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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: BOINC Agent sucks |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 48
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I ran the UD agent happily for some years. It sat quietly in the background, a well-behaved guest on my machine, gave me no trouble, and I mostly forgot it was there.
A few days ago, because of the email about the UD agent's imminent withdrawal, I installed the BOINC agent. This has been nothing but trouble. It causes continual flickering on my ZoneAlarm activity display. I have read the FAQ and I know this is normal, but I don't like it because it may mask other activity that I would want to be aware of. One time when I shut down my machine one of the processes failed to stop and had to be thrown off with task mangler. I've now contrived to get it into a state where it's suspended but the resume buttons are greyed out even after a reboot. Finger trouble on my part with the unfamiliar controls and settings, no doubt, but it's all hassle I could do without. I have uninstalled the thing, and sadly I will not be participating in WCG projects any more unless you can come up with software that is more user friendly. |
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Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
Hi malcw,
----------------------------------------Sorry to hear of your troubles and aggrevation, but one of the things I think is pretty useless is the tray icon animation. If there is really an alert condition the Firewall or AV should pop up a window. If it does not, switch security software. At any rate of all the tested Freeware Firewalls, I feel most comfortable with Comodo PF where loopback traffic animation can be switched off without others being affected. The newest ZA has that same feature.... no masking of real external traffic in the icon flicker. If your Firewall was not configured to exempt BOINCmgr or BOINC.exe to talk to each other via said local host / loopback, you'll indeed see the grayed buttons and most probably no project information. ZA should have popped windows for temporary or permanent permission. If you do see WCG in the project tab, you have to explicitly choose that line before the buttons become functional. This is because BOINC is made to handle many projects and each project can define its own buttons. Anyway, please try again.... it's a little bit of a learning curve, but once past that, it is massively more informational. UD never told if there was an issue.... it just droned on and on without even knowing if work was good. Credits were granted for hours be the work valid or not, so how would a contributor ever know if that were not continuous. ttyl
WCG
Please help to make the Forums an enjoyable experience for All! |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
As Sekerob says, the Zone Alarm activity is normal, and is a flaw in Zone Alarm. If you find it annoying, blame Zone Alarm - it is the only firewall that does this, and I fully appreciate how annoying it must be.
----------------------------------------I think you are using the advanced view of BOINC Manager. Stick with the simple view. It is designed so that you don't have to deal with the underlying complexity. [Edit 1 times, last edit by Former Member at Mar 22, 2008 11:05:36 AM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Guys,
Thanks for your prompt replies. I disagree about the usefulness of the ZA activity display. If I somehow get a virus which hijacks a program that has permission to go through my firewall, the first I may be aware of that is unexpected internet access from my machine. I want to remain alert to that possibility. I did give the BOINC processes permanent access through the firewall. I'm running ZA 7.0.408. I can't find any way in that to turn off local loopback traffic animation. If there is such a way, or a later ZA version that I can install which permits it, then please get back to me. Failing that, I'm not prepared to make major changes to my setup just to run a BOINC agent. If it will coexist peacefully with all my other stuff, as UD did, then fine. (BTW, I ran UD for some years on an Oxford University project before that closed in April last year and I joined WCG. UD was never any trouble.) l think the onus is on WCG/BOINC to be a good guest in my house, not the other way around. |
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Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
Here's a link to a post I made a while back: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/printpost?post=139311
----------------------------------------You need 7.1.078 or higher, but a subsequent post in that thread says that only is "right now" available for Vista ? That was 4 months ago. The high-jacking by a virus I'd expect to be handled by the AV.
WCG
----------------------------------------Please help to make the Forums an enjoyable experience for All! [Edit 1 times, last edit by Sekerob at Mar 22, 2008 1:16:28 PM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
malcw, much as I would like to agree with you, this is not BOINC's fault. It is Zone Alarm's fault.
BOINC does offer a workaround for Zone Alarm's failure, though. I encourage you to install BOINC as a service and only Use BOINC Manager when you need it. Or, get a better firewall! |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Thanks again, guys.
This machine runs XP. The latest version of ZA for XP (I've just checked) is 7.0.462. The 7.1.xxx series was spun off by ZA as a Vista special, and is not currently available for other Windows platforms. 7.1 uses the WFP API which was only introduced in Vista. Older platforms use the TDI API. (This is currently a hot topic because Vista SP1 appears to have broken some builds of ZA 7.1. As yet the info on the web is inconsistent about exactly which ones.) I've run ZA for a number of years. I have a fairly complicated home network which includes another XP machine, a Vista machine, and a Win98SE machine, all of which run ZA, not to mention the Linux box! Not all of these machines are mine, and networking them all was a tricky job including some careful firewall setup which I've now forgotten how to do and don't care to repeat unless I really need to. ZA may not be the bees knees now, and if I were choosing today with a clean sheet of paper I might well install Comodo PF everywhere instead, but it works well enough for me and I'm not going to change it unless I have to. So the ZA issue is not resolved, and you haven't addressed the other unreliability issues I mentioned. I've looked at some of the other posts about running BOINC as a service, and killing the manager process with task manager etc , but that's all too much hassle and I'm not going there. I repeat, if it's to be a guest in my house it needs to obey my house rules whether you agree with them or not. It needs to run unobtrusively and automatically without any input from me and without attracting my attention in any way. UD did; as far as I can see, BOINC does not. So I'm sorry, but it looks like I'm not going to be supporting WCG any longer. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
For the record, Zone Alarm breaks the Windows Style rules with their flashing icon. It is annoying, and Microsoft specifically warn against it.
If you want to quit, then that's fine*. But don't blame BOINC! * I lie. It's not fine. But what can we do? We've explained what the problem is, where the fault lies, AND provided a workaround for you. If you still want to blame BOINC, then the reality is that you just can't be bothered. Which is odd, since you've spent so much time posting on an Internet forum, instead of simply following the advice I have repeatedly given. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I switched from the UD client yesterday due to the e-mail I got. Boinc has been nothing but a problem! The screensaver has been crashing, giving runtime error messages. Also, Windows Media Center has been freezing and crashing, losing current recordings. I can't even get to the Task Manager when MC freezes up!
This is too much of a pain to deal with for a charitable cause, I'm outta here. I'll be uninstalling BOINC for good. |
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retsof
Former Community Advisor USA Joined: Jul 31, 2005 Post Count: 6824 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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first time posters, only with problems. By the time we see that they have a problem that could be fixed with a small amount of BOINC message analysis, they're already gone. WHAT'S A BOINC MESSAGE??Sorry to see them go and too bad that they haven't previously been part of the community here.
----------------------------------------The BOINC notification shouldn't have been a surprise, but the e-mails do tend to force a decision. I am running Vista Ultimate SP1 on one computer. Some nvidia drivers didn't go on, and AVG is preempted by another screen that wants to print a message and return, but that's it. A Win98 system would run BOINC after a fashion, but tended to freeze up. It has been replaced, anyway with the Vista X2 computer. Boinc has been trouble free on both Vista and XP OS computers here. 5.10.45 does work a bit better on vista since it addresses the shutdown issue that previously caused errors. I'm running with no screen saver and BOINC at 100% 24/7. Also, Windows Media Center has been freezing and crashing, losing current recordings. Dragon Naturally Speaking is known not to work well with grid computing. I suspect that it would be better to exit BOINC when doing intense video editing...and restart it after to run in the remaining time. Probably nearly nothing could coexist with that. I have an intense application that DOES coexist. It takes 100% during file maintenance and BOINC backs off to 0%. When done, BOINC picks up and resumes at 100%.
SUPPORT ADVISOR
----------------------------------------Work+GPU i7 8700 12threads School i7 4770 8threads Default+GPU Ryzen 7 3700X 16threads Ryzen 7 3800X 16 threads Ryzen 9 3900X 24threads Home i7 3540M 4threads50% [Edit 7 times, last edit by retsof at Mar 25, 2008 2:28:13 PM] |
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