Been running Seti @ Home for over a decade. For some reason , it now freezes my Imac and requires a power button restart. I just upgraded to high sierra. It was freezing with an older OS as well.

Any thoughts on how to fix this?

Been running Seti @ Home for over a decade. For some reason , it now freezes my Imac and requires a power button restart. I just upgraded to high sierra. It was freezing with an older OS as well.

Any thoughts on how to fix this?

What does the Event log seem to say? Are things still running when you reboot? You probably will need to look at the log before you restart Seti.

Is the processing freezing or just the screen response?

Sometimes your app command line can be set so the screen freezes but the app continues to process. This is known as "screen lag". Take a look at your command line parameters. In the documentation, it may mention that something could cause "screen lag." Do you see anything?

Sometimes you have a screen lag without any parameter that would cause it. It may be possible to put in a parameter that reduces screen lag if that is the problem.

Tom

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association).

How hot does the computer get before it crashes? - Over the years I've had a few computers that would sit there all day "doing nothing" that would stop dead shortly after starting some serious work (all too often just before I did the first save on a new report), a quick check with the hand showed they felt far hotter than normal - after 11 years it may be that the cooling of critical components has been clogged up with dust etc.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

I have the same problem with a late-2015 iMac (3.2 GHz intel Core i5) under MacOS 10.14 and the latest version of Boinc reinstalled from scracth. The same problem occurred on this iMac under MacOS 10.13 and older versions of Boinc. I simply can't run Boinc on this computer. It freezes after a few minutes of Boinc calculation, no matter how long the computer has been running, etc.

I tried to have a look at Boinc's log, but Boinc seems to erase everything each time it restarts, so I can't even try to find out what went wrong last time. I checked the log options, but I failed to find an option to specify the duration of the log file.

Boinc works fine on a 2013 iMac under MacOS 10.14 and a 2011 MacBook Air under MacOS 10.13.

I tried to have a look at Boinc's log, but Boinc seems to erase everything each time it restarts, so I can't even try to find out what went wrong last time. I checked the log options, but I failed to find an option to specify the duration of the log file.

BOINC writes everything to logs in the data directory (default at /Library/Application Support/BOINC Data), the one you're looking for is called stdoutdae which is a text file. stderrdae logs errors. The default size of these logs is 2 megabyte, with a roll-over log called stdoutdae.old/stderrdae.old for when the original is full.

The size of these logs can be regulated through cc_config.xml, but normally that's not necessary.

Computers shutting down when BOINC runs is normally due to excessive heat. Make sure you've cleared as much dust from fan intakes and outtakes as possible.
If running on the GPU as well, try to run without the GPU.

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BOINC writes everything to logs in the data directory (default at /Library/Application Support/BOINC Data), the one you're looking for is called stdoutdae which is a text file. stderrdae logs errors.

Oh, thanks. So the Event log in the Tools menu is limited to the current session, too bad.

Last time the computer frozethe log registered this:

28-Dec-2018 10:35:42 [---] Suspending computation - computer is in use
28-Dec-2018 10:35:42 [---] Suspending network activity - computer is in use
28-Dec-2018 11:05:03 [---] cc_config.xml not found - using defaults
28-Dec-2018 11:05:03 [---] Starting BOINC client version 7.14.2 for x86_64-apple-darwin

Computers shutting down when BOINC runs is normally due to excessive heat. Make sure you've cleared as much dust from fan intakes and outtakes as possible.

Well, it happened from the very beginning, when the computer was brand new. It happens a few minutes after the computer is turned on and the screen saver triggers Boinc. And my old dusty iMac works fine with Boinc. It must be something else.

try to run without the GPU.

In the preferences, I see an option to prevent Boing from using the GPU when the computer is in use, but I can't find any option to prevent it from using it continually. It is somewhere else?

Activity -> Suspend GPU is the quickest for testing.
If that stabilizes things, you can opt for unchecking Use {your GPU brand} in the Seti Project Preferences and afterwards abort all works for the GPU in BOINC Manager.

Even brand new machines aren't always up to the task at hand, especially when they lack adequate cooling.
Seti will use all cores of a CPU and any GPU it detects by default, this is a good stress test for any machine.

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If that stabilizes things, you can opt for unchecking Use {your GPU brand} in the Seti Project Preferences and afterwards abort all works for the GPU in BOINC Manager.

I'll try that, thanks, I simply didn't check online preferences, I focused on the Boinc application.

Setting which hardware to use is a project preference, that you can set per project.
This way you can set that one project uses only the CPU, one the AMD GPU, one the Nvidia GPU, etc. If that were set via BOINC, that would make things more complicated, the client is complicated enough already.

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Setting which hardware to use is a project preference, that you can set per project.
This way you can set that one project uses only the CPU, one the AMD GPU, one the Nvidia GPU, etc. If that were set via BOINC, that would make things more complicated, the client is complicated enough already.

Obviously, yes, thank you for clarifying.
As for these crashes, turning "off" GPU didn't change anything, the computer kept freezing. However, I reverted to a basic image-based screensaver instead of the BOINC one, and so far everything seems to work, BOINC has been running in the background for a few hours without problems so far. Weird.

I think the newest version of OS X did away with OpenGL (which is what the screen saver uses) in favour of Metal. I'll let the developers here know.

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Curiously, the same problem occurred on this computer with the previous version of MacOS and older versions of BOINC and its screensaver. I didn't test this computer's behavior with a standard image-based screensaver back then, though, as I just did with the new OS. Anyway all this is too technical for me, I'm afraid, but thank you for your comments.

I can only contribute my problem to the discussion.
I am running Boinc 7.14.2 on a Mac Pro (end 2103), 3.5 GHz 6 Core Xenon E5 with 16GByte RAM and two AMD Fire Pro D500.
There are no issues as long as I am working with the machine. Graphic and Processor balancing is working with no issues I can recognize. Total processor load is always 100%, system ventilation get on after 5 minutes working on text so I assume graphic cards join calculation. BUT, after the screensaver started, there is no way I can get access to the machine again. The Mac Pro is still running, the Boinc Screensaver is kind of stalled. Keyboard (BT), Mouse(BT) and external DVD drive, all suspend.
Any idea other than uninstalling the package?

I can only contribute my problem to the discussion.
I am running Boinc 7.14.2 on a Mac Pro (end 2103), 3.5 GHz 6 Core Xenon E5 with 16GByte RAM and two AMD Fire Pro D500.
There are no issues as long as I am working with the machine. Graphic and Processor balancing is working with no issues I can recognize. Total processor load is always 100%, system ventilation get on after 5 minutes working on text so I assume graphic cards join calculation. BUT, after the screensaver started, there is no way I can get access to the machine again. The Mac Pro is still running, the Boinc Screensaver is kind of stalled. Keyboard (BT), Mouse(BT) and external DVD drive, all suspend.
Any idea other than uninstalling the package?

I have two ideas. One is try turning off the screen saver. I had boxes that would not bring the screen back after the screen saver started. I have had boxes where if you turn off the "power down the screen after 10 minutes" parameter it was fine.

Either might work for you.

Tom

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association).