So, my last message was 4 Dec 2009 2:06:20 UTC.

I set Activity at Always, Prefs at Connect 0.00, Additional work 0.20.

Since that time, I have been out of work twice, when I left the house for more than three hours. Most tasks from all projects are taking less than three hours.

I got work once by rebooting and once by updating, but not on all projects and not on the same projects both times.

I am at my wit's end.

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How about a slightly bigger cache?, you are only going to ask for work at almost the instant you run out,
and the projects don't promise 24/7/365 server availability, let alone have work available at that instant you require it.

You can go as high as 10+10, but i wouldn't recommend it, try 0+1,

Claggy

Hey Claggy-

I have Additional work set at .20. Am I mis-understanding what you are suggesting?
I was advised - I have had a lot of advice from some very patient CA's and Admins - I was advised since I am on a cable connection, always on, to set Activity at Always and set Connect to 0.00. I was told that the Additional work would set a cache level for extra work. I can of course raise that, let's say to .5, and leave the rest alone. Every time I make a change, I then tgry to leave the machine alone for at least 12 hours.



Also, while you say that I will be asking for work just before I run out, I have with these setting in fact run out twice in the last two days.

And, also, no one has said how long I need to wait to expect BOINC to "learn" my computer and its settings. I am on Win7 64bit, I7-920 hyper-threaded processor, so eight cores, GPU is stopped.

The WU's I am getting, this machine is blowing through most of them in under two wall clock hours. I leave the house for a few hours, I come home to no work.

I am beginning to think that the BOINC software is simply not yer ready for Win7 64 bit and the I7 processor. But, I am not seeing anyone else complaining, so that could be off the wall.

Any suggestions will be carefully considered and much appreciated.

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The 'units' for these values is days, and I think that Claggy means just what he typed in: 2.0 (days).
As it is, you only 'want' work for 4.8 hours (i.e. 0.2 days)

"Time to learn": This can be days; BOINC needs to 'learn' about your projects as well. i.e. How long work units from each one takes for it to get through, in the combination that you're attached to. And some projects have WUs with vastly different run times.

Les-

Thanks. Yes, I know the units are days. Thanks for the clarification of "Time to learn".

So, then should I just set the prefs, e.g. Connect = 0.3, the default (connect every 8 hrs) and Additional work = X and leave things alone? For maybe a week?

If I set the Additional work at something, I need to recognize that this computer is finishing WU's in 2.5 to 3 hours on my watch. So, if I am only going to connect to a project 8 hrs after it finishes, is maybe .25 or .30 a reasonable number for Additional work?

And, if I do all of this, should I just let things alone even if the machine runs out of work, under the assumption that the BOINC software will ultimately adjust and that things will then run normally?

Thanks.

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... So, if I am only going to connect to a project 8 hrs after it finishes, is maybe .25 or .30 a reasonable number for Additional work? ...

Set it to 2.0 and see what happens.

As to your last question, I haven't had all of these problems so I don't know what will happen in your case.

Thanks. That's 2.0 as in 2 days.

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Correct.
Right On.
You got it.

If you're going to use a fast crunching machine, then you need to ensure a Large, constant, supply of work.

Thanks.

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I think it is time to put this thread to bed, or learn from the experience.

I think that I have finally achieved equanimity.

The last time that the Win7 system ran out of work was last Monday. The settings were default settings of Activity on Prefs, and Prefs were Connect every = .3 and Additional work = 0.00.

So, my plan was to take the suggestion of adding to the Connect = .3 with Additional work = 2.0.

Out of work, I detached from every project. I reset the prefs as described in the last paragraph. I went to the Computer Preferences in a BOINC project page and set a new profile "school" with the prefs for just this machine. Then I went to Computers on This Account and switched this machine to that profile (I am not sure if the profile at BOINC matters if one is on local prefs, this may have been redundant).

I re-booted and attached to two projects, Leiden and Rosetta. First, I knew that they both had plenty of work. Second, while the suggestion had been to attach to one project and then only add other projects slowly, I also wanted to explore the dynamics of LTD. Well, BOINC sprang to life. It seemed to "learn" the computer in a nanosecond.

The two projects ran successfully together, with plenty of WU's waiting to start. Both had very short WU's, as small as less than an hour and less than two hours. Nothing was over three hours. I added up the time to complete just what had been downloaded. It was not beyond a two day limit.

WCG has longer WU's. After a couple of days, I added WCG, again using the profile "school". I wanted to see how the longer WSU's would figure in the mix. I have no conclusion on that yet.

One conclusion is forget the posted time for a WU, instead look at the "wall clock" time.

Win7 64bit on an I7-920 it seem simply needs that extra work buffer to keep working.

I hope not to be back on this issue. I will certainly be interested in any comments. I sincerely thank everyone who helped me get this barn burner going.

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