Non-CPU intensive jobs, excluding projects, task speed, sorting, blank projects

[wicked]

Hello!

It's so awesome to find an active project after trying BoincView and getting excited only to realize it's development has stopped. After using BoincTasks for a day I have few wishes that'll make it a perfect tool for me use. Some of these I miss after trying BoincView. Here goes:

1. Better handling for non-CPU intensive projects like FreeHAL (no, it doesn't use GPU either). Now the CPU % and Elapsed Time seem totally off (jumping between 0.xx% and ~80%) and they keep triggering the Warning color due to the default CPU rule. (Yes, I already disabled the warning by deleting the rule.) These should be marked as non-CPU intensive (on Use column?) and excluded somehow from the low CPU warnings (rather warn when they ARE using much CPU).
2. Quick fix for the numerous non-CPU intensive tasks would be to allow exclude (filter out) one or more projects from the lists (especially Tasks). This also helps with the clutter since these add lots of running jobs..
3. I miss the current speed (for example GFlops per second) display of the running tasks that BoincView had. This allowed me to compare effectiveness of different computers running same project. Then I could decide if I should prefer running some project on some specific computer and save the other computer running something else.
4. Sorting with Use column on the Tasks tab doesn't seem to work. Even if I set it up as primary sort criteria it doesn't list blank lines as a group but intermingles them with GPU tasks. Yes, I tried this to have GPU and CPU tasks listed separately. Also, same problem seems to prevent me to sort Projects tab first with Project and then Computer.
5. I have two computers that seems to corrupt their stored password every time BoincTasks is closed and started again. Looking at the XML file there doesn't seem to anything strange there but still the passwords won't survive intact.
6. Projects list in Statistics graphics window seems to gather lots of blank entries that multiply every time it's refreshed.
7. I really like the idea of adding Computers as a "normal tab" that's on the task list. After that's done it can be enhanced to add measured speed of host and other details like BoincView has in it's Hosts tab.
8. Some projects have blank name in the Projects tab. These are probably ones that haven't been able to contact project servers to fetch their official name. BoincTasks should detect this condition and switch to project URL or some other identification string for these.. This is how Boinc Manager handles these projects.

That's probably enough wishes for now. Thanks for listening!

[fred]

Hello!

It's so awesome to find an active project after trying BoincView and getting excited only to realize it's development has stopped. After using BoincTasks for a day I have few wishes that'll make it a perfect tool for me use. Some of these I miss after trying BoincView. Here goes:

1. Better handling for non-CPU intensive projects like FreeHAL (no, it doesn't use GPU either). Now the CPU % and Elapsed Time seem totally off (jumping between 0.xx% and ~80%) and they keep triggering the Warning color due to the default CPU rule. (Yes, I already disabled the warning by deleting the rule.) These should be marked as non-CPU intensive (on Use column?) and excluded somehow from the low CPU warnings (rather warn when they ARE using much CPU).
2. Quick fix for the numerous non-CPU intensive tasks would be to allow exclude (filter out) one or more projects from the lists (especially Tasks). This also helps with the clutter since these add lots of running jobs..
3. I miss the current speed (for example GFlops per second) display of the running tasks that BoincView had. This allowed me to compare effectiveness of different computers running same project. Then I could decide if I should prefer running some project on some specific computer and save the other computer running something else.
4. Sorting with Use column on the Tasks tab doesn't seem to work. Even if I set it up as primary sort criteria it doesn't list blank lines as a group but intermingles them with GPU tasks. Yes, I tried this to have GPU and CPU tasks listed separately. Also, same problem seems to prevent me to sort Projects tab first with Project and then Computer.
5. I have two computers that seems to corrupt their stored password every time BoincTasks is closed and started again. Looking at the XML file there doesn't seem to anything strange there but still the passwords won't survive intact.
6. Projects list in Statistics graphics window seems to gather lots of blank entries that multiply every time it's refreshed.
7. I really like the idea of adding Computers as a "normal tab" that's on the task list. After that's done it can be enhanced to add measured speed of host and other details like BoincView has in it's Hosts tab.
8. Some projects have blank name in the Projects tab. These are probably ones that haven't been able to contact project servers to fetch their official name. BoincTasks should detect this condition and switch to project URL or some other identification string for these.. This is how Boinc Manager handles these projects.

That's probably enough wishes for now. Thanks for listening!

I didn't/don't want to make a complete copy of another program.

1) If FreeHAL is reporting the CPU use correctly it should not generate a warning. The warning is set up for tasks that use the full (1) Cpu. But I put in the to test list.
2) The warning can be tailored to a specific CPU use range like 0.1 to 0.4.
3) Hmm almost impossible to do correctly, you could make a guess , but I put it on the list to look into.
4) Ok on the list.
5) Strange, probably the encryption that has problems with some specific character or combination. If you can give me a password that produces these problems.
6) ?? Tell me more.
7) ??
Can you give me an example or a screenshot. It could be an newer or older BOINC version that causes these problems. The name is the URL name of the project.

[wicked]

1) If FreeHAL is reporting the CPU use correctly it should not generate a warning. The warning is set up for tasks that use the full (1) Cpu. But I put in the to test list.
2) The warning can be tailored to a specific CPU use range like 0.1 to 0.4.
3) Hmm almost impossible to do correctly, you could make a guess , but I put it on the list to look into.
4) Ok on the list.
5) Strange, probably the encryption that has problems with some specific character or combination. If you can give me a password that produces these problems.
6) ?? Tell me more.
7) ??
Can you give me an example or a screenshot. It could be an newer or older BOINC version that causes these problems. The name is the URL name of the project.

1. Hmm, I wonder if there's indeed some reporting problems in that project. After waking from sleep it was overflowing CPU % field and Progress % field was way over 700%. It did correct itself out after a while but still was strange. Also, should the Use column show this as a non-CPU intensive job or is that functioning only for GPU jobs? Maybe FreeHAL is not reporting CPU usage correctly or something..
2. Yeah, I can make the warning go away. But I'm still interested in hiding that particular project on the Tasks tab. Is this something you'd consider implementing for a future version?
3. Cool, thanks for trying!
4. Awesome, thanks!
5. Sure, b72c2597114cae3257a3584186617769 and 69b5b81e5954e755fd9a4b98c576ff14 are the troublesome entries. Both are defaults generated automatically by BOINC Client.
6. Here's a screen shot of the problem. I started by selecting one server, one actual project and four blank lines that were there after opening the window. Waiting a while and there were two additional blank lines. Wait a while and there were six and so on..

7. This is basically host level speed measurements where point 3 was task level measurements. Let's get back to this after those two prerequirements are done (if step 3 is even possible). Although, one thing "Computers" display could have, IMO, and that's the measured speed of the host. And maybe BOINC client version.
8. Sure, this screen shot shows the blank entries. Both are projects that haven't been able to make the initial contact to the project servers.

[/list]

[fred]

1) The 700% is on the bug list.
2) I will try to detect non CPU projects that don't report this in the USE field better. But projects should report the CPU and GPU use properly.
5) Added to the bug list to test.
6) Maybe a project that is still initializing?
7) Added the BOINC version to the list.
Is on the list, but should be quite rare.

[wicked]

6) Yeah, this is probably related to the same blank projects mentioned in point 8. But problem is that the blank lines are multiplying all by themselves. And there's initially four when there's only 2 projects in one computer that haven't been initialized. (I left them on one computer on purpose to detect when their back.)
True, maybe I should just detach from the projects as a workaround. That's probably what everybody else does and thus they have never seen this kind of strangeness.

Thank you for your replies and awesome responsiveness so far!

[fred]

5. Sure, b72c2597114cae3257a3584186617769 and 69b5b81e5954e755fd9a4b98c576ff14 are the troublesome entries. Both are defaults generated automatically by BOINC Client.

Can you do the following, take b72c2597114cae3257a3584186617769 and 69b5b81e5954e755fd9a4b98c576ff14 and put it in the password field.
In BoincTasks select File -> Exit , start BoincTasks again and give me the 2 passwords that are in the password field.
Because on my computers I can't reproduce it. [/list][/list]

[wicked]

First changes to "ŸÄÔG6ÁóK9E04Ó®âµá—€äCf
Ôå×Ej'TÓ1I%" and second to "_Ÿ·ÑiXgDô%›ÕþŽˆö,'Æ•S,4ÌiÒ©0.ééh†Þ" without the quotes. Although, copy/paste to this forum might have changed the encoding..

[fred]

First changes to "ŸÄÔG6ÁóK9E04Ó®âµá—€äCf
Ôå×Ej'TÓ1I%" and second to "_Ÿ·ÑiXgDô%›ÕþŽˆö,'Æ•S,4ÌiÒ©0.ééh†Þ" without the quotes. Although, copy/paste to this forum might have changed the encoding..

I Make a setting for non encrypted passwords, as BOINC gives the passwords in the clear  , it even doesn't make much sense to encrypt them anyway.