I truly love participating but recently changed my preferences so that Boinc only runs while my computer is idle. SETI changed behavior but nothing I do has changed climateprediction\'s behavior! I\'m done! When it becomes this much work, I gotta go!

---

Hi,

Most likely the reason you\'re having problems (22 models, all crashed), is that your PC has less than the recomended amount of memory. This will also result in it being slow to switch between tasks, and cause extra work for the disk drive.

---

I'm a volunteer and my views are my own.
News and Announcements and FAQ

use threadmaster to control cpu and 512 mb of RAM is recommended, as the project takes abt 150 mb of that, even when the project is suspended.

---

Sun Energy World

I have the same problem with the project running constantly (against the preference setting of only running after the PC has been idle for 2 minutes). Why have the preference if a project ignores it anyway??

Never mind. Silly me just found the Activity Menu on Boinc and set it back to \"Run Based On Preferences\" instead of \"Run Always\"...Doh!

I have preferences set to run when idle for 3 min and I have \"follow preference\" set but Climateprediction insists on running while I\'m using the computer. I have had to suspend it to get my work done. I am very frustrated that there is no decent place to contact the staff other than this forum with these apparent bugs.

---

Hi,

A couple of quick questions :

What version of Boinc manager are you using?

Which \'run\' option do you have set on the boinc manager (not the website)?

-Cheers,

Mike

---

I'm a volunteer and my views are my own.
News and Announcements and FAQ

ssapareto

On the crashed models, it says that you have BOINC version 5.3.31
The odd number in the middle indicates that this is a test version.
Upgrading to 5.4.11, the latest release version may help. Available here.

Also, a lot of your models have failed with the 1073741819 error.
Mike has a sticky here with hints and tips.

One that often works is to get the latest driver for your graphics card from the website of the card\'s make.

Contacting the staff (currently 2), isn\'t available because their job is writing programs, not answering questions from the 50,000 or so people running the models.
They have a large number of volunteer helpers for that. If we find a question that needs an answer from the programmers, then we know how to get in touch.

I am having problems changing my prefs also. Tried to switch to using only 1 CPU instead of 2. Using boinc ver.5.5.6, current version on Gentoo. I changed the prefs at Seti, but upon update it is still using 2 CPUs. Then tried to change it on CPDN site, it updates the profile, but when updating from bonc manager there is no change. Rechecking on CPDN site shows prefs back to 2 CPUs. Seti still at 1 CPU. Updating profile on seti seems to have no effect, well neither does CPDN, still keeps the old one, can\'t change even though it appeas to - but acxtually doesn\'t. I have tried it several times with no effect. i don\'t know what to do except detach from CPDN. Why doesn\'t the prefs update take effect?

---

It shouldn\'t make any difference which project site you set the general preferences at, as long as you \'update\' that particular project.

Try setting the Seti one again, then click \'update\' against the seti project. I don\'t know if you\'d then need to restart the manager.

Boinc Manager version 5.5.6 is a beta version, not a production version, so perhaps you\'ve run into a bug with the beta.

---

I'm a volunteer and my views are my own.
News and Announcements and FAQ

I\'ve tried both seti and CPDN to change the prefs, many times, and restarted both the gui and the main process. Nothing worked. I checked the gentoo bug site and found out it was a beta version. Gentoo desn\'t have an ebuild for the stable linux version, why I don\'t know, but I was going to download it and try to install it. I found out why the prefs didn\'t change. There is a global_prefs.xml file that wasn\'t changing. I never edited it before but after I did,the new prefs took effect. However a older problem still remains, even though I have it set to switch between the different projects every 60 min. it doesn\'t do that. I end up maually suspending CPDN after 6 to 8 hrs and then it will run seti. The change now is that it has been running seti for 4 hrs with out switching. The opposite of before. Thanks for your response.

---

I use CPDN to change my general prefs at least twice a day. No problems this morning, but this evening was a different story. Brought up the prefs page, made my changes, pressed the update button on that page, then went to BOIC projects page, selected CPDN, pressed update, them went to messages tab as usual to check. It did NOT say the preferences had been updated. Checked the CPDN page, and the prefs had reverted to what was stored in BOINC. The prefs were going back from BOINC to CPDN, and not the other way.
Repeated the excercise on another project site with no problems.
I can only surmise that the time tag CPDN is attaching to the new set of prefs being entered using CPDN is wrong and is either blank, or earlier than it should be, so it thinks the prefs on BOINC are later, and reads those back from BOINC and stores them as the latest.

Carl has been working on the data bases, so perhaps some server settings got messed up.

*********

Steven

I think that global_prefs.xml is a user file which over rides the server settings.
If so, and you have this file, then YOU will have to keep changing it to change pref settings.

I understand that The Global Prefs file is only looked at once after BOINC starts. I am not prepared to keep booting and sacrificing the time lost on each project since the checkpoints were recorded.
I may be wrong, and will experiment with this.

If it\'s what I think it is, then it\'s optional.
You don\'t have to have the file unless you WANT to over ride the server prefs.

You could ask about it on the BOINC/dev boards. This is where I heard about the file.

Oh yes, it is optional. I have made a small one, but it has been ignored so far. And so to bed.

Hi Martin,

Out of interest, I note that you say you change the preferences daily. I think it may be possible to save you some time here. What are you setting, and is it done at a regular time?

(What I\'m thinking of suggesting is making multiple copies of the global prefs xml file and swapping between them at regular times using the \'scheduled tasks\' tool in Windows).

You don\'t need to reboot the machine, just close and restart the boinc manager (\'exit\' from the menu, and then run the manager again).

An alternative suggestion is to use an \'account manager\' such as BAM, but I don\'t know much about that since I don\'t use it.

---

I'm a volunteer and my views are my own.
News and Announcements and FAQ

My preferences are also ignored. I\'m a new user and have a version 5.4.11. It seems that there is no global preferences xml found. Here is the message:
\"No general preferences found- using Boinc defaults\".

I am using only climateprediction.net. Changing and updating preferences won’t work.

So has someone forgotten to add the correct xml file? If so how I can get it?

And this problem (preferences not working) is in all my 3 computers, so it is not a single shot exceptional behaviour.

There is a F-secure antivirus program in all the 3 pc:s however. Could that be the reason?

Further comment, this program is too difficult to use. You are blocking most of the potential user out of the loop. I mean, for example, add project by copy pasting a web address?!? Oh my god - how the hell my mom will know how to do it and to do what? She can\'t even read English very well.

However, keep up the good work and maybe someday things are smoother.

Yours,
Tonpa

Current boinc versions don\'t update Preferences as they\'re supposed to do. There is a \"work-around\" if you are interested, but it complicates things a bit more.

Boinc\'s defaults should allow CPDN to work okay but not allow the desirable tweaks.

You\'re right, this Project requires a bit of \"baby-sitting\" but, in my opinion, it\'s worth the trouble.

---

"We have met the enemy and he is us." -- Pogo
Greetings from coastal Washington state, the scenic US Pacific Northwest.

Hi,

I\'m not sure the preferences are working properly at the moment, you could try attaching to another project and setting the preferences there - the general preferences are shared between all projects.

I\'d suggest http://attribution.cpdn.org which isn\'t giving out work at the moment and hence you won\'t find yourself processing anything unexpected.

I\'d certainly agree that the Boinc manager is non-intuitive. The Boinc manager is maintained by a separate group (at Berkeley) for a variety of projects, so in some ways isn\'t very suited for the climate prediction project (for example, we would like automatic backups etc). However, on the bright side, there\'s a new version in testing which promises to be a lot simpler. For one thing, you can set the general options in the manager rather than this very round-about way of setting them via the website and updating (see here for some screenshots).

---

I'm a volunteer and my views are my own.
News and Announcements and FAQ