Android app release: feedback thread

FalconFly
FalconFly
Joined: 16 Feb 05
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Ever since the last 2 BOINC

Ever since the last 2 BOINC Versions were released, I'm getting pretty dissatisfied with some things now :

1) Previous Version with updated UI removed the "Quit" option and apparently disabled the Device-bound menu options from the BOINC Client - or it's now hidden where I can't find it.
(not very useful having to "kill" BOINC all the time)

2) Help (random find as I was looking where the Quit option went)
This page leads to a *cough* very rudimentary and hardly useful help page - for Desktop Clients. Not useful for Android users and at best confusing.

3) Current Version seems to have a bug, making it often unable to detect whether the device (Samsung Galaxy S4 in my case) is on a charger or battery.
This results in the device basically ceasing to calculate indefinitely until user intervention.
But even with intervention, I sometimes can't get BOINC to work as it still states "connect device to a charger" (even when calculating on battery power is enabled).
There is no "just run" option anymore, as the automatic features are probably supposed to handle all device states - which unfortunately they don't achieve reliably.
The only way to get BOINC back to work i.e. after removing the charger is a device restart. Looks as if BOINC is being inhibited to read the device charging states and thus is failing to respond (no matter how often I plug the device into/out of the charger)

Not sure if it interferes, but since several months Samsung added security policies and updates them infrequently (which are intransparent in nature, as it nowhere states what is changed).

These may be things for Devs to look into, at least for me the last 2 BOINC Client updates were a major setback (BOINC went from basically carefree to manual intervention upto no-worky sometimes).
But as said, that could be due to changes Samsung did. However, BOINC seems the only software that I use that then would be negatively affected.

Bernd Machenschalk
Bernd Machenschalk
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I understand your concerns,

I understand your concerns, but E@H as a project can't do much about it. A better place for your criticism would be the BOINC forums or the boinc-android ((at)ssl.berkeley.edu) mailing list.

BM

BM

mikey
mikey
Joined: 22 Jan 05
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RE: Ever since the last 2

Quote:

Ever since the last 2 BOINC Versions were released, I'm getting pretty dissatisfied with some things now :

1) Previous Version with updated UI removed the "Quit" option and apparently disabled the Device-bound menu options from the BOINC Client - or it's now hidden where I can't find it.
(not very useful having to "kill" BOINC all the time)

2) Help (random find as I was looking where the Quit option went)
This page leads to a *cough* very rudimentary and hardly useful help page - for Desktop Clients. Not useful for Android users and at best confusing.

3) Current Version seems to have a bug, making it often unable to detect whether the device (Samsung Galaxy S4 in my case) is on a charger or battery.
This results in the device basically ceasing to calculate indefinitely until user intervention.
But even with intervention, I sometimes can't get BOINC to work as it still states "connect device to a charger" (even when calculating on battery power is enabled).
There is no "just run" option anymore, as the automatic features are probably supposed to handle all device states - which unfortunately they don't achieve reliably.
The only way to get BOINC back to work i.e. after removing the charger is a device restart. Looks as if BOINC is being inhibited to read the device charging states and thus is failing to respond (no matter how often I plug the device into/out of the charger)

Not sure if it interferes, but since several months Samsung added security policies and updates them infrequently (which are intransparent in nature, as it nowhere states what is changed).

These may be things for Devs to look into, at least for me the last 2 BOINC Client updates were a major setback (BOINC went from basically carefree to manual intervention upto no-worky sometimes).
But as said, that could be due to changes Samsung did. However, BOINC seems the only software that I use that then would be negatively affected.

There are 'other' versions of Boinc beyond the standard one we see, HTC just came out with one for instance. Maybe you could get with the user Ageless and he could point you to one of them as they might be better suited for you then the current fairly generic one most of us use. ALL of them are written by the Berkeley staff, so should all work at all the different projects, but each has a slightly different look and feel to them.

Jord
Joined: 26 Jan 05
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Credit: 5,890,188
RAC: 4,142

RE: Maybe you could get

Quote:
Maybe you could get with the user Ageless


No need to point anything out to me, I read the missive. But then, what would I need to do with it? It's something that FalconFly feels about the present BOINC for Android version, so he best reports that himself to the developers of the thing. And that's best done on the BOINC for Android email list: https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/boinc-android-testing.

That way I don't have to play middleman in case there's questions, and anyone can just post his or her own views in front of the developers.

telegd
telegd
Joined: 17 Apr 07
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For anyone struggling with my

For anyone struggling with my problem, I found a solution. The android client does not use the location settings set on the Einstein website. I had a separate location set up (school) from my default, because I was doing only GPU on another system.

The BOINC android client ignores anything but your default, so it kept giving me "don't need" messages in the event log.

Changing my locations around so that my Nexus 7 is on the default profile now allows me to get work units.

Thread here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/boinc-android-testing/AD3d4wb3BQE

Edit: I should say thanks to Jord for asking that question over there...

Quote:
Quote:

@Maximilian Mieth Good point. Applying web preferences to the Android devices is, IMHO, kind of unintuitive and the BOINC team currently is inclined to change the Android app so that it ignores web preferences altogether in one of the next versions to be released.

Cheers
HB

This would be great! I am currently struggling with a similar problem on my Nexus 7. I have set up a different location and attached the tablet to it, but it still seems reluctant to request work. One tip I read was to detach and re-attach E@H after setting up the new profile. This worked to get a single task, which has now completed, but the machine then refused to request any further work.

In the event log I see "fetch share 0.000 (blocked by prefs)". The server contact log always says:

effective_ncpus 3 max_jobs_on_host_cpu 999999 max_jobs_on_host 999999 effective_ngpus 0 max_jobs_on_host_gpu 999999
Not using matchmaker scheduling; Not using EDF sim
CPU: req 0.00 sec, 0.00 instances; est delay 0.00
work_req_seconds: 0.00 secs

In comparison, I have no problems getting PrimeGrid work and the tablet crunches it happily on all 4 cores (and their tasks give me almost 4x the credits?). I have tried pretty much every combination of settings on the tablet as well as in my E@H profile. I tried detaching and re-attaching one more time to see if it would work again, and it did give me one more Einstein task. However, I cannot keep doing that.

Any ideas would be welcome!

Jord
Joined: 26 Jan 05
Posts: 2,952
Credit: 5,890,188
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RE: Edit: I should say

Quote:
Edit: I should say thanks to Jord for asking that question over there...


But too bad, that despite my asking it, it's still not documented anywhere in the official Android-BOINC documentation. I also posted about that to the BOINC development email list, and despite the discussion that happened there, still nothing about this has shown up in any official wiki. The only place you can find it now, is that thread on the Google list.

FalconFly
FalconFly
Joined: 16 Feb 05
Posts: 191
Credit: 15,650,710
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Hm, I was under the

Hm, I was under the impression that the App devs were naturally also in contact with Berkeley concerning BOINC.

Right now (despite having changed absolutely nothing) I'm running into another BOINC problem on the device.

Einstein has (somehow) suspended (claims : requested by user) network activity, unable to up-/download since this morning.

WCG is initializing fine, but also fails to download work (states : 38 downloads pending)

SETI is behaving similar to WCG.

I might have to uninstall and re-install BOINC alltogether the way it looks like, as it simply ignores (or fails to receive) changes to user prefs, as well as still sometimes fails simple task like "resume work" or properly check Battery status. Definitely something fishy there, hope the reinstall of the App fixes it.

-- edit --
"Fixed" it for now by manually switching WLAN/Mobile Data on/off and manually updating all projects :p

Mr. Kevvy
Mr. Kevvy
Joined: 11 Nov 04
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RE: I'm running into a bit

Quote:
I'm running into a bit of a problem, where the tasks run for 3 minutes, then seem to reset themselves at 0 min 0 sec crunch time, with completion never going over 0.0% complete. It's got itself looped indefinitely in restarting the tasks.

Having the same issue with this host. The tasks don't even run at all unless I expand them in the Tasks window. Then the Elapsed Time starts, but it goes back to 0:00 after a second or two. After numerous retries, it starts counting up but doesn't get far. I have one task that keeps going back to 00:00 after a few seconds, another resets to 01:08, another to 02:26 etc. So this host has zero completion after over a week. Had a RAC of about 150 with SETI@Home and no issues with task completion.

Motorola Moto G XT1032, updated to Android 4.4.4 kernel 3.4.42.

Claggy
Claggy
Joined: 29 Dec 06
Posts: 560
Credit: 2,699,403
RAC: 0

RE: RE: I'm running into

Quote:
Quote:
I'm running into a bit of a problem, where the tasks run for 3 minutes, then seem to reset themselves at 0 min 0 sec crunch time, with completion never going over 0.0% complete. It's got itself looped indefinitely in restarting the tasks.

Having the same issue with this host. The tasks don't even run at all unless I expand them in the Tasks window. Then the Elapsed Time starts, but it goes back to 0:00 after a second or two. After numerous retries, it starts counting up but doesn't get far. I have one task that keeps going back to 00:00 after a few seconds, another resets to 01:08, another to 02:26 etc. So this host has zero completion after over a week. Had a RAC of about 150 with SETI@Home and no issues with task completion.

Motorola Moto G XT1032, updated to Android 4.4.4 kernel 3.4.42.


Restart the phone,

I see this intermittently on my 2012 HTC One S running Android 4.1.1, Only restarting the phone gets Boinc apps progressing again.

Claggy

Mr. Kevvy
Mr. Kevvy
Joined: 11 Nov 04
Posts: 87
Credit: 11,682,960,308
RAC: 5,427,496

RE: Restart the

Quote:
Restart the phone

Doesn't work... and I don't even have to restart it as, well, that's the other issue that the phone reboots about 2-3x a day when BOINC is running E@H.

I just checked it and it was off again. When I rebooted and went back into E@H, all workunits again running a few seconds and resetting to zero. A whole week of running and progress is still close to zero and not a single work unit completed.

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