I thought that History tab was what you were looking for.

The 'Elapsed Time' shows run time and CPU Time.

CPU Usage is, well what it is.

All are an indication of how much load is on the system.

And yes it's nice to link all your computers into BoincTasks so you can see how they compare ... at a glance.

I thought that History tab was what you were looking for.

The 'Elapsed Time' shows run time and CPU Time.

CPU Usage is, well what it is.

All are an indication of how much load is on the system.

And yes it's nice to link all your computers into BoincTasks so you can see how they compare ... at a glance.

. . Thanks, that is what I wanted, but I was after an app that would keep a track of actual time elapsed (real time start and finish for each task). Boinc Task only records the same times as Boinc Manager. But the History is a nice feature.

. . I can understand that you thought it would do what I was trying to do but the load is not actually an issue. It was running pretty much to the max, and Boinc Tasks verified that but it was not a surprise.

. . Also, recording cobblestone values for each completed task would have been helpful as well.

. . I doubt if there is an app that actually does those things but we tried :)

.

. . May I be a pain and ask how to "uninstall" Lunatics? Is it just a matter of running the installer again and telling it to run stock apps?

. . I have ordered a GPU for the Core 2 Duo machine and I when it arrives I want to go back to stock apps for a while to see how it performs before restoring Lunatics. That way I can make a comparison of the two and gauge the effects of running mixed tasks with an Nvidia GPU for both stock apps and Lunatics.

. . I am ever inquisitive

.

Run down the cache first then use the uninstaller in the control panel add/Remove programs but make shore your finished all the units or they will be lost .

Bionic will just revert to stock

If you still wish to do more units on the GPU you can by using a app_config.xml
witch you put in your c:\Bionic Data Folder\Project\setiathome.berkeley.edu\ folder

here is mine

<app_config>
<app_version>
<app_name>setiathome_v8</app_name>
<plan_class>cuda50</plan_class>
<avg_ncpus>0.2</avg_ncpus>
<ngpus>0.33</ngpus>
</app_version>
<app_version>
<app_name>setiathome_v8</app_name>
<plan_class>cuda42</plan_class>
<avg_ncpus>0.2</avg_ncpus>
<ngpus>0.33</ngpus>
</app_version>
<app_version>
<app_name>setiathome_v8</app_name>
<plan_class>cuda32</plan_class>
<avg_ncpus>0.2</avg_ncpus>
<ngpus>0.33</ngpus>
</app_version>
<app_version>
<app_name>astropulse_v7</app_name>
<plan_class>opencl_nvidia_100</plan_class>
<avg_ncpus>0.2</avg_ncpus>
<ngpus>0.5</ngpus>
</app_version>
</app_config>

good luck

oh if you get a error in the notices that says the AstroPulse app is not there that only because you haven't told it to do AstroPulse so the servers haven't sent you the app's so you can ignore it and

It's for Nvida Cards only I didn't look at your computers .

---

. . May I be a pain and ask how to "uninstall" Lunatics? Is it just a matter of running the installer again and telling it to run stock apps?

. . I have ordered a GPU for the Core 2 Duo machine and I when it arrives I want to go back to stock apps for a while to see how it performs before restoring Lunatics. That way I can make a comparison of the two and gauge the effects of running mixed tasks with an Nvidia GPU for both stock apps and Lunatics.

. . I am ever inquisitive

.

I wouldn't recommend using 'uninstall', although it exists.

You won't be able to preserve work in progress when reverting to stock, so set 'No New Tasks' in advance (or set a really low cache, like 0.01 days, in case it runs down to zero while you're asleep. Then set NNT for the final few.)

Before allowing new work, you have to clear all details of the Lunatics apps from the system. I usually:

Go to the setiathome data folder and delete the file app_info.xml
Set BOINC *not* to Run Manager at login (Other options)
Install new card
(Re-)install GPU driver
Restart the BOINC client
Click the 'Reset project' button in BOINC Manager (Advanced view, Projects tab)

After that, you should be ready to allow new work. Leave the cache setting low until you're sure everything is working well. Then set BOINC to run at login, if that's what you want.

Bionic will just revert to stock

You do need to restart BOINC, and reset the project, at some point during that process.

Bionic will just revert to stock

You do need to restart BOINC, and reset the project, at some point during that process

ops :)

oh if you wish to know witch part you change in the app_config.xml that says how many units to do it these lines

<ngpus>0.33</ngpus> 1 = 1 unit , 0.55 = 2 units , 0.33 = 3 units

this line is how much of the cpu to use

<avg_ncpus>0.2</avg_ncpus> 0.2 = 20% , 0.5 = 50% any more than 0.5 and you will use more than 1 core for 2 units and you may be better using 0.49

---

. . Also, recording cobblestone values for each completed task would have been helpful as well.

. . I doubt if there is an app that actually does those things but we tried :)

If by "cobblestone values" you mean this: flopcounter: 22194348195682.281000
- there is additional program in BoincTasks install directory:
BoincMonitor.exe

Run it and it will preserve stderr.txt for every task (and keep it for a period you select)
Edit monitor_config.xml to set the number of days to keep stderr.txt files (I use 7):

<config>
	<options>
		<stderr_out>	7	</stderr_out>
	</options>
</config>

<!-- 
Copy this file from the BoincTasks examples  to the exe location.

stderr_out keep a copy of stderr_out for a number of days, 0 will disable this feature.
-->

---

 


- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

. . Scanning over those threads I notice you mentioned variations is clocking. This reminded me of a funny thing I observed. When running a mix of CPU and GPU tasks the timer in BOINC manager was running 33% faster for the GPU task than for the 3 MB tasks. After restarting, all four WU's kicked off together. The timers for the MBs stayed in sync but the timer the GPU task kept moving further and further ahead. After observing this I watched it for a while at any given point the elapsed time for the GPU task was 33% ahead of the MD tasks. That made wonder how that timing is performed. I presumed that it would be sampling the system clock, but now I assume it is running timer routines for itself.

Are you saying that the elapsed time for the GPU task was running faster than the CPU takes? So after 3 minutes of elapsed time for the CPU tasks the GPU task displayed 4 minutes?

The times and numbers displayed in BOINC Manager while tasks are running have been known to be a bit wonky, but I don't think I've heard of that kind of situation.

. . Another "D'oh!" moment coming up. I have to confess I was surprised by the exact ratio of the clock rate difference.

. . I have been going over the error outputs in the result files and discovered at the very end of the files is a line about "elapsed time on the wall clock since last restart" which funnily enough corresponds to the actual elapsed time for the task even though the times given in the summary at the top show 20% less. Then it dawned on me. It is due to the CPU duty cycle I have set in Boinc preferences. I was running the CPU's at 80% load and this causes the Boinc timers to only register 80% of the elapsed time. I have now set it to 100% and will be checking for future tasks, I fully expect them to tally from now on. I was afraid running the CPU duty cycle at 100% would render the PC unusable for anything else but it is now running at 100% and as I type this I am not noticing any problem. As I said at the beginning, ... "D'oh!"

.

Run down the cache first then use the uninstaller in the control panel add/Remove programs but make shore your finished all the units or they will be lost .

Bionic will just revert to stock

If you still wish to do more units on the GPU you can by using a app_config.xml
witch you put in your c:\Bionic Data Folder\Project\setiathome.berkeley.edu\ folder

. . Thanks for that. I have read over the config.xml and think I understand it. The 0.33 figure for each of the CUDA protocols tells it to run 3 tasks at once on the Nvidia card, while the 0.5 figure for AP's tells it to only run 2 tasks when doing AP's. It makes some sense but what does the recurring 0.2 value do?

. . May I be a pain and ask how to "uninstall" Lunatics? Is it just a matter of running the installer again and telling it to run stock apps?

. . I have ordered a GPU for the Core 2 Duo machine and I when it arrives I want to go back to stock apps for a while to see how it performs before restoring Lunatics. That way I can make a comparison of the two and gauge the effects of running mixed tasks with an Nvidia GPU for both stock apps and Lunatics.

. . I am ever inquisitive

.

I wouldn't recommend using 'uninstall', although it exists.

You won't be able to preserve work in progress when reverting to stock, so set 'No New Tasks' in advance (or set a really low cache, like 0.01 days, in case it runs down to zero while you're asleep. Then set NNT for the final few.)

Before allowing new work, you have to clear all details of the Lunatics apps from the system. I usually:

Go to the setiathome data folder and delete the file app_info.xml
Set BOINC *not* to Run Manager at login (Other options)
Install new card
(Re-)install GPU driver
Restart the BOINC client
Click the 'Reset project' button in BOINC Manager (Advanced view, Projects tab)

After that, you should be ready to allow new work. Leave the cache setting low until you're sure everything is working well. Then set BOINC to run at login, if that's what you want.

. . Thanks again Richard. So I have to empty the task queue, good to know. I would have merely set NNT and suspended the unstarted tasks, let running tasks finish and then made the changes. Would have been a "whoopsy" there.

.

Run down the cache first then use the uninstaller in the control panel add/Remove programs but make shore your finished all the units or they will be lost .

Bionic will just revert to stock

. . Thanks for that.

No, this person don't know how BOINC or Lunatics installer works (I have him in my ignore list because of nonsense posts)
("make shore" it is BOINC and not "Bionic")

Uninstalling Lunatics will revert to the last config - Not to stock
i.e. if you did several installations of Lunatics you will revert the applications and app_info.xml to the previous Lunatics installation and not to stock.

If you want to listen to someone listen to Richard
He writes the Lunatics installer

---

 


- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

this line is how much of the cpu to use

<avg_ncpus>0.2</avg_ncpus> 0.2 = 20% , 0.5 = 50% any more than 0.5 and you will use more than 1 core for 2 units and you may be better using 0.49

. . I am not quite sure about that relationship. Does it mean that a value of 1.0 assigns once CPU core per task? And so 0.5 (or 0.49) will run 2 tasks per CPU core. Or is it that a value 0.2 assigns 1/5th of the total CPU cores available to each task, and so runs 5 concurrent CPU tasks?

No, this person don't know how BOINC or Lunatics installer works (I have him in my ignore list because of nonsense posts)
("make shore" it is BOINC and not "Bionic")

. . Thanks for the advice, but I won't hold his lack of language skills against him as I hope people will not hold my poor typing against me. :)

Uninstalling Lunatics will revert to the last config - Not to stock
i.e. if you did several installations of Lunatics you will revert the applications and app_info.xml to the previous Lunatics installation and not to stock.

. . That is very useful to know. I have been experimenting with different variations of Lunatics so it would probably have several versions to remove before I would get back to stock.

If you want to listen to someone listen to Richard
He writes the Lunatics installer

. . I have discovered that before (foot in mouth disease) and I would certainly take his advice first and foremost.

. . I was complaining that perhaps Lunatics did not have up to date drivers for the iGPU in this unit (HD530) and Richard nicely explained a few things about the current version of Lunatics.

. . Scanning over those threads I notice you mentioned variations is clocking. This reminded me of a funny thing I observed. When running a mix of CPU and GPU tasks the timer in BOINC manager was running 33% faster for the GPU task than for the 3 MB tasks. After restarting, all four WU's kicked off together. The timers for the MBs stayed in sync but the timer the GPU task kept moving further and further ahead. After observing this I watched it for a while at any given point the elapsed time for the GPU task was 33% ahead of the MD tasks. That made wonder how that timing is performed. I presumed that it would be sampling the system clock, but now I assume it is running timer routines for itself.

Are you saying that the elapsed time for the GPU task was running faster than the CPU takes? So after 3 minutes of elapsed time for the CPU tasks the GPU task displayed 4 minutes?

The times and numbers displayed in BOINC Manager while tasks are running have been known to be a bit wonky, but I don't think I've heard of that kind of situation.

. . Another "D'oh!" moment coming up. I have to confess I was surprised by the exact ratio of the clock rate difference.

. . I have been going over the error outputs in the result files and discovered at the very end of the files is a line about "elapsed time on the wall clock since last restart" which funnily enough corresponds to the actual elapsed time for the task even though the times given in the summary at the top show 20% less. Then it dawned on me. It is due to the CPU duty cycle I have set in Boinc preferences. I was running the CPU's at 80% load and this causes the Boinc timers to only register 80% of the elapsed time. I have now set it to 100% and will be checking for future tasks, I fully expect them to tally from now on. I was afraid running the CPU duty cycle at 100% would render the PC unusable for anything else but it is now running at 100% and as I type this I am not noticing any problem. As I said at the beginning, ... "D'oh!"

.

OK that adds some clarity to your issue. Running a reduced duty cycles when trying to get accurate app run times is not exactly the easiest thing to do. That features also confuses some people. Thinking they apps will only run at whatever % is set. Rather than off/on at a rate to average their desired usage.

I typically only use the times specified on the website for the tasks. Given the odd natures of the BOINC Manager display sometimes. For example. When running Milkyway tasks on my R9 380X they take about 36 seconds to complete. I have watched the display update the progress and remaining time, but only record 6-10 seconds of elapsed time. When the task is reported it displays 36 seconds in the reported data.

---

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

this line is how much of the cpu to use

<avg_ncpus>0.2</avg_ncpus> 0.2 = 20% , 0.5 = 50% any more than 0.5 and you will use more than 1 core for 2 units and you may be better using 0.49

. . I am not quite sure about that relationship. Does it mean that a value of 1.0 assigns once CPU core per task? And so 0.5 (or 0.49) will run 2 tasks per CPU core. Or is it that a value 0.2 assigns 1/5th of the total CPU cores available to each task, and so runs 5 concurrent CPU tasks?

Here are some examples of app_config.xml settings.
Running 1 task per GPU & reserving 1 CPU core per GPU task.

<app>
	<name>setiathome_v8</name>
	<gpu_versions>
		<gpu_usage>1.0</gpu_usage>
		<cpu_usage>1.0</cpu_usage>
	</gpu_versions>
</app>
For a system with 1 GPUs: 1 GPU tasks would run & 1 CPU cores would be reserved.
For a system with 2 GPUs: 2 GPU tasks would run & 2 CPU cores would be reserved.

Running 1 task per GPU & reserving .5 CPU core per GPU task.

<app>
	<name>setiathome_v8</name>
	<gpu_versions>
		<gpu_usage>1.0</gpu_usage>
		<cpu_usage>0.5</cpu_usage>
	</gpu_versions>
</app>
For a system with 1 GPUs: 1 GPU tasks would run & 0 CPU cores would be reserved.
For a system with 2 GPUs: 2 GPU tasks would run & 1 CPU cores would be reserved.

Running 2 task per GPU & reserving .5 CPU core per GPU task.

<app>
	<name>setiathome_v8</name>
	<gpu_versions>
		<gpu_usage>0.5</gpu_usage>
		<cpu_usage>0.5</cpu_usage>
	</gpu_versions>
</app>
For a system with 1 GPUs: 2 GPU tasks would run & 1 CPU cores would be reserved.
For a system with 2 GPUs: 4 GPU tasks would run & 2 CPU cores would be reserved.

Running 2 task per GPU & reserving .25 CPU core per GPU task.

<app>
	<name>setiathome_v8</name>
	<gpu_versions>
		<gpu_usage>0.5</gpu_usage>
		<cpu_usage>0.25</cpu_usage>
	</gpu_versions>
</app>
For a system with 1 GPUs: 2 GPU tasks would run & 0 CPU cores would be reserved.
For a system with 2 GPUs: 4 GPU tasks would run & 1 CPU cores would be reserved.

---

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

OK that adds some clarity to your issue. Running a reduced duty cycles when trying to get accurate app run times is not exactly the easiest thing to do. That features also confuses some people. Thinking they apps will only run at whatever % is set. Rather than off/on at a rate to average their desired usage.

I typically only use the times specified on the website for the tasks. Given the odd natures of the BOINC Manager display sometimes. For example. When running Milkyway tasks on my R9 380X they take about 36 seconds to complete. I have watched the display update the progress and remaining time, but only record 6-10 seconds of elapsed time. When the task is reported it displays 36 seconds in the reported data.
____________

. . Yes it can be confusing. But while learning can be a slow process it is an interesting one too. I am getting very fidgety here waiting for my new GT730 (I know, a very low end card) to arrive. I think it is on a very very slow boat from China. The C2D is in a low profile Small Form Factor case and it is so very hard to get low profile GPU cards. Worse still it only has a 240W PSU which limits the choice even further. Hence the GT730 (GDDR5) which is low profile and about a 30W card. So the case/PSU should cope OK with it.

. . Nonetheless I am very excited and eager for it to arrive so I can start pumping out some CUDA50 or CUDA42 tasks. I am hoping it will cope with 2 GPU tasks and be a very productive little bit of hardware.

Here are some examples of app_config.xml settings.
Running 1 task per GPU & reserving 1 CPU core per GPU task.

. . Thank you very much! That explains it all very nicely, now it makes sense. So if I can get the Pentium D working again and stick two GTX 950 cards into it I would run this configuration:

<app>
<name>setiathome_v8</name>
<gpu_versions>
<gpu_usage>0.33</gpu_usage>
<cpu_usage>0.33</cpu_usage>
</gpu_versions>
</app>

For 2 GPUs: 6 GPU tasks would run & 2 CPU cores would be reserved.

. . I would of course start off 1 & 1 to make sure everything is OK, then build up to 0.5 & 0.5 before hopefully reaching 0.33 & 0.33 if the resources can handle it. Also I would have to specify the same for each task type right? i.e. CUDA50, CUDA 42 and Cuda 32 as well as APs correct? Though for AP's I have the impression I would need to wind it back to maybe 0.5 & 0.5.

. . BTW how did you get the message handler to preserve the spacing for the file listing. When I try, it strips out all spaces after 1.


. . Thanks for that.

.

If I'm on your ignore list how is it you see the posts .

And if I'm not so knowlegable did I get the app_config.xml wrong


NO I did not and to think I had not help from the experts


Steven the question you asked about

. . I am not quite sure about that relationship. Does it mean that a value of 1.0 assigns once CPU core per task? And so 0.5 (or 0.49) will run 2 tasks per CPU core. Or is it that a value 0.2 assigns 1/5th of the total CPU cores available to each task, and so runs 5 concurrent CPU tasks?

Yes you are correct it assign's 1/5 of the cpu core and allows you to do 5 .

As for you Bilbg -- ----- --------------

Edit : I have been told that giving the cpu more helps but in practice I have not seen any increases in the times so if it does help the times or only reducing them a small amount that you don't notice so I set mine for 20% or 0.2

NOW this is where the experts can come in and explain in great detail for us all on how it actually works seeing as I'm such a idiot . You can go first Billb

---

Lets see you can do what Richard says about removing Lunatics witch is complicated and time waste full or you can do this

1 run down cache
2 use uninstaller to remove Lunatics
3 uninstall Boinc (spelt it right for the _____)
4 delete Boinc Data Folder
5 reinstall Boinc
6 reattach to projects

simple no resetting project no looking for leftovers from uninstaller or looking to see witch files you need to remove

Up to you witch way you go the inefficient and complicated way or the easy and simple way

---