Boinctasks stuck on "updating"

[hucker]

I'm sorry but you don't seem to understand that an old computer running Boinc on a rotary drive does not always respond!  It's busy!  I seem to have sorted it by reducing a load of options in your program - I forget what they were, timeouts etc, down to 5 seconds.  The defaults of giving a machine 30 seconds to respond, and hanging up the whole program is unrealistic.

[fred]

I'm sorry but you don't seem to understand that an old computer running Boinc on a rotary drive does not always respond!  It's busy!  I seem to have sorted it by reducing a load of options in your program - I forget what they were, timeouts etc, down to 5 seconds.  The defaults of giving a machine 30 seconds to respond, and hanging up the whole program is unrealistic.

If a computer doesn't respond there is something wrong, not much BoincTasks can do about that.

[hucker]

If a computer doesn't respond there is something wrong, not much BoincTasks can do about that.

Doesn't respond can just mean busy.  A lot of my machines are trying to run multiple VB tasks with only a rust spinner.  I don't see why Boinctasks can't ignore non-responding computers as it does eventually anyway.  Changing the timeouts to 5 seconds seems to have helped, but I often still have to wait up to 20 or 30 seconds when Boinctask's display goes blank.

[fred]

Doesn't respond can just mean busy.  A lot of my machines are trying to run multiple VB tasks with only a rust spinner.  I don't see why Boinctasks can't ignore non-responding computers as it does eventually anyway.  Changing the timeouts to 5 seconds seems to have helped, but I often still have to wait up to 20 or 30 seconds when Boinctask's display goes blank.

It is as it is.
I suggest moving the slow computers into their own group so they hold up the rest.

[hucker]

They can all be slow, it just depends which ones are running vbox tasks.  And they're not "slow computers", they're just computers without SSDs.

[fred]

They can all be slow, it just depends which ones are running vbox tasks.  And they're not "slow computers", they're just computers without SSDs.

Why not add a small SSD, they are really cheap $20 these days.

[hucker]

I've shoved an SSD in when I needed to buy something anyway, but I have all these rotary disks to use up.  Even the 2TB ones are enough of a problem to make Boinctasks stick.  The trouble with small SSDs is they use up their life very quickly with some of the projects.  LHC and Rosetta using VB images, write a huge amount of data.  SSDs can only be written to 300-1000 times before they die.  It's not too bad with the lower timeouts set in Boinctasks, I'll just put up with it or adjust the timeouts some more if you can't do anything about it.

[fred]

if you can't do anything about it.

So far I don't see a solution in BoincTasks.