Messages

--SNIP--
The next BOINC release should correct this.
But I will see what I can do in my own installation.

As advertised, I updated to BOINC 6.10.37 on all hosts after the PrimeGrid challenge was completed.  On the host running BoincTasks, with the renamed boinctasks64.exe, & the CPU suspension threshold at the default 25%, I saw little if any change in the number of suspensions while "managing" local & remote hosts via BT.  Ditto with the threshold at 50%.  For now I've returned the threshold to 90% (as previously with 6.10.36); again that seems to have set the bar high enough.  But at that level what's the point

I'm still trying to see the advantage of using this function of the new BOINC client (as opposed to just letting Windows' multitasking parcel out CPU cycles as it was designed to do).  But I'm willing to concede that the BOINC team must've had some reason to spend the time & resources developing it.  Maybe it's paving the way for some future enhancement?

Best wishes.

Normally Windows will do this quite nicely.
As this is a new BOINC function they may refine it after the user input they will get.
Maybe a post on the BOINC forum will clarify this.

--SNIP--
The weather is perfect in the 70's clear skies, but it's getting warmer fast. Luckily Tucson has some nice high mountains.

Yes, it's getting warmer here in San Diego also, but supposed to be seasonably cool by the weekend   Happy Vernal Equinox (Saturday I believe).  I've been in Tucson at this time of year (twice); the valley is beautiful & the saguaro are tall.  I've also been there in August (not by choice), on the way from Vallejo, California to Groton, Connecticut (by way of San Antonio).  43degC in the shade, and I wasn't in the shade.  In a BMW Model 2002 without air conditioning   I had to run the heater to keep the engine from overheating   Not an experience I'd recommend.

Best wishes.

I had a similar BMW, stopping after a long ride was a problem, as the cooling was not enough.. Hoping the temp meter would stop rising. I can remember using the heater as cooling, not the ideal thing to do I agree.
And the temps should be dropping from the Mid 80's now to the mid 70's next week.
Almost time to go someplace higher and cooler for April.

Thanks for this limit upgrade, I can enter all my PCs now with 0.45.  
It works fine. I'm using mainly "Tasks" tab, "Projects" + "Messages" tabs sometimes. I set update to "slow". Not all my PCs are online in the same time. I noticed max. 39 connected today.
I'm not using "History" feature yet.
I noticed NO problem with 0.45 version on my PC [quad CPU Intel 9300 2.5 GHz, 4 GB RAM, Vista 64 b].

Let me know if you have any wishes.

--SNIP--

Try renaming the BoincTasks(64).exe  to boinctasks(64).exe. Boinc searches for the string boinc (case sensitive?) and excludes these programs.
So BoincTasks may not be excluded, but boinctasks may be excluded.

Neat trick, which I accomplished after the usual gloom/doom whining from User Activity Control.  I'll see how well it works tomorrow (after the PrimeGrid challenge is over) with BOINC 6.10.37.  Will future BT (post 0.45) release packages have the .exe name in lowercase?

Best wishes.

The next BOINC release should correct this.
But I will see what I can do in my own installation.

A reply from David (BOINC Project director, architect, and developer):

OK.  I'll change it to check for Boinc as well as boinc
This will take effect in the next client release.

[edit]I just read Fred's reply as I was drafting this, but I'll post my musings anyway.[/edit]

I saw this exact issue a week or so ago when I was running BOINC 6.10.36 on my hosts.  I ended up setting the threshhold to 90%, which seemed to eliminate the majority of these interruptions.  I also ended up removing 6.10.36 and reverting to 6.10.18 (without this feature) not because of this but because I found the release far too unstable (it is after all, beta software), especially the 64bit version.  I also notice that 6.10.37 is out as of last Friday (also still in beta).  I've downloaded it but haven't tried it yet.  I'm currently working a Challenge on PrimeGrid, and don't want to gum up the works with a (likely) unstable client  But it's possible they're still tinkering with this function.

I'm not sure what the BOINC crew are really trying to accomplish with this feature...hopefully that will be explained in the ReleaseNotes when the official release comes out.  It seems to duplicate functionality that should be managed by the OS  In any case, IMHO it's unlikely they will make concessions to the presence of a 3rd party client manager...open source or not.  But I always try to remember that running a beta (BM) against a beta (BOINC client, in this case) from two different sources, can cause strange things to happen.  And may not be a fair test of either.

One question: are you running both BOINCManager & BoincTasks at the same time?  BM is notorious for stealing CPU cycles, on the order of 15%, even when minimized

Best wishes.

Try renaming the BoincTasks(64).exe  to boinctasks(64).exe. Boinc searches for the string boinc (case sensitive?) and excludes these programs.
So BoincTasks may not be excluded, but boinctasks may be excluded.

--SNIP--
The fix mentioned if for the progress not for the CPU%.
But I will make some changes, if CPU % < 1% add 2 digits, like 0.0001 and round of properly. 0.0000 should be shown as empty.

Sounds like the perfect solution...thanks.

Keep enjoying that vacation.  I hope the weather is cooperating.

The weather is perfect in the 70's clear skies, but it's getting warmer fast. Luckily Tucson has some nice high mountains.

On updating to the latest (.44) version of BT with the latest Boinc 6.10.36 I am seeing a symptom of performing some BT operations.

I will sometimes suspend a couple of tasks to get a few more running, or to prioritize some in the queue.

What I see happening now that was not happening before is that the Boinc will hit the configured Boinc Preference: "While processor usage is less than ____"
I have had this at 25%, and previously have had no occurrence of the symptom.

What happens is that all of the tasks will go into an 'automatic suspended' mode with a status of 'waiting to start; suspended' (or the like) and the message window will record a "Suspending Computation - CPU usage is too high".  This will clear up and go back to normal withing 10-20 seconds (I use slow refresh rate).

Setting the Boinc Preference higher (like 50% seems to affect the symptom little, as it easily goes into this mode.
Setting it to 0 ('no restriction') fixes the symptom, but then this completely removes the automatic suspension that I do want to have when I am performing other processing on the computer.

What seems to be happening is since BT is not considered an official 'Boinc Process', and is being considered a foreign (ie: normal user computer process) and thus Boinc is automatically suspending all of its processing when BT does some things that take a moment of two to complete.

Maybe Boinc can be either be told that BT is a friendly process and not to be considered foreign, or BT can temporarily set the preference to the max while it is doing some processing that may take a bit of time and reset it back when done.

I put in a request, let's see if they can solve this problem. This feature is a bit over aggressive.

I've noticed that PrimeGrid's AP26 Search (cuda23) application (their only GPU app), through its entire run, consistently shows a 'CPU %' of 0.00 with the 'CPU % Long time average' option unchecked, and a null field with it checked.

Now the latest version of AP26/cuda23, (v1.01, deployed 26Feb2010), has a really low CPU:GPU ratio.  According to my Task history on a quad core/GTS250 host, <=0.5 CPUsec on an Elapsed Time ~500 sec is typical.  (Which is only ~0.1% or less, but still nonzero.)  Their previous version (v1.00) had a more typical CPU load of ~10%.

Does BT literally round low CPU usage down (as indicated by CPU %=[0.00] in this case)?  Or is this possibly a side effect of the change mentioned in the release notes for BT v0.43:

-(FIXED) Task view: Sometimes with progress below 1% the progress was not shown properly. Now the alternative way is only used when the progress % is below 0.01%. This is only uses in the first phase of GPU Tasks.

?  I'm posting this as a question rather than a bug, since either way it's not the end of the world  However, it might not be a bad idea for the 'CPU %--Long time average' to at least show 0.00 consistent with the short time option, rather than a null field. (Just a thought )

Best wishes.

The fix mentioned if for the progress not for the CPU%.
But I will make some changes, if CPU % < 1% add 2 digits, like 0.0001 and round of properly. 0.0000 should be shown as empty.

[Note:]

The final for the next version: BoincTasks_DEU.btlang_v0.45_v0.1. (changed line 18, 19, 317 and 320)

Thanks also to aendgraend and Saenger. 

Note: The webspace will be deleted by the provider at the end of month.

Got it, before the end.

V 0.45

(Add) Task tab: An option to enable/disable the alternating stripes.
(Fixed) History tab: "copy selected" doesn't copy what you have really selected.
(Fixed) Project or Task Tab: BOINC Prefs doesn't always  go to the right machine.
(Fixed) Computer: The password with encryption off was always stored as lowercase.
(Changed) Computer: The computer name can have uppercase characters.
(Changed) Computer sidebar: Now scalable.
(Changed) The maximum number of computers is now 60.

Hi,

I see lot of "Initializing" statuses in Projects (in v0.44). These seem to happen also to projects that have been in the computer for sometime already. To me these look more like "Scheduler request in progress" status when comparing to Messages for the computer. Especially since they happen to all after Account Manager sync that trigger scheduler request to all projects.

Maybe this is related to the following change in v0.43?

-(FIXED) Project view code 5 = initializing, 7 = in progress.

What does the BoincManager say about this.

Hi developers
You wrote "tester needed for more than 40 computers" in locked topic here. I have 40+ computers, maybe 43 or 44 now.
I am trying Boinc Tasks only a few days, but it likes it will be a very good and very useful software.
If you wish, I can try help you with testing with 40+ PCs. 

Changed the number from 40 to 60 Max as of 0.45.
Let me know if this is workable with so many computers at once.

Hi,

Even though most of my problems with FreeHAL project tasks were fixed (thanks for that!) I'd still like to hide it's numerous tasks. So I would like an option in Tasks tab to filter out all tasks for a specific project (or projects). Other option is to allow combining on Running status for one or more projects.

I'd like to have this feature because FreeHAL project has upto 25 running tasks per computer. Display gets crowded pretty fast and I'm usually not interested on this project but rather see how tasks for all the other projects are progressing. Add in my hesitation to touching my mouse to scroll the long task list because that would suspend my GPUs and you might understand me better.

BTW, please, could you update your donation status and wishes? Thank you, and keep up the good work! (But enjoy your vacation.)

The filter option is added to the list.
The wishes are up to date.
The donation page is updated.

Thanks, solved the problem.
One thing though, what temperature is displayed, since the ATI card has a number of sensors. There is 6 sensors in each card, total 12 according to GPU-Z
DISPIO, MEMIO, CHADERCORE VDDC1-VDDC3.

It is a double card, not two separate cards.

There is two columns for each sensors?

I only check for the CPU temperature and the card reports 2 of them.
TThrottle uses the hottest one to regulate.
In the Temperature tab you should see 2 entries.