Oh boy!! With all kind of little bells and whistles and levers and sliders and switches so I can really mess things up?? :-)



oh,oh, dont forget knobs, me like knobs!!

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PROUD MEMBER OF Team Starfire World BOINC

Please add an option to the unified installer so I can select the number of GPU tasks and CPU cores that I want to run at a time. This would be much cleaner than editing the file after the fact.

example:
Number of CPU cores to leave idle: 1
Number of GPU work units to run: 3

I might be able to put something together for this
Not sure about leaving a CPU core free, but the GPU workunits to run should be quite simple
I'll have a play tonight and get back to you, but as Jason says it would be a seperate install to the installer

Hi all,

I've installed the lunatic unified apps a couple of hours ago. I checked GPU-usage and found it very poor, so I started to experiment with different settings of <count> in the app_info.

atm I run that with a settting of 0.3 Seems to work, but display of the progress-bar acts strange. Sometimes two wu's show progress, sometimes none.
When I updated the drivers to 11.6 the system was unusable. Needed to complete uninstall all ati and nVidia-software. atm I have two ATI-cards installed and CCC 11.6b Seems to work, but can this be the cause of strange progress-bar behavior?

Another thing is the Lunatics installer. I have one 4850 and one 5830 in this system. What is the correct setting for the MultBeam App? It forces me to decide between HD5 and no-HD5 app.

The last thing is: is it possible to remove the auto-restart of the BM after the installation with help of the unified installer? Or at least place a message that BM will be restarted after pressing 'finish'. I had some Spinhendge wu's running; they checkpoint only after 95% and I lost a lot of crunching-hours.

Alexander

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1)11.6 drivers known to have problems on some hosts. Try Cat 11.2.
2) progress bar updated when predefined part of calculation will be finished. Different parts may take different time so sometimes progress bar ticks not every second (it's a waste of resourses and your own time - to make and to watch progress bar tick every second, don't you think so? ;) )
3) installer should restart BOINC (at least it should stop it to make changes).
4) with mixed capabilities GPU setup like HD4xxx and HD5xxx one should use lower-capability application. There is no known way to tell BOINC to use HD5 only for HD5xxx GPU and not for HD4xxx GPU.

I had some Spinhendge wu's running; they checkpoint only after 95% and I lost a lot of crunching-hours.

Alexander

Is this something you can change in your preferences for the project? I know you can change the checkpoint interval on Seti.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

The last thing is: is it possible to remove the auto-restart of the BM after the installation with help of the unified installer? Or at least place a message that BM will be restarted after pressing 'finish'. I had some Spinhendge wu's running; they checkpoint only after 95% and I lost a lot of crunching-hours.

Alexander

And second note....
Changing the restart of Boinc to manual will not change the situation. If they were not checkpointed, the work done was lost when Boinc shut down to do the install, not upon restart.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

Good point Mark.

While running those projects you should always finnish your running tasks before using the installer.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

Wow, what a response!

Is this something you can change in your preferences for the project?

Project admins say no, it's a very complicated structure and cannot be done earlier. I need to accept that.

While running those projects you should always finnish your running tasks before using the installer.

Well, I think I've learned that lesson ... LOL

Try Cat 11.2.

Will be done tomorrow before restarting BM.

2) progress bar updated when predefined part of calculation will be finished. Different parts may take different time so sometimes progress bar ticks not every second (it's a waste of resourses and your own time - to make and to watch progress bar tick every second, don't you think so? ;) )

To give you an example: elapsed time shows 1h15min, progress bar shows 0%, remaining time counts down. So, how can I be shure, that the wu's progress?
One GPU crunches two AP-wu's and Afterburner reports 24% GPU usage; my intention is to increase that. The other GPU crunches one AP and one Seti Enhanced @ 96% GPU usage.
Anyway, they finish and validate. So, Let it be.

Alexander

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Good point Mark.

And point taken. My only plea in mitigation - so many of the people who post here are "SETI first, the rest nowhere" crunchers that the specific needs of other projects can get overlooked. And the vast majority of backup projects do follow standard BOINC practice with regard to checkpointing.

For the next installer version, I'll try and find a balance between v0.37 (which stopped BOINC, or required the user to stop BOINC, right at the very beginning after launch, losing valuable crunching time while you read the setup screens and chose the right set of options), and v0.38 (which delayed stopping BOINC until the last possible moment, to minimise wasted time). I can split the detection phase ('BOINC is running, this is what will happen, back out now if you don't like it') from the action phase ('closing BOINC at the last moment before modifying files'). Something like that?

Will be done tomorrow before restarting BM.

Alexander

Alexander, you do understand that Boinc Manager only monitors and displays what Boinc.exe is doing, don't you?

Opening and closing BM does not stop the crunching processes from running, unless you specify that in the closing popup window.

It's just your window on what is going on in the background.

It's starting and stopping Boinc in the background that affects the running processes.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

It's starting and stopping Boinc in the background that affects the running processes.

And it's the background boinc.exe process which has to be stopped and restarted for an application change to take effect.

Maybe Alexander - you're one of the people who closes down their computer overnight and starts it up again in the morning? Then yes - starting the computer first, making the changes, and only then starting BOINC (Manager) should work.

Well,
yes, my mainsys is a 6/16 running system, my integrator is a machine running on demand with different configurations; I have a GTX260 and a GTX460 as replacement GPU's here. Runs sometimes with mixed GPU's.
The only 7/24 is my Flash-PC, which acts as fileserver (running @18W power consumption!!!), crunching Seti and Spinhendge.

Opening and closing BM does not stop the crunching processes from running, unless you specify that in the closing popup window.

THX for that hint; yes, the two boxes are checked. I prefer to have control over my system.

For the next installer version, I'll try ...

I like projects where Admins take care about needs of volunteers! Talking for me, a short notice that crunching must be stopped in order to update would be OK.

CHEERS,

Alexander

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...so I started to experiment with different settings of <count> in the app_info.

atm I run that with a settting of 0.3 Seems to work, but display of the progress-bar acts strange. Sometimes two wu's show progress, sometimes none...

Did you set the -instances value according to your <count> variable? (Not sure if that applies to your application(s))

Gruß,
Gundolf

Did you set the -instances value according to your <count> variable? (Not sure if that applies to your application(s))

Gruß,
Gundolf

??? Ahmm .. No.

<cmdline>-period_iterations_num 5 -instances_per_device 1</cmdline>

Looks like there is more to do.
instances per device is selfexplaining (I hope so), but what is period iterations num?

I found this:

I'm not so sure what you can do with the ATI MB app, i'd leave it as it is until you're lowered the APR enough that you're no longer at risk of -177's, then try and run two instances again, (but with an increased -period_iterations_num number too)

With the ATI AP app, try increasing the unroll value and the -ffa_block value up to 6144, again probably best if you did these next 9 Wu's as slow as possible to get the APR down first,

Claggy

Sorry, this raises more questions than answers were given.

Is there more info available?

Alexander

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First of all install other drivers.
As Raistmer said try 11.2.
With 11.6 you won´t get it work.

instances 1 needs count 1
instances 2 count 0.5
instances 3 count 0.33 and so on.

But you should get it work with instances 1 first since Raistmers card seems not to work with 2 instances.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

It's starting and stopping Boinc in the background that affects the running processes.

And it's the background boinc.exe process which has to be stopped and restarted for an application change to take effect.
...

Richard, many Windows updates require restarting Windows. When done as a manual install the final step of the process may have two buttons, one to immediately Restart and the other allowing the user to do the restart later. Is something similar possible here? The actual install is done, it's just a matter of stopping and restarting BOINC so it will read the app_info.xml and thereby activate the changes.

                                                                Joe

It's starting and stopping Boinc in the background that affects the running processes.

And it's the background boinc.exe process which has to be stopped and restarted for an application change to take effect.
...

Richard, many Windows updates require restarting Windows. When done as a manual install the final step of the process may have two buttons, one to immediately Restart and the other allowing the user to do the restart later. Is something similar possible here? The actual install is done, it's just a matter of stopping and restarting BOINC so it will read the app_info.xml and thereby activate the changes.

                                                                Joe

Hmmm. There would be no problem with generating a new app_info.xml, or even with putting new applications into the project directory ready for use. But the current installer moves your old applications into a backup directory, and cleans up the clutter in the working directory - I don't think that housekeeping can be done while SETI is active. And although we can suspend the project (as opposed to closing down BOINC), I suspect that CPU executables would remain locked if the user had 'keep applications in memory' selected - I don't think we can over-ride that and force a dismount without exiting BOINC.

Windows, and application installers, can pull off the trick because it has hooks to run any unfished file operations at an early enough stage in the next reboot cycle for the files not to be in use. I don't think BOINC has any similar facility during the BOINC startup phase, and I suspect users here would be even less happy about being asked for a full Windows restart after a Lunatics installation. Perhaps we should take this over to the development discussion area.

First of all install other drivers.
As Raistmer said try 11.2.
With 11.6 you won´t get it work.

instances 1 needs count 1
instances 2 count 0.5
instances 3 count 0.33 and so on.

But you should get it work with instances 1 first since Raistmers card seems not to work with 2 instances.

THX to the help of all of you it works now with a count of 0.5 and GPU-usage not less than 80% (and a max of 98%) --> goal reached!

@Mike: ols check your PM.

Cheers to all,

Alexander

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First of all install other drivers.
As Raistmer said try 11.2.
With 11.6 you won´t get it work.

instances 1 needs count 1
instances 2 count 0.5
instances 3 count 0.33 and so on.

But you should get it work with instances 1 first since Raistmers card seems not to work with 2 instances.

THX to the help of all of you it works now with a count of 0.5 and GPU-usage not less than 80% (and a max of 98%) --> goal reached!

@Mike: ols check your PM.

Cheers to all,

Alexander

Replied already.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

I have a Core i7 Extreme 980X CPU should i select the SSE4.1 Option or should i stay with the SSE3 (x64, generic)?

And whats with the MultiBeam (Cuda - WARNING requieres 236MiB AVAILABLE Video RAM) option, should i enable processing MultiBeam tasks on NBidia Cuda GPU or is this for special CUDA cards? I have and GTX480

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