I found out the new Boinc versions don't behave with the shutdown program, they don't acknowledge the preference.

The old version 5.8.16, works quite well.

---

OK, I got cpuburn and ran burnp6 to work the cpu and burnbx to run the cpu's memory cache.

Ran them for a couple hours, no errors. Managed to warm the CPU up to 62C.

My system seems to work quite well except for just one program in the whole wide world. sigh....

A Follow-up. I got a windows version of prime95 and loaded in windows XP and ran prime95 in the 'torture test' mode for about 6 hours with no errors.

Prime95 'also' appeared to pause the tests while I was using the system to clean up the old file system and drives unlike Boinc.

I guess it now comes down to is there a different Boinc manager I can use with client 5.10.28 than the one Ubuntu gives out or 5.10.8?

I am up and down from my PC all day and having to manually turn it on and off got old fast as the saying goes.

---

OK, I got cpuburn and ran burnp6 to work the cpu and burnbx to run the cpu's memory cache.

Ran them for a couple hours, no errors. Managed to warm the CPU up to 62C.

My system seems to work quite well except for just one program in the whole wide world. sigh....

---

So I went back to a fresh install of the Ubuntu package 5.10.8 'boincmgr' with 5.10.28 client installed.

As I written in my previos mail, download the offical BOINC client, and use the offical the BOINC client with the BOINC manager from the Ubuntu package.
You can unpack the offical binary package in a temporarly directory, stop the BOINC client, backup the Ubuntu BOINC client (file "boinc) and copy the file "boinc" from the offical package to your BOINC client directory and start the BOINC client again.

I have been doing that since you posted it as I noted at the start of this post up top. I even recently wiped it all out and started all over new.

Could you please post the output from "time nslookup setiatome.berkeley.edu", "time nslookup localhost".

mike@mike:~$ time nslookup setiatome.berkeley.edu
Server: 207.236.176.12
Address: 207.236.176.12#53

** server can't find setiatome.berkeley.edu: NXDOMAIN


real 0m0.239s
user 0m0.012s
sys 0m0.012s
mike@mike:~$ time nslookup localhost
Server: 207.236.176.12
Address: 207.236.176.12#53

** server can't find localhost: NXDOMAIN


real 0m0.022s
user 0m0.008s
sys 0m0.008s

Is "ping localhost" successfull ?

Yes.

What happens, if you go to the BOINC manager, select "Activity"/"Network Activity Suspend" and now SETI is running and you are using FF and TB ?

I will try that, it is on 'based on preferences' now. OK, it doesn't seem to affect the program shutting down or anything, I could leave it run like that and see.

When I start up boinc, it gives the preferences it is following in the message area. Here is mine:

Fri 18 Jan 2008 12:28:36 PM EST|SETI@home|URL: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/; Computer ID: 4139975; location: home; project prefs: default
Fri 18 Jan 2008 12:28:36 PM EST||General prefs: from SETI@home (last modified 31-Dec-2007 17:42:03)
Fri 18 Jan 2008 12:28:36 PM EST||Host location: home
Fri 18 Jan 2008 12:28:36 PM EST||General prefs: no separate prefs for home; using your defaults
Fri 18 Jan 2008 12:28:36 PM EST||Preferences limit memory usage when active to 759.67MB
Fri 18 Jan 2008 12:28:36 PM EST||Preferences limit memory usage when idle to 1367.40MB
Fri 18 Jan 2008 12:28:36 PM EST||Preferences limit disk usage to 3.69GB
Fri 18 Jan 2008 12:30:00 PM EST|SETI@home|Restarting task 13dc06ab.15843.25021.14.6.129_0 using setiathome_enhanced version 527

Note: No mention of suspending when in use.

Toby also mentions the mouse suspend command 'is' broken in 5.10.8, a keyboard hit is required in his version to suspend it. I had that version too and it would suspend when I typed the top command into the terminal, but not when I typed in the GUI of firefox or thunderbird. This latest version 5.10.28 won't do either though.

OK. But do you find the prime bianry from other download sources ?

All the other prime95 links resolve back to the one server that isn't responding theses days.

---

Well I'm actually running 5.10.8 straight out of the Ubuntu repos and the suspending works... after I edited global_prefs.xml as described above and I think the only reason I had to do that is because my web settings are set to do work while I'm using the computer. From my Messages tab in boincmgr:

Fri 18 Jan 2008 01:09:01 AM CST||Suspending computation - user is active
Fri 18 Jan 2008 01:12:02 AM CST||Resuming computation

The only issue is that it doesn't recognize mouse movements because of a small bug so it will only suspend if you type on the keyboard. I have submitted a patch that fixes this so the next release should handle the mouse correctly.

Interesting. I could also force that version of Ubuntu Boinc to suspend by using the keyboard for the 'top' command, but this new client, 5.10.28 won't even allow that.

I do not have the line in my global_prefs.xml file that you deleted.

---

OK so I have been monitoring my CPU usage and it would seem that Boinc and Seti still use 100% of the CPU, just 50% of the 'time' so it pulses the CPU on a steady frequency. I can still get 'TOP' screens showing Seti at 94% for an instant, then averaging down to 40%.

This is excatly the right behavior of the CPU throtteling. The "pulsing" CPU usage of the SETI application indicates that the CPU throtteling is working as it should.

When this frequency coincides with the 'call' frequency of the network card, I have a visual on the TX and RX, things go bad fast. Sometimes the pulses the program monitors show are alternating and then my internet programs work, slower, but work.

I think, that this is the root cause for your slowdown problems with firefox and thunderbird. I think this should not happens and there should be no network activity while running SETI and the BOINC client is not downloading some work or other applications using the network.
Toby and Byrn, do you have an idea, what's going wrong here ? - Interrupt or Hardware problem's of the network card ?

---

So I went back to a fresh install of the Ubuntu package 5.10.8 'boincmgr' with 5.10.28 client installed.

Apparently this still does not work. It 'does' allow the CPU use to be changed though which the old one didn't so it's 'halfway' fixed.

What other options do I have?

You could also copy over the BOINC client from the actual offical release to your BOINC directory and use the old BOINC manager from the Ubuntu distribution.
Please did not complain permanently about fixed bugs and things we already has noticed and fixed in newer versions.

I have not been able to locate a 'fixed' program. THAT IS WHY I AM HERE. Sorry for shouting, but geese it gets frustrating going around in circles.

As I written in my previos mail, download the offical BOINC client, and use the offical the BOINC client with the BOINC manager from the Ubuntu package.
You can unpack the offical binary package in a temporarly directory, stop the BOINC client, backup the Ubuntu BOINC client (file "boinc) and copy the file "boinc" from the offical package to your BOINC client directory and start the BOINC client again.


Could you please post the output from "time nslookup setiatome.berkeley.edu", "time nslookup localhost".
Is "ping localhost" successfull ?

Btw. I am still waiting on some awnsers of my last questions, how exaclty the system slows down at which actions and what happens if you make a stress test.

My firefox and my Thunderbird 'hang' when trying to connect to a website or Usenet server with boinc and seti running. The little circle up in the right corner just keeps on spinning and spinning and... When I suspend the project, the 'hang' instantly goes away and I connect. Happened yesterday on the first page I tried to access after I fired up Boinc and Seti and it is only using 50% of my CPU now. [/quote]
What happens, if you go to the BOINC manager, select "Activity"/"Network Activity Suspend" and now SETI is running and you are using FF and TB ?

It passes the grub memory burn test and Norton's hardware burn test run from a disk.

OK. But do you find the prime bianry from other download sources ?

---

Well I'm actually running 5.10.8 straight out of the Ubuntu repos and the suspending works... after I edited global_prefs.xml as described above and I think the only reason I had to do that is because my web settings are set to do work while I'm using the computer. From my Messages tab in boincmgr:

Fri 18 Jan 2008 01:09:01 AM CST||Suspending computation - user is active
Fri 18 Jan 2008 01:12:02 AM CST||Resuming computation

The only issue is that it doesn't recognize mouse movements because of a small bug so it will only suspend if you type on the keyboard. I have submitted a patch that fixes this so the next release should handle the mouse correctly.

---

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

Can 'you' or anyone else use the preferences to turn off Boinc when 'you' want to use the computer?

Yes.

OK so I have been monitoring my CPU usage and it would seem that Boinc and Seti still use 100% of the CPU, just 50% of the 'time' so it pulses the CPU on a steady frequency. I can still get 'TOP' screens showing Seti at 94% for an instant, then averaging down to 40%.

When this frequency coincides with the 'call' frequency of the network card, I have a visual on the TX and RX, things go bad fast. Sometimes the pulses the program monitors show are alternating and then my internet programs work, slower, but work.

Could you show me a TOP screen shot of yours when it is in pause mode because your PC is in use so I know what I am looking at? Maybe my perceptions are off or there is a timing issue I can address.

I am running client 5.10.28 with boincmgr 5.10.8

Thanks

---

Meanwhile I will see about trying to get prime again and will swap slots on my network card but it seems like a waste of time seeing as I cannot find a working Boincmgr. Even if my system didn't care about an uncontrollable program running, I do.

OK, I changed my network card's position on the buss. It only has a new sound card on that PCI buss, my old sound card was ISA. The rest of the slots are empty.

No joy for either the new buss position or getting prime. Google.ca hung with Boinc running, I suspended and the page opened right up.

Meanwhile prime95 doesn't seem to exist anymore.

---

Can 'you' or anyone else use the preferences to turn off Boinc when 'you' want to use the computer?

Yes.

So far everyone seems to agree with me that the program is broken, it won't shut off on command.

No. As we have seen at the last try, there is a problem in the outdated BOINC client version 5.10.8, which you are using, that the preferences are not updated. As I have written before, please update to a version which fix this problem.

That is one 'big' problem, there is no update to the 5.10.8 Boincmgr for Ubuntu. I 'tried' to use the updated program on the Boinc site, boinc_5.10.28_i686-pc-linux-gnu.sh, but it does not have the boincmgr file included. That 'update' therefore does not 'work' for my issue.

So I went back to a fresh install of the Ubuntu package 5.10.8 'boincmgr' with 5.10.28 client installed.

Apparently this still does not work. It 'does' allow the CPU use to be changed though which the old one didn't so it's 'halfway' fixed.

What other options do I have?

You could also copy over the BOINC client from the actual offical release to your BOINC directory and use the old BOINC manager from the Ubuntu distribution.
Please did not complain permanently about fixed bugs and things we already has noticed and fixed in newer versions.

I have not been able to locate a 'fixed' program. THAT IS WHY I AM HERE. Sorry for shouting, but geese it gets frustrating going around in circles.

So there must be an issue with your system.

See above.

Btw. I am still waiting on some awnsers of my last questions, how exaclty the system slows down at which actions and what happens if you make a stress test.

My firefox and my Thunderbird 'hang' when trying to connect to a website or Usenet server with boinc and seti running. The little circle up in the right corner just keeps on spinning and spinning and... When I suspend the project, the 'hang' instantly goes away and I connect. Happened yesterday on the first page I tried to access after I fired up Boinc and Seti and it is only using 50% of my CPU now.

It passes the grub memory burn test and Norton's hardware burn test run from a disk.

I wasn't able to get that prime program, the sites were all down. I could try that again, but again if I could 'find' an updated boincmgr that actually worked, I would not be having any issues.

If you could point me to a working version of Boincmgr it would be greatly appreciated.

Meanwhile I will see about trying to get prime again and will swap slots on my network card but it seems like a waste of time seeing as I cannot find a working Boincmgr. Even if my system didn't care about an uncontrollable program running, I do.

---

Can 'you' or anyone else use the preferences to turn off Boinc when 'you' want to use the computer?

Yes.

So far everyone seems to agree with me that the program is broken, it won't shut off on command.

No. As we have seen at the last try, there is a problem in the outdated BOINC client version 5.10.8, which you are using, that the preferences are not updated. As I have written before, please update to a version which fix this problem.
You could also copy over the BOINC client from the actual offical release to your BOINC directory and use the old BOINC manager from the Ubuntu distribution.
Please did not complain permanently about fixed bugs and things we already has noticed and fixed in newer versions.

No one has posted that they 'can' shut it off, only that they can use it when it runs rogue!

Works everything well for me. As may others has posted before, there could be an issue and a stress test of the hardware is recommended from a lot of peoples. It is no problem to run SETI with 100%, because the SETI application is running at the lowest priority and the OS scheduler sort this out. -> see Bryn's example, which explains this behavior excelent.
So there must be an issue with your system.

I have no income due to being smashed up in a car accident so am likely to have this PC for a bunch more years because it works for 'everything' else without exception except Boinc.

If the 'preferences' actually worked, then I wouldn't have any issues.

See above.

Btw. I am still waiting on some awnsers of my last questions, how exaclty the system slows down at which actions and what happens if you make a stress test.

---

Electrically, it's about as boring as a parallel port and for an 'ordinary' thing like a mouse to get as far as affecting the RAM says (to me, any way!) that there's something sinister going on with the motherboard.
I'm not really expecting to find RAM faults as such, just (maybe) some esoteric mapping problems which I think may not be uncovered by a RAM test.

It was an optic mouse that did use ram, but I see your point.

Having a program running rogue through my computer is really not a good thing

Yes indeed. But it's not BOINC/seti per se which is faulty because surely, this clobbering of 'common' applications like Firefox & Thunderbird would be affecting many more people.

I'm running a box with the same CPU and less RAM than on your system yet I have no problems at all. BOINC/seti might as well not be running for all the difference I can detect in machine behaviour/responsiveness, including Firefox etc., yet I allow it 100% access at all times.

OK, here is the issue.

Can 'you' or anyone else use the preferences to turn off Boinc when 'you' want to use the computer?

So far everyone seems to agree with me that the program is broken, it won't shut off on command.

No one has posted that they 'can' shut it off, only that they can use it when it runs rogue!

I have no income due to being smashed up in a car accident so am likely to have this PC for a bunch more years because it works for 'everything' else without exception except Boinc.

If the 'preferences' actually worked, then I wouldn't have any issues.

---

I had I/O issues with a USB mouse that affected the ram, but that was found (it was real bad)

Yep - that's exactly the sort of weirdness I mean. A USB device should just be that: a USB device. Electrically, it's about as boring as a parallel port and for an 'ordinary' thing like a mouse to get as far as affecting the RAM says (to me, any way!) that there's something sinister going on with the motherboard.
I'm not really expecting to find RAM faults as such, just (maybe) some esoteric mapping problems which I think may not be uncovered by a RAM test.

The network card is the first in the bus.

Even so, I still think it's worth swapping it around and halving the physical memory - just to try and nail what's going on with your motherboard.

The rest of the machine checks out on Norton Systemworks's diagnostic programs

Ah yes - but ultimately, nothing checks out correct system functionality quite like running applications! ;)

Having a program running rogue through my computer is really not a good thing

Yes indeed. But it's not BOINC/seti per se which is faulty because surely, this clobbering of 'common' applications like Firefox & Thunderbird would be affecting many more people.
I'm running a box with the same CPU and less RAM than on your system yet I have no problems at all. BOINC/seti might as well not be running for all the difference I can detect in machine behaviour/responsiveness, including Firefox etc., yet I allow it 100% access at all times.
Also, as applications, BOINC/seti don't need to get up to anything really fancy WRT accessing hardware: one is a front-end manager and the other is a maths engine, with both making the odd use of file and net access. Nothing too magical there and likely to be much less busy with the hardware than say, something like KDE (or even that other OS).

But - a true aside...
I once worked for a PC manufacturer which produced its own motherboards and they worked very well. Strangely, one reviewer reported horribly slow RAM benchmarks when comparing against someone else's motherboard using the same support chipset and same CPU. The results should have been virtually identical.

After much head scratching it was eventually discovered that although the benchmark he was using was the same type as other reviewers (who reported no odd timings), his particular release had been compiled using a different library to the other versions. (for reasons known only to the benchmark manufacturer)
There was a trick this particular library was pulling which caused some very odd things to happen with the memory mapping in certain regions - enough to highlight a tiny, TINY design problem with the motherboard.
Fortunately it was relatively easy to fix with BIOS firmware alone and the end result was that all available versions of this benchmark behaved properly with none reporting odd timings.

At no point did any of a range of benchmarks, system and memory tests show up anything odd.
Just this one - yet it was still a hardware problem at the root of it.

---

To err is human; to moo, bovine.

Wonder if the memory controller or something else in the north bridge is getting too busy to handle I/O requests from your network card or something

I had a quick Google for problems related to the ASUS CUV4X and found a selection of "it's great" to "it sucks" reports with nothing usefully specific - but, I'm thinking along the same lines as you - especially as Slim reported similar problems when running the same motherboard under Windows.

I wonder if it's worth removing a couple of SIMMs (or removing whatever's required) to drop the physical memory to say, half its current size, just as a test for motherboard-related memory mapping or I/O weirdness?
Or, try moving the network card to a different slot to force it to pick up a different IRQ.

I have new memory chips and they have been run long on Ubuntu's memory check on the computer's boot screen. I had I/O issues with a USB mouse that affected the ram, but that was found (it was real bad) and the mouse is new as well as the ram.

The network card is the first in the bus. The rest of the machine checks out on Norton Systemworks's diagnostic programs in my windows boot as well as any of the reporting ones in Linux.

I can try a slot swap, but seeing as the network card is now in the second slot with the first one empty, I believe we did that way back when boinc first came out and gave me trouble.

Having a program running rogue through my computer is really not a good thing and turning the program on and off manually gets old fast. I have the PC on all day, 18 hours even and come and go at it and want control when I am on it like Seti@home used to do.

---

Hmm this seems to be a slightly bad design but it looks like the "Suspend work while computer is in use?" option is kind of reversed. You can't seem to override it locally unless you have it set to "yes" in your web preferences.

But if you stop BOINC and edit global_prefs.xml (not global_prefs_override.xml) and take out the line that says <run_if_user_active/> and then restart boinc it should stop doing work while you are active. At least it works for me. Of course the problem is that next time your computer reports a result to seti, it will overwrite the global_prefs.xml file and undo your change. However this does mean that the feature works... are you sure you have it set correctly in your global prefs here on the website? Click here and make sure all of the venues you have set up say "yes" on the line that says "Suspend work while computer is in use?"

That line does not exist in my global_prefs.xml and it has been turned off on the website, updated, the program Boinc and client totally deleted locally with a new copy downloaded, installed and updated with a new project.

Still no joy.

After you have done that you will need to do an "update" on the client so it picks up the new prefs from the server.

But I'm still curious as to why you are seeing things freeze in the first place. It sounds more like BOINC is stalling your network connection. Your applications and operating system obviously aren't completely locking up since you can still get to BOINC and pause it. It sounds like whenever BOINC is running, you just can't access the internet. So firefox and thunderbird just can't download new web pages or emails but they aren't really "freezing." Wonder if the memory controller or something else in the north bridge is getting too busy to handle I/O requests from your network card or something... I don't think I've ever heard of that happening though.

It is odd and even happened for Netscape back in Windows.

---

Wonder if the memory controller or something else in the north bridge is getting too busy to handle I/O requests from your network card or something

I had a quick Google for problems related to the ASUS CUV4X and found a selection of "it's great" to "it sucks" reports with nothing usefully specific - but, I'm thinking along the same lines as you - especially as Slim reported similar problems when running the same motherboard under Windows.

I wonder if it's worth removing a couple of SIMMs (or removing whatever's required) to drop the physical memory to say, half its current size, just as a test for motherboard-related memory mapping or I/O weirdness?
Or, try moving the network card to a different slot to force it to pick up a different IRQ.

---

To err is human; to moo, bovine.

Hmm this seems to be a slightly bad design but it looks like the "Suspend work while computer is in use?" option is kind of reversed. You can't seem to override it locally unless you have it set to "yes" in your web preferences.

But if you stop BOINC and edit global_prefs.xml (not global_prefs_override.xml) and take out the line that says <run_if_user_active/> and then restart boinc it should stop doing work while you are active. At least it works for me. Of course the problem is that next time your computer reports a result to seti, it will overwrite the global_prefs.xml file and undo your change. However this does mean that the feature works... are you sure you have it set correctly in your global prefs here on the website? Click here and make sure all of the venues you have set up say "yes" on the line that says "Suspend work while computer is in use?"

After you have done that you will need to do an "update" on the client so it picks up the new prefs from the server.

But I'm still curious as to why you are seeing things freeze in the first place. It sounds more like BOINC is stalling your network connection. Your applications and operating system obviously aren't completely locking up since you can still get to BOINC and pause it. It sounds like whenever BOINC is running, you just can't access the internet. So firefox and thunderbird just can't download new web pages or emails but they aren't really "freezing." Wonder if the memory controller or something else in the north bridge is getting too busy to handle I/O requests from your network card or something... I don't think I've ever heard of that happening though.

---

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

mike@mike:~/Desktop/BOINC$ grep cpu_usage_limit global_prefs_override.xml
<cpu_usage_limit>100.000000</cpu_usage_limit>
mike@mike:~/Desktop/BOINC$

Hm, which BOINC version do you use ?

Please stop the BOINC client and edit the file global_prefs_override.xml and change the value between <cpu_usage_limit> and </cpu_usage_limit> to the value you wan't. For example : <cpu_usage_limit>70.000000</cpu_usage_limit>
Save the file and start the BOINC client. Did it now work ?
If not please send me the output from the grep command again.

You'r network looks OK. - I only wan't to verify if there are some troubles on the network site.

OK, I now have convinced it to only use 50% of my CPU which is a waste really because I only want it working when I am not on it so it should be allowed to use 100%.

I have the Ubuntu manager 5.10.8 and the latest Seti client ver 5.10.28.

Is there a command I can add or edit in global_prefs_override.xml that will shut down the program when my PC is in use?

---

But in BOINC Manager I can see tasks being worked on (even as I type), and Ubuntu's System Monitor shows all 4 cores running at 100%.

Here's a dumb test to show what happens with respect to 'top' showing 100% CPU usage. It depends on the installation of 'bc' (an arbitrary precision calculator - a whole 63 kBytes in size) which IIRC gets installed generally along with the base packages but if not, on Ubuntu, just do sudo apt-get install bc

Paste the following into a file in your home directory called cpuloader.sh
--- snip ---
# thrash the CPU using a recursive factorial function f()

# on a 3.06GHz P4 with HT -
# f(1000) takes 30 mS
# f(2000) takes 120 mS
# f(4000) takes 500 mS
# f(10000) takes 3.5 sec
# f(100000) takes 9 min 22 sec

Num=4000
# or pass yer own
[ -z $1 ] || Num=$1

echo "f($Num)"
echo "define f (x) {if (x <= 1) return (1);return (f(x-1) * x);} f($Num)"|bc
--- snip ---

If this is started with no parameter it will default to using 4000 - half a second run time on my P4.

Open a couple of shell windows and after ensuring that BOINC/seti is running, in one of the windows start 'top' with top -d1 which will cause the process list to be updated every second.
You should see seti apparently using ~100% CPU resources.

In the other shell window, run the cpuloader script with sh ./cpuloader.sh 100000
I don't know how quickly this will complete on a multi-core CPU (lucky you!) but it should chug away for at least a couple of minutes. If it's insanely fast, try passing 200000 instead - on my 3.06GHz P4 that makes it run for a slightly silly 30 minutes plus...
(to display the run time instead of reaching for a stopwatch, prepend time to the sh ./ cpuloader.sh ... line)

While it's running (there will be no output until it completes), switch to the shell window running top - where you should see that 'bc' is now loading the CPU and seti has dropped down the list.
On my P3 box, 'top' now shows:

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
13110 brian     25   0 13404  11m  476 R 92.9  1.6  15:27.85 bc
12490 brian     39  19 39268  34m    8 R  4.3  4.6 468:16.56 setiathome-5.27

If cpuloader completes while you're watching the output from top, you should see that 'bc' vanishes from the list and seti is once again given the most CPU usage. The basic idea is that if a resource is available then it should be used, with Linux quietly handling the switching between processes clamouring for access to resources according to their priority. This happens many thousands of times a second - much too fast for 'top' and other monitors to give a truly accurate picture. You may even see other processes coming & going on the displayed list - that's because as 'top' grabs a snapshot of the processes, a process just happened to be given a 'run slot' by Linux at the same time.
(you can kill cpuloader.sh with ^C)

I appreciate that BOINC may well be ignoring the limit CPU usage parameters, but I just wanted to demonstrate how process loading of the CPU is still being handled and shared correctly, even though 'top' and friends are apparently showing otherwise.

---

To err is human; to moo, bovine.