Posts by Greg Tippitt

1) Message boards : BOINC client : project is not highest priority... (Message 48429)
Posted 1 Apr 2013 by Greg Tippitt
Post:
AGELESS,

Thank you for your explanation of how the priority works for fetching work. Yours was the clearest explanation I have seen. One comment I would like to make is your correction of the other persons spelling and grammar. We have people all over the globe working on Boinc projects. I would hope that the people working on SETI would be the least Xenophobic of all BOINC volunteers. Besides doing work on SETI, I volunteer work on medical research. These project are for researchers all over the globe. English is the first language for only a portion of the volunteers processing work for SETI and other BOINC projects.

How is your spelling in other languages other than English? Could you have answered his question in Swedish? Both queue and cue are kö in Swedish, and both English words come from the same French root word cue. If we do someday get evidence of EM transmission from beings elsewhere in the universe, do you expect them to speak English?

Greg

I'm an American and am sometimes ashamed of it.

A person who speaks more than one languages is called multilingual.

People who speak only one language are called Americans.

People who are proud of their limited language skills are ignorant.
2) Message boards : Questions and problems : using exclusive_app and exclusive_gpu_app on LINUX (Message 44787)
Posted 7 Jul 2012 by Greg Tippitt
Post:
"Click Clear to restore web-based settings (except exclusive apps)." fixed it!!

SekeRob2:
Thanks for the info. I kept changing lots of things that didn't help until I stumbled upon a fix. For your problem with errors when work is CPU starved, the option to suspend BOINC work whenever non-Boinc CPU usage is above a set percentage might be a good addition. I have mine set to suspend BOINC work whenever non-BOINC work is using more than 75% of the CPU.

I've got 7 PCs around my house that all run BOINC. I normally maintain my preferences using the BOINCstatsBAM website. For the Exclusive apps, I was manually editing the cc_config.xml file and restarting the boinc-client each time I made a change. I happened to look at the BoincMgr GUI window for preferences and noticed the line at the top that says "Click Clear to restore web-based settings (except exclusive apps)."

I don't recall having used the local preferences in years, but when I clicked on the clear button, it immediately suspended work due to exclusive application.

This is a really great option on my Home Theater PC. It runs CPU and GPU applications. I had been having to suspend work whenever it was being used, even if I was just web surfing. If I am playing DVDs using VLC, it really fouled up the video if the GPU was being used by BOINC.

It also didn't work well even if I had it suspend GPU and CPU when PC was in use. I use an IR remote control with VLC. When I was using the IR remote, it didn't seem to know I was using the PC, so BOINC would start up after I started watching a movie. I had to manually turn off GPU usage and then remember to turn it back on when finished.

Thanks to everyone for their help.
Greg
3) Message boards : Questions and problems : using exclusive_app and exclusive_gpu_app on LINUX (Message 44778)
Posted 6 Jul 2012 by Greg Tippitt
Post:
I had installed BOINC from the UBUNTU 10.04 LTS install CD originally, but I was getting calculation errors after the UBUNTU upgrade to 12.04 LTS. Per the instructions in another thread in this forum, I added the ppa:costamagnagianfranco/boinc repo, which upgraded BoincMgr to 7.0.28.

Thanks
Greg
4) Message boards : Questions and problems : using exclusive_app and exclusive_gpu_app on LINUX (Message 44772)
Posted 6 Jul 2012 by Greg Tippitt
Post:
I had been editing the cc_config.xml file that is in the /var/lib/boinc-client folder. I discovered that when I edit the one in either folder, it updates the other one automatically.

The BOINC event log shows that it is finding the config entry on startup of BOINIC and says "Config: don't use GPUs while vlc is running".


SekeRob2 :
If I have it set to suspend while in use or when cpu is too busy, I get an entry in the event log that says why computing was suspended. What does your event log say when computing is suspended because of an exclusive_app?

Thanks,
5) Message boards : Questions and problems : using exclusive_app and exclusive_gpu_app on LINUX (Message 44706)
Posted 3 Jul 2012 by Greg Tippitt
Post:
Has anyone using Linux had success using the "Exclusive Applications" feature to suspend BOINC computation?

I've got machines running both 32 bit and 64 bit Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on which I've tried to use the <exclusive_app> and <exclusive_gpu_app> config options. I've tried using just the program name and the full path, but neither works. The event log shows that the config options are being read. I've double checked and run based upon preferences is selected.

I'm running BOINC Manager version 7.0.28.

All of the forum discussions regarding "Exclusive Applications" that I could find are Windows users. Has anybody got it working with Linux?

Thanks,
Greg

P.S. Sorry for the duplicate post of this question. The title of my first message got chopped off somehow to just "on Linux", so it wasn't clear what my question was about.
6) Message boards : BOINC Manager : BOINC Manager 7.0.25 ignoring exclusive apps (Message 44425)
Posted 8 Jun 2012 by Greg Tippitt
Post:
I am running version 7.0.28 of BOINC Manager on Ubuntu 12.04. The "Add" button doesn't work right on the "exclusive applications" tab for computing preferences. Only some programs are listed, while others in the same folder are missing from the folder list. Regardless of what programs I select to add, none are saved when I close BOINC Manager and reopen it.

When I tried to select "exclusive applications" using the BOINC Manager GUI, the list would show "/usr/bin/gimp-2.6", but would not show "/usr/bin/vlc" in the list of programs to add to the list. I clicked on the icon to open the location text box and typed "/usr/bin/vlc", but got an error that " 'vlc' is not an executable application ".

I manually edited the cc_config.xml file in the BOINC data directory with the options below, and restarted the PC. When I run BOINC Manager, the programs I added to the cc_config.xml file are shown in the "exclusive applications" list, but the BOINC tasks continue to run whether these programs are running or not. I have "network activity" and "run based upon preferences" selected under "Activity".

I have selected to use both GPU and CPU while my computer is in use. I have selected to suspend BOINC tasks if CPU usage is greater than 50%, which works okay for most things. BOINC CPU tasks don't seem to cause me much problem with these settings, but GPU task wreck havoc with graphic tasks such as GIMP and playing videos with VLC.

Has anyone had luck with the "exclusive applications" and BOINC on Linux?

Thanks,
Greg

<cc_config>
  <log_flags>
    <task>1</task>
    <file_xfer>1</file_xfer>
    <sched_ops>1</sched_ops>
  </log_flags>
   <options>
    <exclusive_app>/usr/bin/vlc</exclusive_app>
    <exclusive_app>/usr/bin/gimp-2.6</exclusive_app>
    <exclusive_app>vlc</exclusive_app>
    <exclusive_app>gimp-2.6</exclusive_app>

    <exclusive_gpu_app>/usr/bin/vlc</exclusive_gpu_app>
    <exclusive_gpu_app>/usr/bin/gimp-2.6</exclusive_gpu_app>
    <exclusive_gpu_app>vlc</exclusive_gpu_app>
    <exclusive_gpu_app>gimp-2.6</exclusive_gpu_app>
    
  </options>
</cc_config>



Copyright © 2024 University of California.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.