Things I would like to see in the (next) client

[Troodon]

Most useful/important:

1) Don't get new/more work after finishing the current test.

[Win32 only] 2) All configuration data in text files. This would make the things easier for the people with offline machines and for those with multiple Windows versions/installations.

No so important:

3) Benchmark feature.

4) Processor-specific optimizations.

[rsbriggs]

I agree with #1 above. There are occassional maintenance things I would like to be able to do, so an option to "finish the current work, then pause" would be useful.

[Cmarc]

I'd like to see #2 and 1 (in that order) as well as a status file to monitor multiple clients. #3 would be a nice feature and I seem to remeber it's in the works. this thread (http://www.free-dc.org/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2196) includes a couple other requests for future clients.
Thanks,
Marc

[eatmadustch]

what I would like to see in the next client is the ability to get more than one block at a time and also machine-IDs!

[Xyzzy]

I'd like a totally CLI client for Win32...

Yeah, and no registry crap! Just text configuration files...

:)

[Samidoost]

I also seriousely need these two features:

(a) hide the icon
(b) provide two services, (the additional one for dual processors)
(c) really uninstall the client
(d) really idle
(e) lock the menus
(f) prevent running two different blocks simultaneusely.
(g) fork automatically for dual processors (if possible)

Pleeeeeeeease:cry:

Payam:bang:

[Troodon]

Also, I would like to be able to control the time between disk writes and screen output (like in Euler2000 and Prime95).

[dmbrubac]

I have to agree with point d) above. My dual machines don't really idle properly. I have to stop one of my clients to do any work on my main machine, which is a shame because I often forget to restart it when I get up.

My single CPU machines are much more acceptable when the client is running.

All in all though, things work very well indeed.

[Troodon]

Originally posted by dmbrubac
I have to agree with point d) above. My dual machines don't really idle properly. I have to stop one of my clients to do any work on my main machine, which is a shame because I often forget to restart it when I get up.

I have that problem on my machine. It's a single Celeron (Tualatin) with Windows 2000. All programs I tried/run suffer random "pauses" (they are irresponsive for several seconds). Of course, client's priority is set to idle.

[jjjjL]

Troodon's suggestions all look good to me.

Some of Samidoosts seem good.

a lot of people have asked for icon hiding. i have said no a lot too so I'll just say it one more time.

if you need to hide the icon, you're probably installing it on the computers you shouldn't be installing it on. i don't want to help you misuse other people's resources so i can't in good conscience add icon hiding to the client. if it is really important to you and you have a legitimate reason, there are 3rd party pieces of software that do it just fine.

i assume by "really uninstall" the client you mean delete the cache and username strings from registry. the reason the current uninstall doesn't do that is because a lot of people upgrading their client uninstall before reinstalling the client, lose their cache, and wonder why. i decided that losing work was bad so that's why the uninstall saves your username and the block you're working on. there likely won't be any registry used in future clients so i guess in a way, the new client will uninstall "better".

as for really idle... are you runing v1? I know some people had problems with earlier versions because some Windows doesn't correctly inherit thread priorities from processes so in v1 i explicitly set the processing thread to the lowest possible priority and it seemed to solve the problem for everyone. can someone give an example of something that leads you to believe it isn't completely idle because i haven't heard a complaint about that since I fixed it a few months ago. it's not that i doubt you... i just don't see any signs myself. if i run other DC clients at their idle setting, SB shares cycles with them evenly so I don't know what more I can do. let me know.

-Louie

[smh]

a lot of people have asked for icon hiding. i have said no a lot too so I'll just say it one more time.

if you need to hide the icon, you're probably installing it on the computers you shouldn't be installing it on. i don't want to help you misuse other people's resources so i can't in good conscience add icon hiding to the client. if it is really important to you and you have a legitimate reason, there are 3rd party pieces of software that do it just fine

I do respect your opinion but want to say the following:

Running any DC client on a computer thats not yours is your own responsibility.

Some just want to hide icons in the systray because there are already to many in there. But a third party tool for this will do fine.

Some others are running the client legimate on a number of computers which are used by others. Hiding the icon would make it harder for them to chance settings or stop the client. So maybe it is a possibility for you to make it possible to password protect the config menu, or even stopping the client?

I personaly would like to see a true service version.

[Mystwalker]

can someone give an example of something that leads you to believe it isn't completely idle because i haven't heard a complaint about that since I fixed it a few months ago

Where I work, there's a software called "Software Depot" for installing common software (every time a user signs on, it looks what software is available, which of the installed software is not adapted to the user yet and if there are important messages from the server). It runs with idle priority.

Normally, it takes maybe a second or two to complete, but with SB running, it takes - well, minutes to hours, let's say very long. :(
When I let run distributed.net in service mode, it's slower, too, but it then only takes maybe 5 seconds.

[eatmadustch]

simple: just set this software of yours to low priority, that way it's priority is higher than sob (so it won't be slow anymore) and it's still got lower priority than all your other software installed.

[Troodon]

Originally posted by jjjjL
as for really idle... are you runing v1? I know some people had problems with earlier versions because some Windows doesn't correctly inherit thread priorities from processes so in v1 i explicitly set the processing thread to the lowest possible priority and it seemed to solve the problem for everyone. can someone give an example of something that leads you to believe it isn't completely idle because i haven't heard a complaint about that since I fixed it a few months ago. it's not that i doubt you... i just don't see any signs myself. if i run other DC clients at their idle setting, SB shares cycles with them evenly so I don't know what more I can do. let me know.

-Louie

I'm running v 1.0.0. The pauses I speak about disapear when I press the stop button. If I run Euler2000 or distributed.net client, all works fine.

[dmbrubac]

Originally posted by jjjjL
as for really idle... are you runing v1?

-Louie

Louie

The issue is much more prevalent on dual machines than on single machines.
For instance, one of the first things I do in the morning is check my rankings. Your site will not come up on my dual machine, moreover, cursor movement is jerky, I get timeouts from Outlook, don't even think about reading mail - it never gets around to pulling the body of the message off the server. If I stop one of the clients, I get immediate smooth cursor movement and very soon after that, web pages come up, I can read my mail, etc.

On my single machine, response is a bit sluggish at first, then SB gives up and everything is fine.

I am running v1.0.0 and v1.0.0 SMP on a dual P3 Tualatin @1.31.
WinXP SP1 and about 40 processes at any given time. Commit charge is usually up around 300M, but with 1 GB physical.

I can give you more machine details if it will help.

Dave

[MathGuy]

FWIW, this problem is not uniform on dual machines. I have SB running on 2 duallies, an ancient dual P2 333MHz running W2K and a dual 2.2GHz Xeon running WinXP SP1. I have no problems with foreground response on either one.

However, I am running both of these with specific CPU affinity set (I set SB to CPU0 and SB SMP to CPU1). I don't remember why I started doing this, but I noticed that it gave me higher cEMs...maybe it also helps with foreground response. Another difference from dmbrubac's setup is that I'm running with HT enabled on the Xeon box, so the OS still has the 2 other virtual CPUs on which to schedule the foreground task.

As far as the old P2 goes, maybe Win2K just does a better job of this than XP...it wouldn't be the first time!

My most sluggish machine (in terms of foreground response) is a P3 running Win98SE, but even it only takes a second or 2 before it reduces the CPU load of SB.

You might try the CPU affinity trick on your duallies...I'd like to see that added to the config of the client (it's easy enough to do by hand, though).

[Troodon]

Originally posted by dmbrubac
I am running v1.0.0 and v1.0.0 SMP on a dual P3 Tualatin @1.31.
WinXP SP1 and about 40 processes at any given time. Commit charge is usually up around 300M, but with 1 GB physical.


We both have Tualatins, maybe it's a Tualatin-related problem? :p

[smh]

I use diskeeper Lite, which also runs at idle priority. It takes hours to defrag my drive when SoB is running.

[dmbrubac]

Ok - embarrasment time!

A few weeks ago I was showing my father how processes can have different priority and the effect priority has on system response.

Does everyone know where I am going on this? I either forgot to reset it or clicked cancel or my 3 year old changed it or something.

Anyway, we're back down to idle and things are much better. gawd I am so embarrased!

BTW I have two dual P2 333 machines (gotta love that BX chipset) that do not exhibit any problems either.

Dave

[MikeH]

Originally posted by Louie
... i just don't see any signs myself. if i run other DC clients at their idle setting, SB shares cycles with them evenly so I don't know what more I can do. let me know.
I run SB and Prime95 on Win2K and XP, and on both systems SB gets all the idle cycles, and Prime95 gets almost nothing (this is looking in task manager where SB is always >95% when nothing else is going on).

But I'm not complaining. This is how I want it to work - SB gets priority unless it runs out of work, then Prime95 runs so at least those idle cycles aren't lost.

[MikeH]

Forgot to add...

One feature I'd like to see is an option to allow the client to suspend whilst running on battery power.

[cmprince]

Originally posted by MikeH
But I'm not complaining. This is how I want it to work - SB gets priority unless it runs out of work, then Prime95 runs so at least those idle cycles aren't lost.
Well, at the rate Prime95 is going, my poor PIII NT4 box won't be done with M17404083 for another 30+ years. Adjusting the priorities doesn't do much for me. I was planning on turning SoB off on this machine for now to let it finish up this exponent, but that would still be three months away and I find SoB more rewarding than GIMPS.

Minor quibbles, though. Thanks for the client in any case! :thumbs:

[Nuri]

Originally posted by cmprince
Well, at the rate Prime95 is going, my poor PIII NT4 box won't be done with M17404083 for another 30+ years. Adjusting the priorities doesn't do much for me. I was planning on turning SoB off on this machine for now to let it finish up this exponent, but that would still be three months away and I find SoB more rewarding than GIMPS.

Minor quibbles, though. Thanks for the client in any case! :thumbs:


Well, I use both clients also. Here's what I see on my PC. (I'm not sure but that might change based on CPU speed, operating system etc.)

If you don't do anything with the priorities, then Prime95 uses 6 cycles every 5 seconds and everything else goes to SoB. So ratio is 494/6 (in other words, 1.2% of idle time goes to Prime95, and the remaining 98.8% goes to SoB). As a result, if I run both clients at default settings, then Prime95 takes 83.3 times longer than it should finish if I ran it alone. (And thats the setting I love most) :D

SoB client default priority speed is equal to Prime95 running at priority 2 (default is 1 for Prime95). So, when I change Prime95's priority ot 2, then they share the cpu cycles 50/50.

If Prime95 priority is set to 3, than 494/6 ratio applies vice versa. But I strongly discourage this for five reasons.
1- Block processing time increases 83 times. So if it normally takes 1 hour to process a block when client run alone, it will take 3.5 days under this setting. Severe risk of not being able to catch up with the 5 day deadline on some boxes!!
2- Good feedback from Louie for any question that arises here. I really appreciate this. Perfect motivation tool. :)
3- This is SoB forum
4- I love SoB :rotfl:
5- I love SoB :rotfl:

PS: Prime95 priorities can be changed under Advanced / Priority menu. (If it's gray, then you have not turned the advanced options on yet. Here's how to do it from the help: "You should not need to use the Advanced menu. This menu choice is provided only for those who are curious to play with. To avoid confusion for novice users, all the choices in the Advanced menu have been grayed. Please read this section if you want to know what the Advanced menu choices do. To turn on the Advanced menu, use the Advanced Password dialog box and enter a value of 9876. Also note that many of the menu choices are grayed while testing is in progress. Choose Test/Stop to activate these menu choices." - more info on help.)

[tqft]

Am curious as to whether the SB people have thought about using the BOINC setup in the future.

The short summary is that BOINC written by some of the SETI people will be a wrapper to do all the admin work (dishing out work, tracking usage, etc) and clients (source or binary) can be added by almost anyone.

The idea is that developers can then concentrate on what they know about not scoring security league tables etc, end-users wil then be able to run anything under the frame work - SETI, SoB, folding@home - apparently with a configurable % option so you can share your PC cycles with a number of different projects - and if one finsihes/fails/ - another can pick up the slack time.

Then all the OS/CPU configuration stuff can be done generally by one development group. And all the bits people want (GUI yes/no, service yes/no) can be programmed once and help across the spectrum.

At the moment I am running Prime95, SoB and SETiI. Why Prime95 and SoB make SETI go faster - something a day per work unit rather 5 - as they keep the machine alive while SETI is crunching.

[Stricker]

First this i would want changed is the ability to pause testing on battery power


next is the ability to install as a service. I have legit reason to install it like this. It is on my family machine and other members of the family wouldn't know what it is and they are "trigger happy" also since it is a multi user setup if i understand the way the program works whenever the computer is logged out but not turned off it doesn't run SoB. Also on my personal machine i don't like to leave it logged in all the time and installing as a service would allow me to be logged out and still be processing data. Also some of the programs that sit in the takbar wouldn't be running while i was logged out allowing SoB to run faster

[Mystwalker]

You can try FireDaemon to create a service that starts the client. The program is free for personal use IIRC.

Just look here for the appropriate discuccion:
http://www.free-dc.org/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1881

Concerning pausing when on battery power:
That would be good, but when doing so, please insert an option to turn this feature off. When I'm knowing that battery power is enough either way, I would like to let it run though...

[cmprince]

Originally posted by Nuri
Well, I use both clients also. Here's what I see on my PC.
[snip]
Hi Nuri,
Thanks for the advice, it worked perfectly! I didn't know about the seperate client priority settings before (had been using Task Manager thread priorities before).

-- chris