Posts by robsmith

41) Message boards : The Lounge : Don't know where it should go? Stick it here! (Message 111679)
Posted 28 Apr 2023 by robsmith
Post:
Never in Richard you'll cool down quickly enough when you get back to the UK as the temperature has barely reached double figures for the last couple of weeks, and isn't expected to get there very soon.

(and all too soon we will be moaning about it being far too hot, us Brits are never satisfied with the weather)
42) Message boards : Web interfaces : BOINC GUI Dark Mode????? (Message 111653)
Posted 23 Apr 2023 by robsmith
Post:
There's already an open request for this, but it appears to have been dormant for a few years - you might try and give it a prod.
https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/issues/2917
43) Message boards : Questions and problems : In the client, what does the "Reset project" command button do? (Message 111533)
Posted 9 Apr 2023 by robsmith
Post:
Your stats remain on the project servers
44) Message boards : Projects : Anything and Everything to do with (WCG) World Community Grid (Message 111482)
Posted 2 Apr 2023 by robsmith
Post:
It would be a marginal help, as they wouldn't be getting "send work" requests, to which they respond with "no work available" or "download server is down" messages.
45) Message boards : BOINC Manager : Boinc stuck connecting to localhost (Message 111472)
Posted 1 Apr 2023 by robsmith
Post:
Resides in the same place as ever, have a look at your earlier post:
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=14942&postid=111396
46) Message boards : BOINC Manager : Boinc Manager under Windows 11 - not working correctly (Message 111444)
Posted 29 Mar 2023 by robsmith
Post:
BOINC "assumes" that each task will occupy one CPU core, but Windows 11 task manager aggregates the tasks to give a very distorted view of use, so 10 tasks each occupying one core would show as 5 "complete" cores in use, so give you 5 graphs, but a task rarely actually uses 100% of a core, so the total for ten tasks will always be less than that, especially when using the "% of time" control. This is not shown on the graphs so it is far better to use the tables which show exactly what each task is using in terms of CPU and memory.
In Windows task manager you need to look at the tab that gives the % of the CPU cores that each task is using - noting that, confusingly, these are give in percent of the total CPU, so 5% is one CPU core in use by that task.

Picking up on what Dave said - I totally agree, indeed by using the % of time you may actually be adding to your confusion. For PCs this variable is, today, all but useless, but may be of use to those that want to use phones & tablets as they operate in a very different manner.
47) Message boards : BOINC Manager : Boinc Manager under Windows 11 - not working correctly (Message 111441)
Posted 29 Mar 2023 by robsmith
Post:
OK, you have ten tasks running from Rosetta, so the "use 50% of the cores" part of your configuration is working correctly.
No on to the "use the CPU 50% of the time". The tasks won't start at exactly the same time, and so the number of tasks running at any exact moment will not always be zero or ten, it depends on the exact sample time. Also the 50% of time may not have the same time-base for all tasks, to clarify this - some tasks may have a very short time to measure the 50% of, while others may have a very long time to measure their 50% of.
So all is running correctly.

One thing to consider is that using the "use the CPU for 50% of the time" can induce a lot of thermal stress on the CPU as it is continuously warming up then cooling down, and not in a uniform manner across all the cores.
48) Message boards : Projects : Anything and Everything to do with (WCG) World Community Grid (Message 111409)
Posted 24 Mar 2023 by robsmith
Post:
While they may not know about an individual user loosing data the way BOINC works on the server make sure that the results for a task sent out but never returned are sent out to another user. This may be a bit hard on the individual user, but the science data is pretty well protected.
49) Message boards : BOINC Manager : Boinc stuck connecting to localhost (Message 111375)
Posted 22 Mar 2023 by robsmith
Post:
The thirty lines you posted are a fair time after BOINC started to run and some work has been completed and results returned to the project.
The sort of thing I would expect to see in the first few minutes of running BOINC are:
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | Starting BOINC client version 7.20.2 for windows_x86_64
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | log flags: file_xfer, sched_ops, task, http_debug, sched_op_debug
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | Libraries: libcurl/7.84.0-DEV Schannel zlib/1.2.12
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | Data directory: C:\ProgramData\BOINC
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | Running under account rob
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | CUDA: NVIDIA GPU 0: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti (driver version 511.65, CUDA version 11.6, compute capability 6.1, 8192MB, 8192MB available, 8186 GFLOPS peak)
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | CUDA: NVIDIA GPU 1: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti (driver version 511.65, CUDA version 11.6, compute capability 6.1, 8192MB, 8192MB available, 8186 GFLOPS peak)
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | OpenCL: NVIDIA GPU 0: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti (driver version 511.65, device version OpenCL 3.0 CUDA, 8192MB, 8192MB available, 8186 GFLOPS peak)
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | OpenCL: NVIDIA GPU 1: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti (driver version 511.65, device version OpenCL 3.0 CUDA, 8192MB, 8192MB available, 8186 GFLOPS peak)
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | Windows processor group 0: 16 processors
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | Host name: gaw-win-64
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | Processor: 16 AuthenticAMD AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core Processor [Family 23 Model 113 Stepping 0]
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | Processor features: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 htt pni ssse3 fma cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 movebe popcnt aes f16c rdrandsyscall nx lm avx avx2 svm sse4a osvw ibs skinit wdt tce topx page1gb rdtscp fsgsbase bmi1 smep bmi2
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | OS: Microsoft Windows 10: Professional x64 Edition, (10.00.19044.00)
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | Memory: 31.93 GB physical, 55.82 GB virtual
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | Disk: 930.76 GB total, 632.08 GB free
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | Local time is UTC +0 hours
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | No WSL found.
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | VirtualBox version: 6.1.34
22/03/2023 07:32:12 | DENIS@home | Found app_config.xml
22/03/2023 07:32:12 | Einstein@Home | Found app_config.xml
22/03/2023 07:32:12 | LHC@home | Found app_config.xml
22/03/2023 07:32:12 | SiDock@home | Found app_config.xml
22/03/2023 07:32:12 | World Community Grid | Found app_config.xml
22/03/2023 07:32:12 | DENIS@home | Max 4 concurrent jobs
22/03/2023 07:32:12 | Einstein@Home | Max 2 concurrent jobs
22/03/2023 07:32:12 | LHC@home | Max 4 concurrent jobs
22/03/2023 07:32:12 | SiDock@home | Max 4 concurrent jobs
22/03/2023 07:32:12 | World Community Grid | Max 4 concurrent jobs
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | Config: don't compute while Cities.exe is running
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | Config: event log limit 20000 lines
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | Config: use all coprocessors
22/03/2023 07:32:12 | climateprediction.net | General prefs: from climateprediction.net (last modified 16-Feb-2023 15:33:31)
22/03/2023 07:32:12 | climateprediction.net | Computer location: home
22/03/2023 07:32:12 |  | General prefs: using separate prefs for home


As you can see there's a pile of information about what has started, how things are configured. The easiest way to get this is very soon after a re-boot of the computer, say five minutes, or (as in my case) have a very large event log.
50) Message boards : Questions and problems : Too many WUs were downloaded, all settings are ignored (Message 111343)
Posted 19 Mar 2023 by robsmith
Post:
Thanks for correcting my mistakes Richard - must take more time to read and think in the future.
51) Message boards : Questions and problems : Too many WUs were downloaded, all settings are ignored (Message 111335)
Posted 18 Mar 2023 by robsmith
Post:
Add to above:
While setting the cache to al low value may sound to be a good way to reduce the load on your computer it doesn't work that way. The cache is calculated from the average task duration and the number of CPU threads being used. So, if you have a 32 thread CPU and have your cache set to 1 day's worth of work you will get 32 CPU-days worth of work, and BOINC will try to run 32 tasks at a time. What you may find works is to limit the number of CPU threads BOINC can use, and not being a regular Linux user I won't suggest where to look for the appropriate file to edit to control this. However if you are using the GUI you can look under "options"/"computing preferences" and reduce the value of "use at most xx% of CPUs" to say 50%.
52) Message boards : Questions and problems : Too many WUs were downloaded, all settings are ignored (Message 111334)
Posted 18 Mar 2023 by robsmith
Post:
How much memory on the affected computer(s)?
Which version of BOINC?

It is not uncommon when running on a computer with too little memory to have quite significant reductions in overall performance of the computer as the operating system struggles to keep all the tasks running by swapping tasks in and out of memory.
53) Message boards : BOINC Manager : Boinc stuck connecting to localhost (Message 111317)
Posted 16 Mar 2023 by robsmith
Post:
On more recent versions of Windows (7, 64bit onwards) BOINC program (not project data & programs) default to c:\program Files\BOINC

Project files (data and applications) may be in user specific areas or in c:\ProgramData\BOINC. Common control files are in root of this structure, with project data in sub folders from the "projects" sub-folder.
54) Message boards : Projects : News on Project Outages (Message 111193)
Posted 6 Mar 2023 by robsmith
Post:
As all too often - cure the obvious problem and there are at least two more problems lurking in the shadows to come out an bite one :-(
55) Message boards : Projects : News on Project Outages (Message 111184)
Posted 6 Mar 2023 by robsmith
Post:
Only a matter of hours until the next ice age in the north of the UK......
56) Message boards : Questions and problems : new at boinc. is my pc usefull?? (Message 111100)
Posted 19 Feb 2023 by robsmith
Post:
Most projects have work for CPUs and your current CPU will do that work.
Of the projects that do have tasks for GPUs many require more modern GPUs than yours, so don't be surprised if that is not too productive.
57) Message boards : Questions and problems : BOINC manager crashes with RPC password error, but not when visible (Message 111025)
Posted 8 Feb 2023 by robsmith
Post:
Yes and no.....
Error message is the same.
BUT
This even happens when the CPU is far from bound (I'm using max half the cores), and it happens when there's noting else (known) to be running.
It even happens with only one task in progress, and so very low CPU loading.
58) Message boards : Questions and problems : BOINC manager crashes with RPC password error, but not when visible (Message 111021)
Posted 8 Feb 2023 by robsmith
Post:
Over the last few months, and several versions of BOINC the manager has been crashing with the "RPC password corrupt" error message. BUT this only happens when the manager is neither minimised to the task bar, or active as a visible window.

The following do not affect the problem :-
Running Virtual Box (LHC);
WGC (various sub projects);
Denis;
SiDock;
Universe;
Einstein
Any combination of the above, with up to three different projects selected, visible or minimised BOINC runs all day without problems, sitting in the notification area BONC manager will crash after a variable length of time (minutes to several hours).
Checking using windows task manager shows that BOINC and the tasks are still running, but cannot be controlled.
The PC is a Ryzen 7 3700X (virtualisation active) with 32GB RAM, running Windows 10 Pro.
BOINC is currently version 7.20.2, but this behaviour has been consistent over a number of older versions.

I have two work arounds:
If I remember I open BOINC manager and minimise it to the task bar;
or if I forget and the manager has crashed I exit BOINC (maximise, right click, exit).
59) Message boards : Questions and problems : BOINC Manager is not able to start a BOINC client (Message 111020)
Posted 8 Feb 2023 by robsmith
Post:
Sounds as if your new computer had McAfee installed during it's build,either by intent by those that built it, or by accident while installing some other software. The first thing I would look at is the list of installed and active software and first disable then remove McAfee (which can be a grade one pain to do), and will probably have to be done as an administrator rather than ordinary user.
60) Message boards : Questions and problems : How to receive tasks that need less than 4 hours to run... (Message 110969)
Posted 26 Jan 2023 by robsmith
Post:
Aborted tasks are sent out to another user.


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