2/5/2010 10:29:32 AM	Milkyway@home	Message from server: No work sent
2/5/2010 10:29:32 AM	Milkyway@home	Message from server: (reached limit of 6 tasks in progress)

Oh really? That's funny. I only see 1 Enigma WU, to finish soon, and a handful of FreeHal WUs. So, where are these supposed 6 MW WUs? On one of my other machines, maybe?
And what's up with newer versions of BOINC Manager popping up a little window to indicate it's "communicating"? I've seen it hang things for several minutes and this includes on very new (not too slow) computers.

OK, never mind with the first question. Somehow only active tasks were showing. I know I never deliberately selected that, but, oh, well. Still, anyone have an answer about the second one? It's fairly annoying.

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Howdy Sarge!!

How many total tasks are on the computer that is "communicating"?

BOINC is constantly updating every single task in the queue whether it is actually running or not. If there are too many (and the number varies depending on the speed of the computer), BOINC has to pause to make its constant updates to the disk.

Alternatively, if something besides BOINC is grabbing too many CPU cycles, BOINC will also pause to "communicate" with the client.

It has become a real problem for some of the major CUDA crunchers at SETI; these crunchers sometimes have thousands of WUs in the queue.

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Calm Chaos Forum...Join Calm Chaos Now

I have a couple dozen machines that are dedicated DC crunchers... they are all either hooked up to KVM switches or controlled through VNC. They don't have anything else running on them, but exihibit the same behavior if they're running 6.10.17 or newer versions of BOINC. The CUDA crunchers do it the most.

It is, indeed, VERY annoying. None of these machines has a lot of WU in queue, so that explanation doesn't hold much water, either. I've watched them do it on a machine that only had 5 work units.

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Jeff Gu
Guru Mountain DC Team

Howdy Sarge!!

How many total tasks are on the computer that is "communicating"?

BOINC is constantly updating every single task in the queue whether it is actually running or not. If there are too many (and the number varies depending on the speed of the computer), BOINC has to pause to make its constant updates to the disk.

Alternatively, if something besides BOINC is grabbing too many CPU cycles, BOINC will also pause to "communicate" with the client.

It has become a real problem for some of the major CUDA crunchers at SETI; these crunchers sometimes have thousands of WUs in the queue.

Between 6 and 21 WUs is the usual. At worst, I barely have to scroll down to see others not showing on an entire screen. So, a worst case scenario would be around, say, 66 WUs.

I don't have a problem with constant communication. it probably worked that way before.

What I do have a problem with is the newer versions of BOINC Manager are popping up that "window" and it sure appears to be the case that if it doesn't disappear in a few seconds, it's going to be hanging around there at least several minutes. hanging my system from doing anything else with BOINC or even other applications I have open.

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Another issue is when the system is slowing down, apparently due to BOINC, right clicking on BOINC Manager icon in the tray to the bottom right doesn't even include the option to exit at times. Only "Open BOINC Manager." Everything else is grayed out. Annoying.

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