On the subject of "Force Task", could it be implemented to operate on only one task. So that once that chosen task has completed everything returns to normal.

I see it as;
select task.
click Force button,
Force button is now greyed out for other tasks, but can be used to un-force the selected task.
task finishes,
BOINC returns to normal operation and Force button is free to be used for another task.

Of course if you really wanted to get complicated then it could be expanded to one "Force"/cpu.

Andy

edit] I would probably want to see the "Force" button greyed out if BOINC was in EDF. [/edit

During the day when I need part or all of my system back if I don't very carefully turn off new work requests AND THEN suspend the projects it causes more work to come down and the over commit happens etc..

As there seems not to be a lot of interest for the feature so far and iot doesn't look like its going to happen I'm trying to figure it out.

If you crunch a lot of projects it can be confusing and a nuisance. One very simple yet very effective solution... write scripts that automate turning new work requests on/off. They would call boinccmd.exe with the --project url op args. Suppose you crunch LHC and ABC. The script to turn off new work would be like:

boinccmd --host localhost --passwd <password> --project http://abcathome.com/ nomorework
boinccmd --host localhost --passwd <password> --project http://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome nomorework

The turn work on script would be like:

boinccmd --host localhost --passwd <password> --project http://abcathome.com/ allowmorework
boinccmd --host localhost --passwd <password> --project http://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome allowmorework

If you need more details on making the scripts work then may I suggest starting a new thread on that matter rather than cluttering this thread.

"Force" Task.

Equivalent to "Resume" suspended tasks, tasks in state "Waiting to run" should be able to be "forced" to continue. Reason: almost finished work units can be finished faster when the user tells. My workaround so far: suspending all other running tasks until the specific task continues - and when it's finished resuming the suspended tasks. But this requires the user to resume the other tasks. A single function "Force" would do this without any further intervention.

I would like to see this too. However I am hesitant to admit it since it would likely take the title for most abused test option. It would be useful to force a specific project or task to run to verify that some new feature is working or a bug has been squished. Suspending projects is more trouble than it is worth most of the time since it usually results in excess work from a project that you were not expecting.

The way I interpreted the rules in 5.8 and up was that even suspended work was counted towards the buffer to stop over committing the overall client. Tested this several times and absolute no additional work was being pulled from any active project.

I downloaded and installed Tortoise. "Import" command required a password. Maybe that's the wrong command to use. I started browsing. Can do that! I'll take a hard look at the code and see if I can locate the right place for an "opportunity" in the cracks around my other work. I primarily code in COBOL for a living but I can work in C as well. I'm just not nearly as experienced in it and I'm real busy so it will be slow going. I'll get back to you. Thank you for your responses.

Ty

You'll want to right click on a new directory (I called mine BOINC Source) and choose SVN Update, not import from that popout menu. Then put in the URL.

I just created a clean directory on a different partition and it works fine.

Assuming Windows of course...

Thanks Kathryn
I'll give it a try in a bit. BTW we celebrate Eore's Birthday in here in Austin every year.

Let me know if it doesn't work for you.


I lived in Austin for several years while I was in grad school. I think I went one year while I was there.

The last parameter in the config file isn't parsing. Don't know how to make it happy. <work_request_factor>1</work_request_factor>
I'm real interested in that one obviously.

Ty

I think that parameter was supplanted by: Maintain enough work for an additional
(Requires 5.10+ client under Network in General Preferences.

It has been working for me since I updated to 5.10.8.

I installed 5.10.7 several days ago. I hope it wasn't supplanted. I have have "maintain" set to zero. I don't want any additional work. Thanks for responding.

But that's exactly what that flag did. It allowed extra caching of work. So I'm a bit confused why you want that rather than the current web/local version.

I downloaded and installed Tortoise. "Import" command required a password. Maybe that's the wrong command to use. I started browsing. Can do that! I'll take a hard look at the code and see if I can locate the right place for an "opportunity" in the cracks around my other work. I primarily code in COBOL for a living but I can work in C as well. I'm just not nearly as experienced in it and I'm real busy so it will be slow going. I'll get back to you. Thank you for your responses.

Ty

You'll want to right click on a new directory (I called mine BOINC Source) and choose SVN Update, not import from that popout menu. Then put in the URL.

I just created a clean directory on a different partition and it works fine.

Assuming Windows of course...

You can download the source code with Tortoise SVN. The link to use in there is http://boinc.berkeley.edu/svn/trunk/boinc

Compiling it under Windows will need a (usually registered) compiler though. Look at Intel compilers.

I decided to take a look at this config file. Search the entire C: drive. Can't find one. Is this part of a source release or something only available in a Linux environment, or is it an optional override file I don't have?

The core client configuration file is something you have to make your self.
See How do I configure my client using the cc_config.xml file? for more information.

What sort of development environment do I need to change the BOINC source to do what I want myself? I hate brick walls.

Software prerequisites (Unix/Linux) and the source code.

2. For this question, what I'm asking is, if I have 4 cores (which I do) and I lie and say I have 6 will it open and run 6 tasks? What are the ramifications?

You can lie and tell Boinc you have any arbitrary number of CPUs using the <ncpus> tag in the cc_config.xml ovverride file. It has sense for testing purposes, but will cause unnecessary context switches and thrashing the CPU cache (because more applications will share less cores).

I was personally doing this while crunching Malaria WUs - they were (or still are?) prone to stop crunching (or not being preempted, or not starting to consume CPU time after being selected) and effectively causing the CPU to sit idle until someone (me) will notice it. Forcing Boinc scheduler to behave as with 2 CPUs caused to run apps much less effectively, but in case of such acident the other app could run using he whole CPU.

Peter

I appreciate your perspective on this Peter. Thanks for responding.

2. For this question, what I'm asking is, if I have 4 cores (which I do) and I lie and say I have 6 will it open and run 6 tasks? What are the ramifications?

You can lie and tell Boinc you have any arbitrary number of CPUs using the <ncpus> tag in the cc_config.xml ovverride file. It has sense for testing purposes, but will cause unnecessary context switches and thrashing the CPU cache (because more applications will share less cores).

I was personally doing this while crunching Malaria WUs - they were (or still are?) prone to stop crunching (or not being preempted, or not starting to consume CPU time after being selected) and effectively causing the CPU to sit idle until someone (me) will notice it. Forcing Boinc scheduler to behave as with 2 CPUs caused to run apps much less effectively, but in case of such acident the other app could run using he whole CPU.

Peter

1. No, that isn't possible.
BOINC will detect what operating system you are using and make a hostID on the project with the CPU, amount of RAM and that OS.
Signing up with the same computer but a different OS, will make a new hostID.

So you can't run results from the other hostID. Sorry.

2. No.

BOINC will ask the OS how many CPUs there are. Real or virtual ones (think hyperthreading CPUs). And then, even if you fill in 14, but only have 4 CPUs, BOINC will use the maximum amount of CPUs that you truly have: 4.

3. There isn't a way for you to set it. The maximum amount of results that you can download per CPU, per 24 hours, is set by the project. You can check up on that in your preferences, under the list of your computers, click on the hostID number and you'll see a mention of "Maximum daily WU quota per CPU".

If that isn't enough for your computer to keep busy with, you can ask in the project's forums if the daily quota can go up.

I have some questions back and some answers.

1. Are you using the 64bit BOINC client, or the 32bit BOINC client?
If the 64bit BOINC client, I think you can point to the same BOINC directory without much of a problem.

If one is a 32bit client and the other a 64bit client, I would install the 64bit client to its own directory and just attach it to your projects separately (using the same login and password).

And if you don't trust it anyway, or think you'll muck up, always install to its own BOINC directory.

2. It's 8 CPUs which can get work. You can easily have more CPUs in the computer, but they won't get work from the same project. I am not too sure I understand the latter part of your question, could you rewrite it?

3. Like in Project A gets 1 task and project B gets 3 tasks?
You could work around with setting the Project Resource share, that way you can tell which project has priority. But it's quite difficult to say that one project can download 1 task and the other 3, as not all work runs the same amount of time. So for instance, a CPDN model takes over 3 months to run, while a Primegrid task takes mere minutes.

Hi. Just in the last 48 hours BOINC appears to be giving control to the threads for 1 second in 5. My 4 cores are idle for the other 4. I tried opening up my general parameters several times in several different ways but its not paying attention.

The only thing I have done in this period is add Einstein project to the other three I have running, climate, QMC, and uFluids. Its wasting a lot of time. Suspending these projects in various combinations is not helping.

It sounds like CPU throttling got turned on in your preferences somehow.

Check them on the project website and make sure "use at most of CPU" is set to 100%. Make sure you don't have a global_prefs_override.xml file in the BOINC directory.