I used BV about three years ago before the farm started multiplying. It was fine with a few hosts but became impossible to use once the number of hosts exceeded some relatively small (by my standards anyway) threshold. Everything just bogged down very quickly and I abandoned using it. For a while I did keep a look out for new versions that might perform better but I got the impression that there wasn't much new development going on. I haven't looked for quite a while now.
These days most hosts largely run unattended and I use BM if I need to have a quick look at what is going on. At major transitions like the present, I'll physically visit each host and do a bit of a cleanup if required before loading any new stuff from a network share. I've still got more to do and I'm quite surprised how well the unprepped machines are doing with maintaining a supply of resends only. There was a relative drought right at the start but there seem to be a few around at present.
Regarding BV, yes, this is related to the part of the conversation Archae86 and I were having on anomalies.
I had this happen when I started adding hosts, too. I think you'll find that if you go into the host setup dialog and add some startup delay, as well as increase the update interval you can work around the problem of having BV bog down as well as start hogging a lot of CPU time.
For example, I have mine set for 5 seconds of startup delay, active host updates every 60 seconds, and inactive host updates every 120 seconds. I have found that this lets BV run continuously without issues, and with reasonably low CPU demands for the most part when monitoring my 10 hosts, even if I run it an older, slower 9x host.
Operationally, I'm still a little peeved at the BOINC Dev management about the AP/Web UI issue. I not too happy I ended up torpedoing my own fleet trying emergency 'combat' repairs to make something work which had previously worked perfectly until they messed around with adding something new to the mix. >:-/
Looking over my logbooks, the Web/UI feature came out right around the time SAH Beta was gearing up for serious AstroPulse development, final release testing of MultiBeam, as well as Joe Segur working on a couple of particularly gnarly little bugs with 9x compatibility in the Enhanced and MultiBeam apps. I was using selective app_info files a lot then and never had a problem like this. You can bet I would have reported it if I had.
Also, as I said elsewhere, I was running the original Akos specials back on S4, and had zero issues on my end when the transition to S5 happened, even tough I stayed configured for S4 only at first.
In any event, this is in no way any of the EAH team's fault. They had no way of knowing project options they have never used, probably have no immediate plans to use in the near future, and should be default off in any case, were going to cause a major snafu for their 'hard core' users. I'd almost bet if they had just stayed with the old server software this would have been an almost seamless transition to R4. ;-)
For example, I have mine set for 5 seconds of startup delay, active host updates every 60 seconds, and inactive host updates every 120 seconds.
I find I've been running with 30 second host updates--just now bumped it up to 60.
But what/where is startup delay? Or possibly I'm running too old a BOINCView (1.2.2) for that to be offered. I had some setup trouble (mostly on the GUI RPC configuration matter) so have been slow to upgrade. I see from BOINCView web site there is a 1.4.2 "production" version and a 1.5.0 Beta 8, so I'm rather a good deal behind.
So you have any version preference or advice?
Humm... in reviewing the 1.5.0 features, this one looks germane to our discussion:
* new: allowing multiple selections at Projects, Hosts, Transfers and Tasks tabs
If multiple selection is supported, it seems likely that multiple task abort may be at hand here.
For 1.4.2, it's right there with the update interval settings in the host setup dialog.
I thought it was there for 1.2.x too, but I upgraded to 1.4.x right when it came out since it fixed other issues I was having with it at the time. So I guess I just didn't remember whether it had it or not.
BTW, thanks for the heads up about the new BV Beta. I hadn't been to the BV site in awhile either, so I guess I'll give it a test drive. As far as version preference goes, 1.4.2 has proven to be a reliable workhorse on all platforms from 9x/NT4 right through XP Pro and Server 200x. Pretty nice piece of work considering the moving (and as we've seen not completely stable or tested) target it's aimed at! ;-)
Humm... in reviewing the 1.5.0 features, this one looks germane to our discussion:
* new: allowing multiple selections at Projects, Hosts, Transfers and Tasks tabs
If multiple selection is supported, it seems likely that multiple task abort may be at hand here.
I today downloaded and installed BoincView 1.5 Beta 8 over my 1.2.2 installation.
The upgrade was pretty smooth. My firewall alerted me of the program change, and BoincView itself warned me that it noticed its own version change, and that some options might have been changed back to their defaults.
The only two substantive objections I've had so far to this upgrade are:
1. I no longer am getting anything on the "completed" tab which was a feature I found useful.
2. When making changes to a particular computer setup (for example to change the startup time which was the entry point to this discussion), BV tells me it "could not connect" to the computer in question. I think this is a spurious warning.
As to the substance of my own post to which this is a response, 1.5 Beta 8 indeed allows multiple selection by the usual Windows method, and indeed with multiple tasks selected one can pause them all, resume them all, or abort them all. This would have saved me much time and some errors over the past couple of years.
I cannot yet offer any evidence on whether 1.5 Beta 8 is better or worse than 1.2.2 on the occasional relapse into locking up a full core at 100% CPU. So far in seven elapsed hours it has used 2.5 CPU minutes or .15 % overhead burden since the host is a quad. That is managing four hosts. Clearly no lockups of substantial duration have happened yet.
On reading the tool tip for the startup parameter, it seemed to me to hint that setting the different values for different hosts would spread out the communication burden, so I did that. (2, 5, 10, and 15 seconds for my four hosts).
So far, so good, and multi-select is quite wonderful if you do task tampering for any reason.
RE: Thanks for the replies,
)
Regarding BV, yes, this is related to the part of the conversation Archae86 and I were having on anomalies.
I had this happen when I started adding hosts, too. I think you'll find that if you go into the host setup dialog and add some startup delay, as well as increase the update interval you can work around the problem of having BV bog down as well as start hogging a lot of CPU time.
For example, I have mine set for 5 seconds of startup delay, active host updates every 60 seconds, and inactive host updates every 120 seconds. I have found that this lets BV run continuously without issues, and with reasonably low CPU demands for the most part when monitoring my 10 hosts, even if I run it an older, slower 9x host.
Operationally, I'm still a little peeved at the BOINC Dev management about the AP/Web UI issue. I not too happy I ended up torpedoing my own fleet trying emergency 'combat' repairs to make something work which had previously worked perfectly until they messed around with adding something new to the mix. >:-/
Looking over my logbooks, the Web/UI feature came out right around the time SAH Beta was gearing up for serious AstroPulse development, final release testing of MultiBeam, as well as Joe Segur working on a couple of particularly gnarly little bugs with 9x compatibility in the Enhanced and MultiBeam apps. I was using selective app_info files a lot then and never had a problem like this. You can bet I would have reported it if I had.
Also, as I said elsewhere, I was running the original Akos specials back on S4, and had zero issues on my end when the transition to S5 happened, even tough I stayed configured for S4 only at first.
In any event, this is in no way any of the EAH team's fault. They had no way of knowing project options they have never used, probably have no immediate plans to use in the near future, and should be default off in any case, were going to cause a major snafu for their 'hard core' users. I'd almost bet if they had just stayed with the old server software this would have been an almost seamless transition to R4. ;-)
Alinator
RE: Regarding
)
I find I've been running with 30 second host updates--just now bumped it up to 60.
But what/where is startup delay? Or possibly I'm running too old a BOINCView (1.2.2) for that to be offered. I had some setup trouble (mostly on the GUI RPC configuration matter) so have been slow to upgrade. I see from BOINCView web site there is a 1.4.2 "production" version and a 1.5.0 Beta 8, so I'm rather a good deal behind.
So you have any version preference or advice?
Humm... in reviewing the 1.5.0 features, this one looks germane to our discussion:
* new: allowing multiple selections at Projects, Hosts, Transfers and Tasks tabsIf multiple selection is supported, it seems likely that multiple task abort may be at hand here.Hmmm... For 1.4.2, it's
)
Hmmm...
For 1.4.2, it's right there with the update interval settings in the host setup dialog.
I thought it was there for 1.2.x too, but I upgraded to 1.4.x right when it came out since it fixed other issues I was having with it at the time. So I guess I just didn't remember whether it had it or not.
BTW, thanks for the heads up about the new BV Beta. I hadn't been to the BV site in awhile either, so I guess I'll give it a test drive. As far as version preference goes, 1.4.2 has proven to be a reliable workhorse on all platforms from 9x/NT4 right through XP Pro and Server 200x. Pretty nice piece of work considering the moving (and as we've seen not completely stable or tested) target it's aimed at! ;-)
Alinator
RE: Humm... in reviewing
)
I today downloaded and installed BoincView 1.5 Beta 8 over my 1.2.2 installation.
The upgrade was pretty smooth. My firewall alerted me of the program change, and BoincView itself warned me that it noticed its own version change, and that some options might have been changed back to their defaults.
The only two substantive objections I've had so far to this upgrade are:
1. I no longer am getting anything on the "completed" tab which was a feature I found useful.
2. When making changes to a particular computer setup (for example to change the startup time which was the entry point to this discussion), BV tells me it "could not connect" to the computer in question. I think this is a spurious warning.
As to the substance of my own post to which this is a response, 1.5 Beta 8 indeed allows multiple selection by the usual Windows method, and indeed with multiple tasks selected one can pause them all, resume them all, or abort them all. This would have saved me much time and some errors over the past couple of years.
I cannot yet offer any evidence on whether 1.5 Beta 8 is better or worse than 1.2.2 on the occasional relapse into locking up a full core at 100% CPU. So far in seven elapsed hours it has used 2.5 CPU minutes or .15 % overhead burden since the host is a quad. That is managing four hosts. Clearly no lockups of substantial duration have happened yet.
On reading the tool tip for the startup parameter, it seemed to me to hint that setting the different values for different hosts would spread out the communication burden, so I did that. (2, 5, 10, and 15 seconds for my four hosts).
So far, so good, and multi-select is quite wonderful if you do task tampering for any reason.