Uninstalled old BOINC version and installed new 5.8.15. It did the usual initial checks, found the new application and found my computer's sytem info ie processor type etc, then showed the version change from 5.4.11 to 5.8.15...then it developed an error. "[error] No URL for file transfer of setiathome_4.11_windows_intelx86.exe" ...then it said it was backing off for 1 min on download of (above file).
What have I done wrong or still need to do. Can ya guess that I'm not computer savy...lol

There is a work unit 'stuck' in the transfer page.
Do I need to go to 'tools' and click on "attach to project" ? Reluctant to do that and maybe loose my credit history or worse....lol
TIA

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Uninstalled old BOINC version and installed new 5.8.15. It did the usual initial checks, found the new application and found my computer's sytem info ie processor type etc, then showed the version change from 5.4.11 to 5.8.15...then it developed an error. "[error] No URL for file transfer of setiathome_4.11_windows_intelx86.exe" ...then it said it was backing off for 1 min on download of (above file).
What have I done wrong or still need to do. Can ya guess that I'm not computer savy...lol

There is a work unit 'stuck' in the transfer page.
Do I need to go to 'tools' and click on "attach to project" ? Reluctant to do that and maybe loose my credit history or worse....lol
TIA

The short answer is 'No' - don't touch any of the controls just yet. You've got plenty of time to sort this out (or let SETI/BOINC sort it out) over the next couple of days.

1) seti...4.11...exe is a very old version, no longer used or needed. It's one of the (many) bugs in the BOINC 5.8.x range that dredges up references to these bits of ancient history. Don't worry about it, hopefully it'll go away, but if not you can safely ignore it. Eventually, I hope we get a working, stable version 5.8.999 which will eliminate all these problems: then it'll be time to upgrade again.

2) WU stuck in 'transfer'. You don't say whether this is an Upload or a Download. I see you got 4 WUs issued about 3 hours ago, so hopefully downloads are working OK. If you have something stuck in uploading, wait and see if it clears itself - there are server changes going on at Berkeley, which can get in the way sometimes. Allow 24 hours - that'll cover tonight's maintenance period, and the catch-up afterwards - if it's still stuck, post again with a copy of recent entries from your message log, and someone can look into it more deeply with you.

Actually, I think part if the solution here is as simple as deleting the references to the 4.11 app in the app_info.xml file. That will take care of the attempts to download it.

I agree though it's not too clear what's going on with the WU transfer. Perhaps a snippet from the message tab would help with this.

Alinator

Hey guys...thanks immensely for the helpful suggestions!! I really appreciate it. What the heck was I thinking of when I decided to try this upgrade just before TUE maint. day..!!! DOAH....lol. The WU that was stuck was a download but it has since cleared through. I tried to get you a few lines out of my "Message" tab, by clicking on the lines and then clicking on the "Copy selected messages", and I guess it sent those lines off to the "clipboard" wherever THAT is..I can't find it and XP help does not even acknowledge that the word even exists!....lol.
Anyway I still have the ...4.11.... error stuck in the "transfer" tab and it retries to communicate every few minutes or so. I'm not too worried about that for now.
The main reason I tried this version upgrade was because I couldn't maintain a WU cache of more than 21hrs of work despite the fact that prefs are set for 9 days....it kept saying computer was available for 0% of the time. I know it's still early to expect much with the new version just installed, but it appears no better and I'm crunching my final WU right now....oh well.
PS...just what the heck is a 'clipboard' and where do I find it?
and yes I still have a sense of humour (Cdn spelling).lol

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Hey guys...thanks immensely for the helpful suggestions!! I really appreciate it. What the heck was I thinking of when I decided to try this upgrade just before TUE maint. day..!!! DOAH....lol. The WU that was stuck was a download but it has since cleared through. I tried to get you a few lines out of my "Message" tab, by clicking on the lines and then clicking on the "Copy selected messages", and I guess it sent those lines off to the "clipboard" wherever THAT is..I can't find it and XP help does not even acknowledge that the word even exists!....lol.
Anyway I still have the ...4.11.... error stuck in the "transfer" tab and it retries to communicate every few minutes or so. I'm not too worried about that for now.
The main reason I tried this version upgrade was because I couldn't maintain a WU cache of more than 21hrs of work despite the fact that prefs are set for 9 days....it kept saying computer was available for 0% of the time. I know it's still early to expect much with the new version just installed, but it appears no better and I'm crunching my final WU right now....oh well.
PS...just what the heck is a 'clipboard' and where do I find it?
and yes I still have a sense of humour (Cdn spelling).lol

Long caches and short deadlines do not mix well. The shortest deadline on BOINC is about 4 days. A full cache of 9 days is just about guaranteed to have deadline misses (if it is in the cache now, the deadline is 4.5 days from now, and the 9 day cache is full, there is no way that half of the cache can be completed before deadline). Not missing deadlines has been given priority over keeping the queue completely full.

1) If you are really only guaranteed to connect to the network to upload/download/report work once every 9 days, I would suggest finding a project with longer deadlines, at least until some server code is modified to take deadlines into account better. Even then, it would be good to have a project with consistently long deadlines.

2) If you connect on a much shorter schedule than 9 days, you should set your connect every X days to be just over the expected maximum time between connections. Add work_request_factor to the cc_config.xml file. Keep the client up to date (the feature currently does not work correctly, but I have been informed that the code to fix it has been checked in). The range for this value is 1 to 10 with a limit placed on Connect every X * work_request_factor of 14 days. So if you connect daily, and you just want to have 9 days of work, set connect every X to 1 and work_request_factor to 9. This will help a great deal, but there is still going to be a problem with 4 day deadlines in a cache of 9 days - won't work well.

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BOINC WIKI

Thanks John....I've dropped down to 1 day...see what happens....my system runs 24/7 for SETI...I thought I had recalled reading a post suggesting upping the duration, to pick up more WU's in the cache...the most it would hold has been about 4-5 which of course wouldn't carry me through Tue maintenance days...no problem...I'll wait for it to settle down for a few days and see what happens...thanks again.

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Thanks John....I've dropped down to 1 day...see what happens....my system runs 24/7 for SETI...I thought I had recalled reading a post suggesting upping the duration, to pick up more WU's in the cache...the most it would hold has been about 4-5 which of course wouldn't carry me through Tue maintenance days...no problem...I'll wait for it to settle down for a few days and see what happens...thanks again.

The only problems you should have are when Seti has another of those outages that takes a few days to fix. Then your 1 day cache will be in trouble. The way to fix it is find another project you are willing to crunch for and when Seti is down, crunch for them.

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<snip>

PS...just what the heck is a 'clipboard' and where do I find it?
and yes I still have a sense of humour (Cdn spelling).lol

Once you use the copy command in BOINC Manager, just switch to your browser window, right click in the editing box and paste it in. Typically in windows you never 'see' the clipboard unless you have a clipboard utility installed to allow that.

Regarding the DL warning you're getting:

This is due to you running Cruch3r's optimized app. When it was released there was still regular SAH BOINC work around as well as the Enhanced stuff, which is all there is now. Therefore the app_info file which is used is set up so BOINC would use the correct app for what ever kind of work happened to get DL'ed.

Probably the easiest way to fix it now would be to set SAH to No New Work, and let the cache run out. Then just delete everything left in the SAH Project directory. At that point you could re-enable work requests and BOINC would automatically DL the new stock app from the project.

Alternatives are:

1.) Install one of the Chicken Coop's new optimized apps (depending on what your host's CPU is capable of). There are links to them in the stickied thread in NC about optimized apps.

2.) Edit out the references in your current app_info file to the obsolete 4.11 application.

Here's an example of what needs to go:

Top of File
.
.
.
- <app>
<name>setiathome</name>
</app>
- <file_info>
<name>setiathome_4.11_windows_intelx86.exe</name>
<executable />
</file_info>
- <app_version>
<app_name>setiathome</app_name>
<version_num>411</version_num>
- <file_ref>
<file_name>setiathome_4.11_windows_intelx86.exe</file_name>
<main_program />
</file_ref>
</app_version>
.
.
.
End of File

Delete these sections from the first to last line inclusive for every instance which refers to 4x, and leave all the ones which refer to 5x.

Alinator

<snip>
Delete these sections from the first to last line inclusive for every instance which refers to 4x, and leave all the ones which refer to 5x.

Alinator

Make that: ...from the <app> to </app_version> line inclusive...

Alinator