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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: Website Support
Thread: Local Preferences |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 11
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
If I have a system using the local preferences, does that override everything?
For instance, if the only change I make to the local preferences is the processor factor, leaving all projects checked, if I globally remove one project, with that one system continue to run all projects? My understanding is that the local preferences override everything and ignore all global preferences. Thought i would check. |
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Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
Certain elements like sub-projects can only be selected in the My Projects and in the Device Profiles on the website. The client is unaware of what sub-projects are specifically assigned to run and likely never will.
----------------------------------------Local prefs (LP) versus Website prefs is discussed in a Start Here FAQ and yes, each field you enter locally permanently overrides website settings until you use the LP "Clear" button.
WCG
----------------------------------------Please help to make the Forums an enjoyable experience for All! [Edit 1 times, last edit by Sekerob at Sep 24, 2008 5:08:27 PM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
each field you enter locally permanently overrides website settings until you use the LP "Clear" button. If I change the LP for VM%, but I do not change the LP for Processor%, does that mean that if I change the global VM% and the Processor% for the profile in use on the machine that the Processor% will change but the VM% will not? If this is how it works, then the LP only contains fields that are different from the Global profile at the time the LP was changed(1). If the GP is later changed(2), those non-overridden GP will be shown in the LP when I edit the LP after that(3). |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
You sound confused.
And why shouldn't you be? It's bl**dy confusing! I have called for preference improvements for a long time, but Berkeley aren't interested. World Community Grid are committed to improving them, but doing anything practical is very difficult. Okay, then. I will try and explain the current mess, as best I can. This may get technical. Global preferences are so called because they apply to all your BOINC projects, not because they apply to all your computers. Side by side with the global preferences are the project preferences. These are stored per-project, and include the project weight (or share) and preferences unique to individual projects, such as the WCG sub-project options. You can see your WCG project preferences in account_www.worldcommunitygrid.org.xml but you can only modify them online. The global preferences can be overridden locally. The project preferences cannot. If the override file exists, all the settings in it override the global settings. BUT if you change a setting in the advanced view dialog, then all your current settings are written to the file, and will mask any changes you subsequently make online. If that wasn't confusing enough, the simple view preferences dialog writes a subset of the settings. Some of the more advanced settings are still inherited from the global preferences, but the simple settings are masked by the file, and changes online will be ignored. This is a huge source of frustration for new users. If frequently catches out experienced users, too. Is that it? No.... we have venues to consider. Or "locations". Or "device profiles". Many names, one concept. You can create a whole set of preferences and apply them to different computers. Only, BOINC limits you to three preset names, and the "default" profile. But watch out - this default has nothing to do with the "set as default" option in a profile. That option merely specifies which profile name is assigned to new computers you add. Each profile contains project and global preferences. Sometimes. As a convenience, changing your sub-project selection on the "My Projects" page will change your selections in all your device profiles (or it did last time I checked). The sad thing about this explanation: I have left out the numerous bugs and idiosyncrasies that make working with preferences so unpredictable. Some preferences don't work in some versions of the client. Others behave unexpectedly. Preferences: just say NOomgarrrrgghhhhgristlegristlegristlesplat! |
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JmBoullier
Former Community Advisor Normandy - France Joined: Jan 26, 2007 Post Count: 3716 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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astrolab,
----------------------------------------Now that Didactylos has described how big a mess you can create by playing with all possible ways of setting parameters and profiling I will tell you how I avoid that mess. Maybe you will not like it and you will prefer to do it another way, e.g. all from the website as my fellow CAs usually recommend. Two things to realize: 1. you have parameters which affect the servers when they deal with your devices. In fact there is only one, which is your selection of projects that the servers may send you. Plus the option to accept beta WUs or not, which is in the same spirit but is set in a different part of the website (unfortunately). 2. all other parameters are related to the way you want your clients to work: resources which they can use, schedules for running and connecting to the network, etc... and most or all of them are highly dependent on the real physical characteristics of each machine. Parameters in the latter can be changed everywhere and it is easy to create a disaster if you do not remember where you have changed something. And sooner or later you will not remember, especially if you have many machines and you use all four profiles. Choices of the first category can be made only in the website profiles and, as you said in another post, four profiles is not much for 5 (or soon more) sub-projects. So use them only for that purpose, with all other parameters left at their default values to make sure a new machine will work correctly even before you optimize it with local preferences. And change parameters of the second category (if you need it) only via Advanced->Preferences in the Advanced view of Boinc Manager. This way you should always have the right settings for a given machine, and if you need to change them you will always remember where you have to do it. And don't forget, once you do it that way changing one of these parameters in a website profile will never have any effect on those machines (unless Berkeley change the hierarchy that Boinc uses to handle settings, but I hope they won't  ).If you have an easy access to all your machines this is very easy to implement, especially if you refrain from changing everything every day... If you have machine(s) out of reach then it is time for you to learn more about remotely controlling them and/or using tools like BoincView (for example). In that case the following external Wiki is a good starting point: Controlling BOINC remotely Good luck, and feel free to ask more questions if necessary. Jean. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
A question that could help is: Suppose you choose to run WCG while the user is using their system. Does the user see any difference from their perspective if WCG is set to use 40% or 80% of the CPU and VM? If WCG moves to a lower priority whenever the user starts typing, then there may be little reason to use 2 different CPU rates. There might be a reason that you do not want to work the machine harder, but will the user notice the change in the CPU rate?
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hello astrolab,
The BOINC application runs at lowest priority. It simply replaces the Idle Cycle. Anything the user runs is much higher priority. The Idle Cycle uses very little power, so running BOINC increases the heat dissipated. So, at first glance, BOINC is totally invisible to the user except for the noise of the fan spinning faster to dissipate heat. Of course, the applications take up hundreds of megabytes of memory, so there is plenty of opportunity for that to cause slowdowns. But percent of CPU utilized does not have any effect on that. It just changes the amount of heat produced by the CPU. There is no difference in user-noticed speed between BOINC at 100% and BOINC at 40%. Lawrence |
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JmBoullier
Former Community Advisor Normandy - France Joined: Jan 26, 2007 Post Count: 3716 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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astrolab,
----------------------------------------The most common normal (i.e. except particular problems) reason for a user to "see" Boinc or to be really disturbed by it is when there is not enough RAM for everything s/he and Boinc have to do. The good news is that current WCG projects are not needing much RAM to run. For example while I am typing this message there are four FAAH jobs running which use only 416 MB of RAM in total. See Sekerob's famous "The WCG Projects, Systems Usage Matrix" thread for details (column HW RAM use) and for estimating what you can reasonably do depending on the characteristics of your machines. Cheers. Jean. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
See Sekerob's famous "The WCG Projects, Systems Usage Matrix" thread for details (column HW RAM use) and for estimating what you can reasonably do depending on the characteristics of your machines. Since this is the only reference made to an existing thread, is there a need to organize this information into a FAQ on performance? Or maybe I am just too far out on the edge. Thanks to all 4 CAs who helped cover this topic  |
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JmBoullier
Former Community Advisor Normandy - France Joined: Jan 26, 2007 Post Count: 3716 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Or maybe I am just too far out on the edge. I do think you are. Sekerob's matrix is gathering facts identical for all users of a given platform. It is probably a tough and boring job but the result is worth the effort because there is nothing to argue about, and it does not change too often. Doing the same for performance would be a nightmare both for complexity (too many various situations - HW & SW) and for selecting/arbitrating information coming from members. Since none of us, CAs or techs, would be able to think of such a chart without information provided by members. Cheers. Jean. |
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