Mac Boinc problems

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Message 1087203 - Posted: 15 Mar 2011, 0:02:17 UTC

Lately the computer always shows a menu saying communicating with Boinc client, and either it says connected to local host, or connecting to local host, but it is increasingly difficult to get it to work. I even uninstalled Boinc, and trashed all related librarys. That worked for a day at best, then back to the same thing. I have done this several times over the last few months. I never used to have this problem. Cant remeber if it started when Mac OS had an update or not. Running 10.6.6 and latest version of Boinc client. Late 2009 Mac Pro. ALL SETTINGS ON BOINC ARE SAME AS BEFORE, AND SAME AS ALL THE WINDOWS RIGS I HAVE. THE WINDOWS ONES DID THIS A LITTLE A FEW WEEKS AGO AGO, BUT NO PROBLEMS NOW. ANY IDEAS?
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Message 1087306 - Posted: 15 Mar 2011, 6:02:24 UTC - in response to Message 1087203.  

Lately the computer always shows a menu saying communicating with Boinc client, and either it says connected to local host, or connecting to local host, but it is increasingly difficult to get it to work. I even uninstalled Boinc, and trashed all related librarys. That worked for a day at best, then back to the same thing. I have done this several times over the last few months. I never used to have this problem. Cant remeber if it started when Mac OS had an update or not. Running 10.6.6 and latest version of Boinc client. Late 2009 Mac Pro. ALL SETTINGS ON BOINC ARE SAME AS BEFORE, AND SAME AS ALL THE WINDOWS RIGS I HAVE. THE WINDOWS ONES DID THIS A LITTLE A FEW WEEKS AGO AGO, BUT NO PROBLEMS NOW. ANY IDEAS?


This happens on (my) PCs when WU queues get long - how many days' cache are you running? Did you get lots more WUs than you thought you might - there are some problems with time estimates now which can cause lots more WUs sent than should be for a given cache size.
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Message 1087361 - Posted: 15 Mar 2011, 12:20:27 UTC - in response to Message 1087203.  
Last modified: 15 Mar 2011, 12:25:16 UTC


On Tasks tab - push button [Show Active Tasks]

Impact of 'Show All Tasks' with BOINC Manager
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=62634&nowrap=true


 


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Message 1087363 - Posted: 15 Mar 2011, 12:46:11 UTC - in response to Message 1087361.  
Last modified: 15 Mar 2011, 13:02:46 UTC

Can't reach the Link, but displaying all tasks, causes boinc.exe and boincmgr.exe to use more then 1% or 2%, sometimes, with a large amount of tasks which can easily get to 5% or more, 12%, also depends on the CPU used and memory speed. And GPU can be affected, too.


Hi, got some Connection Problems, but they only affect
the Data Driven Webpages, up& Downloads are OK.
Could also be on my end.

On the frontpage:

Lab-wide Power Outage
Our building's electrical systems are being tested this week. To avoid power surges we will be shutting everything down Tuesday afternoon (after the usual weekly outage) and coming back up Wednesday morning once the tests are finished. All servers/web sites will be down during this time. 14 Mar 2011 | 21:46:40 UTC

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Message 1087374 - Posted: 15 Mar 2011, 13:33:22 UTC

I cant show all task, or any function, the communicating with boinc client keeps poping up and wont stop. if i cancel it just pops up again. if it exit boinc manager, then i am not connected to local host. the last 2 days i cant do anything on this computer.
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Message 1087394 - Posted: 15 Mar 2011, 14:39:07 UTC - in response to Message 1087374.  

I cant show all task, or any function, the communicating with boinc client keeps poping up and wont stop. if i cancel it just pops up again. if it exit boinc manager, then i am not connected to local host. the last 2 days i cant do anything on this computer.


How many WUs do you have on that machine? Look in SETI data folder, and see how many objects in there; WUs are about total - 50 or so. If it is a large number ( > 2 or 3000) that may be the source of your system slowness.
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Message 1087399 - Posted: 15 Mar 2011, 14:57:30 UTC - in response to Message 1087374.  
Last modified: 15 Mar 2011, 14:58:21 UTC

error
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Message 1087412 - Posted: 15 Mar 2011, 15:46:03 UTC - in response to Message 1087203.  

What is running on that machine? (I've seen that message before but only on a PC.) You can use activity monitor to find out what is running. You can even sort by CPU usage. Anything running you don't know what it is? Anything eating up too much CPU, e.g. a virus scan? Time machine or spotlight indexing might also cause this, you might pause them.

Normally when you get that message something else is eating enough CPU that BOINC manager and BOINC application can't sync up.

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Message 1087420 - Posted: 15 Mar 2011, 15:58:51 UTC - in response to Message 1087412.  


Normally when you get that message something else is eating enough CPU that BOINC manager and BOINC application can't sync up.


This can also be caused by overmany WUs - I see it occasionally when the servers puff me up with too many WUs on my machines which only run BOINC/SETI.

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Message 1087508 - Posted: 16 Mar 2011, 20:27:58 UTC - in response to Message 1087374.  
Last modified: 16 Mar 2011, 20:30:18 UTC

I cant show all task, or any function, the communicating with boinc client keeps poping up and wont stop. if i cancel it just pops up again. if it exit boinc manager, then i am not connected to local host. the last 2 days i cant do anything on this computer.


If the interface of BOINC Manager is unusable you can change the setting for [Show Active Tasks] directly:

Exit BOINC
Start RegEdit
Go To:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Space Sciences Laboratory, U.C. Berkeley\BOINC Manager\Tasks]

Change "ActiveTasksOnly" to 1

Start BOINC

P.S.
There have to be something similar to RegEdit on Mac OS


 


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Message 1087531 - Posted: 16 Mar 2011, 21:37:38 UTC

I DONT KNOW WHAT IT WOULD BE, AS I DONT EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT IS ON A wINDOWS MACHINE. i DID UNINSTALL, DELETE ALL THE LIBRARIES FOR BOINC, AND THE PREFERENCES ALSO. THEN REINSTALLED AND IT SEEMS TO WORK FOR NOW. I HAVE DONE THIS BEFORE AND IT WORKED FOR A WHILE.
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Message 1087533 - Posted: 16 Mar 2011, 21:38:43 UTC - in response to Message 1087508.  

I cant show all task, or any function, the communicating with boinc client keeps poping up and wont stop. if i cancel it just pops up again. if it exit boinc manager, then i am not connected to local host. the last 2 days i cant do anything on this computer.


If the interface of BOINC Manager is unusable you can change the setting for [Show Active Tasks] directly:

Exit BOINC
Start RegEdit
Go To:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Space Sciences Laboratory, U.C. Berkeley\BOINC Manager\Tasks]

Change "ActiveTasksOnly" to 1

Start BOINC

P.S.
There have to be something similar to RegEdit on Mac OS


Mac's don't have registry's so there is no need to edit them, ergo no RegEdit. Think Linux when you think of Mac OS.

But that may be an option in the cc_config.xml file.
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Client_configuration



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Message 1087764 - Posted: 17 Mar 2011, 12:12:16 UTC - in response to Message 1087533.  

I cant show all task, or any function, the communicating with boinc client keeps poping up and wont stop. if i cancel it just pops up again. if it exit boinc manager, then i am not connected to local host. the last 2 days i cant do anything on this computer.


If the interface of BOINC Manager is unusable you can change the setting for [Show Active Tasks] directly:

Exit BOINC
Start RegEdit
Go To:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Space Sciences Laboratory, U.C. Berkeley\BOINC Manager\Tasks]

Change "ActiveTasksOnly" to 1

Start BOINC

P.S.
There have to be something similar to RegEdit on Mac OS


Mac's don't have registry's so there is no need to edit them, ergo no RegEdit. Think Linux when you think of Mac OS.

But that may be an option in the cc_config.xml file.
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Client_configuration



On my mac, I found "Library/Preferences/BOINC Manager Preferences" has a line as "ActiveTasksOnly=0"
I believe this is the one to change.

As the file is a simple text file, TextEdit should work for editing it.
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Message 1088017 - Posted: 18 Mar 2011, 8:49:16 UTC - in response to Message 1087531.  
Last modified: 18 Mar 2011, 8:54:02 UTC

I DONT KNOW WHAT IT WOULD BE, AS I DONT EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT IS ON A wINDOWS MACHINE. i DID UNINSTALL, DELETE ALL THE LIBRARIES FOR BOINC, AND THE PREFERENCES ALSO. THEN REINSTALLED AND IT SEEMS TO WORK FOR NOW. I HAVE DONE THIS BEFORE AND IT WORKED FOR A WHILE.


And that is saying somebody with 9 Windows computers attached to SETI ??!
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/hosts_user.php?userid=62707

If "IT SEEMS TO WORK FOR NOW" did you already find the time to:
On Tasks tab - push button [Show Active Tasks] ?


 


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Message 1088020 - Posted: 18 Mar 2011, 9:03:57 UTC - in response to Message 1087764.  

On my mac, I found "Library/Preferences/BOINC Manager Preferences" has a line as "ActiveTasksOnly=0"
I believe this is the one to change.

As the file is a simple text file, TextEdit should work for editing it.


You can check "is this the one" - in BOINC Manager push [Show Active Tasks]
and check the file - I think it will only update if you Exit BOINC Manager.

So if someone want to edit the file:
1) Exit BOINC Manager
2) Edit in the file ActiveTasksOnly=1
3) Start BOINC Manager


 


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Message 1088089 - Posted: 18 Mar 2011, 15:18:35 UTC - in response to Message 1088020.  

On my mac, I found "Library/Preferences/BOINC Manager Preferences" has a line as "ActiveTasksOnly=0"
I believe this is the one to change.

As the file is a simple text file, TextEdit should work for editing it.


You can check "is this the one" - in BOINC Manager push [Show Active Tasks]
and check the file - I think it will only update if you Exit BOINC Manager.

So if someone want to edit the file:
1) Exit BOINC Manager
2) Edit in the file ActiveTasksOnly=1
3) Start BOINC Manager



I just didn't want to restart it at that time, so I checked it now.
Here is what I did.
0) Hit button Show active task and Show all task several times.
-> the file is not updated.
1) Exit BOINC Manager, while all tasks are shown.
-> the file is updated.
2) tried to edit with TextEdit, but cannot.
-> TE doesn't recognize it as text file. It seems that TE cannot handle UNIX style text.
4) Edited as ActiveTasksOnly=1 with TextWrangler, a freeware text editor downloaded from App Store.
# There should be some other choice for editor. vi in Terminal is just fine for me.
5) Start BOINC Manager
Confirmed only active tasks are shown

So, this may be a help if this kind of trouble happens on my mac or others.
# I don't have such trouble right now. So, I cannot check it works.

2 lines above of ActiveTaskOnly, there is a line for SortColumn
Setting it as -1 disables task sorting.
It also can be a help.
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Message 1088106 - Posted: 18 Mar 2011, 16:42:12 UTC - in response to Message 1088089.  
Last modified: 18 Mar 2011, 16:52:55 UTC


Good test and info for Mac users :)

# I don't have such trouble right now. So, I cannot check it works.

The "trouble" can/will show up if you have >1000-3000 tasks (depends on the CPU speed) -
BOINC Manager have to do (every second):
* Get the tasks list from boinc.exe
* Sort the tasks list
* Display the beginning of the sorted tasks list

On this Mac you have the biggest number of tasks (820 'In progress' tasks):
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=4529500

What is the CPU usage by BOINC Manager (boincmgr.exe) if window is maximized and all tasks are shown?
Does this depend (probably not) of which column is used for sorting?


P.S.
speedbump have probably problem on this Mac (>3000 tasks, 1670 'In progress' == in his computer):
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=5820994


 


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Message 1088151 - Posted: 18 Mar 2011, 18:29:34 UTC

I will try to check all this out this evening. After reloading Boinc and running Seti, I noticed that only three work units or crunching at a time, when I have 16 cores to do work. I tried restarting, but still the same.
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Message 1088152 - Posted: 18 Mar 2011, 18:29:41 UTC

I will try to check all this out this evening. After reloading Boinc and running Seti, I noticed that only three work units or crunching at a time, when I have 16 cores to do work. I tried restarting, but still the same.
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Message 1088309 - Posted: 19 Mar 2011, 2:56:53 UTC - in response to Message 1088106.  


On this Mac you have the biggest number of tasks (820 'In progress' tasks):
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=4529500

What is the CPU usage by BOINC Manager (boincmgr.exe) if window is maximized and all tasks are shown?
Does this depend (probably not) of which column is used for sorting?


BOINC Manager is displayed as -
* BOINC with icon on Activity Monitor
* BOINCManager on top command in Terminal
on Mac.

Anyway, with maximized window, up to 50+ tasks shown at a time, CPU usage is

  • 6.3 - 6.4% when all tasks with showing in-progress tasks in the window.
  • 5.5 - 5.6% when all tasks without showing in-progress tasks in the window.
  • 1.6 - 1.7% when only active tasks is
  • 0.1 - 0.2% window closed, or statistic or disk tab selected


I couldn't see dependency on sorting column in the test.
but showing active tasks only clearly reduces CPU usage.

After reloading Boinc and running Seti, I noticed that only three work units or crunching at a time, when I have 16 cores to do work. I tried restarting, but still the same.

Did you check the preference setting? especially for

  • use at most of [xxx] % of processors ( processor usage )
  • use at most of [xxx] % when computer is in use ( disk and memory usage )
  • use at most of [xxx] % when computer is idle ( disk and memory usage )


The information in Messages tab is also helpful to get hint.

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Message boards : Number crunching : Mac Boinc problems


 
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