OK, i'll start! It's more of a request than a question, but I'll post while I'm here!

can we get more (unlimited - well, within reason!) preferences than home, school and work? Three profiles isn't enough for me and I'm only running a small number of computers. I know these can be overridden (although the project preferences for Rosetta (i.e. runtimes) cannot)I'd find it really useful if these profiles could be added to as required, and please can you make them renamable?!?

Also, any update on BOINC on the consoles? David Baker posted that they've been discussing with MS the possibility of Rosetta on the xbox, which I assume would include some of the core BOINC code too?

cheers
Danny

Hi

Again moor of a request i am attached to a lot of projects and when I need to take a box out of service(without throwing away wu) I have to click "no new tasks" over 30 times. A bit tedious especially over VNC. A global (per host)no new tasks button would be of great use to me.

Is the global update ever returning? Although I can see where it can be abused.

Thank you for your time answering questions/comments on this board.

Perhaps a series of questions about the challenges of running long-duration work units on Boinc. I find that people get very irate if a work unit which has been running for a couple of months crashes.

The stuff in brackets are just ideas, and not part of the question.

<b>1) What are the typical things which cause the work unit to fail?</b>
(Environmental - antivirus, graphics drivers, excessive overclocking, PC crashes, playing games for hours, video encoding, etc.
Human factors - Misunderstanding boinc messages, for example incorrect URL - they detach and attach, then get upset that x months of work is 'down the pan'. Ditto installation of berkeley version over bbc version, easy to fix but they don't know now)

<b>2) Is there anything which can be done to avoid these, either by the science app or by Boinc itself?</b>
(Uploading partial results as the WU runs. Exception handlers, both at science app and callbacks at boinc? Restart from checkpoint/backup if error code 0,-107...,etc etc received? Going into hibernation if PC is very busy, out of memory, etc)

<b>3) What support does Boinc have / plan to have which relate to this category of work unit specifically?</b>
(e.g.) some ideas, many of which may be impractical -
* Separation of graphics from the work unit so that a temporary problem with the graphics drivers doesn't cause the WU to fail
* Automatic backups
* Backups which are per-workunit rather than for all workunits which happen to be running
* Callbacks from Boinc into science app to allow the science app to handle boinc exceptions it wouldn't normally be able to trap
* Handling of the situation where the PC is very busy, out of memory or other resources, about to crash, TCP/IP stack blocked...)

Please feel free to expand/contract as needed...

-Cheers,

Mike

Prefernce sets: i think this would be a very valuable feature
a simple example that i'm sure many home users have as that they don't want to define hosts by location, but rather by type, such as one group that's always on, with a permanent Inet connection
another for permanently on but a dial-up connection (not permanent)
another for sometimes on with permanent connection
another for sometimes on with non-permanent connection

already we're up to 4 lol, so the current model fails

NNW for all projects: Stanley, this can easilly be done with BoincView, all it takes is 2/3 clicks to set any individual or all my host(s) to NNW, there's a guide for how to configure it in the BOINC wiki

same good questions from MikeMarsUK, i'm sure the answers will be interesting

Question: how's the progress with allowing AMS/BMS/BAM (whatever it's called these days) to control the state of projects and WUs
such as setting NNW, or suspending a project/task?

Farm Managers ?

Farm Manager ability came with Account Managers, I cannot find any programs on the BOINC website to install a Farm Manager on my comupter, what is it? is it working? or has it been abondoned?




Auto update of 'BOINC' ?
Most programs now include and Auto Update option which periodically checks a server to see if there is an update. The user is normally asked during install if they want to allow this (curtesy and percieve privacy). Why does BOINC not employ an auto update function, since it is suppose to be a fit & forget application, the science apps update all the time and are using the internet so that's not really an issue.
I know there is a small message if one happens to look in the messages tab that there is a new one available but that's kind of useless ;-)
What whould happen if a security flaw was found in BOINC (or the OpenSSL/lib.... etc part) and they needed updating or projects needed the newer functionality.
So why has it never been used?

Hi,
I am new to BOINC and I'm loving it, but I was wondering: are any plans for BOINC to use the powerful new age GPU's and PhysX processors that are perfect for floating point computations? I know Stanford's Folding@home is testing GPU crunching ability, but they are only supporting a single ATI card. I've got an overclocked Nvidia 7900GT that I would love to put to work, but nobody is offering a way for me to do that.
Also, as a request, the ability to simply choose which of the downloaded data you want your computer to work on instead of just the auto choosing that goes on now would be nice.

I can answer the last one,

ATI(AMD) have asked BOINC if they would like help, though it would be the projects that would need the help if the GPU is capable. NVIDIA would probably need to jump in if your(we) are going to get it running on that, or somebody like Microsoft developes an easy to use API (Accelerator in research ?)

As for PhysX, we (some members in the forum) contacted them from Rosetta@home and had no real rosponse.

Rosetta@Home are in talks with Microsoft for the XBOX360 though, apparently.