We're now up to Boinc 6.6.20 for the development versions...

How's this latest one shaping up for scheduling, CUDA, and whatever else?

Happy crunchin',
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

We're now up to Boinc 6.6.20 for the development versions...

How's this latest one shaping up for scheduling, CUDA, and whatever else?

Happy crunchin',
Martin

Looking very good on my rig. Still occasionally see dates reverting to US format and then back in BM and still has a preference to send AP rather than MB for my CPU (not that I mind, just curious that the only time I have 603's recently is when the AP splitters were down). But, overall, the scheduling seems to be working with minimum intervention.

F.

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It is working much better than previous versions. Selecting on Seti@home preferences run to cuda only actually works now, unlike some instances in 6.6.15 i found.

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I did the upgrade early because I was only using one cpu for SETI if I got an AP unit. This was because the estimated time for the AP was so high, I could not get scheduler to give me any more work even though I had an idle cpu to do it. That works fine in the upgrade. Within a short time of upgrade, scheduler had sent more than enough- I guess I should have turned the "days on hand" back down before starting up.

One thing I noticed is that I saw the old message that 'BOINC could not contact server due to no internet connection and no default connect was set up' - message. I have not seen that for ages back when I had a dial-up connection, and there actually were times I had no connection. But, now I am on connected all the time, and that message was a bit strange since just after it popped up, I did an update, and connection was fine.

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Of course now 6.6.21 is out for Windows, No sign yet of the Mac and Linux versions.

And yeah 6.6.20 works pretty good here too.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Many of the problems of V6.4+ have been resolved. I don't have CUDA but from my reading, CUDA/CPU scheduling has been much improved. The only reservation I still have is that on multi-CPU system with multiple project, there exist too much task switching without obvious reasons. Tasks are often suspended to start a different project after running only a few minutes, sometimes even before checkpoint is done. This was not the case in V5. This is being discussed on the mailing list but I don't think the message is getting through to the developers. It's not major, just annoying.

V6.6.20 may not become a public release but I can't think of anything major except the above that could be a show stopper. This development line should become the recommended version very soon.

EDIT: Thanks for the heads up on V6.6.21. I have a tab open to index/dl but hadn't refreshed or looked at it today.

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Boinc V7.2.42
Win7 i5 3.33G 4GB, GTX470

Of course now 6.6.21 is out for Windows, No sign yet of the Mac and Linux versions.

Don't get it at this moment, it's broken. It won't install. Rom's busy with it.

I just got news in that BOINC 6.6.20 is going to be released to the public tonight. Best all gather up your FAQs and readme's. :-)

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Of course now 6.6.21 is out for Windows, No sign yet of the Mac and Linux versions.

Don't get it at this moment, it's broken. It won't install. Rom's busy with it.

Thanks Ageless, I'd downloaded It, But hadn't done anything with It, I'll delete the useless thing and await the real McCoy when Rom is done with It.

6.6.20 is going public, Wow! Cool.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

I had no problem with 6.6.21. I downloaded and installed it immediately after my last post in this thread. What's the problem? It seems to be working fine.

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Boinc V7.2.42
Win7 i5 3.33G 4GB, GTX470

Of course now 6.6.21 is out for Windows, No sign yet of the Mac and Linux versions.

Don't get it at this moment, it's broken. It won't install. Rom's busy with it.

I just got news in that BOINC 6.6.20 is going to be released to the public tonight. Best all gather up your FAQs and readme's. :-)

Downloaded and installed 6.6.21 in x64 and x86 flavours earlier,
seemed to install O.K, will update when new version available.

Claggy

I had no problem with 6.6.21. I downloaded and installed it immediately after my last post in this thread. What's the problem? It seems to be working fine.

It's possible the installer exits with "BOINC -- SetEntriesInAcl Error". Else it's possible it doesn't set the correct permissions for Everyone.

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A bit later than "tonight", but here it is:

BOINC 6.6.20 released for Windows, Windows x64, and MacOS X

Rom Walton wrote:

Howdy Folks,

We are pleased to announce the first of the 6.6 clients to be ready for
public consumption.

This release includes:

1. A new CPU/GPU scheduler.

2. An improved work-fetch policy.

3. Improved communication handling between the manager and client
software.

4. Consolidation between the grid based advanced view and the list based advanced view for accessibility improvements.

Future 6.6 releases will include the updated localization files that the localizers have been hard at work on.

We would like to thank all the testers for their hard work over the last few months, without your help we would not have had as stable a client as we have now.

----- Rom

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A bit later than "tonight", but here it is:

BOINC 6.6.20 released for Windows, Windows x64, and MacOS X

Rom Walton wrote:

Howdy Folks,

We are pleased to announce the first of the 6.6 clients to be ready for
public consumption.

This release includes:

1. A new CPU/GPU scheduler.

2. An improved work-fetch policy.

3. Improved communication handling between the manager and client
software.

4. Consolidation between the grid based advanced view and the list based advanced view for accessibility improvements.

Future 6.6 releases will include the updated localization files that the localizers have been hard at work on.

We would like to thank all the testers for their hard work over the last few months, without your help we would not have had as stable a client as we have now.

----- Rom

It is a huge improvement on 6.4.x. If you are using 6.4, you should really upgrade.

There are some bug fixes that improve overall stability vs 6.2.x and 5.x. The workfetch and CPU schedulers are a bit different though (didn't say better or worse, just a bit different).

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BOINC WIKI

I've been running 5.10.45 on three of my hosts for months, and 5.10.20 on another for longer. Recently the 5.10.45 hosts lost a couple of days of Einstein credit during an outage. As the bug at hand in that incident is reportedly fixed in modern versions, I installed 6.6.20 on one host today.

For others making a similar transition, here are a few comments:

1. I stopped the previous boincmgr, and just double-clicked the file to run the install.
2. It asked very few questions: mostly just queried whether I wanted to change the directories. I accepted the defaults.
3. It took quite a while in the "migrating data" phase (perhaps 15 minutes?)
4. With the install complete, it told me a system restart was required to have BOINC actually run again.
5. On restart, I found I had two instances of BOINCmgr 6.6.20 running, but no actual science aps started up for quite a while. The delay was at least in part because it immediately ran benchmarks.
6. Using msconfig, I found that I now had two BOINCMgr startup conditions set. I turned off one in msconfig, leaving the one with the /a /s flags (not sure that was the right one).
7. For better or worse, on this host I had several third-party BOINC "helper" aps installed under the /program files/BOINC directory, including BOINCView, BoingLogX, and a couple of others. After the 6.6.20 install, I found that it had moved them to the new BOINC data directory under \Documents and Settings\All Users\Application data. Of course this was incompatible with their launch conditions, so I moved them back manually.
9. Once I had moved the third-party stuff back, a restart on BOINCView actually worked without any revised settings or permissions.
10. Much to my surprise, the user interface for BOINCMgr under 6.6.20 seems very similar to that under 5.10.45.
11. as I run COMODO Firewall with some Defense+ options turned on, the relocated science aps were considered "new", and I had to authorize first time run for each. This was made easier than it used to be by the upgrade in 6.6.20 compared to 5.10.45 (actually made long ago), which allows selection of multiple tasks for the Suspend and Resume operations. So I forced first run of the Einstein pulsar search while I was available to "say yes".

Hope this helps someone considering making the transition to have a slightly smoother experience.

My usage so far is too brief to have noticed whether the scheduler changes have effects I don't like. As I use strongly biased work allocation (96% Einstein, 4% SETI, with that currently devoted to Astropulse v5 on my major hosts) I'll be sensitive to that point.

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Hello,

Is 6.6.20 compatible with the Optimized Clients? And also do we need to deplete our wu cache before installing so we don't trash all of them?

Is 6.6.20 compatible with the Optimized Clients? And also do we need to deplete our wu cache before installing so we don't trash all of them?

While cache depletion is always the safest option, I did nothing of that sort for my transition described in message 883983 in this thread. On restart, it appeared to pick up in-process work, obviously using the previous ap_info.xml. While I have no completed tasks yet to add confidence, I think this was OK.

Also worth noting, while for my case (accepting defaults, and moving from 5.10.45) the data moved, the program directory did not, so ap_info.xml and the things it refers to remained in their existing locations.

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7. For better or worse, on this host I had several third-party BOINC "helper" aps installed under the /program files/BOINC directory, including BOINCView, BoingLogX, and a couple of others. After the 6.6.20 install, I found that it had moved them to the new BOINC data directory under \Documents and Settings\All Users\Application data. Of course this was incompatible with their launch conditions, so I moved them back manually.

Good point. I made it a ticket in Trac, at [trac]#870[/trac]

By the way, what happened to your point 8? ;-)

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By the way, what happened to your point 8? ;-)

Another age-related fault. I caught a number of other typos in reviewing before posting, but missed that one. And now it is too late for me to edit that one.

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Is 6.6.20 compatible with the Optimized Clients? And also do we need to deplete our wu cache before installing so we don't trash all of them?

While cache depletion is always the safest option, I did nothing of that sort for my transition described in message 883983 in this thread. On restart, it appeared to pick up in-process work, obviously using the previous ap_info.xml. While I have no completed tasks yet to add confidence, I think this was OK.

I had one issue with app_info.xml on a new Windows 2003 install:
Downloaded BOINC 6.6.20, installed in protected mode (aka service), started it, went to advanced mode, attached SETI.
Wasn't quick enough to set NNW on SETI so it immediately downloaded a AP-wu.
Stopped service, put in arkayn's SSE3 package (PC is a P4 Prescott) & restarted BOINC.
Messages didn't show any app_info.xml used for SETI.
Checked project dir. Yes, app_info and apps are there along with stock app.
Reviewed app_info. Nothing obvious wrong, but to be safe copied a known working app_info from a backup.
Restarted BOINC-service. Same thing again: No message about app_info.
Rebooted PC. Again same thing. Oh and task manager shows stock app is running, not optimized.
Stop service. Reinstal 6.6.20, choosing repair. Again same.
Download and install 6.2.19. Start service. Manager won't start: boinc.dll missing.
Stop service. Reinstall 6.2.19, choosing repair. boinc.dll is there now. Manager starts.
Start service.
Messages shows SETI uses opt-app, task manager shows opt-app crunching. Stock app is no longer in project folder :)

5 minutes later: 6.6.20 is released on website and 6.2.19 no longer available (well it is in dl of course).

I did download the "new" 6.6.20 and it differs in size from "old" 6.6.20, but don't know what is different and didn't get time to retry from scratch again yet.

I did download the "new" 6.6.20 and it differs in size from "old" 6.6.20, but don't know what is different and didn't get time to retry from scratch again yet.

A fix in the setup of how the 'Everyone' security ID was included in the boinc_users group.

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