I'm considering signing up for climateprediction. I want BOINC to use 100% of my cpu time for Seti, and only run climateprediction when I'm completely out of work for Seti. If I sign up for climatepredection, could I accomplish this by simply setting my Seti@home priority to 100, and climateprediction to 0?
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We are Borgholio. You will be assimilated...bunghole!

No, a 100 - 0 split wouldn't work. The best you can do is a huge split like S@H 10,000 - CPDN 1.

You will always get one WU downloaded from any project that you are attached to. You will spend some time crunching it. The time that you spend will be proportional to the resource share. If you set the resource shares to be extreme like 10000 to 1, you will spend time crunching, and return the WU for no credit.

This is one of the results of a preemptive scheduler. There are ways to fix this, but they are somewhat complicated, and they will take a while to get into place.

The other places where the current work scheduler gets into trouble is short deadlines and slow machines, for the same reasons.

I have another question about CPU use. Why does BOINC give up CPU time to any other program that opens after BOINC is running when I have run always selected?
I have plenty of memory on my computers and I don't need BOINC to stop running when any other program is running makes it kind of hard to meet deadlines when BOINC will stop proccesing for any program you open. I'm not a programer but can't you release a version for people that really want the BOINC program to run always and make it really run always? Does anyone else think the program should have a feature like this?

Memory is not the problem, it's the CPU speed. In the task manager, set the Priority of the application to normal or high if you it take most of your resources. Someone else might be able to explain why you shouldn't do this.

> I have another question about CPU use. Why does BOINC give up CPU time to any
> other program that opens after BOINC is running when I have run always
> selected?

Because BOINC is supposed to use idle CPU cycles.

If BOINC yields to another process, that process will finish quicker, and then there will be more idle time for BOINC, so it probably doens't make much difference.

> Because BOINC is supposed to use idle CPU cycles.
>
> If BOINC yields to another process, that process will finish quicker, and then
> there will be more idle time for BOINC, so it probably doens't make much
> difference.
>
>
Well what I really need is for BOINC to keep working when my father uses his game that he likes to play for up to 5 or more hrs a day. The time my dad spends playing his game BOINC just sits there doing nothing (his game doesn't use much in the way of CPU resources just and old Win 95 card game) so there is no reason BOINC can't keep working. There is a setting on the BONIC general
preferences of the user account Do work while computer is in use? I have selected Yes. So why can't they get it to work while the computer is in use? That's all Im asking.

Tony, if you want that to happen, follow what I said before. Set the Priority to normal or high and see how that works.

> Tony, if you want that to happen, follow what I said before. Set the Priority
> to normal or high and see how that works.
>


>
>
I did set it to normal and it quit working disappeared out of the task manager. Had to exit the BOINC in tasktray and restart it. Windows said it might make the system unstable if I changed the priority and it did. Just to be safe I rebooted the computer and it seems to be working but still in the default low setting. That's why I would like to see an option for BIONC to run at a higher priority.

>
> > Because BOINC is supposed to use idle CPU cycles.
> >
> > If BOINC yields to another process, that process will finish quicker, and
> then
> > there will be more idle time for BOINC, so it probably doens't make much
> > difference.
> >
> >
> Well what I really need is for BOINC to keep working when my father uses his
> game that he likes to play for up to 5 or more hrs a day. The time my dad
> spends playing his game BOINC just sits there doing nothing (his game doesn't
> use much in the way of CPU resources just and old Win 95 card game) so there
> is no reason BOINC can't keep working. There is a setting on the BONIC
> general
> preferences of the user account Do work while computer is in use? I have
> selected Yes. So why can't they get it to work while the computer is in use?
> That's all Im asking.

Assuming we're talking about Win2K or WinXP, look at the task manager while his game is running. That will tell you how much CPU his game actually takes.

If the CPU is pegged the whole time the game runs, then it doesn't play nice with the Windows tasker, and that's the end of the story.

On the other hand, if it uses about 10%, the task manager will show that, and BOINC will take the remaining 90% if it's set to "run always".

You can see what tasks are actually taking time.

>>his game doesn't use much in the way of CPU resources just and old Win 95 card game)

Tony, your problem may be your Dad's old card game. If it's as old as you suggest it may simply not be releasing the processor, and sitting running idle loops all day. In this case you're right - BOINC won't get a lot done. However, if you did set the priority higher one of two things would then happen: either the card game would run very slowly as BOINC grabbed its share of processor time, or worse, the game wouldn't run at all as BOINC was running at a higher priority.

Maybe you should buy your Dad a new game, or maybe persuade him to go wash his car/play golf/mow the lawn :-))



Giskard - the first telepathic robot.

Remember, there is an option in your Preferences, "Do Work While Computer is In Use" - what have you set that to?

Don't know how this works, but it must be watching for so much idle time in a period to decide the machine is unused.