Topics

I've been meaning to ask - what are your criteria for promoting BoincTasks from v0.xx to 1.0?  No big deal, it's just a number.  But I'm curious

To the Extra>Run CPU benchmarks>... and the Extra>Read Config file>... submenus, could you add an option for "All computers" ?  I for one modify my CC_CONFIG.xml options at least twice a day.

According to what I discussed when I requested this addition to the Rule parameters, I set up 2 complementary rules on GPUGRID to Suspend Project in the evening & Resume the next morning.  It looks like each rule triggered perfectly -- once.  The next day and following days, nothing.  I tried opening the rules to edit and saving...no effect.  I deleted the rules & built new identical ones, same thing again (once).

Am I missing something incredibly obvious to make these rules trigger every day at the '>' time, or is something broken

[Connect about every x.xx days]

2 (more or less) unrelated questions:

1. What do you prefer as a viewer/editor for XML, and whence did you get it?  (I'm looking for something that's more sophisticated than a general text editor [Notepad/Wordpad], but won't choke on the inevitable syntax errors in BOINC-related XML output, as MS Word or MS XML Editor always do.)

2. For a given "Connect about every x.xx days" setting in Preferences, does the core client output time remaining to the next connection attempt (in client_state or wherever)?  You can probably see where this question is going

I guess technically that's 3 questions, so sue me

I was reading post http://www.efmer.eu/forum_tt/index.php?topic=477.msg2038#msg2038 and it reminded me:

When you get around to implementing wishlist item

- Extra selection options with the keyboard, up/down, shift up/down, Ctlr A, Shift Home, Shift End, Page up, Page dwn.

could you also add some View (Computers, Projects etc.) hotkeys similar to the ones BOINCMgr has (Ctrl-Shft-P, Ctrl-Shft-T etc.)?  Some dinosaurs like myself from the pre-pointing-device era still compute with one hand on the Trackman and the other on the keyboard -- and we love hotkeys

May I suggest that when you post a new release you also include the d/l link in the Re: New Version message as well as in What is BoincRescheduler

[<report_results_immediately>]

If this discussion has come up before, I apologize.

Should bad downloads be recorded in History?  The following d/l event showed up in Tasks (in the proper color) as "Download error" but doesn't appear in History:

4+1 [hostname]

7465   yoyo@home   7/24/2010 00:04:04   Started download of ogr_100703001006_78-in.og2   
7466   yoyo@home   7/24/2010 00:04:06   Incomplete read of 43.000000 < 5KB for ogr_100703001006_78-in.og2 - truncating   
7467   yoyo@home   7/24/2010 00:04:06   Finished download of ogr_100703001006_78-in.og2   

Note that <report_results_immediately> was set true at the time, so it wasn't displayed in Tasks for very long--possibly within your 15 sec cycle.  But saving that exception, would you expect such a busted download to be in the History?

Thanks for the Task Properties and the expanded Project Properties.  Both appear to be working correctly on my Vista_64 & Vista_32 platforms

This may just be a matter of personal preference, but:

Currently the "No new tasks" color takes precedence over the other two on the Projects view.  However if a project is in Status "Suspended, No new tasks" it seems more logical for the Suspended color to take precedence.  Unless of course you could arrange alternating diagonal stripes of both colors. (lol)

Request an option to display Time Left (Projects view) and Elapsed Time/Time Left (Tasks view) in hhh:mm:ss format rather than d,hh:mm:ss.  Generally speaking I prefer the way it is now, but I'd appreciate being able to choose.  Sometimes when comparing BT against BOINCMgr, it would be helpful to match their time format

For the next BT release notes:
note that effective today, the BOINC "recommended version" for Win 32/64 & Mac OS X is now 6.10.58

Fred,

Do you have a "silver bullet" that can (for testing purposes) crash BT at will and cause generation of a dumpfile?  Hopefully without trashing the executable or screwing up the registry keys

[-03d,17:34:40 (1)]

Regarding the welcome new feature

- Changed: Projects: Tasks and Time left column now give CPU / GPU data.

the totals appear to be tracking correctly

One slight modification may be needed in Time Left   CPU-only tasks are displayed e.g., "04:37:12 (4)/-", which is fine.  For GPU-only tasks, the display is e.g., "-03d,17:34:40 (1)" which technically means a negative number (not so fine).  I recommend you prepend "-/ " instead of just a hyphen, to indicate zero CPU total in Time Left for GPU-only tasks.

On the new "Show all computers" gadget there's an "empty" column in position 3 between Gpu & Computer.  Is that reserved for future use, or is something not displaying on my system

EDIT--Or is it just because the other mode has 4 columns?

If you could stand to add "yet another timer" to BT:

I like to use the gadget for its intended purpose, but I'd prefer it didn't activate instantly by casually running the cursor over the n systray icons   A variable cursor "hover delay" over the BT icon would be helpful.  I would probably set it to ~2 seconds, or slightly longer than the tooltip activation time.  Prioritize this however you see fit

I've been meaning to ask this for awhile.  On my primary test platform (BT 0.61, WinVista_x64 SP 2, core duo NB), the Snooze & Snooze Gpu items of the systray icon's context menu are permanently unavailable (grayed out), have been so for several version updates back.  Annoying, but not critical.  On my backup test platform (BT 0.61, also WinVista_x64 SP 2, core quad/GPU tower), the Snooze & Snooze Gpu items are active and work correctly.  What am I missing  

[Exit Status -221 (0xffffff23)]

Fred,

Are you familiar with the result cancellation function of the BOINC project server?  The server can order the client to cancel results that have not yet started to run, usually for purposes of redundancy.  Not all projects use the function, but SETI/SETI Beta and Yoyo definitely do.  After a project update, the result will suddenly show up (in BM) as Progress=100%, with a Status message of "Cancelled by server."  Strangely there's nothing in Messages, which I believe is a bug the BOINC team should address.  

Apparently BT doesn't quite know what to do with these tasks.  They go red (i.e., Error color), with Progress=100%, but with a generic computation error status, nothing about being cancelled by server.  In History they show up as "Reported: Aborted," which erroneously implies an abort by the user.  It would be helpful if you could capture this situation and display a Status in Tasks of "Cancelled by server," with appropriate disposition entry in History.  I wish I could tell you what the XML from the core client says in this situation, but I can't.  The information at Yoyo resultid 6507953, particularly Exit Status -221 (0xffffff23), might help.  (Don't wait too long to check that out--Yoyo doesn't keep completed results in his database very long.)

Thanks in advance.

[cc_config.xml]

Fred,

When you get around to adding the "Run benchmark" feature:

- Add: Benchmark, show time to next benchmark. http://www.efmer.eu/forum_tt/index.php?topic=362.0

request you also add a command to "Read config file" on the selected computer, like that on the Advanced menu of BOINCMgr.  It's handy for toggling the logging & feature switches in cc_config.xml   Maybe add it to the Extra menu similar to "Allow network communication?"

B/w

I have a loooong (CPU) PrimeGrid task in progress--currently 44:11:33@64.140% complete, on a fast machine.  When it is Running, BT shows a correct ET & CPU time, Progress % and Time Left all consistent with BOINCMgr and the boinc_task_state.xml from the task slot.  However when the task is Waiting or Suspended, BT reverts the Elapsed Time to 05:30:53, and it stays there until the next Run cycle.  Weird, yes   Which raises the question(s): where does BT store the Elapsed Time of a task in Status "Waiting to run," and why would it get stuck on an old ET from several days ago?  Both the Progress % and the Time Left continue to display correctly when the task is Waiting.  CPU % while running looks good, so I don't think the task data files are funky.  I've run the same subproject before on the same machine, so the .exe & the wrapper app are probably OK too.

I've only seen this behavior on this one task out of several thousand either completed or in progress since I started using BT.  The problem did not originate with BT 0.52, since the task is a couple of weeks old.  The task in question is on a remote host, in case that matters.  The OS is Vista SP2, the BOINC client is 6.10.45.  The subproject is PSP LLR v5.11.

Best wishes.

I haven't asked for a new feature in awhile, so:

It would be helpful to be able to do a quick filter of Messages by project, similar to "Show only this project" in BOINCMgr.  It would be easy to go overboard with filtering Messages by various criteria, but I think this simple one would be very helpful.  As an example, I often like to check my CPDN tasks to see when the last trickle-up report was sent.  This tends to get lost among the Messages on a quad/GPU host with 10~15 tasks either Running or Waiting--especially if I have any debug logging switches turned on

Prioritize this however you see fit.

Best wishes.