I wish the BOINC CPDN to run only when my computer is idle, and not when I use the computer to do other things. How can I set it up to do so please?

If you click on Taking part in cpdn in the menu on the left and then your account, you\'ll find the option to modify your preferences. I think you then need to click update in the boinc manager to make the change take effect.

If you find that this makes no difference, it means that there\'s still a problem with updating preferences at the cpdn server and this will last until the server gets its next update.

If that is the case, one way you can still do it is to attach to a different boinc project (but not SETI because they\'ve had the same problem) and change your preferences there. The change should propagate to cpdn. You can then detach from the other project.

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Cpdn news

Yeah it is pissing me off im afraid - ive just tried what you said but it means that the preferences in the boiic manager are crap with the result that it is stealing CPU cycles while i am using the computer and thi sis definately not what i want.
much as i would like to help climateprediction if the user interface is this crap and i cannot reliablely control its operation then it is going to go whihc is unfortunate as i am happy to contribute to this cause when i am away from my pc as i often leave it downloading stuff via emule and thst is fine time to let you guys use it to...
I am very very disappointed as the fine grainned bonic manager settings atre pure bullshit and i wont be advising anyone to contribute to this project otherwise...
if the manager gui settings dont work then they shouldnt be there and you need to set it through a web page instead in my country this would be considered a fraud and consequently a computer crime...
if you can explain and asist let me know other BOINIC will be uninstalled very soon without even a first sim completion
SAD :-(
Matthew

what a load of bullshit :- its still stealing cpui while not idle. i updated my preferences on the web page/server and THERE IS NO UPDATE OPTION IN THE BOINIC CLIENT MANAGER AS MENTIONED SOMEHWRE.

YOU GUYS GOT TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT AS FULL BORE IT MAY WELL COOK MOST LAPTOPS IF LEFT RUNNING AT FULL BORE CPU...

STUPID DAMN STUPID AND VERY SAD
MATTHEW

WELL STOPPED AND RESTARTED BOINIC seems like some of the CPU usage and other options may be working but no the idle option as it persists in running continualy : i dont beleive that it is pulling down my settings from the server at all. my client version is 5.8.11 downloaded ove the last few days or weeks from your site.

MY CONCLUSION IS THAT YOU MAY BE IGNORING THE IDLE SETTINGS DELIBERATELY.
IF SO THEN THIS WOULD BE A CRIME IN MOST COUNTRIES...

IF THERE IS NO ANSWER HERE AND YOU DONT SEE A POSITIVE RESPONSE AND ANSWER FROM ME THEN OTHER READERS/USERS HERE CAN TAKE FROM ME IT THAT MY PRESUMPTIONS ARE CORRECT..

COME ON GUYS PLEASE DONT DISSAPOINT ME...
MATTHEW

The people who provide help on these boards are just volunteers from among crunchers, not some special \'hotdesk\' people just sitting there waiting for people to ask qestions.

The Update button is the top one in the Projects tab of the BOINC manager. If you can\'t find it, then you\'re not looking very hard.

\'COME ON GUYS PLEASE DONT DISSAPOINT ME\'

I\'ve found in the past that when I shout, disappointment and frustration are almost inevitable.

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Cpdn news

The Boinc manager is also a separate bit of software to the CPDN project, it\'s maintained from http://boinc.berkeley.edu. But as far as I know there isn\'t a problem with not-running-when-busy provided you\'ve set it up correctly.

The \'messages\' tab should say something about \'general preferences updated\' when you click \'update\'.

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

Well, you re right about one thing - found the Update button and Updated and guess what it still steals CPU and runs when NOT IDLE.

The simple mode preference values arent updated: they are a furphy disbaling them resulted in the preferences from the climateprediction server finally being passed down and applied.

NOWHERE IN THE FAQ IS THIS EXPLAINED!!!
SAME ARGUMENT APPLIES: CLIMATEPREDICTION.NET MAY WELL BE HAPPY TO STEAL YOUR CPU CYCLES IF YOU DONT REALIZE THIS. ARGUMENT THEN IS WHY THET HAVENT BOTHERED TO DOCUMENT IT!!!???
AGAIN STEALLING CPU IS DESIREABLE FROM THEIR PERSPECTIVE: IF YOU ARE AN AVERAGE OR IDOT USER THEN THEY MUST OBVIOUSLY BE HAPPY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OTHERWISE OF COURSE: IT WOULD HAVE BEEN DOCUMENTED IN THE FAQ WOULDNT IT!!!!!!

For these reasons I am still pissed and my compliants stand as still valid...

BTW: I am a computer scientist (and therefore an expert witness) so if I had problems with it what hope is there for the average user!?

If the BOINIC Managers default preferences (what i would call the session/performance management) are not used then either tweak the client so the entire dialog box is disabled or scrap the server config and stick with the default BOINIC perferences management.

I ask you how many potential users are there that pissed off like me and just uninstall BOINIC and climateprediction.net projectss and fail to asist the project as a result!

One could probably disable the preference menu resource in the executable without even touching the code for christs sake!

Jesus I hate shoddy software and even sloppier developers... I think whoever decided to byoass the BIONIC native config for the server-based project-based specific config is a bloody idiot!

Well, Matthew, you\'ve had your vulgar rant. Boinc Projects don\'t steal cycles when you\'re active. Repeat, boinc Projects don\'t steal cycles when you\'re active. They run at low priority and stay out of the way when other activity wants the machine.

I used to run some P-4 boxes and still have one active. They never had a problem. Of course, they weren\'t burdened with Vista, and Vista with only a Gig of memory at that. That configuration, alone, could be an issue running two Models and other things; even Vista might step on itself from time to time when operating in narrow confines, eh?

You\'ve already demonstrated a propensity to rant about this shoddy Project when the problem lay with your own failing (the update thing). There\'s more of that failing demonstrated in your rants -- but you can remedy that.

People have been, and are, willing to help but posts like yours don\'t make the job easier. Lighten-up. Read the FAQ, Wiki, and Sticky posts. They\'re based upon a few years of collective experience; they\'ll help.

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

The bottom line is that the USEABILITY SUCKS as any specialist in useability design will tell you. It is written by computer and climtae scientists for computer and climate scientists and I am sure that the BOINIC WIKI has absolutely nothing to say about climatepredctin project setting and I cannot easily find any climateprediction wiki.

So fix your software mate!

Despite my rant - for this you can make no accepatible denials.

Acceptable (I assume that\'s the word you meant) to whom?

Look at the number of completed Runs here. That wasn\'t all done by experts in boinc/CPDN modeling, nor all done on high-end boxes, nor all done by computer scientists:
http://climateapps2.oucs.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/proj_stat.php

Further, you apparently didn\'t read Les\' post about who the Mods are or you wouldn\'t have made the exclamation in your 1:34:30 UTC post.

And, I\'m curious: As a software scientist/expert witness, is this how you keep contracts, or get along with peers, or satisfy your superiors? And, I thought accuracy and precision were necessary for scientists and experts. And that progress was furthered more by constructive criticism than rants made with incomplete or poorly-researched data or information. (Just a thought, I could be wrong.)

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

This Distributed Cmputing project is one of several dozen around the world.
All of these use a \'houseking\' program called BOINC to look after uploads downloads, switching between projects, etc.

This was devised by, and still is maintained by, people at the University of California, Berkeley in America, and is separate to all of the science applications for the numerous projects.

Berkeley
Open
Interface
for
Network
Computing

These forum boards we\'re now using, as well as the server software for the project, are also part of BOINC.

The Wiki is here: BOINC Wiki, and is NOT specific to cpdn. It\'s a repository for various pieces of information for ALL DC projects.

As you are a computer expert, you\'ll have no trouble finding your way around it.

you are quite right there is info in the wiki on cp but still nothing I can find on perfromance tweaking, update from server etc.

My point again is that you could have many many more users if you address useability issues (and updating the FAQ+Wiki or if the info is already there (which i doubt) making it more easily accessible in the FAQ or Wiki.

This is going to become an awfully long thread if I keep having to come back to ask where in the FAQ Wiki it is a speople keep saying its there but no one can point me to the information despite to many repetative posts by forum members protesting my criticisms.

Guess I keep plugging away until someone posts the actual link or finally come around to my useability and/or documentation opinion and start to do something about it.

People will finally get the message and the project will benefit in the end...

The Boinc Wiki is still a really good bedtime read, even more so if you print it onto paper. Its apparent disorganisation means you never know what to expect next, like the suspense of a good thriller.

There was a problem a while ago with the server in Oxford not updating boinc preferences, but I thought this was sorted out. A workaround suggested then was to attach to another boinc project (you wouldn\'t need to actually run any of their workunits) and change the preference through your account with them. The change in general preferences should propagate to all projects.

If you haven\'t disabled the cpdn screensaver, I\'d advise doing so. On some computers it can cause problems. You can still open up the graphics using the button in Boinc manager. If you have been running the screensaver, I\'d try this before modifying the preference.

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Cpdn news

I\'m fairly sure that the prefs are working now. It\'s just Matthew not doing things correctly.
Not that it\'s hard:

Go to your Account page
Pick one of the 3 prefs to look at
At the bottom of the page, click: Edit preferences
Change one or more settings
At the bottom of the page, click: Update preferences
In the Manager on your computer, go to the Projects tab
Click on a project to select it
Click the Update button
Go to the Advanced section of the menu
Select: Run based on preferences
Go to the Messages tab to check that both the Update, and the change of Run setting worked

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Backups: Here

I think I should explain how CPU scheduling and prioritisation works. I tried to find a good link on Google but couldn\'t see one.


Everything running on a computer is given a different priority. For example, in Windows, user interface tasks are \'normal\', important tasks which must be responded to within a fixed period of time are \'above normal\' or even \'realtime\' for really critical stuff. Lower priority stuff has \'idle\' priority.

In Linux, the scheme is similar but numbers are used. 19 is the equivalent of \'idle\', and 1 is the equivalent of \'real time\'.

When the computer is looking for stuff to do, it always runs the highest priority stuff first.

If several tasks have equal priority, then the one which has least recently run is given the CPU for a brief period (called a timeslice). This way of cycling around within a priority is called \'Round Robin\' scheduling.

On some operating systems (not windows), lower priority tasks are sometimes given a small amount of CPU if they haven\'t had any recently, just to stop them being completely starved.

Boinc\'s projects are run at the very lowest priority possible. (The boinc manager itself is run at \'normal\' priority because it is a user-interface which needs to be able to interact with the user without freezing, but it doesn\'t do any significant processing itself).

As a result of this, if any normal task comes along, then it\'ll preempt Boinc and run instead. Hence, your concern about stealing CPU time isn\'t actually a real problem in practice. As a computer scientist it\'s important that you understand the basics of how a computer works, but for most people the above isn\'t really of interest.

Boinc has a feature which is to not run when the PC is in use (the one you\'re having trouble with). This has little to do with the CPU, but is more about avoiding using memory when there are other things using memory at the same time.

There are a number of README postings (which are basically collections of links to elsewhere) at the following location:

http://www.climateprediction.net/board/viewforum.php?f=36

Included in these links are the Boinc FAQ, the Boinc Wiki, and so forth. Note that as stated elsewhere, Climateprediction.net is not the same as Boinc, although it uses the Boinc framework.

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

Speaking as one of the \"average or idiot users\" referred to by Matthew, never having done distributed computing or taken part in an on-line forum before I started this experiment, I would like to point out that I have so far completed two models, with a lot of help from the moderators and other users.

So I am very surprised that a \"computer scientist and expert witness\" should be having so much trouble - all that\'s necessary is to ask politely for information and, in my experience, it has always been forthcoming.

Regards, MM @ the Pavilion

I\'m fairly sure that the prefs are working now. It\'s just Matthew not doing things correctly.
Not that it\'s hard:

Go to your Account page
Pick one of the 3 prefs to look at

Heh, not the third one. That one only changes the forum preferences. Updating BOINC afterwards is of no use. ;-)

But let\'s do it with links, maybe that\'s easier for Matthew:
Go to Your Account;
Press General Preferences, view or edit;
Scroll to the bottom, press edit preferences;
Make sure that Do work while computer is in use? is set to No.
Make sure you set an amount of time after Do work only after computer is idle for. The amount is in minutes.
If you want to, set two different times for the Do work only between the hours of preference... then BOINC will only work on CPDN between those two hours, when the computer is idle.
Scroll down and press the Update preferences button (no link here).

Open BOINC Manager.
If in Simple View, press Preferences.
Remove the check on I want to customize my preferences for this computer only, if the check has been set.
Press Save.
Press Advanced View.
Go to the Projects tab.
Select Climateprediction.net by clicking on it.
Press the Update button.
Go to the Messages tab.
Make sure you got the confirmation message from CPDN that your preferences have updated. It will look something like this:

22/03/2007 13:21:41|climateprediction.net|Sending scheduler request: Requested by user
22/03/2007 13:21:41|climateprediction.net|(not requesting new work or reporting completed tasks)
22/03/2007 13:21:46|climateprediction.net|Scheduler RPC succeeded [server version 509]
22/03/2007 13:21:46||General prefs: from climateprediction.net (last modified 2007-03-22 13:20:19)
22/03/2007 13:21:46||Host location: home
22/03/2007 13:21:46||General prefs: no separate prefs for home; using your defaults
22/03/2007 13:21:47||Suspending computation - user is active

Now sit back and do not move your mouse or touch your keyboard for the amount of minutes you told BOINC to wait before your computer would be idle.

When you still have the Messages tab open, you\'ll see that after a while the messages will change to:

22/03/2007 13:23:39||Resuming computation
22/03/2007 13:23:39|climateprediction.net|[cpu_sched] Resuming hadcm3ohc_your_result

If you have set BOINC to be used as your screen saver this one will kick in around this time as well.

If for any reason you don\'t want the screen saver to be used, make sure you disable it in Windows, screen saver properties.

Yet, as you can see from this little example, it works.

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Jord.

Buried deep in one of his posts was this:

The simple mode preference values arent updated: they are a furphy disbaling them resulted in the preferences from the climateprediction server finally being passed down and applied.

If I understand it properly, he was overriding the general preferences via the simple view\'s preference override screen. \'Furphy disbaling\' appears to have solved his problem.

If only we knew what \'furphy disbaling\' actually means, we could recommend it to other people. \"Have you disbaled your furphies yet? That may help...\"

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