Windows: Boinc as a service - Boinc gui will corrupt environment

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Morten Ross
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Message 13126 - Posted: 28 Jul 2004, 16:00:36 UTC

Hi,

I am getting more and more worried about the quality of current v3.20! I have waited until this version to test, as I assumed it is now past beta stage - alas.

I run BOINC as a service (boinc_cli.exe), this runs OK. In order to look into the stats/processes I use the Boinc gui.

However - if I open Boinc gui it will also start another set of setiathome_3.08_windows_intelx86.exe. My system has 4 CPUs, thus 8 executables will be active. I then have to close the four windows/instances opened by the GUI. These GUIs are NOT opened if Boinc is NOT running as a service!! Understand it I do not!
The 4 instances allready running under Windows service will NOT be updated in Boinc Gui. Instead the Boinc gui will not understand that the CPUs are working at all! Restarting the services will NOT report the finished units, NOR will the Boinc Gui see them. They are orphants! HOW do I upload them now - I have used my CPUs to process, but the BOINC software corrupts its own envirnoment so I am unable to upload results! The workunits have been reported, but NOT the results - they are on the system, and no error is reported - as they are not there.
This is way too messy! I have no control. Boinc has no control.

There is
NO verification
NO validation
NO coordination
NO intelligence
on whether or not BOINC processes are allready running. In fact the Boinc service and the GUi are like two completely different software systems!
Elementary logistical rules have been overridden here! What is this?

Since there is NO other GUI to display current stat and manually activate communication running the service there is no other choice but to start the GUI to validate and read about curent status. Looking into eventvwr is absolutely not an option, as the Boinc interface to eventvwr is incorrect and will read:

"
The description for Event ID ( 1 ) in Source ( BOINC ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: BOINC error: 0; 2004-07-28 11:26:18 [SETI@home] Deferring communication with project for 1 minutes and 0 seconds
"

instead of:

"
BOINC error: 0; 2004-07-28 11:26:18 [SETI@home] Deferring communication with project for 1 minutes and 0 seconds
"

Where is all the experience, intellgence, know how and expertise gained from S@H1? It seems nothing has been absorbed and implemented here! This is very disappointing.

Can someone in close proximity to the developement team or similar respond to this asap - please!

Regards
Morten Ross
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Pascal, K G
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Message 13133 - Posted: 28 Jul 2004, 16:25:07 UTC

Works great for me......and a lot of others.........
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Message 13139 - Posted: 28 Jul 2004, 16:35:42 UTC - in response to Message 13126.  

> I assumed it is now past beta stage -

You assumed wrong. Open your GUI, press Help, About. Read out loud what it says in the blue bar at the top of the window that opens. Close the window and don't assume anymore.

The CLI & service options in the present version of BOINC aren't the well implemented ones yet. Wait for a next version of BOINC that has got the correct CLI and service implementations.
----------------------
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Morten Ross
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Message 13165 - Posted: 28 Jul 2004, 17:33:42 UTC - in response to Message 13139.  

> > I assumed it is now past beta stage -
>
> You assumed wrong. Open your GUI, press Help, About. Read out loud what it
> says in the blue bar at the top of the window that opens. Close the window and
> don't assume anymore.

I guess I should not have use the word assume, as I have base my statement on public information from the Boinc project. The official page http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_participate.php
does not refer to nor state that version 3.20 IS a beta. Instead, June 22 was the release date for the public version 3.20 together with information that now S@H1 will move to Boinc. I received a mail also stating this - no mention of beta.
IF this was a proper beta program I would have had no problems working with the problems and reporting them to proper technical teams. I have participated in various beta programs (Microsoft, CA, IBM), and they all have a commonality that problems are reported in close cooperation with the developement teams. Without this reporting mechanism there will be thousands of frustrated users as well as myriads of forum updates duplicating the same problems many times, as the forum is not designed to facilitate groupings, filtering or advanced search, thus users rather create a new thread, since it is too difficult to find out if there is another existing thread.

This said as a beta user I should be entitled to see the list of upcoming additions, if my problem is going to be corrected in next version or not and what current problems have been reported and what will be done to resolve them.
You might be part of the "true" beta testing team, and thus have this information. I do not and am completely in the dark. Nobody appreciates being in the dark.

Seti@Home is an oustanding project, with millions of users working together for one cause - for free. S@H1 is also incredibly stable, well managed and streamlined and should be an incredibly good foundation to boild Boinc on. But current beta program is not well managed nor respect the time we put into the problems we experience with 3.20. The only thing that I can find contious updates on is the down times/news page (http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/). As a beta tester I need to see what is being worked on. This will ensure that hundreds of users will wait for the next release instead of updating their frustrations in this fourum.

Morten Ross


>
> The CLI & service options in the present version of BOINC aren't the well
> implemented ones yet. Wait for a next version of BOINC that has got the
> correct CLI and service implementations.
> ----------------------
> Jordâ„¢
>
> src="http://boinc.mundayweb.com/seti2/stats.php?userID=2">
>
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Morten Ross
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Message 13167 - Posted: 28 Jul 2004, 17:39:23 UTC - in response to Message 13133.  

> Works great for me......and a lot of others.........
>
>

Pascal,

1: Do you have Boinc as a service? This is only relevant when running as a service!
2: Is it running PRIOR to starting the Boinc GUI?
3: Do you have setiathome_3.08_windows_intelx86.exe in the task manager BEFORE you start Boinc GUI?
4: When you then start Boinc GUI do you get a processing/graph GUI for each CPU in the background of the Boinc main GUI?

If you do not you must run a different version than 3.20.

Morten Ross


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Profile Christopher Hauber
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Message 13168 - Posted: 28 Jul 2004, 17:44:08 UTC - in response to Message 13165.  

Long story short, the GUI and the CLI aren't really fully integrated yet. I had some problems caused by this too. I don't know if the CLI will download units, but it CAN upload them if you use the -send_results_immediately parameter to run it. Be very careful when you use the CLI with the GUI. The GUI may try to move workunits to a "slot" to work on them and because the CLI has the slot locked it can't do it and errors the workunit, starts another, does the same, and so on until you've gone through 50 workunits on the machine each day. That's why I stopped using the CLI as a service. I'd like to have it that way, but sometimes you just can't have it all. They'll get it fixed sometime and when I trust that it works properly and well, I'll do it again.

Chris

> I guess I should not have use the word assume, as I have base my statement on
> public information from the Boinc project. The official page
> http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_participate.php
> does not refer to nor state that version 3.20 IS a beta. Instead, June 22 was
> the release date for the public version 3.20 together with information that
> now S@H1 will move to Boinc. I received a mail also stating this - no mention
> of beta.
> IF this was a proper beta program I would have had no problems working with
> the problems and reporting them to proper technical teams. I have participated
> in various beta programs (Microsoft, CA, IBM), and they all have a commonality
> that problems are reported in close cooperation with the developement teams.
> Without this reporting mechanism there will be thousands of frustrated users
> as well as myriads of forum updates duplicating the same problems many times,
> as the forum is not designed to facilitate groupings, filtering or advanced
> search, thus users rather create a new thread, since it is too difficult to
> find out if there is another existing thread.
>
> This said as a beta user I should be entitled to see the list of upcoming
> additions, if my problem is going to be corrected in next version or not and
> what current problems have been reported and what will be done to resolve
> them.
> You might be part of the "true" beta testing team, and thus have this
> information. I do not and am completely in the dark. Nobody appreciates being
> in the dark.
>
> Seti@Home is an oustanding project, with millions of users working together
> for one cause - for free. S@H1 is also incredibly stable, well managed and
> streamlined and should be an incredibly good foundation to boild Boinc on. But
> current beta program is not well managed nor respect the time we put into the
> problems we experience with 3.20. The only thing that I can find contious
> updates on is the down times/news page (http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/). As
> a beta tester I need to see what is being worked on. This will ensure that
> hundreds of users will wait for the next release instead of updating their
> frustrations in this fourum.
>
> Morten Ross
>

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Profile Jord
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Message 13173 - Posted: 28 Jul 2004, 17:59:39 UTC - in response to Message 13165.  

> This said as a beta user I should be entitled to see the list of upcoming
> additions, if my problem is going to be corrected in next version or not and
> what current problems have been reported and what will be done to resolve
> them.
> You might be part of the "true" beta testing team, and thus have this
> information. I do not and am completely in the dark. Nobody appreciates being
> in the dark.

Try to see at the taskbase what you are after. You won't be able to change anything, mind, yet it should make you feel better. ;)


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Morten Ross
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Message 13174 - Posted: 28 Jul 2004, 18:02:27 UTC - in response to Message 13168.  
Last modified: 28 Jul 2004, 18:08:29 UTC

> Long story short, the GUI and the CLI aren't really fully integrated yet. I
> had some problems caused by this too. I don't know if the CLI will download
> units, but it CAN upload them if you use the -send_results_immediately
> parameter to run it. Be very careful when you use the CLI with the GUI. The
> GUI may try to move workunits to a "slot" to work on them and because the CLI
> has the slot locked it can't do it and errors the workunit, starts another,
> does the same, and so on until you've gone through 50 workunits on the machine
> each day. That's why I stopped using the CLI as a service. I'd like to have it
> that way, but sometimes you just can't have it all. They'll get it fixed
> sometime and when I trust that it works properly and well, I'll do it again.
>
> Chris
Hi Chris,
The CLI will indeed upload/download units, but my reason for using the GUI is the lack of information and control when using the CLI - there is NO management tool!
Using the GUI does not work well with reboots, logouts, etc. so CLI is a must. But I am now painstakingly aware of the problem, so I know I must stop the CLI service PRIOR to starting the GUI. Do you know if this is actually dealt with in next version? When is the next version due?
Thanks again Chris :-)

Morten Ross
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Morten Ross
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Message 13175 - Posted: 28 Jul 2004, 18:05:54 UTC - in response to Message 13173.  

> > This said as a beta user I should be entitled to see the list of
> upcoming
> > additions, if my problem is going to be corrected in next version or not
> and
> > what current problems have been reported and what will be done to
> resolve
> > them.
> > You might be part of the "true" beta testing team, and thus have this
> > information. I do not and am completely in the dark. Nobody appreciates
> being
> > in the dark.
>
> Try to see at <a> href="http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/taskbase/database.cgi?function=view&fresh=yes">the
> taskbase[/url] what you are after. You won't be able to change anything, mind,
> yet it should make you feel better. ;)

Excellent!
That was very informative - thanks a lot :-))

Morten Ross
>
>
> ----------------------
> Jordâ„¢
>
> src="http://boinc.mundayweb.com/seti2/stats.php?userID=2">
>
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Message 13178 - Posted: 28 Jul 2004, 18:21:27 UTC
Last modified: 28 Jul 2004, 18:59:30 UTC

Is the problem that you want to run the CLI as a service but you still want to be able to see the GUI when you want?

Let me tell you what I have done. I used to run the CLI as a service using the free version of FireDaemon. BIG MISTAKE!! You do not want to artificially run BOINC as a service. You must install it as a service properly. That said I recently did that on my 2 computer. Now I have another problem. I want to see what it is doing.
Some day you will just be able to open the GUI and every one will be happy but if you do that now it will cause major problems by acting like the CLI is not running as a service and starting more WU.

THE SOLUTION FOR ME.

BoincView

This is a 3rd party software that can access the client using the xml files or better yet the GUI RPC. While I have not been able to get it to access clients across my network it will view the local client and you can even attach/detach/update and view almost anything you could with the authentic GUI. I like being able to only open the GUI when I want and check up on things. It is handy.

Although the CLI has a built in -allow_remote_gui_rpc to work while running as a service using registry edits it does work when running the GUI. I will be interested how things will work once everything is in place but for now, using BoincView has worked out great for me.

http://boincview.amanheis.de/

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Profile Christopher Hauber
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Message 13192 - Posted: 28 Jul 2004, 19:10:26 UTC - in response to Message 13174.  

Oh I totally understand that. That's the same thing I was wanting to do. I hope that it is fixed soon just because of the way the service works. I was hoping also for a slight boost in speed but I didn't notice any at all.

I don't actually know what is planned for the next release, but if you search Rom's posts, you can find a link to 2 pages dealing with version history and updates made from one release to the next.

Chris

> Hi Chris,
> The CLI will indeed upload/download units, but my reason for using the GUI is
> the lack of information and control when using the CLI - there is NO
> management tool!
> Using the GUI does not work well with reboots, logouts, etc. so CLI is a must.
> But I am now painstakingly aware of the problem, so I know I must stop the CLI
> service PRIOR to starting the GUI. Do you know if this is actually dealt with
> in next version? When is the next version due?
> Thanks again Chris :-)
>
> Morten Ross
>
>
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Message boards : Number crunching : Windows: Boinc as a service - Boinc gui will corrupt environment


 
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