Posts by Ken Putnam

InfoMessage
1) Message boards : Projects : Orbit@Home Revival Imminent?
Message 62108
Posted 11 May 2015 by Ken Putnam
He doesn't even have the old "expected return" page up anymore

I'll keep checking back, periodically, but really don't expect this project to ever go live again, which is a shame, IMHO
2) Message boards : Projects : News on Project Outages
Message 59053
Posted 28 Dec 2014 by Ken Putnam
has been non-responsive for two days now
3) Message boards : Questions and problems : BOINC credit across projects not consistent?
Message 58978
Posted 25 Dec 2014 by Ken Putnam
Bitcoin may be the MOST ridiculous, but only by degree

I've been crunching since the SETI command line days, and joined Rosetta and Einstein in the 2009/2010 time frame

I joined Bitcoin, Asteroids, POEM, and Milky Way in June of this year, when I got a new box with a decent GPU

Take a look at my signature. SETI/Rosetta/Einstein have ALWAYS shared the largest resource share, but look where they rank, based on "credit"
4) Message boards : BOINC client : My Wish List
Message 58094
Posted 24 Nov 2014 by Ken Putnam
Thanks, Richard.

That appears to have done the trick.

Set those options, and restarted BOINC.

Now have one instance running (two more queued) with only 4 CPUs dedicated to each


If we ever meet, I owe you several drinks for your assistance over the last couple of weeks!!!
5) Message boards : BOINC client : My Wish List
Message 58085
Posted 23 Nov 2014 by Ken Putnam
It would be REALLY nice it you could add an option like


For MutliThreaded WUs, use XX% of processors


I've had problems where a project with VERY short deadlines download enough WUs that they immediately go into EDF mode, which excludes work on any other project until the backlog is cleared

With this option, I could for example limit MT WUs to 6 of my 8 processors, and let the Scheduler portion out the remaining 2
6) Message boards : Questions and problems : Multi-Threaded Apps
Message 56172
Posted 22 Sep 2014 by Ken Putnam
<app_config>
<app>
<name>Blender</name>
<avg_ncpus>4</avg_ncpus>
<max_concurrent>1</max_concurrent>
</app>
<app_version>
<app_name>Blender</app_name>
<plan_class>mt</plan_class>
<cmdline>--nthreads 4</cmdline>
</app_version>
</app_config>

Stupid board strips leading spaces - I tried to formatting it myself, but apparently just hosed things up

Thanks again for all your assistance


Still 100% of all processors <sigh>
7) Message boards : Questions and problems : Multi-Threaded Apps
Message 56170
Posted 22 Sep 2014 by Ken Putnam
here is the new one

<app_config>
<app>
<name>Blender</name>
<avg_ncpus>4</avg_ncpus>
<max_concurrent>1</max_concurrent>
<app_version>
<app_name>Blender</app_name>
<plan_class>mt</plan_class>
<cmdline>--nthreads 4</cmdline>
</app_version>
</app_config>

Blender (spelled that way in the client_state file) is still using 100% of all 8 processors and displays "(8 CPUs)" in the status field of BOINC Manager

(the anomaly I mentioned before appears to be that there is end of WU processing that does not use all the capacity of the processors that it has grabbed)
8) Message boards : Questions and problems : Multi-Threaded Apps
Message 56167
Posted 22 Sep 2014 by Ken Putnam
It is a quad core hyper threaded = 8 processors

I realized my mistake and changed the app_config to

<app_config>
<app>
<name>blender</name>
<avg_ncpus> 4</avg_ncpus>
</app_config>
[<app_version>
<app_name>BLENDER</app_name>
[<plan_class>mt</plan_class>]
[<cmdline>--nthreads 4</cmdline>]
</app_version>]


and it is now back to using all 8 processors


Does the app_name have to be the exact name of the executable?

Thanks again for your help


Update

Interestingly enough, tho it is using all 8 processors, they are each only being used at approx 50% ??
9) Message boards : Questions and problems : Multi-Threaded Apps
Message 56165
Posted 22 Sep 2014 by Ken Putnam

Set the same figure - number of cores/threads you want the app to use - in both <avg_ncpus> (controls scheduling the other cores) and after <cmdline>--nthreads (controls the behaviour of the MT app itself). That rather assumes that the particular app you're interested in follows the standard rules of behaviour, and I don't think many people have tested it yet.

I'd assume from the use of cmdline that the application behaviour will only change when a new task starts, or at least re-starts.



Thanks

Here is my app_config file

<app_config>
<app>
<name>blender</name>
<avg_ncpus> 4</avg_ncpus>
</app_config>
[<app_version>
<app_name>BLENDER</app_name>
[<plan_class>mt</plan_class>]
[<cmdline>--nthreads 4</cmdline>]
</app_version>]


Doesn't appeara to ahve any affect at all

The mt WU still uses all 8 CPUs
10) Message boards : Questions and problems : Multi-Threaded Apps
Message 56162
Posted 22 Sep 2014 by Ken Putnam
Is there an app_config operand that will tell a mt app to only use xx% or yy total processors, rather than allowing it to grab EVERY processor on a box


(BURP is another project with a mt app)

(and vLHC uses VBox)
11) Message boards : Questions and problems : Alternate Times
Message 45338
Posted 18 Aug 2012 by Ken Putnam
You could use Windows Task Scheduler to start BOINC and something like "boinccmd -quit" to stop it (again scheduled with Task Manager)
12) Message boards : Questions and problems : V7 "Work Requestor"
Message 45256
Posted 14 Aug 2012 by Ken Putnam
I absolutely HATE the v7 work requestor module (or whatever the proper name of the dang thing is)

I upgraded from v 6.12.34 to v7.0.28 in order to run Test4Theory (which doesn't play nice on my system, but that's another whole issue)

To my complaint:

Under the V6 BOINC manager, work from all of my projects downloaded in an understandable fashion All active projects downloaded so that most if not all had work on my system at the same time

Under v7, the fist project that downloads completely fills the work buffer (7.5 + 5 days). For example, Einstein just downloaded 6 WUs with an estimated 48hrs each. On my single processor hyper threaded CPU, that is 12 days of work. meanwhile at least two other Projects have work available, but of course won't download since my buffer is full

In v6, I would have gotten one or _maybe_ two WU from Einstein and one or two or ?? from the other two projects.

If I wanted to run one project at a time, I'd enable and disable projects when the mood hit me, but I just want BOINC to time slice between the projects I'm running, however many that may be

Since T4T doesn't play nice anyway, I'm seriously considering running the buffer dry and reverting to the v6 manager!
13) Message boards : Questions and problems : Help with Error Messages
Message 40564
Posted 6 Oct 2011 by Ken Putnam
Followup

I've downloaded and installed NISTime32 and am updating twice a day
(I like it because it tells you how much the clock is being reset)

I'm now down to an average of less than one of the messages a day, (From about 8 a day)

Thanks all
14) Message boards : Questions and problems : Help with Error Messages
Message 40489
Posted 30 Sep 2011 by Ken Putnam
OK

Thanks All!

I did check my Event Viewer and saw nothing about resetting the System Clock. Maybe I need to setup TimeSrv on my machine
15) Message boards : Questions and problems : Help with Error Messages
Message 40467
Posted 30 Sep 2011 by Ken Putnam
I have recently started getting a couple of error messages in the BOINC log

System clock was turned backwards; clearing timeouts

Project yyy | Task xxxx exited with zero status but no 'finished' file


I can find nothing pertaining to either of them. I have reset all three projects that were giving the second one, and they still throw that error periodically. As far as I can tell, all tasks are completing normally (except for a few random "computation errors"

Any help or explaination gratefully received
ken




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