BOINC 6.10.11 released for testing for Windows, Windows x64 and Macintosh
4 October 2009: BOINC 6.10.11 released for Linux and Linux x64

Rom Walton wrote:

Howdy Folks,

This release fixes a crashing bug that was discovered yesterday. The
crash happened when <no_cpus> was set to zero.

Please log test results to http://boinc.berkeley.edu/alpha/

Thanks in advance.


----- Rom

This is a development version of BOINC. Do not use it if you do not plan to use it for Alpha or Beta testing. Expect parts of it to be broken, or in the least to work in a different way than you are used to.

REMINDER TO ALL ALPHA TESTERS:
It's far easier for us to fix problems if you send message logs with the appropriate flags set. The main flags are:

<cpu_sched_debug>: problems involving the choice of applications to run.
<work_fetch_debug>: problems involving work fetch (which projects are asked for work, and how much).
<rr_simulation>: problems involving jobs being run in high-priority mode.

Use these flags from the cc_config.xml file.

Report any problems you get with it to the Alpha email list. This list needs registration. Reporting about it on these forums does not make any sense as the developers HARDLY read these forums.


Change Log:

- client: fix crash with <ncpus>0</ncpus>

- client: fix bug in coproc summary string.

BOINC 6.10.12 released for testing for Windows, Windows x64

This is a development version of BOINC. Do not use it if you do not plan to use it for Alpha or Beta testing. Expect parts of it to be broken, or in the least to work in a different way than you are used to.

REMINDER TO ALL ALPHA TESTERS:
It's far easier for us to fix problems if you send message logs with the appropriate flags set. The main flags are:

<cpu_sched_debug>: problems involving the choice of applications to run.
<work_fetch_debug>: problems involving work fetch (which projects are asked for work, and how much).
<rr_simulation>: problems involving jobs being run in high-priority mode.

Use these flags from the cc_config.xml file.

Report any problems you get with it to the Alpha email list. This list needs registration. Reporting about it on these forums does not make any sense as the developers HARDLY read these forums.

Change Log:

Rom 2 October 2009
- client: fix crashing bug introduced in [trac]changeset:18605[/trac]

Rom 5 october 2009
- client: if downloaded project list file is garbage, ignore it.

- all: accept <foo /> as an XML bool

- client: Apparently it is valid for the autoproxy to return successful API completeion but a null proxy list. Check for the null instead of crashing.

- client: only support one of the ati13* plan classes at a time. A couple users had not updated their amdcal* runtime libraries after upgrading catalyst drivers. This was leading to crashes of the project applications when work was supplied looking for the old DLL names.

- client: fix a handle leak I just introduced. (From: Andreas a.k.a Gipsel)

- lib: Fix memory/resource leak. (From Nicolás Alvarez)

- lib: Add additional ATI descriptions.

- lib: Fix some inaccurate ATI capabilities in certain cards. (From: Andreas a.k.a Gipsel)

- lib: Fix memory/resource leak. (From Nicolás Alvarez) (reprise)

- client: restore calDeviceGetInfo(), add its info to COPROC_ATI struct (some plan class might need to know this).

- Code cleanup.

- client: better behavior if a GPU goes away:
1) if an APP_VERSION is missing a coprocessor, don't delete it and its files. (If the coprocessor returns, we won't need to re-download)

2) if a RESULT uses an app version that is missing a coprocessor, abort it (rather than deleting it). The client will report the result on the next scheduler RPC, and the server will make a new instance.

- client: fix bug where if you change project "no CPU/NVIDIA/ATI" prefs and update, the change wouldn't take effect until client restart.

- client: fix bug in enforcement of "no CPU/NVIDIA/ATI" prefs

- client: make the order of the result vector consistent with the order used to select coproc jobs

- client: improve coproc_debug messages

- client: if a task is running, uses a GPU, and the system has >1 GPU, append text to its resource string saying which GPU it's using

- manager: tweak Task properties text

- DIAG: Suspend threads right before extracting their context and then resume them afterwards. Otherwise we could end up in a deadlock state where both the main thread and a support thread are attempting to use the same system resource. In the last situation it was way down in Winsock.

- DIAG: Don't resume after the thread has been suspended, otherwise the thread stack may be trashed after extracting the context. This should still be okay though as by the time the diagnostics framework has gotten here it has already downloaded all the symbols it'll need.

Tag for 6.10.12 release, all platforms boinc_core_release_6_10_12

BOINC 6.10.13 released for testing for Windows, Windows x64, Linux, Linux x64 and Macintosh

Rom Walton wrote:

Howdy Folks,

This release contains logic for handling the missing GPU in a better way. Some more changes are coming for this issue, but they probably won't make it in for the first public release.

This release also refines handling the ATI GPU a bit.

If all goes well this release will become the first 6.10 public release, to that end I'll be turning on the automated emails describing our testing progress again. I want to see it get to 90%+ before a public release.

Please log test results to http://boinc.berkeley.edu/alpha/ and report bugs to this email list.

Thanks in advance.


----- Rom

This is a development version of BOINC. Do not use it if you do not plan to use it for Alpha or Beta testing. Expect parts of it to be broken, or in the least to work in a different way than you are used to.

REMINDER TO ALL ALPHA TESTERS:
It's far easier for us to fix problems if you send message logs with the appropriate flags set. The main flags are:

<cpu_sched_debug>: problems involving the choice of applications to run.
<work_fetch_debug>: problems involving work fetch (which projects are asked for work, and how much).
<rr_simulation>: problems involving jobs being run in high-priority mode.

Use these flags from the cc_config.xml file.


Report any problems you get with it to the Alpha email list. This list needs registration. Reporting about it on these forums does not make any sense as the developers HARDLY read these forums.

Change Log:

Rom 5 october 2009
- client: Fix crash that was introduced 7 months ago. (From Nicolás Alvarez)

- client: Fix a missed checkin that prevents a crash during autoproxy detection.

Tag for 6.10.13 release, all platforms boinc_core_release_6_10_13

BOINC 6.10.14 released for testing for Windows, Windows x64 and Macintosh

This is a development version of BOINC. Do not use it if you do not plan to use it for Alpha or Beta testing. Expect parts of it to be broken, or in the least to work in a different way than you are used to.

REMINDER TO ALL ALPHA TESTERS:
It's far easier for us to fix problems if you send message logs with the appropriate flags set. The main flags are:

<cpu_sched_debug>: problems involving the choice of applications to run.
<work_fetch_debug>: problems involving work fetch (which projects are asked for work, and how much).
<rr_simulation>: problems involving jobs being run in high-priority mode.

Use these flags from the cc_config.xml file.


Report any problems you get with it to the Alpha email list. This list needs registration. Reporting about it on these forums does not make any sense as the developers HARDLY read these forums.

Change log for 6.10.14

Rom 7 October 2009
- MGR: Fix the Statistics page Save/Restore project display feature.

Charlie 8 October 2009
- MGR: If aborting multiple tasks, ask "Are you sure?" only once.

Rom 16 October 2009
- client: Fix crash that was introduced 7 months ago. (From Nicolás Alvarez)

- client: remove redundant 0s in job log

- client: add --unsigned_apps_ok cmdline option and <unsigned_apps_ok> config option. This tells the client to allow unsigned apps. For testing. No file xfers or other network traffic will be allowed if set.

- client: add <exit_after_finish> option (same as cmdline flag)

- client: add <skip_cpu_benchmarks> option (same as cmdline flag)

- client: print message if abort past-deadline unstarted job

- client: improve message when have NVIDIA drivers but no GPU

- client: if anonymous platform description (app_info.xml) doesn't specify FLOPS for a GPU app, assume that it runs at CPU peak speed rather than GPU peak speed. Better to be conservative, otherwise job might be aborted due to time limit exceeded.

- client: on startup, if a coproc needed by a job is missing, set a "coproc_missing" flag rather than aborting the job. If use removes a GPU board while there's a large queue of GPU jobs, they'll stay queued (until their deadline passes).

Note: this doesn't fix the situation where user connects via Remote Desktop while GPU jobs are running or queued. We should check for Remote Desktop every minute or so, and stop GPU jobs.

- client: the get_all_projects_list() RPC doesn't require auth

- client: don't multiply checkpoint interval (i.e., "disk interval" pref) by # processors.

- actually, make it "Tasks checkpoint to disk at most every ..." and change it in the advanced prefs dialog too

- LIB: Make the is_remote_desktop compilable for all VS versions and SKUs.

- MGR: Fix initial first connection problem on startup. I'm not sure why it was only happening at startup, there might have been a few crashes because of this issue as well. The basic problem is that wxWidgets had an exception handler around the initial frame creation and when the first GUI RPC was issued to detect whether or not we were atached to an account manager during menu creation the GUI thread would go about doing idle processing while waiting for the GUI RPC thread to initialize. During this time the frame pointer is NULL and was getting dereferenced which would halt window construction and stay there until some other event was fired.

- MGR: Initial dose of code cleanup and shuffling. Order the menu functions in the order in which they are displayed in the menu.

- client: address the situation where GPUs become unusable for certain periods (e.g. when Remote Desktop is used on Win).

* add is_usable() member function to COPROC.

Currently this just calls the respective (CUDA or CAL) initialization function. We need to check whether this works and/or causes problems.

* in enforce_schedule(), check whether usability has changed for each GPU type.

If we've gone from usable to unusable, flag all jobs for that GPU as coproc_missing (so they won't get run, and will quit if they're running). If we've gone from unusable to usable, clear the flag.

This should deal with all cases except where the client is started up with GPUs unusable.

- client: bug fixes to the above. Don't fetch work for an unable resource.

- update cal.h to current ATI code

- client/scheduler: standardize the FLOPS estimate between NVIDIA and ATI. Make them both peak FLOPS, according to the formula supplied by the manufacturer.

The impact on the client is minor:

* the startup message describing the GPU
* the weight of the resource type in computing long-term debt

On the server, I changed the example app_plan() function to assume that app FLOPS is 20% of peak FLOPS (that's about what it is for SETI@home).

- client: the weight of GPU debt in computing total debt should be (estimated throughput of all GPUs)/(estimated throughput of all CPUs) rather than the ratio of 1 GPU to 1 CPU. This change will hopefully cause ratios of granted credit to more closely match resource shares.

- client: multi-thread jobs were being given too high priority; in particular, they were preempting jobs in the middle of time slice.

Solution:
1) don't use MT in the sort order defined by more_important().
2) add a 2nd reordering in which MT jobs are moved ahead of non-MT jobs, but only if #CPUs used is < #CPUs (see promote_multi_thread_jobs())

- client: the seqno of jobs in progress but not selected was being set to zero. It should be runnable_jobs.size(). This could potentially cause wrong scheduling decisions.

Tag for 6.10.14 release, all platforms boinc_core_release_6_10_14

Charlie 16 October 2009
- MGR: Fix build break on Mac

BOINC 6.10.15 released for testing for Windows, Windows x64 And Macintosh

Rom Walton wrote:

Howdy Folks,

Major fixes for this release are:

1. Startup problems on reboot should be fixed. Everybody should reboot at least once and verify that the manager can start the client at logon.

2. The introduction of a limbo state when the GPU disappears. Task instances should error out if they go past deadline.

3. We introduced some code to detect Remote Desktop and to move GPU jobs into limbo until the user signs back into the console. The original detection code is where the .13 client was crashing, the new code doesn't appear to work correctly. If I can figure out what is going wrong I'll do another release for that.

Please give items 1 and 2 a few tries. Changing driver versions and that should trigger #2.

Please log test results to http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ and bug reports here.


----- Rom Walton

This is a development version of BOINC. Do not use it if you do not plan to use it for Alpha or Beta testing. Expect parts of it to be broken, or in the least to work in a different way than you are used to.

REMINDER TO ALL ALPHA TESTERS:
It's far easier for us to fix problems if you send message logs with the appropriate flags set. The main flags are:

<cpu_sched_debug>: problems involving the choice of applications to run.
<work_fetch_debug>: problems involving work fetch (which projects are asked for work, and how much).
<rr_simulation>: problems involving jobs being run in high-priority mode.

Use these flags from the cc_config.xml file.


Report any problems you get with it to the Alpha email list. This list needs registration. Reporting about it on these forums does not make any sense as the developers HARDLY read these forums.


Charlie 16 October 2009
- MGR: Fix build break on Mac

Rom 19 October 2009
- client: Use is_remote_desktop() instead of the various GPU functions to determine when the client software has been switched into Remote Desktop mode and shutsdown GPU apps. This will prevent App crashes.

Tag for 6.10.15 release, all platforms boinc_core_release_6_10_15

BOINC 6.10.16 released for Windows and Windows x64, Linux and Linux x64

Rom Walton wrote:

This release has the fix for Remote Desktop detection.

After you sign into a machine with Remote Desktop, BOINC will shut down any GPU jobs it has in progress and will not start any new GPU jobs within one minute. BOINC will not attempt to start any GPU jobs until somebody logs back into the console.

----- Rom

This is a development version of BOINC. Do not use it if you do not plan to use it for Alpha or Beta testing. Expect parts of it to be broken, or in the least to work in a different way than you are used to.

REMINDER TO ALL ALPHA TESTERS:
It's far easier for us to fix problems if you send message logs with the appropriate flags set. The main flags are:

<cpu_sched_debug>: problems involving the choice of applications to run.
<work_fetch_debug>: problems involving work fetch (which projects are asked for work, and how much).
<rr_simulation>: problems involving jobs being run in high-priority mode.

Use these flags from the cc_config.xml file.


Report any problems you get with it to the Alpha email list. This list needs registration. Reporting about it on these forums does not make any sense as the developers HARDLY read these forums.


Change log:

- client: Use the ANSI version of WTSQuerySessionInformation to determine if Remote Desktop is in use.

BOINC 6.6.41 release for Windows, Windows x64, Linux and Linux x64

This is a development version of BOINC. Do not use it if you do not plan to use it for Alpha or Beta testing. Expect parts of it to be broken, or in the least to work in a different way than you are used to.

REMINDER TO ALL ALPHA TESTERS:
It's far easier for us to fix problems if you send message logs with the appropriate flags set. The main flags are:

<cpu_sched_debug>: problems involving the choice of applications to run.
<work_fetch_debug>: problems involving work fetch (which projects are asked for work, and how much).
<rr_simulation>: problems involving jobs being run in high-priority mode.

Use these flags from the cc_config.xml file.

Rom 20 October 2009
- client (Linux): when launching apps, put a relative path to the executable (../../projects/x/y) into argv[0], not just the executable filename. Apparently the new NVIDIA drivers have a bug that cause CUDA apps to crash unless this is done.

- MGR: Fix initial first connection problem on startup. I'm not sure why it was only happening at startup, there might have been a few crashes because of this issue as well. The basic problem is that wxWidgets had an exception handler around the initial frame creation and when the first GUI RPC was issues to detect whether or not we were attached to an account manager during menu creation the GUI thread would go about doing idle processing while waiting for the GUI RPC thread to initialize. During this time the frame pointer is NULL and was getting dereferenced which would halt window construction and stay there until some other event was fired.

Tag for 6.6.41 release, all platforms
boinc_core_release_6_6_41

Please test this version with projects that return zero byte files, such as Lattice and Sztaki and let the developers know if it works. You can post about this version in the forums, we will put through all test reports to the developers.

BOINC 6.10.17 released for Windows, Windows x64, Linux, Linux x64 and Macintosh

Rom Walton wrote:

Howdy Folks,

Well we got some really good test results from the 6.10.16 builds for Windows and Linux and the 6.10.14/6.10.13 for the Mac. This build fixes a problem with a missing keyboard shortcut on the Mac (To go from the simple view to the advanced view).

This build and future builds will no longer install on Windows 9x based computers. We stopped supporting Win9x some time ago but I forgot to prohibit installing on them, this would have caused some serious support headaches as I have been removing the backwards compatibility code in the 6.8 and 6.10 builds.

If nothing goes wrong, we'll ship this release to the public on Friday.

Please report test results to http://boinc.berkeley.edu/alpha/ and any showstoppers to the alpha email list.


----- Rom

This is a development version of BOINC. Do not use it if you do not plan to use it for Alpha or Beta testing. Expect parts of it to be broken, or in the least to work in a different way than you are used to.

REMINDER TO ALL ALPHA TESTERS:
It's far easier for us to fix problems if you send message logs with the appropriate flags set. The main flags are:

<cpu_sched_debug>: problems involving the choice of applications to run.
<work_fetch_debug>: problems involving work fetch (which projects are asked for work, and how much).
<rr_simulation>: problems involving jobs being run in high-priority mode.

Use these flags from the cc_config.xml file.

Report any problems you get with it to the Alpha email list. This list needs registration. Reporting about it on these forums does not make any sense as the developers HARDLY read these forums.


Change Log:

Rom 21 October 2009
- WINSETUP: Remove the 'SeDebugPrivilege' prev from the list of privs the installer sets for BOINC.

Rom 23 October 2009
- MGR: Change the shortcut key for switching to the simple view.

- client: If an administrator has deployed proxy settings at runtime or during a VPN connection allow the client to read the new proxy configuration from the registry.

Charlie 26 October 2009
- MGR: Add View menu with Cmd+Shift+A to Mac Simple GUI for disabled users.

Rom 26 October 2009
- WININSTALL: Abort install if Win9x detected.

Tag for 6.10.17 release, all platforms
boinc_core_release_6_10_17

BOINC 6.10.18 released for testing for Windows, Windows x64

This is a development version of BOINC. Do not use it if you do not plan to use it for Alpha or Beta testing. Expect parts of it to be broken, or in the least to work in a different way than you are used to.

REMINDER TO ALL ALPHA TESTERS:
It's far easier for us to fix problems if you send message logs with the appropriate flags set. The main flags are:

<cpu_sched_debug>: problems involving the choice of applications to run.
<work_fetch_debug>: problems involving work fetch (which projects are asked for work, and how much).
<rr_simulation>: problems involving jobs being run in high-priority mode.

Use these flags from the cc_config.xml file.


Report any problems you get with it to the Alpha email list. This list needs registration. Reporting about it on these forums does not make any sense as the developers HARDLY read these forums.


Charlie 4 November 2009
- Mac Installer: set most files in BOINC Data directory world-readable

Rom 5 November 2009
- MGR: Use mixed case keyboard accelerators instead of all caps, the wxGetTranslation function is case sensitive even though the rest of the menu code does not care about case.

Rom 6 November 2009
- Update to OpenSSL 0.9.8l

All new translations for all languages are included in this release.

Tag for 6.10.18 release, all platforms
boinc_core_release_6_10_18

The new Nvidia API that BOINC 6.10 uses has a minimum driver set of CUDA 2.2, 185.85.

If your present drivers are below this version, update first.
If your present drivers are below this and they're the last available for your hardware, you cannot update to 6.10; stay at the last 6.6.x version for your OS.

Spread the word.

BOINC 6.10.19 released for Windows, Windows x64

This is a development version of BOINC. Do not use it if you do not plan to use it for Alpha or Beta testing. Expect parts of it to be broken, or in the least to work in a different way than you are used to.

REMINDER TO ALL ALPHA TESTERS:
It's far easier for us to fix problems if you send message logs with the appropriate flags set. The main flags are:

<cpu_sched_debug>: problems involving the choice of applications to run.
<work_fetch_debug>: problems involving work fetch (which projects are asked for work, and how much).
<rr_simulation>: problems involving jobs being run in high-priority mode.

Use these flags from the cc_config.xml file.

Report any problems you get with it to the Alpha email list. This list needs registration. Reporting about it on these forums does not make any sense as the developers HARDLY read these forums.

Change Log:

10 November 2009
Charlie
- Mac installer: fix crash bug in AddRemoveUser utility

18 November 2009
Charlie
- Mac installer: fix 2 installer bugs

Rom
- Move URL-related code to a new file

- Remove stuff related to SOCKS version, since we only support 5

- client: parse HTTP_PROXY strings of the form http://username:[email protected]:port/file (we weren't parsing the username and password before).

- client: fix the feature that lets you exclude a list of hosts from going the proxy.

- client: the checkin of 15 Oct related to multi-thread apps didn't work due to a typo.

- client: if <ncpus> is present in cc_config.xml, we're supposed to act as if there were that many physical CPUs. In particular, we need to set host_info.p_ncpus to that value, since that's what is reported in scheduler requests.

- client: add --no_gpus cmdline option

- client: avoid spurious error message when parsing <proxy_info> from cc_config.xml

- client: fix bug that crashed client if client_state.xml had garbage within <file_info>

- client (Mac/Linux): if the NVIDIA or ATI detection functions cause a SIGSEGV, recover from it.

- client: the handling of GUI RPCs was inconsistent; some expected <request>, some expected <request/>, and some would accept either. Changed them all to accept either.

NOTE: this means no request can be a substring of another

- client (Unix): use waitpid(-1, ...) instead of waitpid(0, ...). This reaps child processes even if they've changed their process group. (from Michael Melanson)

- client: handle no_cpu, no_cuda, no_ati prefs correctly when they're in venue-specific prefs.

- On Windows treat all SEH exceptions as C++ style exceptions.
NOTE: I'll need to do a little more research and adjust the diagnostics stuff later. I believe that the diagnostics framework will now always report an unhandled C++ exception for things like an Access Violation.

- client: On Windows, recover from an Access Violation if/when the GPU functions access violate.

- Backout previous change. The problem doesn't yet manifest itself on Windows and the change has too many implications.

- client: fix (yesterday's) checkin to remove restrictions on GUI RPC request elements. You can now use either <foo></foo> or <foo/> for empty request messages.

- GUI RPC client library: fix double-free bug. it's not clear how this ever worked.

- client: if a project has a no_{cpu,cuda,ati} pref set, don't accumulate debt for that resource. Otherwise we'll accumulate debt forever, pushing other projects into overworked state.

- Mac compile fix

- client: add new config options:
<ignore_cuda_dev>n</ignore_cuda_dev>
<ignore_ati_dev>n</ignore_ati_dev>

To ignore (not use) specific NVIDIA or ATI GPUs. You can ignore more than one.

- client: add <exclusive_gpu_app> option: suspend GPU usage when particular apps are running

- client: fix exclusive_gpu_app feature so that it responds within 10 sec instead of 60 sec.

- MGR: Remove bitmap that is part of the Wizard.

- MGR: Add basic support for displaying the Nvidia and ATI logos for projects which support Nvidia and ATI GPUs. Todo: add descriptions and project images when selected.

- MGR: Add descriptions for each project as a tooltip and add an icon for multicore capable projects.

- MGR: Fix the minimum wizard size problem introduced by removing the wizard graphic.

- MGR: Better formatting and layout of the project descriptions within the list box instead of relying on the tooltips.

- fix build breaks

Tag for 6.10.19 release, all platforms
boinc_core_release_6_10_19

BOINC 6.10.19 released for Macintosh

Change Log, besides those above in the Windows release log:

18 November 2009
Charlie
- Mac: Fix build breaks

19 November 2009
Charlie
- Mac MGR: don't show exit confirmation dialog if shutting down or restarting system

- Mac Uninstaller: change owner and group of BOINC Data to those of the user running the uninstaller

- MGR: Attach Wizard's accessibility support ignores extra panels in several pages to improve clarity for disabled users

- Mac MGR: Add accessibility support for disabled users

Milestone 6.10 completed.

BOINC 6.10.19 released for Linux and Linux x64

This is a development version of BOINC. Do not use it if you do not plan to use it for Alpha or Beta testing. Expect parts of it to be broken, or in the least to work in a different way than you are used to.

REMINDER TO ALL ALPHA TESTERS:
It's far easier for us to fix problems if you send message logs with the appropriate flags set. The main flags are:

<cpu_sched_debug>: problems involving the choice of applications to run.
<work_fetch_debug>: problems involving work fetch (which projects are asked for work, and how much).
<rr_simulation>: problems involving jobs being run in high-priority mode.

Use these flags from the cc_config.xml file.

Report any problems you get with it to the Alpha email list. This list needs registration. Reporting about it on these forums does not make any sense as the developers HARDLY read these forums.

Change log in previous 6.10.19 platform releases.

BOINC 6.10.20 released for testing for Macintosh

This is a development version of BOINC. Do not use it if you do not plan to use it for Alpha or Beta testing. Expect parts of it to be broken, or in the least to work in a different way than you are used to.

REMINDER TO ALL ALPHA TESTERS:
It's far easier for us to fix problems if you send message logs with the appropriate flags set. The main flags are:

<cpu_sched_debug>: problems involving the choice of applications to run.
<work_fetch_debug>: problems involving work fetch (which projects are asked for work, and how much).
<rr_simulation>: problems involving jobs being run in high-priority mode.

Use these flags from the cc_config.xml file.

Report any problems you get with it to the Alpha email list. This list needs registration. Reporting about it on these forums does not make any sense as the developers HARDLY read these forums.

Change log:

20 November 2009
Rom
- Fix DLLs with missing file version resources

November 23 2009
Charlie
- MGR: In Simple View, Mac screen reader tells user to switch to Advanced View

25 November 2009
Charlie
- MGR: Implement Mac accessibility for Statistics and Disk tabs

- Mac Sandbox: attempt to fix bug where Manager reports that admin user is not authorized to run BOINC

26 Bovember 2009
Charlie
- MGR: Don't localize keyboard shortcut for Close Window

- MGR: Tweaks to Mac accessibility

- Mac Installer: Check for our users and groups having IDs which conflict with other users and groups on the system

30 November 2009
Rom
- MGR: Switch back to tooltips for descriptions.

- client: show more general prefs on startup

- manager: show status for jobs aborted because not started by deadline

- client: use [wfd] consistently

- client: add <cpu_sched_status> log flag. This tells you what's running, not why.

- client: add <std_debug> log flag; changes in STD The above are to let you log just stuff relevant to debt. Right now I'm not sure why we need STD at all.

Tag for 6.10.20 release, all platforms
boinc_core_release_6_10_20

BOINC 6.10.21 released for testing for Windows, Windows x64 and Macintosh

This is a development version of BOINC. Do not use it if you do not plan to use it for Alpha or Beta testing. Expect parts of it to be broken, or in the least to work in a different way than you are used to.

REMINDER TO ALL ALPHA TESTERS:
It's far easier for us to fix problems if you send message logs with the appropriate flags set. The main flags are:

<cpu_sched_debug>: problems involving the choice of applications to run.
<work_fetch_debug>: problems involving work fetch (which projects are asked for work, and how much).
<rr_simulation>: problems involving jobs being run in high-priority mode.

Use these flags from the cc_config.xml file.


Report any problems you get with it to the Alpha email list. This list needs registration. Reporting about it on these forums does not make any sense as the developers HARDLY read these forums.

Change Log:

November 30 2009
Rom
- MGR: Fix-up tools tips for various elements in the project list control.

- MGR: Hitting the back button on the ProjectInfo page in the wizard when you have highlighted a project you are already attached to, should not cause the 'you are already attached to project' dialog to be displayed. This also appears to have fixed the random page being displayed when the dialog has been dismissed.

- small bug fix

BOINC 6.10.22 released for testing for all platforms

SKIP THIS ONE. Big GPU detection bug

This is a development version of BOINC. Do not use it if you do not plan to use it for Alpha or Beta testing. Expect parts of it to be broken, or in the least to work in a different way than you are used to.

REMINDER TO ALL ALPHA TESTERS:
It's far easier for us to fix problems if you send message logs with the appropriate flags set. The main flags are:

<cpu_sched_debug>: problems involving the choice of applications to run.
<work_fetch_debug>: problems involving work fetch (which projects are asked for work, and how much).
<rr_simulation>: problems involving jobs being run in high-priority mode.
<std_debug>: problems involving short term debt.

Use these flags from the cc_config.xml file.

Report any problems you get with it to the Alpha email list. This list needs registration. Reporting about it on these forums does not make any sense as the developers HARDLY read these forums.

2 December 2009
Charlie
- Mac Installer: Rearrange License Agreement so Restrictions section is visible without scrolling and is in bold text

3 December 2009
Charlie
- Mac client: update build scripts, XCode project for curl-7.19.7 and c-ares 1.7.0

4 December 2009
Charlie
- Mac MGR: Fix crashes on OS 10.3.9 due to accessibility APIs implemented on OS 10.4

5 December 2009
Charlie
- Mac: Update XCode project; fix installer not starting Manager on OS 10.6

7 December 2009
Charlie
- Mac installer: If user tries to install on OS 10.3.9, display an alert and quit

8 December 2009
Rom
- MGR: Filter project list icons so that the icon will only be displayed if the volunteer has the hardware to go with it.

- client: apply the LTD normalizing offset to all projects, even non-debt-eligible ones.

- client: message tweak on <std_debug> use.

- client: change how short term debt is updated.

Old: it's based entirely on CPU time.

So a GPU project, whose app uses only a fraction of a CPU, accrues positive debt. This is OK if the project has only GPU apps, since STD is not (currently) used for GPU scheduling. But some projects have both CPU and GPU apps.

New: STD is based on total processing.

It has terms for each resource type. The notion of "runnable resource share" is specific to a type.

Note: the notion of "resource share fraction" appears in a couple of other places:

* it's passed to apps in app_init_data.xml
* it's passed in scheduler requests. It should be broken down by resource type in these cases too. Note to self: do this later.

- Tweaking messages.

- client: fix divide-by-zero bug in STD code

- fix compile warnings

- client: Add offset to LTD of non-eligible projects only if the offset is positive.

- client: some cmdline args set members of config.
However, config was being cleared after cmdline args were parsed, so these args had no effect. Instead, clear config before parsing cmdline

- client: my STD-related checkin of Dec 1 was bad.
It computed an "overall STD" as the sum of CPU and coprocs, weighted by the coproc's speed, as we do for LTD. This was the wrong idea; in the presence of GPUs, STDs quickly get pushed to +- 1 day and are truncated there.

New scheme: STD is maintained per (resource type, project). This fixes the above problem, and it opens to door to round-robin scheduling of GPUs.

- client: the calculation of "anticipated debt" was scaling by relative resource share. This wasn't correct, seems to me.

- client: rename "debt" to "long_term_debt" in a few places (but not in the client state file, for compatibility)

- compile fixes, message tweaks

- client: fix bug in debt calculation

- client: <zero_debts> zeroes STD too

- client: scale STD limit by # instances

- client: sort out proxy_info mess. Source of proxy info (descending priority)

* GUI RPC (Manager or boinccmd)
This and only this is saved in state file. If neither HTTP nor SOCKS server name present, this is viewed as not present

* environment vars
* cc_config.xml

Show sources of proxy info in message log. If one is present but overridden, show a message to that effect.

This fixes a bug where someone had a proxy info env var and forgot about it. They got an erroneous message saying no proxy was being used.

- win compile fixes

- client: bug fixes to recent proxy info checkin

- code shuffle: move client-specific GPU code to a separate file

- more code shuffle: add COPROCS to HOST_INFO

- result of code shuffle: the HOST_INFO structure returned by the get_host_info() GUI RPC now contains GPU info

- client: don't set STDs for non-runnable projects to zero.
Let them float around with other projects. Fixes problem where, when a project finishes its last job and has a negative STD, it gets an unfair increment by being set to zero.

- client: scheduling tweak.

Old: if a project has RR sim deadline misses, select jobs to run high-priority on the basis of:
1) deadline (earliest first)
2) estimated time to completion (least first)

This ignores whether jobs missed their deadline in RR sim, so it may choose to run a job that's actually in no danger of missing its deadline over one that is.

New: choose only jobs that miss their deadline in RR sim

BOINC 6.10.23 released for testing for all platforms

SKIP THIS ONE AS WELL. Big GPU detection bug not fixed yet!

This is a development version of BOINC. Do not use it if you do not plan to use it for Alpha or Beta testing. Expect parts of it to be broken, or in the least to work in a different way than you are used to.

REMINDER TO ALL ALPHA TESTERS:
It's far easier for us to fix problems if you send message logs with the appropriate flags set. The main flags are:

<cpu_sched_debug>: problems involving the choice of applications to run.
<work_fetch_debug>: problems involving work fetch (which projects are asked for work, and how much).
<rr_simulation>: problems involving jobs being run in high-priority mode.
<std_debug>: problems involving short term debt.

Use these flags from the cc_config.xml file.

Report any problems you get with it to the Alpha email list. This list needs registration. Reporting about it on these forums does not make any sense as the developers HARDLY read these forums.

8 December 2009
Rom
- fix initialization bug that made GPUs invisible

BOINC 6.10.24 released for testing for all Windows, Windows x64, Linux, Linux x64 and Macintosh

This one is "OK" apparently. :-)
Windows versions available, Linux and Mac are to follow.

This is a development version of BOINC. Do not use it if you do not plan to use it for Alpha or Beta testing. Expect parts of it to be broken, or in the least to work in a different way than you are used to.

REMINDER TO ALL ALPHA TESTERS:
It's far easier for us to fix problems if you send message logs with the appropriate flags set. The main flags are:

<cpu_sched_debug>: problems involving the choice of applications to run.
<work_fetch_debug>: problems involving work fetch (which projects are asked for work, and how much).
<rr_simulation>: problems involving jobs being run in high-priority mode.
<std_debug>: problems involving short term debt.

Use these flags from the cc_config.xml file.

Report any problems you get with it to the Alpha email list. This list needs registration. Reporting about it on these forums does not make any sense as the developers HARDLY read these forums.

8 December 2009
Rom
- fix GPU bug (again)

BOINC 6.10.25 released for testing for Windows, Windows x64 and Macintosh

This is a development version of BOINC. Do not use it if you do not plan to use it for Alpha or Beta testing. Expect parts of it to be broken, or in the least to work in a different way than you are used to.

REMINDER TO ALL ALPHA TESTERS:
It's far easier for us to fix problems if you send message logs with the appropriate flags set. The main flags are:

<cpu_sched_debug>: problems involving the choice of applications to run.
<work_fetch_debug>: problems involving work fetch (which projects are asked for work, and how much).
<rr_simulation>: problems involving jobs being run in high-priority mode.
<std_debug>: problems involving short term debt.

Use these flags from the cc_config.xml file.

Report any problems you get with it to the Alpha email list. This list needs registration. Reporting about it on these forums does not make any sense as the developers HARDLY read these forums.

Change Log:

8 December 2009
Rom
- fix GPU bug (again)

9 December 2009
Charlie
- Mac: Update XCode project for new files cs_proxy.cpp,h, coproc_detect.cpp

13 December 2009
Charlie
- Mac command-line install: add .txt extension to copyright files

14 December 2009
Charlie
- SS: Allow users to set screensaver durations from ss control panel


15 December 2009
Charlie
- Mac SS: In Mac screensaver control panel say "overview screensaver" not "BOINC screensaver"

16 December 2009
Charlie
- Mac Uninstaller: Properly change screensaver settings under OS 10.6

Rom
- client: STD for a device with N instances can increase or decrease at N times real time. My checkin of 7 Dec reflects this by changing the STD limits to +- N*MAX_STD. This looks like a bug to users. Instead, scale that rate of STD change by 1/N, and keep the old limits of +- MAX_STD

- client/manager: first whack at a "snooze GPU" button

- client/manager: finish "snooze GPU" button

- manager: fix bug in the above

- client: deal with situation where GPU has enough RAM to run job, but when we actually run the job not enough GPU RAM is free, so the application fails. This can cause a large number of jobs to fail.
Solution:

* app_plan() can specify the GPU RAM requirements of an app version. This is passed to the client in a new field <gpu_ram> of the <app_version> element.

* prior to starting or restarting a GPU app, the client checks the amount of free RAM on the particular GPU. If it's not enough for the app version,
the client doesn't start it, and arranges for the scheduler to ignore it for 5 minutes (by which point there might be more free GPU RAM)

Notes:
1) this change will have effect only when both client and scheduler are updated.

2) the check is done in enforce_schedule(), rather than schedule_cpus(),
because only at that point have we assigned a specific GPU to the job.

3) there's another case to deal with: a GPU app's malloc of GPU RAM fails in the middle of the job. Currently the job fails. I plan to add an API call boinc_temporary_exit(x) so that the job can exit and potentially restart in x seconds. (In principle this mechanism is sufficient for all cases, but it could lead to a lot of starting/exiting, so the current change is worthwhile).

- manager: add GPU always/auto/never menu items

- boinccmd: fix output of --get_disk_usage

- manager: bug fixes

- client: maintain mean STD at zero over all projects, not just runnable ones

- client: add an API function boinc_temporary_exit(dt). This exits the app with status zero and no finish file, so the client will restart it.
It creates a file "temporary_exit" containing dt. The (new) client reads this file and will postpone scheduling the job again for dt seconds. Old clients will treat it as a premature exit, and potentially try to reschedule the job immediately.

This function is intended for GPU applications that fail to allocate GPU RAM, presumably because a non-GPU application has it allocated. We don't want the job to fail, and we want to wait for a while before trying the allocation again.

- client: Fix bugs (indicated by compiler warnings) in recent check-ins. David: please confirm these changes.

- client: ATI: call calShutdown() when done. Otherwise Lenovo can't switch to low-power GPU

- client/manager: show coprocessor short-term debts

- client: fix bug in insufficient video RAM feature

- client: improve CPU sched debug msgs

- client: fix "temporary exit" feature

- client: typo fix

- boinccmd: compile fix

- Cleanup various warnings

- WINSCR: Implement new configuration dialog with new parameters

- WINSCR: Remove crufty code

- WINSCR: Update copyrights in resource files

- Update copyright information

Tag for 6.10.25 release, all platforms
boinc_core_release_6_10_25

Development versions of BOINC released for testing for all platforms

This is a development version of BOINC. Do not use it if you do not plan to use it for Alpha or Beta testing. Expect parts of it to be broken, or in the least to work in a different way than you are used to.

REMINDER TO ALL ALPHA TESTERS:
It's far easier for us to fix problems if you send message logs with the appropriate flags set. The main flags are:

<cpu_sched_debug>: problems involving the choice of applications to run.
<work_fetch_debug>: problems involving work fetch (which projects are asked for work, and how much).
<rr_simulation>: problems involving jobs being run in high-priority mode.
<std_debug>: problems involving short term debt.

Use these flags from the cc_config.xml file.

Report any problems you get with it to the Alpha email list. This list needs registration. Reporting about it on these forums does not make any sense as the developers HARDLY read these forums.

Change Log:

6.10.26:

- client: add missing dlsym of cuMemGetInfo() on non_Windows platforms.

- MGR: fix another bug due to changes for Snow Leopard compatibility:
on OS 10.4.11 (Tiger) and perhaps others, when Automatic Login is set, getlogin() returns "root" for a time after the system is first booted, causing the Manager to think the user is not a member of group boinc_master. So check "USER" environment variable instead.

- Mac MGR: Call Mac accessibility calls GetViewDisplayName() instead of GetViewName() to announce localized tab names.

- client: Eliminate x86_64 Mac client; i386 client determines if system supports x86_64 applications and sets HOSTTYPE and platform accordingly. This allows us to link with the 32-bit CUDA libraries. The one other effect is that the benchmarks are run in 32-bit mode even on a 64-bit capable Mac.

- client: Async get_state RPC was not updating state.have_ati field.

- MGR: Rebuild Advanced Menu and Taskbar Menu after connecting to client, so GPU Activity and Snooze GPU items are displayed if needed.

- Mac: Fix bug in backtrace code which showed up only under OS 10.6.

- Mac installer: Add CUDA information to Mac ReadMe files.

6.10.27:

- client (Mac): it's DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH, not DYLIB_LIBRARY_PATH

- client: ATI available RAM wasn't being detected correctly

6.10.28:

- client sandbox: set LD_LIBRARY_PATH and DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH in switcher. For unknown reasons, the these 2 environment variables are not passed in to switcher, though all other environment variables do get propagated.

6.10.29:

- client (Mac): append /usr/local/cuda/lib to LD_LIBRARY_PATH and DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH

- client: show <cpu_sched> message when suspend/resume GPU activity

- client: there are oddball cases where the client has an app for which avg_ncpus > ncpus. Allow such jobs to run; otherwise nothing runs.

- client: in computing "anticipated" STD, scale by ninstances (from John McLeod)

- MGR: Deconflict menu item IDs.

- manager/client: show PID in task properties; add PID to RESULT structure in GUI RPC

- client: when parsing cc_config.xml, clear vectors so we don't end up with duplicates

- client: divide LTD deltas by ninstances, same as for STD. This is cosmetic - it won't affect work fetch, but it will prevent LTD from changing faster than real time

- client: add logic to work fetch so that each project will have enough jobs to use its share of resource instances. This avoids situations where e.g. on a 2-CPU system a project has 75% resource share and 1 CPU job, and its STD increases without bound.

Did a general cleanup of the logic for computing work request sizes (seconds and instances).

- client: Unix: if can't create client lock file, report ERR_OPEN rather than ERR_ALREADY_RUNNING
fixes #970

- client: fix format strings for ninstances (can be fraction now)

- client: scheduling problem:
* a project overestimates job FLOP counts
* the client starts jobs in EDF mode
* as job progresses and fraction done increases, its completion time estimate decreases until it's no longer a deadline miss.
* job gets preempted by other job from that project; you end up with lots of partly completed jobs.

Solution (I hope): if an app version has running jobs, compute a "temp DCF" for the app version, which is the min of dynamic/static estimates for its jobs. Apply this scaling factor to completion time estimates for unstarted jobs in RR simulation

- client: the estimation of remaining time of running jobs was wrong (how did this bug survive so long?)

- client: bug in ACTIVE_TASK::est_dur()

- client: work fetch fix: avoid sending null request in certain cases.

- client: add <stderr_head> config option; sends the first rather than last 64KB of stderr to server. This doesn't belong here; this choice should come from the server.

I may take this out later.

- client: small tweak to work fetch:
if project has crazy DCF, don't automatically request 1 sec; only request work if there's a shortfall.


6.10.30:

- Mac Sandbox: SetupAuthorizationExecuteWithPrivileges() forks to run chmod and chown, leaving zombie processes which can exceed the system-imposed limit of processes MAXUPRC for a user. Call waitpid() to clear these zombies.

- Mac Sandbox: fix comment in Mac_SA_Secure.sh script.

- Mac Installer: update, fix bugs in script for building GridRepublic Installer.

- client: tiny code shuffle

- API: fix crashing bug. Don't memset(0) APP_INIT_DATA; it contains HOST_INFO, which now contains COPROCS, which has a vector. Define a clear() for APP_INIT_DATA.

- client: initial checkin for "don't compute if CPU usage above X"

- client: finish the above. Should add the Adv Prefs dialog as well.

- lib: Don't allow the diagnostics threads to be suspended, if a crash happens within the remaining thread the process will deadlock.

- client simulator: further fiddling around. Not done.

- client simulator: done for now

- client: brute-force attempt at eliminating domino-effect preemption:
if job A is unstarted and EDF, and there's a job B that is later in the list, is started, has the same app version, and has the same arrival time, move A after B.

- client: remove the "temp_dcf" mechanism, which had the same goal but didn't work.

- client: in computing overall debt for a project, subtract a term that reflects pending work.
This should reduce repeated fetches from the same project.

- client simulator: tweaks

- client bug fixes

- client: when launching app, delete init_data.xml using switcher prior to trying to write it,
in case it's owned by another user (e.g., boinc_project)

- client: fix small bug that could interfere with work fetch on hosts with both NVIDIA and ATI GPU

- client: fix work fetch bug that prevented getting work from an overworked project, even if idle instance or major shortfall.

- client: remove debug msgs

- client: if a project has zero resource share, treat it as a "backup project":
fetch work from it only if there is an idle instance and no other projects have work.

- client: fix my last checkin

- client: allow zero resource share (needs project server software update to work! ATM only Seti@Home and BOINC Alpha have this code)

6.10.31:

- client: newer ATI drivers crash if struct_size isn't filled out before the structure is used.

6.10.32:
This release contains several work fetch and CPU/GPU scheduling issues as well as two new features. The new features are as follows:

1) Suspend computation if CPU usage exceeds a certain value. Basically if the overall CPU usage of non-BOINC related processes exceed the configured value BOINC suspends computation. I think the default value right now is 25%. Right now the value can be tweaked via web based preferences.

2) The long awaited for backup project mechanism has now been implemented. Projects with a resource share of 0 are considered backup projects.