We're #200 @ Rosetta@Home, improving the world!

[Umfriend]

I see credits coming in, gr8 J1NG and Box! A Resurected and a Newborn to save our day in just one week!

[J1NG]

Hmmm... No joy on restarting of machine. Todays download brought in some 25-30 work units again. If I wasn't here all day today, I'd have to abort a whole lot of them again.

Need to look into this again unfortunately.

J1NG

[Umfriend]

What are you current settings for Minimum work buffer and Max additional work buffer? If any, especially the latter, is zero, it may think there is no limit at all (some settings behave such). I would now try 0.01 and 0.01.

[J1NG]

Had to mess around with quite a bit of stuff. First thing I had to do was alter the initial default settings. I think that's why it tries to grab some 20-30 work units every time it starts back up from a restart or cold boot as that's the default number. Hopefully changing it to the new numbers should prevent it from grabbing more than a days workload.

Storage is now at 4GB, 0.5GB reserve.
Max additional and minimum work buffer is both set at 0.2. This only shoots in a total of 4-6 work units at a time. (0.01 or less basically tells Boinc servers to sod off as far as I can tell
Multi-CPU usage is set to 3 (for testing purposes at the moment)

Will be able to tell if original preferences are reset after the next time I reset the machine. Hopefully it'll stick and then can run it as is without manually aborting some 20 work units.

J1NG

[Umfriend]

I just hope those user preferences are not saved to the Ramdisk, then you'd lose them every time.

The alternative is to manage preferences though the web via the Rosetta website.

Many thanks for the effort, you're part of a great team!

One thing I'd like to know is how to measure the aggregate read/write I/O (actually hitting a HD) of any single process (not just for BOINC). AFAIK, BOINC has rather little I/O so it should not materially add to the wear of an SSD.

[J1NG]

We'll know for certain tomorrow morning when I boot the machine back up whether the settings remain. Although I have updated the online prefrences already. And I think any downloads when I add back the project in use the defaults if I don't change them first.

Looking at the Ramdisk now, I see a few "config" and "preferences" files. So I'm going to guess that Boinc decided the best place to locate their preferences file is with the data.

Maybe something to suggest to them on a separate location for a config/preferences file?

As for the read/write of Boinc running Rosetta, I'll go run some tests when I have time on the other machine that was being used. That one has a HDD, so I don't mind that one having the test ran on.

J1NG

[J1NG]

Unfortunately, the bad news is realised. Boinc does indeed default to the 0.5 (half a day worth of) work units on start up. As it's default preferences file is stored with the damned data files where the crunching takes place. (Who thought that one up??)

The good news from all this is I have now stripped the working secondary (backup/redundant) HDD from a secondary system (after work on migrating to a NAS later on for backup instead) and lugged it into this system so it can store the Boinc data on it and not worry about needing to shut down. The only downside is, as you can't alter Boinc besides during installation setup that I've found, I've had to uninstall Boinc for now. Will need to go get it ready for tomorrow's installation once I get this thing going again. So no more crunching from me until I get that sorted.

J1NG

[Umfriend]

Bad and good news indeed. Hope you get it running soon. With you and box (re-)joining, we're looking at a RAC-ranking in the top 90 at least, top 80 possibly.

[J1NG]

Hmmm... Not too impressed with the boinc client. Have the HDD attached and it's actually able to stall the system for a second or two, even the contents of, or whats running from - the ramdisk.

Quick examination shows that boinc is accessing the HDD every 5-6 seconds whilst running (writing something to it). Damn happy I never let it touch the SSD. Although I'm less than impressed with it working on the HDD and managing to stall the contents of my ramdisk. Currently will be turning off Boinc whenever I need persistant access to the contents of the ramdisk (TV shift, video encoding, conversion, etc). Which thankfully is not often at the moment, but when I do, Boinc will be switched off during those access times.

J1NG

[Umfriend]

This surprised me. I was aware that BOINC can be a nuisance at boot because it loads many small files and does significantly add to boot-to-ready time in my experience (when on a real HDD, not SSD). However, after that, I am looking at my desktop PC, 4 tasks running and, well, hardly any I/O at all except for an occassional write to something in a System Volume Information, a Log$ file and, dang, is is gone again folder. Anyway, that I/O seems to be rather limited and I'd be amazed if it'd cost me one day of SSD-life for every year I got it running.

[J1NG]

May be related to fact it's one of the first gen SATA drives, so it's spin up, seek and all that is slowing the system down (when the slowest item in the system was previously the SSD, you tend to notice things like the HDD in opperation).

As for the file writing, I'm happy to leave it as it is. Would much prefer Boinc allow setups which can be configured for something with a ramdisk like my own that shuts down every few hours when not in use. But that's neither here nor there at this time.

Stepping the CPU threads up soon. Seeing where the sweet spot it for whilst I still need 2-3 cores on hand.

J1NG

[Umfriend]

One thing that I dislike about BOINC is that it can't throttle. If I allow it to take 100%, some tasks have difficulty getting CPU resources but if I tell BOINC to back-off quickly it may stop (and unload) tasks while only 25% CPU is required for something else. It'd be way way kewl if you could say something like "Use everything but leave at least 10% CPU idle".

I think I have seen Rosetta writing 64K blocks. Even if a drive spins up, that should be handled through cache _unless_ one of the settings, don;t remember which one right now, is set such as to not allow delayed writes.

[VJ]

I keep BOINC running on my work computer, but it does slow it down. Getting to the login screen takes much longer, and the automatic suspending of boinc calculations also does not go very fast. It may be disk related, IO related or even virus scanner related but it is not always a very smooth client. (this is the main reason I have not asked my colleague to run it: he needs computing time for simulations)

[Umfriend]

Yes, boot-to-ready time takes longer, substantially I'm afraid, if not booting of an SSD. There are two tips I have for improvements, especially for PCs that are actually in use by users:
1. (I have not tried this myself). Start -> services.msc -> Select BOINC -> Properties -> Set Startup type to Automatic (Delayed Start)
2. In BOINC Manager (Advanced view) -> Tools -> processor usage -> Set "On multiprocessor systems use at most % of the processors" to a percentage that always leaves one (logical) CPU idle and set "While processor usage is less than" just below a percentage that is equal to 1 logical CPU / number of logical CPUs.

The first is aimed at getting boot-to-ready quicker. The second is a bit harder to explain. I typically had very aggressive settings (all CPUs, "While computer is in use" checked and "While processor usage is less than" at 0) with the idea that should a demanding task start then BOINC would unload quickly. However, I've found that such a task is first strugling to get enough CPU allocated before BOINC realises it needs to back off.

So, on a 4 logical-core system I have allocated 75% of the CPUs and While processor usage is less than 20%. The new taks would easilly get over 20% and then the rest would be freed as well. With an 8-core it'd be 90% and 10%. This worked well but, of course, you're missing out on quite a bit of processing power. On the other hand, BOINC is intended to use spare resources, not compete for requested resources. The scheduler is just not as advanced as I'd like it to be.

Have to say though, since I went SSD, I reinstated aggressive settings and experience no sloppiness anymore.

[J1NG]

Going to grab a USB3 Flash drive (8GB or 16GB). It won't be hitting 150+ MB/s like a SSD, but frankly, the slowdown should be non existant since I don't have anything plugged in the USB slots. It should also solve the issue of the HDD needing to "spin up" or "seek" or anything else that would - right now, slow the system down periodically.

That way, I won't need the HDD slowing things down (speed), a new SSD (price), or worry about the flash memory getting scrubbed (maintenance).

Will get that sorted out later this week. Hopefully should see no more slow downs after that.

J1NG