About a year or so ago, someone stated that leaving Boinc Manager on the "Messages" panel allowed quicker conversions. Is that still true?

Yes I did try to find the answer in the FAQs.

---

AFAICT it makes no difference at all when the Manager is hidden or minimized. Any panel with a running counter (Tasks for example, or Projects when a communications deferral is in effect) will use something like one percent of a CPU while it’s being displayed. The Messages tab only seems to have noticeable ‘draw’ when new entries are made, but it’s still not quite as ‘quiet’ as Statistics—which is where I usually leave mine—or Disk.

---

Personally I do not even have BoincManager in memory unless I need it (I run as a Service).

---

My movie https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/502242

Yeah same here. On Linux I just have the boinc_client daemon start up in the background and if I want to play with it I run the manager. Otherwise the manager doesn't even run.

---

A member of The Knights Who Say NI!
For rankings, history graphs and more, check out:
My BOINC stats site

Same here, I got the service running all over the place and use the manager on 1 PC that doesn't even have BOINC running.

I think Tasks, Statistics, and Disk Space use extra CPU in the manager. On my Linux, there is CPU usage on these even when minimized. So, I leave it on messages or just shutdown the manager.

If installed as service, it's generally no reason to keep the Manager running, but as long as you're running Advanced View (grid or accessible) and minimized to system-tray, it uses insignificant cpu-resources.

Minimized to task-bar instead of system-tray seems to use roughly the same as if open...

Opened-up, the disk-tab uses normally the most, and in old clients can also use significant amount in boinc.exe.

Of the other tabs, this depends on #attached projects, tasks and transfers, so normally the least active is Transfers, but if you've got 100+ uploads/downloads it can still use some cpu-time.

The more you've got listed the slower things goes, so if you've got 500+ tasks with expected cpu-time around 1-minute that some projects seems to ocassionally give-out, you risk using more cpu-resources on Core Client + Manager than on crunching...


As for the "Simple" view, this seems to draw roughly the same 1% cpu-resources regardless of minimized or not, so as long as you've not got a tab with 100+ listings on it, the Advanced View is better.

---

"I make so many mistakes. But then just think of all the mistakes I don't make, although I might."

Even if not running as a service, you can slightly optimize CPU cycles by the following.

On the <Advanced> menu, click on <Select Computer>. Type in "dummy" or "null" or something similar which does not refer to one of the host names on your local network, leave the password blank.

A few seconds later BOINC Manager will come up with a dialog box: "BOINC Manager is not able to connect to a BOINC client, Would you like to try again?" Choose <No>, then click on <File>, <Exit>.

BOINC Manager is now closed, but BOINC, and the science apps for SETI and all other projects will continue to run in the background.

To regain control of BOINC via a GUI interface, just re-start BOINC Manager, or you can also use Command Line tools via the boinccmd app in the BOINC folder.

I have been using this procedure on my slower PC for months with various different versions of BOINC, and it works flawlessly, according to WINTOP on my Windows 98 host, the science app is using ~ 99.75% CPU with BOINC using 0.05%

[edited]

---

Sir Arthur C Clarke 1917-2008

Even if not running as a service, you can slightly optimize CPU cycles by the following.

On the <Advanced> menu, click on <Select Computer>. Type in "dummy" or "null" or something similar which does not refer to one of the host names on your local network, leave the password blank.

A few seconds later BOINC Manager will come up with a dialog box: "BOINC Manager is not able to connect to a BOINC client, Would you like to try again?" Choose <No>, then click on <File>, <Exit>.

BOINC Manager is now closed, but BOINC, and the science apps for SETI and all other projects will continue to run in the background.

To regain control of BOINC via a GUI interface, just re-start BOINC Manager, or you can also use Command Line tools via the boinccmd app in the BOINC folder.

I have been using this procedure on my slower PC for months with various different versions of BOINC, and it works flawlessly, according to WINTOP on my Windows 98 host, the science app is using ~ 99.75% CPU with BOINC using 0.05%

[edited]

If you do this how does the app get new work units? Do you need to restart the manager occasionally or will the science app download work units?

---

If you do this how does the app get new work units? Do you need to restart the manager occasionally or will the science app download work units?

The Manager just manages the BOINC main software which stays running. They are separated applications and are more or less independent of each other.

---

My movie https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/502242

About a year or so ago, someone stated that leaving Boinc Manager on the "Messages" panel allowed quicker conversions. Is that still true?

Yes I did try to find the answer in the FAQs.

(BOINC/SETI running as a service, manager doesn't run at all.)

I access BOINC/SETI on my computers through a web interface, which works very well.

BoincPHP5-GUI
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/addons.php

It is especially convenient to be able to monitor and control BOINC/SETI from anywhere. Often, out in public, I even use my Sony PSP to check on the computers back home.

If you are going to make it publicly accessible, simply:

* Include the directory in robots.txt so that crawlers don't submit the directory to search engines.

* User/Pass the directory.

* SSL the directory.

I have it SSL'd not so much for the WAN side, but because you can't blindly trust wireless hot spots. Many are rogue honeypots.

The computer that I use for httpd, along with mail (fetchmail, procmail, imap, pop3, etc) is simply just an old Pentium-166 running GNU/Linux. It serves it's single user, me, very well. Get that old computer out of the basement, wipe the dust off, and do a base GNU/Linux (or FreeBSD) install. Don't even bother installing X, but do bother installing gcc. Your old computer will become your best friend.

[free@sonic free]$ uptime
13:14:36 up 294 days, 21:33, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.00

I used to not be able to get an uptime more than two months, but after converting the file system to ReiserFS (it was ext2fs) and adding a UPS, I'm knocking on wood to break a year. We rarely get full outages, but sometimes get power flickers during storms. Probably just jinxed myself. LOL

The Manager just manages the BOINC main software which stays running. They are separated applications and are more or less independent of each other.

The BOINC “main software” is best known as the “core client”.

About a year or so ago, someone stated that leaving Boinc Manager on the "Messages" panel allowed quicker conversions. Is that still true?

Yes I did try to find the answer in the FAQs.

IMO ("In My Opinion"), the Transfers tab OR the Projects tab would be the ones to "use":
Projects: Updates only when you attach or detach.
Tasks: Can update several times an hour, depending on project, task length, and Internet Connection availability.
Transfer: Updates 'continuously' whenever you have an upload/download. Otherwise, it updates only when you complete a WU.
Messages: Updates often depending on task start/stop, upload/download, checkpointing, errors, logging based on cc_config.xml, etc. (If you have cc_config.xml and <checkpoint_debug>1</checkpoint_debug>, Messages can update between 'every 1 minute' and 'every WU completion' depending on project and WU.)
Statistics: Updates every time you Update a project and a WU was validated since the last Update.
Disk: Updates while a project runs (and saves to disk). May depend on "Save to disk every XX seconds" setting.

---

Projects: Updates only when you attach or detach.

Not so: while there’s a communication deferral in effect from any project, its countdown timer gets updated every second.

Right, forgot about that... o-o

---

A year or so ago, someone stated if you let Boinc run on the "Messages" tab it runs a little quicker.

Is this still valid?

I doubt that it would make any difference depending what tab you left it on.
As the program is hidden in your system tray 99.99% of the time :)

And looking at task manager on my computer, during the 9 days my system has been running for Boinc has used 36 Seconds of CPU time.

Prehaps if you left Boinc open 24/7 on a slow single core system, then the statistics tab would be the best one, as it hardly ever gets updated?

---

I guess I just don't understand this question in the first place......
I run Boinc/Seti as a single user installation, and I have noticed that when I have the Boinc manager maximized, it does consume a few cpu cycles.....
But AFAIK, when it is minimized and is not updating the graphics page info, just doing it's managing thingy, there is little impact or cpu usage....
There is a lot of cpu usage when downloading work...a LOT of cpu hogging, but during quiet times, when just crunching is going on, I don't see the difference of what tab you left it on when you minimized Boinc.

---

"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

[…] but during quiet times, when just crunching is going on, I don't see the difference of what tab you left it on when you minimized Boinc.

ITYF pretty well everyone who’s expressed an opinion on the question here has either stated or implied that only a running and open Manager is concerned.

[…] but during quiet times, when just crunching is going on, I don't see the difference of what tab you left it on when you minimized Boinc.

ITYF pretty well everyone who’s expressed an opinion on the question here has either stated or implied that only a running and open Manager is concerned.

Well then......close the manager and close the question.........

---

"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

[…] but during quiet times, when just crunching is going on, I don't see the difference of what tab you left it on when you minimized Boinc.

ITYF pretty well everyone who’s expressed an opinion on the question here has either stated or implied that only a running and open Manager is concerned.

On my P200, BOINC Manager 5.2.12 uses about 5% of CPU cycles when active, about 3% when minimized to the tray. Those amount to about 10 MHz or 6 MHz of CPU usage, which is fairly insignificant on faster systems, but still wasted cycles if you're not actually using BOINC Manager. It's a matter of what price you're willing to pay for the convenience of clicking a tray icon rather than actually starting the Manager.

                                                                  Joe