Messages

I lied about "tomorrow"  Sorry about that.

After a week and several reboots I reinstalled BT 1.30 on the Q6600 and saw what I described before ~ 1 CPU (25%) used in task manager. The connection threads are essentially zero on the BT  thread graph when shown all together with the main task. The main BT task monotonically increased to 42 % (after 10 minutes and was still increasing) while displaying all tasks (270) for all computers (8 of them). When I minimized BT after 10 minutes the main BT task line monotonically decreased but the slope of the line is less than half of the slope of the increase. Task manger reports an immediate decrease to 2-4% upon minimization.

I kept BT minimized for 15 minutes. The main thread graph decayed to 8%. When I maximized the main thread started back up at the same rate as before. Viewing only the local host (1 computer) gave the same result.

I'm not sure what this means, but that's what it did 

Edit: I've been installing BT 1.30 over BT 1.25 without uninstalling BT 1.25. Would this make a difference?

OK, but this a bit arcane  My brain is frizzled for tonight. I'll try your magic words tomorrow.

I still see BT using almost 1 CPU (out of 4 on a Q6600/Win Vista) with BT 1.30. I have to assume that I am uniquely cursed because no one else has complained recently

BT 1.25 works just fine. BT 1.26 through BT 1.30 hogs the CPU. I'm guessing it's me (usually a good bet), but I can't figure out anything to do except go back to BT 1.25 which I've done. I've said all the magic words I know to make it work. Fred, can you give me a magic word or two to say? 

I need to amend a statement I made earlier. Given the "interesting" behavior on my Q6600 I tried BT versions 1.27, 1.28, and 1.29 a bit more thoroughly. They all exhibit "CPU Hogging". Falling back to BT 1.25 eliminates the problem on the Q6600. I deleted all history and disabled LT history which did not seem to have an effect.

My laptop (T8300, BT 1.28) has not exhibited this behavior over the past few days since I installed it. I'm guessing a configuration issue, but I usually (but not always) accept the default.

The problem seems to be with the number of tasks displayed. CPU usage went to normal for both computers with excessive usage when I displayed only active tasks. If I display all tasks again the CPU usage goes back to 25.

For fun I played around this afternoon. I opened Windows Task Manager and checked the BT CPU usage on the Q6600 as I viewed different tabs and computers. I found some interesting behavior. Note that 25 is one CPU on a quad.

Q6600/Win Vista (BT host): BT minimized 0-2, viewing Q6600 BOINC tasks 25, viewing Q6600 transfers 4-8. Other tabs show 4-8 as well. Well, this is interesting 

Looking at 7 remote hosts (all tabs): 4-8 (on Q6600 CPU) except viewing AMD Phenom II X4 955/Win 7. This AMD host shows the same behavior as the Q6600; 25 viewing tasks, 4-8 otherwise.  The Q6600 and the AMD Phenom are my 2 fastest computers. They also have the largest number of tasks; 137 and 210 respectively.

I offer this as an observation hoping someone will have an "ah ha!" moment and will know exactly what's happening. I just find it strange   

All my computers are running BOINC 6.12.34 except one old Linux computer that won't upgrade beyond BOINC 6.10.58.

I just did a new install BT 1.28 on my T8300/3MB/Win Vista laptop. BT has never been there before. I do not see the CPU problem, at least after a whole 3 minutes of watching  I'll keep it running for a while.

I can only assume that a) I'm crazy (often a good bet), b) there are some really big history files (or some such) on the Q6600, or c) somebody named Fred is playing with my mind 

I'm glad that .../users/fred... didn't work  The BT start up log:

12/01/2011, 09:48:35 -- Startup: BoincTasks Version: 1.28
12/01/2011, 09:48:35 -- Set exeption handler
12/01/2011, 09:48:35 -- Read arg:
12/01/2011, 09:48:35 -- Language detection
12/01/2011, 09:48:35 -- Language registry: 1033
12/01/2011, 09:48:35 -- Language selected: 1033
12/01/2011, 09:48:35 -- Read translation
12/01/2011, 09:48:35 -- Close translation, OK
12/01/2011, 09:48:35 -- Started logging
12/01/2011, 09:48:35 -- Open translation override
12/01/2011, 09:48:36 -- Close translation override, OK
12/01/2011, 09:48:36 -- User: 1033 (ENU), System: 1033 (ENU), Selected: 1033 (ENU) Used: 1033 (ENU)
12/01/2011, 09:48:36 -- Mutex is not set
12/01/2011, 09:48:36 -- DeleteFiles in folders:C:\Users\rick\AppData\Roaming\eFMer\BoincTasks\crash\*.*
12/01/2011, 09:48:36 -- Deleted crash files
12/01/2011, 09:48:36 -- WSAStartup OK
12/01/2011, 09:48:36 -- Menu translations done
12/01/2011, 09:48:36 -- Created main window
12/01/2011, 09:48:36 -- Skip garbage collector, runs only once a day, at startup
12/01/2011, 09:48:36 -- computers.xml IP: 192.168.5.148
12/01/2011, 09:48:36 -- computers.xml IP: 192.168.5.142
12/01/2011, 09:48:36 -- computers.xml IP: 192.168.5.146
12/01/2011, 09:48:36 -- computers.xml IP: 192.168.5.144
12/01/2011, 09:48:36 -- computers.xml IP: 192.168.5.145
12/01/2011, 09:48:36 -- computers.xml IP: 192.168.5.147
12/01/2011, 09:48:36 -- computers.xml IP: 192.168.5.143
12/01/2011, 09:48:36 -- computers.xml IP: 192.168.5.149
12/01/2011, 09:48:36 -- computers.xml IP: 192.168.5.150
12/01/2011, 09:48:36 -- Connect to BOINC clients
12/01/2011, 09:48:36 -- Startup finished

All computers are continuously connected-no drop outs. For fun I stopped monitoring all computers except the Q6600 (local host where BT runs). I exited BT and restarted. Only the Q6600 showed up, but the CPU problem remains.

I've not noticed any abnormal behavior in BT. Some slowness perhaps, but I attribute that to running Prime Grid on the GTX 260. I suspended PG and still saw the CPU usage problem.

Usually I've been web browsing with Fire Fox when I check BT. Nothing fancy or CPU intensive (other than BOINC). I have the CPU indicator in BT set for "instantaneous" (or whatever-not average). I notice normal CPU usage as I bring BT out of minimized. 30 to 45 seconds later one of the CPU usage indicators take a dive leveling out around 5% or so.

I'm monitoring 8 computers. The connection to all the computers is good, no disconnects.  There is normally about 200 tasks for all of them. With SIMAP running I now have 600 tasks, but I've seen the problem at both levels. There's nothing abnormal in the BT log.

If you can't repeat the problem then you can't fix it  What data can I collect to help?

To start the computer is a Q6600/3.3MB (actually 4MB-stupid 32 bit OS) ram with at GTX 260 card. It's running full bore with Prime Grid on the video card and SIMAP on the 4 CPUs. Ram memory usage is 50-60%. I'll put BT 1.28 on my laptop (T8300/Win Vista) to see if I can duplicate the result. I've got several other computers I can try too.

I can verify Corsair's observation of CPU hogging. On my Q6600 quad/Win Vista host BT takes 95% of 1 CPU when it is maximized. When it's minimized it works as it always did (0 to 2%). I restarted BT, same thing. I restarted BOINC, same thing so it's repeatable.

BT 1.27 didn't do this. I also found that it wasn't easy to go back to BT 1.27...sigh. I got the standard incompatibility errors (which I can't remember at the moment).

Well, the other computers were doing just fine. I hadn't "improved" them yet I only cared about the one that I killed at that moment. The simple solution wasn't intuitive to me, but it's obvious now that it's been explained. I just put this on my very long list of mistakes-I-won't-ever-make-again 

From what you say I think I may have been doing something wrong. I have 9 computers on the local network. I was only displaying the one I was interested in--the one with no projects. It didn't occur to me to display them all and try it from there.

Well, the world still turns. This might be a undocumented feature (not a bug)