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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Retired Forums
Forum: UD Windows Agent Support [Read Only]
Thread: Forced to Remove Agent from Systems |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 15
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
 I have run World Community Grid on several different systems ranging from Win/98 to Win/XP Pro to Linux generally with good results. I configure to run with the screen saver mode so as not to affect other operations. I have had four different systems (Win/98, Win/XP Home, and Win/XP Pro) where performance slows to a crawl and the agent is using all of the system resources (memory & CPU). Since I was already configured to only run as a screensaver, my only other option was to uninstall the agent and have one less system participating in the grid. If it happened only once I could write it off as a fluke, but when 4 different systems have run into the same problem I become suspicious of the stability of the agent. I have no problem sharing my unused cycles with the grid, but when it takes over a system I have to just say no. Has anybody else seen this problem and have a viable explanation and fix for it? |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
My suggestion is that you look at Task Manager for an explanation. Recently we had some compounds from Phase II of FAAH that used 50 MB more than usual, causing even systems with 250 MB of RAM to page excessively. When we noticed this, we pulled the large compounds. How much memory do your systems have?
----------------------------------------Added: If FAAH is too big, you can always specify HPF1 only in your project preferences. [Edit 2 times, last edit by Former Member at Apr 29, 2006 3:06:20 AM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
One of my team members reported a similar problem. However, his systems had memory and more to spare.
Unfortunately, I can't remember who experienced this, or what they did about it. I'm 90% sure it was UD, though. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
i guess you already know that some anti-virus programs' 'scanning actions' have a problem with WCG, causing them to take a big chunk of CPU usage that you can see in task manager. just in case....
McAfee was the worst i saw, with its 'on-access scanning' process named Mcshield.exe |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I'm having the same problem on multiple machines as well, all XP (if that makes a difference). Even though the "run only as a screensaver" option is checked, the agent runs when the screensaver is not engaged (read: all the time) and sucks up all the remaining processing time, bringing my machine to a crawl. If it continues to do this, I will have no choice but to uninstall it.
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retsof
Former Community Advisor USA Joined: Jul 31, 2005 Post Count: 6824 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I'm having the same problem on multiple machines as well, all XP (if that makes a difference). Even though the "run only as a screensaver" option is checked, the agent runs when the screensaver is not engaged (read: all the time) and sucks up all the remaining processing time, bringing my machine to a crawl. If it continues to do this, I will have no choice but to uninstall it. I assume that UD is the screensaver and not something else. Others may have some ideas.My desktop machines are running at 100% (no screensaver set, just monitor save energy turnoff) and have no problems. In the meantime, investigate the "throttling" option. You can cut the percentage down so UD doesn't take all of the remaining machine. This is a notable problems on some laptops that have cooling problems at 100% utilization. I'm not sure throttling will run on BOINC or not, but it definitely does with the WCG UD interface version.
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
akidder, it would be great if you could stick around and help us solve this one. Every once in a while somebody reports something like this, but it has proved impossible to replicate.
Please will you tell us what other software you are running, in particular your antivirus software. Issues have been reported with AOL, McAfee, and others. No matter what other software you are running, if UD is set to "screensaver only", then nothing should be running. Have a look at Task Manager, and see if something else is to blame. If you just want a quick fix, migrating to BOINC is your best bet. And retsof: I tested the BOINC throttle: no joy. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hi all,
I'm having the same problem, so let me see if I can provide some more details. I'm running the UD agent on an XP Pro machine with 1 Gb RAM. I also have the agent set to run only as a screensaver. When the problem occurs, a check of Task Manager shows that the process eating all my CPU is WCGrid_AutoDock. I have to kill this process to get my CPU usage back down to normal levels. Killing the process does not remove the WCG Agent icon from my system tray. As for antivirus, we're running Symantec AV, their enterprise-level product, and it's administered from a network server. I have no control over when the scans run, and it doesn't inform me when a scan is running. I know the rtvscan process also devours CPU. Since I don't know when the scans are run (they're on some kind of rotating schedule so they don't hit our workstations at the same time every day), I don't know if the scans are related to the agent running away. I'm on the verge of uninstalling the agent, as well, which I really don't want to do. Thought I'd check the forums first, and I'm glad I did. Any help I can give, I'll be glad to! Tami |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Yes, the UD icon is a different process. That's all normal.
It could conceivably be a problem with the screensaver not cleaning up properly, and leaving the process hanging loose. Does this occur only after the screensaver has displayed, or is it happening straight after a reboot? Remember, when UD is working in the background normally, it runs at very (very!) low priority, and shouldn't impact your computer use at all. It is possible that the screensaver runs at a higher priority, and that is causing the slow-down which is reported when this problem occurs. The solution then would be to remove the screensaver (set it to "blank"), and set UD to work all the time. You will still see 100% CPU usage, but your system will be perfectly responsive and healthy. Please let us know if that works, because it will help identify the actual bug here. Thanks for helping us try to solve this. It can be frustrating when things misbehave. |
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knreed
Former World Community Grid Tech Joined: Nov 8, 2004 Post Count: 4504 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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And retsof: I tested the BOINC throttle: no joy. An aside - we are looking at adding this to the BOINC code, but it will be done differently. Rather then looking at a registry entry as we do for the UD code we will be pulling the value from the project preferences file which will allow users to set it on the website - thus allowing both the technical and the less technically inclined users to set it easily. |
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