P.S. I never use any CD in my pc and my AVG anti-virus is always updated.
I've been away for a little while but I see Michael is doing a fine job of saving you some cpu cycles. Seti at almost 60% completed!! That is great!! I had a quick look and when that result is finished and returned, you will receive 16.82 credits - your first credits from any BOINC project!!
Your EAH result has a deadline around 2.00pm UTC on 13th October so you have plenty of time. BOINC must think that time is owed to Seti but that really is quite OK. Sooner or later BOINC will say "enough" to Seti and EAH will no longer be preempted. Knowing Murphy's Law, I bet that will happen when Seti reaches 99.8% complete!! :). Another nice thing that is protecting you is that BOINC is aware of the deadlines. If BOINC thinks there is any danger of the EAH result missing the deadline, it will stop Seti and handover to EAH. The fact that it hasn't done this already means that BOINC considers that all is well.
By now, there should be some messages visible in your BOINC Manager messages window. For example, when you told us previously that EAH had increased to 1.7% there should have been messages saying that Seti was being stopped and EAH was being started and then the reverse messages when the switch back to Seti occurred. Those type of messages are what you need to observe and understand in order for you to fully appreciate what is going on. If you see any particular message of interest you can look it up in the Wiki as I mentioned in a previous post. As your knowledge of BOINC grows, you should look back through our previous discussions and see if it is starting to make more sense.
Please be aware that we all think you are coping marvellously well and we are all sitting here "glued to the TV" as it were, waiting for you to announce a successful result. Like any football fan, we need to know the score!! 58.42% is an important part of the score but so are the times estimates you gave us previously. We need to know the times!! :).
Your free AVG antivirus is a good choice for an antivirus program and it is vital to keep it up to date if you were regularly downloading heaps of stuff from all over the internet. However, I agree with Michael that your risk of getting a virus is nil when you are not connected and virtually nil if your surfing activities do not include visiting risky sites or downloading risky files. You could save valuable cpu cycles by turning it off when you are not actively using the internet. In fact you could probably develop a habit of having it off for most of the time and turning it on for a little while to check your machine and download updates, say at intervals of about 4 days or so.
P.S. I never use any CD in my pc and my AVG anti-virus is always updated.
I've been away for a little while but I see Michael is doing a fine job of saving you some cpu cycles. Seti at almost 60% completed!! That is great!! I had a quick look and when that result is finished and returned, you will receive 16.82 credits - your first credits from any BOINC project!!
Your EAH result has a deadline around 2.00pm UTC on 13th October so you have plenty of time. BOINC must think that time is owed to Seti but that really is quite OK. Sooner or later BOINC will say "enough" to Seti and EAH will no longer be preempted. Knowing Murphy's Law, I bet that will happen when Seti reaches 99.8% complete!! :). Another nice thing that is protecting you is that BOINC is aware of the deadlines. If BOINC thinks there is any danger of the EAH result missing the deadline, it will stop Seti and handover to EAH. The fact that it hasn't done this already means that BOINC considers that all is well.
By now, there should be some messages visible in your BOINC Manager messages window. For example, when you told us previously that EAH had increased to 1.7% there should have been messages saying that Seti was being stopped and EAH was being started and then the reverse messages when the switch back to Seti occurred. Those type of messages are what you need to observe and understand in order for you to fully appreciate what is going on. If you see any particular message of interest you can look it up in the Wiki as I mentioned in a previous post. As your knowledge of BOINC grows, you should look back through our previous discussions and see if it is starting to make more sense.
Please be aware that we all think you are coping marvellously well and we are all sitting here "glued to the TV" as it were, waiting for you to announce a successful result. Like any football fan, we need to know the score!! 58.42% is an important part of the score but so are the times estimates you gave us previously. We need to know the times!! :).
Your free AVG antivirus is a good choice for an antivirus program and it is vital to keep it up to date if you were regularly downloading heaps of stuff from all over the internet. However, I agree with Michael that your risk of getting a virus is nil when you are not connected and virtually nil if your surfing activities do not include visiting risky sites or downloading risky files. You could save valuable cpu cycles by turning it off when you are not actively using the internet. In fact you could probably develop a habit of having it off for most of the time and turning it on for a little while to check your machine and download updates, say at intervals of about 4 days or so.
Oh dear Gary , thank you for all the interest you show for my progress, very kind of you , and thanks for all these informations, i think i will be able to get very soon my IT degree. For my part the only fact that i spend usefully my online time is a reward in itself , even though i don't get any credit. "Ce qui compte , c'est la tache elle-meme et non pas le but", the path in itself is an exciting experience , the target is of a less importance . I'm happy just to learn something new , this is already my reward .
More information about preemption. The word simply means that BOINC has decided to "preempt" or "stop" EAH from running at the moment. It can do this quite safely because the science application that is running writes out to disk from time to time all the vital information about its progress. The files created are called "checkpoint" files. If you have a power failure and your whole system goes down, when you restart it BOINC will restart the science application (app) and the app will simply read from the checkpoint file to find out its last saved state. Then it will simply continue on from that point as if nothing had happened. I told you that BOINC was "fault tolerant" :). The only loss will be any crunching that had occurred from the time of saving the checkpoint until the time of the crash.
Now a similar process occurs when BOINC decides to swap from Seti to EAH or vice-versa. However there is an interesting difference. You have the option through your general preferences on the website to tell BOINC what to do with the science app when it wants to preempt it. The 4th pref under the heading of "Processor Usage" says "Leave applications in memory while preempted?" and the default is NO. This means that BOINC will do exactly what happens in a crash - that is it will just stop and wipe the program from memory, relying on the checkpoint file for when the app needs to be restarted. This wastes a little bit of time every hour under normal operation when one app is changed to the other. If you select YES for this option, BOINC will still preempt the app but will not wipe it from memory. This means that when the app is restarted, it is already in memory and doesn't have to read the checkpoint file and you will save crunching time at the expense of using more memory. Now you are limited for memory and that is why the default is NO. However, memory not only includes the physical RAM of which you now have 192MB but also virtual memory which is spare space on your hard disk. I think it might be worth your while to sacrifice a bit more of your hard disk space by redoing the previous change that Michael told you about and using 384 instead of 288 as your virtual memory. After you do this, go to the EAH website and edit your general preference for preemption from NO to YES and update as previously. Then come back to BOINC manager and "Update" the EAH project to force the new preference to be read from the website. From that point on both Seti and EAH apps will remain in memory (probably swapped out to hard disk but that is OK) and you will save some more precious cpu cycles.
Once you get the hang of all this you will become a real "Pro" at system tweaking. We will make a Geek out of you yet!! :).
Normally I wouldn't advise this level of tweaking as we are really getting down and dirty into territory where novices shouldn't go but you are not a novice any more :). I use this setting on all my boxes with no ill effect but if your computer seems to suffer at all we can easily reverse it.
Do you have a picture on your display, background behind the icons? Windows does, by default. It can be removed and changed to a blank, in your choice of several colors. Right-click on an open part of your screen, click "Properties", and the "Display properties" box will open. You did this before when Gary had you adjust for no screensaver. This time, on the "Desktop" tab, you will see a box in the lower portion labeled "Background" with several entries. You can select "(None)" and then click the "Color" button on the lower right, and a dropdown with 20 color options will appear. As you try different colors, the small preview window above will reflect the change. When you decide which you prefer, click "Apply", then "OK".
These changes I've suggested here and in the previous posts shave a little background work from your CPU's load, and I am unable to quantify the savings. For argument's sake, let's suppose they save 80Khz. On my rig, or one of Gary's, that may translate into less than 0.5%, below the threshold of our perception and amounting to perhaps a minute or two less crunchtime/WU, but we do it to squeeze the last few bits of power to channel them into whatever work we direct the computer to do. On your computer, though, that 80Khz would amount to 8% of it's workload being freed for crunching, and becomes quite significant. Again, the 80Khz is just a figure that I grabbed arbitrarily, but the end result for you should be a noticable shortening of your crunching time. Give it a try, and after your BOINC runs Einstein through another turn or two, add the CPU time and the Time to Completion, and let us know if the sum has changed from the earlier 100-hour figure. I'm guessing that the difference will be several hours lower. ;-)
I am so happy that you have achieved so much already!
microcraft
Dear Michael , i had a wonderful experience with all this screen story. Yes i had a picture behind my icons, so i followed your instructions , but before clicking "none" i tested all the beautiful pictures and at the end i clicked "none" and choose a color . Now i think everything is OK . By the way i had never an idea before that i could change the picture of my windows XP, i was not very satisfyied with it , but you learned me a good way, thank you .
For my part the only fact that i spend usefully my online time is a reward in itself , even though i don't get any credit. "Ce qui compte , c'est la tache elle-meme et non pas le but", the path in itself is an exciting experience , the target is of a less importance . I'm happy just to learn something new , this is already my reward.
I fully understand your position and the main reason I spend my time is simply that you are keen to learn something new.
However, be honest - you do enjoy your avatar that Captain Avatar made for you, don't you?? And you do notice "Credit: 0" and "RAC: 0" everytime you look at it, don't you?? And it will be good to finally get some positive numbers there just to show you are a real cruncher, wont it?? :).
We will all celebrate with you when those numbers appear.
Now here is your next lesson for the day. When you read and post in the threads like this one it probably takes a huge amount of time for large threads to download to your computer, doesn't it?? Also do you have to scroll to the starting point of new posts if you want to continue reading from the point where you last looked at a thread?? Would you like threads to load faster and once loaded would you like to jump automatically to the point where you last finished?? If you say YES to all of these then here is what you need to do. You may have already done this in which case simply ignore these instructions.
1. Go to your account page on the website and this time select "View or edit forum preferences"
2. Think about and choose the "Sort styles" that you like the most.
3. Tick the box for "Jump automatically to first new post ...
4. Tick the box for "Hide signatures" (this should save you heaps).
5. *Optional* Tick the box for "Hide Avatars" - saves time but many like to see them - your personal choice.
6. Setup a personalised signature - perhaps a favourite quote or quip - if you wish.
The saving of thread loading time becomes very important for people on slow internet connections who are paying by the hour - ie YOU!!
Would that tip about "leave in memory while preempted" have any benefit to someone working only on one project?
I sometimes shut BOINC down while playing an intensive game, then restart when I'm finished. Sometimes I even have to unclock for a game, to "dummy down" my rig, and re-overclock before resuming the crunching. ( :) I know, I'm getting a little long in the tooth for gaming, but it goes back to my roots in computers, when I was brought out to Pennsylvania to work for Commodore in 1983, the heyday of the Commodore 64, to be Software Librarian, and wound up wearing a second hat doing QA testing on prototype software (and some hardware) being developed in-house.)
I have the "save to disk every..." left at the default 10 seconds.
microcraft
microcraft
"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice" - MLK
Would that tip about "leave in memory while preempted" have any benefit to someone working only on one project?
No, because a single project never gets preempted, I would think. One could never be 100% sure without reading the code. Sillier things have happened. I'm sure ... :).
Quote:
I have the "save to disk every..." left at the default 10 seconds.
Which should be fine ... However I have a gut feeling that some projects may not use this setting and may have longer checkpoint times and because I don't know which ones may be in that category, I tend to play safe and have all apps left in memory. I have this gut feeling that in some cases the checkpoint time might be several minutes or more and I don't want to risk that. With 512MB plus lots of virtual why should I risk it? Also I'm only running two projects. If I had seven all left in memory it might get a bit congested :).
Do you have a picture on your display, background behind the icons? Windows does, by default. It can be removed and changed to a blank, in your choice of several colors. Right-click on an open part of your screen, click "Properties", and the "Display properties" box will open. You did this before when Gary had you adjust for no screensaver. This time, on the "Desktop" tab, you will see a box in the lower portion labeled "Background" with several entries. You can select "(None)" and then click the "Color" button on the lower right, and a dropdown with 20 color options will appear. As you try different colors, the small preview window above will reflect the change. When you decide which you prefer, click "Apply", then "OK".
These changes I've suggested here and in the previous posts shave a little background work from your CPU's load, and I am unable to quantify the savings. For argument's sake, let's suppose they save 80Khz. On my rig, or one of Gary's, that may translate into less than 0.5%, below the threshold of our perception and amounting to perhaps a minute or two less crunchtime/WU, but we do it to squeeze the last few bits of power to channel them into whatever work we direct the computer to do. On your computer, though, that 80Khz would amount to 8% of it's workload being freed for crunching, and becomes quite significant. Again, the 80Khz is just a figure that I grabbed arbitrarily, but the end result for you should be a noticable shortening of your crunching time. Give it a try, and after your BOINC runs Einstein through another turn or two, add the CPU time and the Time to Completion, and let us know if the sum has changed from the earlier 100-hour figure. I'm guessing that the difference will be several hours lower. ;-)
I am so happy that you have achieved so much already!
microcraft
Dear Michael , i had a wonderful experience with all this screen story. Yes i had a picture behind my icons, so i followed your instructions , but before clicking "none" i tested all the beautiful pictures and at the end i clicked "none" and choose a color . Now i think everything is OK . By the way i had never an idea before that i could change the picture of my windows XP, i was not very satisfyied with it , but you learned me a good way, thank you .
Cheers
Ariane,
For your future interest in backgrounds: in the box where you looked through the different backgrounds, there is a "Browse" button. Here you may navigate to the pictures that you have stored on your PC, and select one of your own to use as background. I don't suggest doing this on your present computer, because of the forementioned cycle penalty for it, but if you find yourself in posession of a stronger computer one day, you may wish to apply this.
grins
microcraft
microcraft
"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice" - MLK
Do you have a picture on your display, background behind the icons? Windows does, by default. It can be removed and changed to a blank, in your choice of several colors. Right-click on an open part of your screen, click "Properties", and the "Display properties" box will open. You did this before when Gary had you adjust for no screensaver. This time, on the "Desktop" tab, you will see a box in the lower portion labeled "Background" with several entries. You can select "(None)" and then click the "Color" button on the lower right, and a dropdown with 20 color options will appear. As you try different colors, the small preview window above will reflect the change. When you decide which you prefer, click "Apply", then "OK".
These changes I've suggested here and in the previous posts shave a little background work from your CPU's load, and I am unable to quantify the savings. For argument's sake, let's suppose they save 80Khz. On my rig, or one of Gary's, that may translate into less than 0.5%, below the threshold of our perception and amounting to perhaps a minute or two less crunchtime/WU, but we do it to squeeze the last few bits of power to channel them into whatever work we direct the computer to do. On your computer, though, that 80Khz would amount to 8% of it's workload being freed for crunching, and becomes quite significant. Again, the 80Khz is just a figure that I grabbed arbitrarily, but the end result for you should be a noticable shortening of your crunching time. Give it a try, and after your BOINC runs Einstein through another turn or two, add the CPU time and the Time to Completion, and let us know if the sum has changed from the earlier 100-hour figure. I'm guessing that the difference will be several hours lower. ;-)
I am so happy that you have achieved so much already!
microcraft
Dear Michael , i had a wonderful experience with all this screen story. Yes i had a picture behind my icons, so i followed your instructions , but before clicking "none" i tested all the beautiful pictures and at the end i clicked "none" and choose a color . Now i think everything is OK . By the way i had never an idea before that i could change the picture of my windows XP, i was not very satisfyied with it , but you learned me a good way, thank you .
Cheers
Ariane,
For your future interest in backgrounds: in the box where you looked through the different backgrounds, there is a "Browse" button. Here you may navigate to the pictures that you have stored on your PC, and select one of your own to use as background. I don't suggest doing this on your present computer, because of the forementioned cycle penalty for it, but if you find yourself in posession of a stronger computer one day, you may wish to apply this.
grins
microcraft
Oh Thank you Michael, certainly i would have a lot of options if someday i have a stronger computer, for the moment i enjoy a lot this color i'v chosen, a sort of light blue-green, or greeny blue or bluish green , very beautiful and simple, i like it much more than the previous.
RE: Dear Gary and Michael
)
I've been away for a little while but I see Michael is doing a fine job of saving you some cpu cycles. Seti at almost 60% completed!! That is great!! I had a quick look and when that result is finished and returned, you will receive 16.82 credits - your first credits from any BOINC project!!
Your EAH result has a deadline around 2.00pm UTC on 13th October so you have plenty of time. BOINC must think that time is owed to Seti but that really is quite OK. Sooner or later BOINC will say "enough" to Seti and EAH will no longer be preempted. Knowing Murphy's Law, I bet that will happen when Seti reaches 99.8% complete!! :). Another nice thing that is protecting you is that BOINC is aware of the deadlines. If BOINC thinks there is any danger of the EAH result missing the deadline, it will stop Seti and handover to EAH. The fact that it hasn't done this already means that BOINC considers that all is well.
By now, there should be some messages visible in your BOINC Manager messages window. For example, when you told us previously that EAH had increased to 1.7% there should have been messages saying that Seti was being stopped and EAH was being started and then the reverse messages when the switch back to Seti occurred. Those type of messages are what you need to observe and understand in order for you to fully appreciate what is going on. If you see any particular message of interest you can look it up in the Wiki as I mentioned in a previous post. As your knowledge of BOINC grows, you should look back through our previous discussions and see if it is starting to make more sense.
Please be aware that we all think you are coping marvellously well and we are all sitting here "glued to the TV" as it were, waiting for you to announce a successful result. Like any football fan, we need to know the score!! 58.42% is an important part of the score but so are the times estimates you gave us previously. We need to know the times!! :).
Your free AVG antivirus is a good choice for an antivirus program and it is vital to keep it up to date if you were regularly downloading heaps of stuff from all over the internet. However, I agree with Michael that your risk of getting a virus is nil when you are not connected and virtually nil if your surfing activities do not include visiting risky sites or downloading risky files. You could save valuable cpu cycles by turning it off when you are not actively using the internet. In fact you could probably develop a habit of having it off for most of the time and turning it on for a little while to check your machine and download updates, say at intervals of about 4 days or so.
Cheers,
Gary.
RE: RE: Dear Gary and
)
Oh dear Gary , thank you for all the interest you show for my progress, very kind of you , and thanks for all these informations, i think i will be able to get very soon my IT degree. For my part the only fact that i spend usefully my online time is a reward in itself , even though i don't get any credit. "Ce qui compte , c'est la tache elle-meme et non pas le but", the path in itself is an exciting experience , the target is of a less importance . I'm happy just to learn something new , this is already my reward .
Cheers
Ariane
Ariane, More information
)
Ariane,
More information about preemption. The word simply means that BOINC has decided to "preempt" or "stop" EAH from running at the moment. It can do this quite safely because the science application that is running writes out to disk from time to time all the vital information about its progress. The files created are called "checkpoint" files. If you have a power failure and your whole system goes down, when you restart it BOINC will restart the science application (app) and the app will simply read from the checkpoint file to find out its last saved state. Then it will simply continue on from that point as if nothing had happened. I told you that BOINC was "fault tolerant" :). The only loss will be any crunching that had occurred from the time of saving the checkpoint until the time of the crash.
Now a similar process occurs when BOINC decides to swap from Seti to EAH or vice-versa. However there is an interesting difference. You have the option through your general preferences on the website to tell BOINC what to do with the science app when it wants to preempt it. The 4th pref under the heading of "Processor Usage" says "Leave applications in memory while preempted?" and the default is NO. This means that BOINC will do exactly what happens in a crash - that is it will just stop and wipe the program from memory, relying on the checkpoint file for when the app needs to be restarted. This wastes a little bit of time every hour under normal operation when one app is changed to the other. If you select YES for this option, BOINC will still preempt the app but will not wipe it from memory. This means that when the app is restarted, it is already in memory and doesn't have to read the checkpoint file and you will save crunching time at the expense of using more memory. Now you are limited for memory and that is why the default is NO. However, memory not only includes the physical RAM of which you now have 192MB but also virtual memory which is spare space on your hard disk. I think it might be worth your while to sacrifice a bit more of your hard disk space by redoing the previous change that Michael told you about and using 384 instead of 288 as your virtual memory. After you do this, go to the EAH website and edit your general preference for preemption from NO to YES and update as previously. Then come back to BOINC manager and "Update" the EAH project to force the new preference to be read from the website. From that point on both Seti and EAH apps will remain in memory (probably swapped out to hard disk but that is OK) and you will save some more precious cpu cycles.
Once you get the hang of all this you will become a real "Pro" at system tweaking. We will make a Geek out of you yet!! :).
Normally I wouldn't advise this level of tweaking as we are really getting down and dirty into territory where novices shouldn't go but you are not a novice any more :). I use this setting on all my boxes with no ill effect but if your computer seems to suffer at all we can easily reverse it.
Cheers,
Gary.
RE: Ariane, Do you have a
)
Dear Michael , i had a wonderful experience with all this screen story. Yes i had a picture behind my icons, so i followed your instructions , but before clicking "none" i tested all the beautiful pictures and at the end i clicked "none" and choose a color . Now i think everything is OK . By the way i had never an idea before that i could change the picture of my windows XP, i was not very satisfyied with it , but you learned me a good way, thank you .
Cheers
Ariane
RE: For my part the only
)
I fully understand your position and the main reason I spend my time is simply that you are keen to learn something new.
However, be honest - you do enjoy your avatar that Captain Avatar made for you, don't you?? And you do notice "Credit: 0" and "RAC: 0" everytime you look at it, don't you?? And it will be good to finally get some positive numbers there just to show you are a real cruncher, wont it?? :).
We will all celebrate with you when those numbers appear.
Now here is your next lesson for the day. When you read and post in the threads like this one it probably takes a huge amount of time for large threads to download to your computer, doesn't it?? Also do you have to scroll to the starting point of new posts if you want to continue reading from the point where you last looked at a thread?? Would you like threads to load faster and once loaded would you like to jump automatically to the point where you last finished?? If you say YES to all of these then here is what you need to do. You may have already done this in which case simply ignore these instructions.
1. Go to your account page on the website and this time select "View or edit forum preferences"
2. Think about and choose the "Sort styles" that you like the most.
3. Tick the box for "Jump automatically to first new post ...
4. Tick the box for "Hide signatures" (this should save you heaps).
5. *Optional* Tick the box for "Hide Avatars" - saves time but many like to see them - your personal choice.
6. Setup a personalised signature - perhaps a favourite quote or quip - if you wish.
The saving of thread loading time becomes very important for people on slow internet connections who are paying by the hour - ie YOU!!
Cheers,
Gary.
Gary, Would that tip about
)
Gary,
Would that tip about "leave in memory while preempted" have any benefit to someone working only on one project?
I sometimes shut BOINC down while playing an intensive game, then restart when I'm finished. Sometimes I even have to unclock for a game, to "dummy down" my rig, and re-overclock before resuming the crunching. ( :) I know, I'm getting a little long in the tooth for gaming, but it goes back to my roots in computers, when I was brought out to Pennsylvania to work for Commodore in 1983, the heyday of the Commodore 64, to be Software Librarian, and wound up wearing a second hat doing QA testing on prototype software (and some hardware) being developed in-house.)
I have the "save to disk every..." left at the default 10 seconds.
microcraft
microcraft
"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice" - MLK
RE: Would that tip about
)
No, because a single project never gets preempted, I would think. One could never be 100% sure without reading the code. Sillier things have happened. I'm sure ... :).
Which should be fine ... However I have a gut feeling that some projects may not use this setting and may have longer checkpoint times and because I don't know which ones may be in that category, I tend to play safe and have all apps left in memory. I have this gut feeling that in some cases the checkpoint time might be several minutes or more and I don't want to risk that. With 512MB plus lots of virtual why should I risk it? Also I'm only running two projects. If I had seven all left in memory it might get a bit congested :).
Cheers,
Gary.
Ah OK Gary, i will go on my
)
Ah OK Gary, i will go on my courses of today and will try to apply them .
Thanks a lot ! Til later .
Cheers
Ariane
RE: RE: Ariane, Do you
)
Ariane,
For your future interest in backgrounds: in the box where you looked through the different backgrounds, there is a "Browse" button. Here you may navigate to the pictures that you have stored on your PC, and select one of your own to use as background. I don't suggest doing this on your present computer, because of the forementioned cycle penalty for it, but if you find yourself in posession of a stronger computer one day, you may wish to apply this.
grins
microcraft
microcraft
"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice" - MLK
RE: RE: RE: Ariane, Do
)
Oh Thank you Michael, certainly i would have a lot of options if someday i have a stronger computer, for the moment i enjoy a lot this color i'v chosen, a sort of light blue-green, or greeny blue or bluish green , very beautiful and simple, i like it much more than the previous.
Cheers + Grin
Ariane