ok, thanks for the reply, not really a big deal, just one of those "it would be nice if...." things.

Hello ebattleon.

No. If no projects you have selected have work units available, then you can choose to receive a work unit from a random project, but it is not possible to define a set of alternative projects.

This would require selecting a set of projects and numbering them 1, then selecting from the remaining projects and numbering them 2, etc. Finally you could either quit, or select a take anything available if there is nothing for groups 1, 2, 3, etc.

But this apparently requires some serious changes to the BOINC server software.

Lawrence

Yes, been requested too and part of the same problem. Think it will on top substantially impact scheduler performance, a key element of the BOINC distribution system. The simple working solution is to limit the choice. Generally WCG gives exclusive crunchers first choice.

Have asked knreed some time ago to let the ''if no work is available...'' not kick in until client cache is empty, which he would be looking at. Then with e.g. a 2 day cache, you'd have your prime choices only, even when supply is temporarily interrupted. This would work though only when doing WCG exclusively. If attached to other projects, the client would start backfilling there, BUT, later WCG would be compensated with the inter-project debt/weighting system. Even within WCG there's an inter-science weighting system. The distributors are set to provide a fairly equal amount of work to a client over time for each science selected, but that works only long as the selections are not changed.

edit: So as noted, all this requires serious development and that has to be done in collaboration with the Berkeley group too, so it can be integrated into the trunk source code. WCG is pretty special with so many sciences running concurrent.

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