BOINC not doing anything.
3 Nov 2005 1:15:17 UTC
Topic 190110
(moderation:
Since upgrading all three of my computers to the latest BOINC, 5.2.5, it seems that none of the computers do anything. When I bring up the BOINC manager, it says the status is "suspended", even though I haven't done so. Clicking on Suspend and then on Resume still shows status as "suspended". So, I think the only time it runs is when I'm not doing anything, like looking at the BOINC manager. I make a note of the time to completion and go watch a movie for several hours. When I come back the time to completion is still the same.
My theory is that this "System Idle Process" I see in the task manager lately is the problem. From all I've read, system idle process is what runs when the cpu doesn't have anything to do. So, if it doesn't have anything to do and runs the system idle process, when does BOINC see that nothing is running? Or am I just crazy?
Anyway, I changed my setup to "Run Always", maybe that will help.
BOINC not doing anything.
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Ed,
I can see that you've been doing Einstein all year, so I'm not about to get into selecting a project before pressing "Resume".
Just this note: The System Idle process is only high (upper 90s%) when nothing else substantial is running - System Idle doesn't consume CPU cycles, it uses less than 01% of the available processing time, and only ~16k of memory. When TaskManager reports that S.I. is using 99%, that means that it's using 99% of what is actually in use, not 99% of what's available for use, so if it reads high like that, it means that Einstein is asking for nothing, i.e. idle, suspended, or whatever.
Regards,
Michael
microcraft
"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice" - MLK
RE: I can see that you've
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Einstein is the only project I have and unless it is selected, suspend or resume is not available. I have not changed my preferences in my profile so I can't understand why just upgrading the BOINC version would result in having to change from "run based on preferences" to "run always".
Ed, Is it misbehaving like
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Ed,
Is it misbehaving like this on all your computers, or only on one?
BTW, your account shows 4 hosts, not 3, all running Boinc v5.2.5 - is there a duplicate there somewhere?
Someone more knowledgable about the newest 5.x versions will have to jump in here.
Michael
microcraft
"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice" - MLK
RE: Ed, Is it misbehaving
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Yeah, all of them. There are just three. Games was running Win2000 Pro and crashed, reloaded with WinXP Pro which it didn't like and after a bit it was back on Win2000 Pro. For a while the Games computer showed three entries and I merged two of them, can't get the others to merge though.
Before switching them to "run always", even though the message said "activities suspended" when I clicked on the project, only "Suspend" was available. Click on that and "Resume" comes up. It's hard to tell without setting "run always" if it was running at all except the time to completion never changed.
Strangely, I see no performance degradation of any of the machines even though they are running BOINC "always".
I now see why my friend told me I should never keep my weapons in the same room as my computers.
Ed, I can see that you
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Ed,
I can see that you were running 4.45 before you went to 5.2.5 but I can also see one result around 20 Oct where you were running 4.19. Was that your actual upgrade path, ie 4.19 -> 4.45 -> 5.2.5??
4.19 had a bug where even if you set your preference for "Do work while the computer is in use" to "No", it would have acted like it was set to "Yes". So when you did the upgrade from 4.19, if that setting were "No" then all of a sudden BOINC would have started obeying it so that whenever you were typing or mousing then EAH would have shown as not running. Because EAH was not running the system idle process would show at 99%. Can you please check and tell us what you have that preference set to on the website? If you have it set to "No" can you change it to "Yes" and see if that solves your problem?
Cheers,
Gary.
RE: Ed, I can see that you
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Yes, that was the upgrade path.
So, I updated my profile as requested. On all three computers, I changed from "run always" to "run based on preferences". I selected the project, clicked update. Now computer "Backroom" says "activities suspended", the other two are still "running".
I also notice among the messages:
"|General prefs: from Einstein@Home (last modified 2005-11-03 09:26:17)"
"|General prefs: no separate prefs for home; using your defaults".
RE: RE: Can you please
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Still need to check web site for "Do work while the computer is in use", set it to "Yes", and hit Update for that project...
RE: RE: RE: Can you
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As I said, I changed the profile on the website and updated. I also clicked "update" on all three computers and got message responses so I know they are all communicating with EAH.
All three computers have the same settings now. Only the "backroom" computer seems to do what it is told. With the BOINC manager up and no screen saver, after a few minutes the status says "running". Move the mouse and the status changes to "Preempted", followed by "Suspended". The other two computers just keep "running" no matter what else is going on.