Hi,

I have participated in a similar program many years ago and here I am again. I don't know if this question has been asked before. If so, then this thread should be merged with an earlier one.

The question is; what should be the right power scheme for BOINC to work? E.g. @ default setting, screen saver kicks in after 5 mins of inactivity. What if the power scheme setting for the monitor to switch off is 15 mins, does it means that BOINC stops working after 15 mins? And what if the same power scheme setting for the hard disk to turn off is 30 mins. Does BOINC stop or does it still run in RAM? And finally, there is a setting for the system to go into standby. Does BOINC prevent the system from dozing off?

Another situation would be if the volunteer have a torrent client working in the background. Does torrent clients interfere with BOINC and vice versa?

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Life is short so, make the best of it.

Welcome to the Seti project.

Hi,

I have participated in a similar program many years ago and here I am again. I don't know if this question has been asked before. If so, then this thread should be merged with an earlier one.

The question is; what should be the right power scheme for BOINC to work? E.g. @ default setting, screen saver kicks in after 5 mins of inactivity. What if the power scheme setting for the monitor to switch off is 15 mins, does it means that BOINC stops working after 15 mins?

This is probably the setting used by the majority of the Seti community. Some people however have found the Seti screensaver to be problematic. Depending on the chip set and video driver updates the system may not want to wake up properly. In which case it is recommended to use a regular screensaver rather then the Boinc/Seti screensaver.
Power down settings for the monitor will not effect Boinc.

And what if the same power scheme setting for the hard disk to turn off is 30 mins. Does BOINC stop or does it still run in RAM?

Hard drive power down is not problem since it is design to spin up as needed.

And finally, there is a setting for the system to go into standby. Does BOINC prevent the system from dozing off?

Boinc does not prevent system standby or sleep mode but this does stops CPU usage and therefore no work will get done. Same thing for low power mode on laptops.

Another situation would be if the volunteer have a torrent client working in the background. Does torrent clients interfere with BOINC and vice versa?

Most torrent software use very little CPU cycle (2-5%) therefore has no more impact on Boinc or vice versa then most application run on the system.

Note: Today's system are powerful enough to allow Boinc to always run in background. Since Boinc runs at the lowest priority this rarely effect normal system use. Most of the Board denizen (admittedly many are power users) set Boinc to always run in background, never use the screensaver (a waste of CPU cycle and use monitor power down mode instead) and use the Boinc advanced mode to monitor the work Seti is processing. They tend to use the show graphics button if and when the mood strikes them to see the cute graphics.

Feel free to make inquires in the Q&A section of the boards. There is usually someone around to answer your questions. Posting to the main Board forums is resticted to active members that have received credits for completed work.

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

One note on system hibernation. Hibernation tends to kill BOINC tasks, so there is a setting to stop processing after the host is idle for X minutes. You want to set this to be 2 or three minutes earlier than the system hibernation.

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BOINC WIKI

Welcome to the Seti project.

Thank you.

Feel free to make inquires in the Q&A section of the boards. There is usually someone around to answer your questions. Posting to the main Board forums is resticted to active members that have received credits for completed work.

I take it to mean that I am allowed to post here for the time being since, I can't get BOINC to work properly or is it that the SETI server is overwhelmed with requests for work. Here are the latest lines from a long list of messages I got since I installed BOINC;

5/18/2009 11:10:15 PM SETI@home Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
5/18/2009 11:10:15 PM SETI@home Requesting new tasks
5/18/2009 11:10:25 PM SETI@home Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks
5/18/2009 11:10:25 PM SETI@home Message from server: (Project has no jobs available)

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Life is short so, live it well.

One note on system hibernation. Hibernation tends to kill BOINC tasks, so there is a setting to stop processing after the host is idle for X minutes. You want to set this to be 2 or three minutes earlier than the system hibernation.

Thanks for the tip but what is defined as system inactivity? Does number crunching without disk activity constitute system inactivity?

And what if the unit is hooked to a UPS that is configured to shut the system down when dangerously close to battery exhaustion? Does BOINC interfere with this procedure?

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Life is short so, live it well.

System inactivity means keyboard or mouse is not in use.

The UPS does a normal power down so that is should be no problem. Boinc does maintains a back up of the file that keeps track of progress so even if it gets corrupted by a power failure it should recover.

Something hung up on work generators this weekend so that explains why no work is currently available. The guys should be in soon so that problem should be resolved shortly. Be aware also that every Tuesday the servers are offline for several hours for maintenance and backup. This is usually followed by a few hours where work availability is hit and miss as everyone is trying to report completed work and refill their queues.

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

Work has started to flow again so you should be seeing something here shortly.


Yep, I see you got a couple. Hope everything goes well for you. Welcome to SETI.

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PROUD MEMBER OF Team Starfire World BOINC

Note: Today's system are powerful enough to allow Boinc to always run in background. Since Boinc runs at the lowest priority this rarely effect normal system use. Most of the Board denizen (admittedly many are power users) set Boinc to always run in background, never use the screensaver (a waste of CPU cycle and use monitor power down mode instead) and use the Boinc advanced mode to monitor the work Seti is processing. They tend to use the show graphics button if and when the mood strikes them to see the cute graphics.

Thank you kind folks for your help.

• Item 1. I've got the program set @ "Run always" & I can c from d Tasks tab that progress is awfully slow. I had the unit working for 2 hrs now and the progress is barely 1%. I do not know if my old unit can be regarded as a 2day's system; it is a P4 2.5GHz, 512 MB RAM running on XP Pro. Is this system good enough to have BOINC run always or should I set it to run when idle?
  
• Item 2. Hope you kind folks can bare with this dummy 4 another question. My home unit is an Athlon dual core with 3GB RAM running on XP Home. The question is, if I got a main application running in the foreground, will XP Home delegate d 2nd processor 2 run BOINC in the background?
  

I hope I don't have 2 ask anymore silly questions.

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Life is short so, make the best of it.

Item 1. I've got the program set @ "Run always" & I can c from d Tasks tab that progress is awfully slow. I had the unit working for 2 hrs now and the progress is barely 1%. I do not know if my old unit can be regarded as a 2day's system; it is a P4 2.5GHz, 512 MB RAM running on XP Pro. Is this system good enough to have BOINC run always or should I set it to run when idle?

I have a 2.5 GHz laptop running always (and 24/7) without any problems. If the fans rev up too high, I blow out the dust and all is fine again.
It needs about 300 hours (14 days at exclusive use) for an AstroPulse (AP) task and about 5 hours for a MultiBeam (MB) task.
If AP seems to 'heavy' for you, you can disable those in your SETI@home preferences.

Item 2. Hope you kind folks can bare with this dummy 4 another question. My home unit is an Athlon dual core with 3GB RAM running on XP Home. The question is, if I got a main application running in the foreground, will XP Home delegate d 2nd processor 2 run BOINC in the background?

Boinc will run the project application always in the background (with very low priority). If you want to restrict BOINC from using all CPUs (cores), set On multiprocessors, use at most XX % of the processors accordingly in your Computing preferences.

Gruß,
Gundolf

PS: There are no silly questions

[edit] If you attach your home unit to SETI, do it as existing user, not as new user.[/edit]

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Computer sind nicht alles im Leben. (Kleiner Scherz)

SETI@home classic workunits 3,758
SETI@home classic CPU time 66,520 hours

Gruß,
Gundolf

PS: There are no silly questions

[edit] If you attach your home unit to SETI, do it as existing user, not as new user.[/edit]

10Q Gandolf,

I have my station at work set @ run always & it is working on an AP unit albeit awfully slow. Barely 1% after a day @ the office. And I have a home station that is also set @ run always & it has chalked up 7 avg work done overnight! The station @ work is registered to a different email. Should I still attach my home station to SETI as an existing user? How do I do it? Why should I do it?

Ps. How do you attach your cool BOINC stats report to your signature and what is the Einstein project about?

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Life is short so, live it well.

I have my station at work set @ run always & it is working on an AP unit albeit awfully slow. Barely 1% after a day @ the office.

As I said, my laptop needed about 2 weeks running 24/7. If your PC at work only runs for 8 hours, you'd need 6 weeks, which is over the deadline. So, if you can't leave it running over night, you should consider aborting it after you have disabled AstroPulse.

And I have a home station that is also set @ run always & it has chalked up 7 avg work done overnight!

That's normal for MultiBeam tasks.

The station @ work is registered to a different email. Should I still attach my home station to SETI as an existing user? How do I do it? Why should I do it?

Since you have only one computer attached to your ID, I thought the other one wasn't attached already. You could detach one machine from the one user ID (email) and reattach it to the other, so that both would show for one user. But be cautious! Detaching aborts all currently downloaded tasks and discards already done work. If you want to do it (it isn't necessary), first set your SETI project to "No New Tasks" (NNT) and wait until all work is uploaded and reported.

Ps. How do you attach your cool BOINC stats report to your signature and what is the Einstein project about?

The signature is from BOINCStats and is configured in your Community preferences. Infos about the Einstein@home project you can get here. They search for spinning neutron stars (also called pulsars) using data from the LIGO gravitational wave detector. They also search for radio pulsars in binary systems, using data from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

Gruß,
Gundolf

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Computer sind nicht alles im Leben. (Kleiner Scherz)

SETI@home classic workunits 3,758
SETI@home classic CPU time 66,520 hours

As I said, my laptop needed about 2 weeks running 24/7. If your PC at work only runs for 8 hours, you'd need 6 weeks, which is over the deadline. So, if you can't leave it running over night, you should consider aborting it after you have disabled AstroPulse.

How much time have I got for 1 AP unit? I left my work station on & have disabled the standby and hibernation mode. What will happen to the work unit if the deadline is missed?

Since you have only one computer attached to your ID, I thought the other one wasn't attached already. You could detach one machine from the one user ID (email) and reattach it to the other, so that both would show for one user. But be cautious! Detaching aborts all currently downloaded tasks and discards already done work. If you want to do it (it isn't necessary), first set your SETI project to "No New Tasks" (NNT) and wait until all work is uploaded and reported.

Thanks for the tip. I'll give it a try but what is the procedure for doing this? Looks like I'll need a step by step guide.

Ps. How do you attach your cool BOINC stats report to your signature and what is the Einstein project about?

The signature is from BOINCStats and is configured in your Community preferences. Infos about the Einstein@home project you can get here. They search for spinning neutron stars (also called pulsars) using data from the LIGO gravitational wave detector. They also search for radio pulsars in binary systems, using data from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

Gruß,
Gundolf[/quote]

Pulsars! Isn't that pure science? Sheesh, that work should really be done with state funds. I think I'll just contribute my PC time to SETI@home for the time being.

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Life is short so, live it well.

How much time have I got for 1 AP unit? I left my work station on & have disabled the standby and hibernation mode. What will happen to the work unit if the deadline is missed?

If a task reaches the deadline, a new copy is sent out to be crunched by another computer. However, if you return the completed task before that copy is returned, you'll get credit if your task has no errors. The new copy will also get credit if it validates.

Thanks for the tip. I'll give it a try but what is the procedure for doing this? Looks like I'll need a step by step guide.

The BOINC FAQ Service is a good place to look for such a guide.

Pulsars! Isn't that pure science? Sheesh, that work should really be done with state funds. I think I'll just contribute my PC time to SETI@home for the time being.

There are many other projects where you could donate your CPU cycles, look at this page. If you hover the mouse pointer over a link, a short description of the project is shown.

Gruß,
Gundolf

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Computer sind nicht alles im Leben. (Kleiner Scherz)

SETI@home classic workunits 3,758
SETI@home classic CPU time 66,520 hours

If a task reaches the deadline, a new copy is sent out to be crunched by another computer. However, if you return the completed task before that copy is returned, you'll get credit if your task has no errors. The new copy will also get credit if it validates.

This morning when I first check on BOINC, I found 1 AP task completed (100%). Wow, that was quick isn't it? But here are the messages I got;

5/20/2009 8:13:57 AM No general preferences found - using BOINC defaults
5/20/2009 8:13:57 AM Reading preferences override file
5/20/2009 8:13:57 AM Preferences limit memory usage when active to 255.49MB
5/20/2009 8:13:57 AM Preferences limit memory usage when idle to 459.88MB
5/20/2009 8:13:57 AM Preferences limit disk usage to 20.00GB
5/20/2009 8:17:34 AM SETI@home Sending scheduler request: To report completed tasks.
5/20/2009 8:17:34 AM SETI@home Reporting 1 completed tasks, not requesting new tasks
5/20/2009 8:17:40 AM SETI@home Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks

I suppose now is a good time to set to, "No New Task".

The BOINC FAQ Service is a good place to look for such a guide.

Ok, thanks for the link. Looks like I have to sort it out myself.

There are many other projects where you could donate your CPU cycles, look at this page. If you hover the mouse pointer over a link, a short description of the project is shown.

Gruß,
Gundolf

Again, 10Q. I am tempted to participate in some life sciences projects but there are too many of them. I believe more state funds should be allocated for such work instead of spending too much public money on defense technology. SETI@home is a project that should receive state funding but is not so, I willingly volunteer. It is good to see that an overwhelming number of BOINC participants are donating their CPU cycles to this effort. It shows that there is hope for humankind yet.

I will be flagging this Q&A as solved. 10Q very much 2 u kind folks. I may visit this thread again for other questions.

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Life is short so, make the best of it.

If a task reaches the deadline, a new copy is sent out to be crunched by another computer. However, if you return the completed task before that copy is returned, you'll get credit if your task has no errors. The new copy will also get credit if it validates.

This morning when I first check on BOINC, I found 1 AP task completed (100%). Wow, that was quick isn't it? But here are the messages I got;

5/20/2009 8:13:57 AM No general preferences found - using BOINC defaults
5/20/2009 8:13:57 AM Reading preferences override file
5/20/2009 8:13:57 AM Preferences limit memory usage when active to 255.49MB
5/20/2009 8:13:57 AM Preferences limit memory usage when idle to 459.88MB
5/20/2009 8:13:57 AM Preferences limit disk usage to 20.00GB
5/20/2009 8:17:34 AM SETI@home Sending scheduler request: To report completed tasks.
5/20/2009 8:17:34 AM SETI@home Reporting 1 completed tasks, not requesting new tasks
5/20/2009 8:17:40 AM SETI@home Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks

I suppose now is a good time to set to, "No New Task".

I see nothing wrong with those messages you've shown me. You finished the AP work, reported it, and didn't request more, which means you already had/have enough work. Or is that what you're trying to show, that it worked as its supposed to?

I'm not tring to be dense, I'm just not sure I'm on the same page as you.

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The first WU he completed was a Multibeam (enhanced). His other one is an Astropulse (AP) WU. That the reason there was no work request. The AP was enough for Boinc to consider his cache already full.

@freecitizen
The AP WU take much longer to process, something like 100 to 150 hrs instead of the 6 to 10 hrs the MB take.

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

This morning when I first check on BOINC, I found 1 AP task completed (100%). Wow, that was quick isn't it? But here are the messages I got;

5/20/2009 8:13:57 AM No general preferences found - using BOINC defaults
5/20/2009 8:13:57 AM Reading preferences override file
5/20/2009 8:13:57 AM Preferences limit memory usage when active to 255.49MB
5/20/2009 8:13:57 AM Preferences limit memory usage when idle to 459.88MB
5/20/2009 8:13:57 AM Preferences limit disk usage to 20.00GB
5/20/2009 8:17:34 AM SETI@home Sending scheduler request: To report completed tasks.
5/20/2009 8:17:34 AM SETI@home Reporting 1 completed tasks, not requesting new tasks
5/20/2009 8:17:40 AM SETI@home Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks

I suppose now is a good time to set to, "No New Task".

I see nothing wrong with those messages you've shown me. You finished the AP work, reported it, and didn't request more, which means you already had/have enough work. Or is that what you're trying to show, that it worked as its supposed to?

I'm not tring to be dense, I'm just not sure I'm on the same page as you.

Hi Moderator,

The exchanges with Jahn centered around the BOINC I have @ work that is registered to another email. I was asking how I can have SETI@home running on two stations with 1 account. Looks like I have 2 drop 1 of the accounts by detaching SETI@home and then re-attaching it as an existing user. Did I get this right?

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Life is short so, make the best of it.

This morning when I first check on BOINC, I found 1 AP task completed (100%). Wow, that was quick isn't it? But here are the messages I got;

5/20/2009 8:13:57 AM No general preferences found - using BOINC defaults
5/20/2009 8:13:57 AM Reading preferences override file
5/20/2009 8:13:57 AM Preferences limit memory usage when active to 255.49MB
5/20/2009 8:13:57 AM Preferences limit memory usage when idle to 459.88MB
5/20/2009 8:13:57 AM Preferences limit disk usage to 20.00GB
5/20/2009 8:17:34 AM SETI@home Sending scheduler request: To report completed tasks.
5/20/2009 8:17:34 AM SETI@home Reporting 1 completed tasks, not requesting new tasks
5/20/2009 8:17:40 AM SETI@home Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks

I suppose now is a good time to set to, "No New Task".

I see nothing wrong with those messages you've shown me. You finished the AP work, reported it, and didn't request more, which means you already had/have enough work. Or is that what you're trying to show, that it worked as its supposed to?

I'm not tring to be dense, I'm just not sure I'm on the same page as you.

Hi Moderator,

The exchanges with Jahn centered around the BOINC I have @ work that is registered to another email. I was asking how I can have SETI@home running on two stations with 1 account. Looks like I have 2 drop 1 of the accounts by detaching SETI@home and then re-attaching it as an existing user. Did I get this right?

Yes.

Further BOINC accounts cannot be merged. In classic, this was used to steal the credits from an account.

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BOINC WIKI