I have a Mac Mini running OSX 10.9.2. I have BOINC 7.2.42.

Recently (like about 3 weeks ago) my Mac started running very, very
slow. I tried several things, including running CleanMyMac2 and
MacScan. Eventually I quit the BOINC Manager. When I did, my Mac
resumed normal speeds. I don't recall changing anything - preferences
or what not. I even uninstalled and reinstalled the BOINC software, with
no luck.

Now I'm forced to run BOINC only when I'm not otherwise using my
computer.

I need some help trying to figure out why this is happening. I know there
will probably be information you need if you're willing to help. Just tell
me what information to provide and I'll do my best to provide it.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Sue

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~Sue~

Good question...I've had something similar. I've noticed 2 things First, Boinc is a bandwidth hog. It will stall out my system, even when I set the preference to suspend all activity. I'm forced to quit the program altogether in order to speed it up and free up the internet connection. Also, if I'm using more than 3 of the 4 cores that the system slows WAY down and sometimes freeze. I end up Force quitting some programs. Either way, I notice that trying to use my system and Boinc at the same time doesn't always work. So I just turn it off when I'm working and turn it on when I'm done for the day. I know that doesn't help you but thought I'd mention you aren't alone with this particular issue. I have a theory as to what might be causing it but it's only based on what I observed. Lets sees what one of the other Mac users might know about this.


Happy Crunching....

Zalster

Is it throttling due to dust build up?

Cheers.

I have a Mac Mini running OSX 10.9.2. I have BOINC 7.2.42.

Recently (like about 3 weeks ago) my Mac started running very, very
slow. I tried several things, including running CleanMyMac2 and
MacScan. Eventually I quit the BOINC Manager. When I did, my Mac
resumed normal speeds. I don't recall changing anything - preferences
or what not. I even uninstalled and reinstalled the BOINC software, with
no luck.
Sue

I've noticed on one or two occasions that BOINC slowly increases its memory usage -- on one of my (2 GB) Linux boxes recently it got up to over 1.5 GB and started saying it didn't have enough memory to load any s@h jobs! Stopping it and starting it anew cleared it, but if this happens it will slow down other processes because of increased swapping to disk. Did you check memory and CPU usage with, e.g. top -- or whatever GUI tools Mac provides to do this?

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I think that most people have found that Seti V7 is a lot more resource hungry than v6 was.

Don't know about the GPU apps, but I didn't notice any difference with the CPU apps. No slow downs, about the same RAM usage, same temperatures, they just run longer. And on my ancient hardware I'm sure I'd be the first one to notice if it was slowing down anything...

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Well, I was hoping another mac user would respond. Mac currently don't use the graphic cards and the mac mini doesn't have a dedicated graphic card, but an integrated one. I'm pretty sure it's not utilized at this time. So we are dealing probably just with CPU work units. There is some testing going on for trying to use the graphics but those aren't ready yet :( I go along with the Ram getting used up as well. I've noticed time to time the longer I leave on my machine without a reboot the more RAM gets sucked up by Boinc. That has forced me in the past to have to reboot the computer to clear it and start fresh. But I don't think this is the only issue. The internet bandwidth is another issue that slows down the system along with full utilization of all the cores. For the last issue, you can change how many cores Boinc using in the task manager. Go to view and change it to advance. Then go to the Tools pulldown menu and select computing preferences. Second to last line from the bottom, where it says "On multiprocessors systems use at most" and change the number there to 75% that way it only uses 3 out of the 4 cores of your mini. If it is still too much then change it down to 50%. If you want to change the number in your other mac (the dual core) then make the number 50% and save. The last issue I've had is having to periodically having to rebuild volume directory and then booting off the eDrive and optimizing the Hard Drive. (For this I use TechTool Pro 7 for Macs.) That usually speeds my system back up if the first two things don't seem to resolve the issues of slowing or stalled computer. My 2 cents.

Happy Crunching...

Zalster

I have a Mac Mini running OSX 10.9.2. I have BOINC 7.2.42.

Recently (like about 3 weeks ago) my Mac started running very, very
slow. I tried several things, including running CleanMyMac2 and
MacScan. Eventually I quit the BOINC Manager. When I did, my Mac
resumed normal speeds. I don't recall changing anything - preferences
or what not. I even uninstalled and reinstalled the BOINC software, with
no luck.

Now I'm forced to run BOINC only when I'm not otherwise using my
computer.

I need some help trying to figure out why this is happening. I know there
will probably be information you need if you're willing to help. Just tell
me what information to provide and I'll do my best to provide it.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Sue

It sounds as though you've already looked into the normal suspects. If there was such a drastic change you would think something new was responsible. Besides the programs you used you could look at the processes with Activity Monitor and see if anything looks suspicious, repairing Permissions with Disk Utility is always worth trying. You might try installing an Antivirus program just long enough to do a scan. This site seems to have a Mac version, Antivirus for Mac. You could try reverting to BOINC 7.2.38 and see if that makes a difference. Were there any OSX Updates around that time? You could download the last Combo Update and run that again in case some file was damaged. Other than trying to find the cause about all you can do is reduce the number of cores used by BOINC.

Good question...I've had something similar. I've noticed 2 things First, Boinc is a bandwidth hog. It will stall out my system, even when I set the preference to suspend all activity. I'm forced to quit the program altogether in order to speed it up and free up the internet connection. Also, if I'm using more than 3 of the 4 cores that the system slows WAY down and sometimes freeze. I end up Force quitting some programs. Either way, I notice that trying to use my system and Boinc at the same time doesn't always work. So I just turn it off when I'm working and turn it on when I'm done for the day. I know that doesn't help you but thought I'd mention you aren't alone with this particular issue. I have a theory as to what might be causing it but it's only based on what I observed. Lets sees what one of the other Mac users might know about this.


Happy Crunching....

Zalster

Great! It's good to know that I'm not the only one. Thanks for posting.

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~Sue~

Thanks to you all for your input.

Here's something funny. The problem seems to have disappeared as quickly
as it appeared. I forgot to quit BOINC yesterday while I was surfing the web
and my computer speed was just fine.

I don't know what might have happened to "fix" whatever was wrong.

I had already repaired disk permissions and run an anti-virus program. As
a result of your answers I have changed the multiprocessor use to 75%, but
the problem disappeared before I did that.

Like I said, thanks for your input.

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~Sue~

I have noticed on my PC systems that if all of the CPU cores are busy doing VLAR tasks the whole system will bog down & if may have to suspend all tasks so I can do simple tasks on the system.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

I've had BOINC go haywire a couple of times, and hog ALL the system RAM, and then some. When you only have 2gb, and a task hogs 2.5 for some reason, yeah things get sluggish. I think from memory one of the tasks threw an error after I did a reboot of the machine. It's maybe only happened 2X over the years though, so it might be some random glitch on my machine?

Other issues have been cooling (lack of it from dusty heatsinks) On a modern PC this just down-clocks the CPU. Machine still operates normally, just at 1/2 speed until you bust out the brush and vacuum.

GPU processing can also bog things down, but the default setting is to only use the GPU when the machine is not in use That can still get messed up sometimes though. I see the OP isn't using GPU's, so it's not that.

But by default BOINC should run tasks at low priority, and unless the machine is short of RAM it has little affect on foreground tasks. Some other projects are heavier on RAM, but SETI is pretty light use with each V7 task grabbing only ~40mb. So even running 8 or more task isn't a memory hog.

Obviously something went a bit wonky with the machine, but a cold reboot has probably corrected it, as often happens.

Ian