything else as I activate more roles & features? |
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Message boards :
GPUs :
Choosing GPU mostly for BOINC but with the occasional film
(Message 48832)
Posted 27 Apr 2013 by Jazzop Post: Since you don't say what you price range is, in actual numbers, it's still difficult to give advice. Even then, I may like AMD, you may like Nvidia, you have to choose what you want. All of the above are DirectX 11 these days. Well, ASUS uses 2D onboard graphics for their server boards; so I assure you, they are still out there. I have a Z8PE-D12X as the foundation for my system. I tried adding a video card a couple of years ago, but it conflicted with my SAS array, so I gave up. I am asking here because I want information for a very specific use-case. Generic web pages comparing GPUs are really not very helpful because they take into account gaming performance and such. And since I know nothing about graphics rendering, I can't really compare the technical specs on my own without devoting a bunch of time that I don't currently have to learning the engineering background. My price range is between $200-500. If that's too vague for you, then I'm sorry. |
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33)
Message boards :
GPUs :
Choosing GPU mostly for BOINC but with the occasional film
(Message 48820)
Posted 25 Apr 2013 by Jazzop Post: Really? No one has any advice for me? I'm relatively GPU-ignorant because my typical computer use cases are much more dependent on I/O throughput and CPU/memory bottlenecks. I have an application I need to run that requires DirectX capability not present in my onboard graphics. But other than this application and my desire to watch an occasional movie, the rest of the GPU cycles will be dedicated to BOINCing. I need help filtering through the gaming-related nonsense in order to determine what features on a whiz-bang graphics card will actually be relevant to BOINC projects. Since I'm pretty sure I will go with an nVidia product, how about some help comparing Quadro to GTX-series cards? The CUDA GPU listing has a "compute capability" number for each product, but what is that based on? Is that a precise enough metric to simply buy the card with the highest "compute capability" that is in my price range? |
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34)
Message boards :
GPUs :
Choosing GPU mostly for BOINC but with the occasional film
(Message 48653)
Posted 17 Apr 2013 by Jazzop Post: I need a GPU because my onboard video (Aspeed AST2050) is too crappy to watch movies in 1080p. But that's the only non-BOINC use I will get out of it, so I imagine that I should find something with the best GPU computing power and as long as it has an HDMI out, it will probably do the trick, right? I remember when the only choice for GPU computing was nVidia products, but now that ATI GPUs are supported, the decision is more difficult. Personally, I never really liked ATI stuff because their control software always seemed chintzy. What GPUs would you recommend for maximum BOINCing? Here's my system: ASUS Z8PE-D12X w/ dual Xeon E5520 (3 PCIe 2.0 x16 slots free) 12GB ECC RDIMMs Windows Server 2008R2 Vizio ES370VL LCD HDTV used as monitor |
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Message boards :
Questions and problems :
[error] No scheduler URLs found in master file
(Message 44996)
Posted 20 Jul 2012 by Jazzop Post: Sounds like a permissions problem. From master_cbl-boinc-server2.cs.technion.ac.il_superlinkattechnion.xml : Unable to connect to database - please try again later Error: 2013Lost connection to MySQL server during query This is the complete contents of the file. How are you running BOINC? As a service, or not?As a service, with protected execution When do you get these errors, running it as administrator or as another user?administrator Are all those users allowed to control BOINC?Yes Are all those users allowed to write to the BOINC Data directory? Only boinc_admins and Administrators can write to the directory |
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36)
Message boards :
Questions and problems :
[error] No scheduler URLs found in master file
(Message 44978)
Posted 20 Jul 2012 by Jazzop Post: I am posting this here because I get this error for multiple projects. It began after upgrading from ver. 6.x to 7.0.28, running on a Win Server 2008R2 machine. Any thoughts? |
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37)
Message boards :
Questions and problems :
BOINIC crashing my system?
(Message 40841)
Posted 25 Oct 2011 by Jazzop Post: Perhaps the keyboard buffer is overflowing from his sticky "I" key.... |
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38)
Message boards :
Questions and problems :
Change location of data directory?
(Message 35750)
Posted 17 Nov 2010 by Jazzop Post: How do I tell BOINC to use a new physical disk drive as its data directory? Must I reinstall BOINC to do this? Or can I just move the BOINC folder and change a simple line of code somewhere? |
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39)
Message boards :
Projects :
Which projects have >2 week WU deadlines?
(Message 33591)
Posted 29 Jun 2010 by Jazzop Post: I'm having a problem with timing out on WU deadlines because of an intermittent internet connection. I basically have no connectivity unless I am actively using the machine. (I am fairly sure why this is, but I am not able to address it at the moment). The only solution available to me right now is only to accept WUs that will not expire before the next time I am sitting in front of the machine. Since I'm taking a 2-week vacation tomorrow, I need to stock up on WUs from those projects with generous expiration dates. CPDN is the obvious candidate. Others that seem to qualify: SETI SZTAKI Einstein QMC RCN Anything else I am overlooking? |
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40)
Message boards :
Questions and problems :
Message received - 'Suspending Computation-CPU usage is too high
(Message 32031)
Posted 8 Apr 2010 by Jazzop Post: I'm with you, man. I think this new "feature" is absolutely stupid. |
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