Hello GWG,
I think that I last heard from knreed about this 3 days ago. He said that it would be a major programming job to get the Account Management System fully operational on our server. It will be done, but this is going to take a long time.

Lawrence

Hi Dark Star,

I have a BAM account and BAM does read all the WCG settings, but have yet to discover what the all surpassing benefit is that would prevent any BOINC cruncher to set up an account, 1 time and get and keep going.

Anyway, since it's you with the lament, maybe you can list the pros and cons of what BAM and BOINC 'standard' projects have versus what WCG has / not has. Be objective and do list the things that WCG has, that 'pure' projects don't have and u think the BOINC projects should have. Than, prioritize them from Must to Nice with a score.

cheers

Okay, since you asked. The root of several issues appears to be WCG's implementation of BOINC not using the same user information as virtually all other BOINC projects - email address and password. This results in a namespace limitation either because a specific username is "taken" on the non-BOINC side of WCG, or because WCG limits the available character set for user names and doesn't allow some characters that BOINC does, which makes managing WCG alongside those other projects problematic. This also impacts capabilities other than BAM, such as cross-project statistics for these users.

For instance, if one's username on all the other projects isn't the same as it is on WCG, issues occur with using the account manager to attach to WCG, change resources, suspend/resume the project, modify machine profiles, etc., in the same manner as the other projects. While these problems are reasonably minor for an individual with one or two machines, they're magnified for those of us with more. Even though many of us do in fact run multiple projects and "split their resources so many ways that WCG barely gets a look in", that can still be a non-trivial amount - in my case, if a project is set for 10% of my overall production, it gets the equivalent of around 3.4GHz x 24hrs x 7days - approximately an "average" single user, and I'm one of the smaller ones. The real issue comes down to convenience (the "user experience", if you will) when different machines are added, removed, relocated, and repurposed more often than occurs with a typical single machine user. Yes, there are other ways to do this when the machines is located on the same network segment, but it's more difficult when one or more of them is remotely located and not accessible using standard remote access tools due to security concerns.

It's been suggested that people experiencing these problems change their username at all other projects to be the same as it is on WCG. That would work, but hardly seems a reasonable expectation since WCG is really the "odd man out" in terms of its BOINC implementation and the resulting limitations.

While I certainly could develop a detailed workup of the abilities and liabilities of the WCG implementation of BOINC vs. all other BOINC projects, well, I don't mind donating computer cycles since they're not used anyway but donating professional time is something of a different matter.

In any case, a decision has obviously been reached concerning the priority of these issues. My sole intent in posting the previous message was to point out that some of the information used to reach that decision may have been less than complete, and based on the two subsequent posts, it appears that I may well have been correct in that assertion. However, it also appears that the low priority given compatibility with other projects is based less on usefulness to the user than a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

For me, that's useful information, as it helps me to reach a decision about how often to check back to see if things have changed enough to put a few machines back on the project, or to recommend that others do so. I do think the output is useful, but not so much more useful than other projects that are easier to manage that it's worth the time and effort needed to make the exception.

All just one individual opinion, of course, with all the usual disclaimers.