BT 1.28

[Pepo]

"-Add: BoincTasks settings: Messages tab: Keep user definable number of lines."

In my case the default value was 50 000 IIRC. I personally do like to keep a lot of messages available, but while testing I've seen BT becoming unresponsive a couple of times for a lot of seconds, until all old messages became displayed. (As the memory usage rose by some 20 MB for the first time, I assume the display grid etc. had to be allocated, etc.)

The GUI still gets unresponsive for some time (20-40 seconds, masked behind "Switched, busy..." note, until the "Waiting *" sate appears again), when taking a look later at any intervals - unlike BOINC Manager, which still seems to handle all hundreds of thousands of message lines without such glitches (the message ID counter was around 120 000 now).

After restarting BT, there are just the 2 000 most recent messages (the client's cache) and the "Switched, busy..." status appears just during 2 seconds - consistent with other tabs.

My only recommendation ATM is to lower the default to 5 000 lines and leave it upon the user (with possibly noticing the consequences later, but being aware of the change and reasons).

[fred]

"-Add: BoincTasks settings: Messages tab: Keep user definable number of lines."

In my case the default value was 50 000 IIRC. I personally do like to keep a lot of messages available, but while testing I've seen BT becoming unresponsive a couple of times for a lot of seconds, until all old messages became displayed. (As the memory usage rose by some 20 MB for the first time, I assume the display grid etc. had to be allocated, etc.)

I set the default to 5000.
BT keeps only one copy of the messages, so when you switch computer it may take a while to fill up. But this depends on the computer speed.

[Pepo]

In my case the default value was 50 000 IIRC. I personally do like to keep a lot of messages available, but while testing I've seen BT becoming unresponsive a couple of times for a lot of seconds, until all old messages became displayed. (As the memory usage rose by some 20 MB for the first time, I assume the display grid etc. had to be allocated, etc.)

BT keeps only one copy of the messages, so when you switch computer it may take a while to fill up. But this depends on the computer speed.

It was a single machine - localhost, no client switching. Just between BT tabs.
Filling the list from other client would load the 2 000 messages over network, whereas in my case it was some woodoo magic happening with 50 000 in-memory messages.

I'll check the machine again tomorrow, the messages should slowly fill up until.

[Purple Rabbit]

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).

[fred]

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.

That's a least a clue, something from 1.27->1.28.
My main suspect is the messages count, that is now limited, it may starts looping.....
Always remove the old version in the config screen -> software so everything is removed.

Whatever I do nothing gives a high CPU usage on my computers.

[Purple Rabbit]

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.

[fred]

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

Reproducing the problem would be nice.
And see when it happens, what you where doing.
What happens on the tabs, anything abnormal in the status messages or the log.
Do you loose connection with a computer, that sort of things.

[Purple Rabbit]

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.

[fred]

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.

Are CPU indicators of the computers (Computer name) going down or are some staying high?

[Purple Rabbit]

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.

[fred]

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.

What does the C:\Users\fred\AppData\Roaming\eFMer\BoincTasks\log BoincTasks Startup.log show
It may start some cleaning up at startup.

[Purple Rabbit]

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

[Purple Rabbit]

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 

[Corsair]

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.

every time I've seen that such situation happens is when BT is running not minimized, and if I minimize it when the thing happens doesn't recover the normal CPU usage still goes to the top, until BT re-started, but if the problem has happened in the last run still goes to the top very quickly, and must reboot computer to avoid this recurrence.

[Corsair]

Something with messages:

the BT running machine, restored Applications tab and went to the messages tab and after a refreshing of the tab shown:

291   Enigma@Home   01-12-2011 13:14   Scheduler request failed: Error 417   
292   PrimeGrid   01-12-2011 13:14   Sending scheduler request: Requested by user.   
293   PrimeGrid   01-12-2011 13:14   Not reporting or requesting tasks   
_Init_               
_Init_               
_Init_               
_Init_               
_Init_               
_Init_               
_Init_               
_Init_               
_Init_               
_Init_               
_Init_               
_Init_               
_Init_               
294   PrimeGrid   01-12-2011 13:14   Scheduler request completed   

at the moment looks like that it's only in the BT machine, when should be shown as follows:

293   PrimeGrid   01-12-2011 13:14   Not reporting or requesting tasks   
294   PrimeGrid   01-12-2011 13:14   Scheduler request completed   
295   Collatz Conjecture   01-12-2011 14:57   Computation for task collatz_2372607239263466793320_103079215104_1 finished   
296   Collatz Conjecture   01-12-2011 14:57   Starting task collatz_2372609324555988347240_103079215104_0 using mini_collatz version 209   
297   Collatz Conjecture   01-12-2011 14:57   Started upload of collatz_2372607239263466793320_103079215104_1_0   
298   Collatz Conjecture   01-12-2011 14:58   Finished upload of collatz_2372607239263466793320_103079215104_1_0   
299   Collatz Conjecture   01-12-2011 16:55   Computation for task collatz_2372609324555988347240_103079215104_0 finished   
300   Collatz Conjecture   01-12-2011 16:55   Starting task collatz_2372611053297504856424_103079215104_1 using mini_collatz version 209   
301   Collatz Conjecture   01-12-2011 16:55   Started upload of collatz_2372609324555988347240_103079215104_0_0   
302   Collatz Conjecture   01-12-2011 16:55   Finished upload of collatz_2372609324555988347240_103079215104_0_0   
303   Collatz Conjecture   01-12-2011 16:55   Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.   
304   Collatz Conjecture   01-12-2011 16:55   Reporting 2 completed tasks, requesting new tasks for ATI GPU   
305   Collatz Conjecture   01-12-2011 16:55   Scheduler request completed: got 1 new tasks   
306   Collatz Conjecture   01-12-2011 16:55   Started download of collatz_2372676571168179464552_103079215104   
307   Collatz Conjecture   01-12-2011 16:55   Finished download of collatz_237267657116817

if I change to another tab and come back to the message one is properly shown the correct layout.