Under Advanced->Preferences->Network usage tab there is the "Day-of-week override" with the seven weekdays.

What I would like is for network access to be allowed Mon.-Fri. 09:00-17:00 and not allowed at all Sat. and Sun.

What do I put into the Sat. & Sun. fields (or elsewhere) to cause this? Thanks. :^)

Switch to the Advanced view and then go to Advanced>Preferences>Network Usage there.

To stop weendend access, just leave Saturday and Sunday unchecked. You will need to fill in a start and stop time for access for the other days (per the balloon tip).

Alinator

What!!??

You mean this hasn't been addressed in all this time? Sheesh, then what's the point in having a day of week feature at all?

Now I remember why when I absolutely don't want a host talking to projects I block the sites at the firewall! ;-)

Alinator

This interface and how it responds to the instructions is flat screwed. By not ticking the saturday/sunday boxes, you have them assume the general daily instruction which if 00:00-00:00 means 24 hours on. Ticking a box is an override for the selected day of the week. There is no 'inverse' though originally the wording in early days of these prefs suggested so. The best you can do thus for sat/sun is for the overall (everyday) to be set for instance 00:01 to 00:02, i.e. 1 minute.

Crap... I was afraid of that. Yes, not much point if you can't specify a "null" interval where there is no communication on a particular day. I think it should be that if you have any weekday overrides set then if there are any unchecked then there's no allowed comm. on those days... this is the most intuitive option.

Thanks for the answer!

In theory you can disable networking for a day by setting the time range to 24:00-00:00 but the advanced preferences dialog gives an invalid format error because the validation only allows for hours up to 23.

You can manually set the network disable pattern you require by saving the following in global_prefs_override.xml in your BOINC data directory:

<global_preferences>
   <net_start_hour>9.000000</net_start_hour>
   <net_end_hour>17.000000</net_end_hour>
   <day_prefs>
      <day_of_week>0</day_of_week>
      <net_start_hour>24.000000</net_start_hour>
      <net_end_hour>0.000000</net_end_hour>
   </day_prefs>
   <day_prefs>
      <day_of_week>6</day_of_week>
      <net_start_hour>24.000000</net_start_hour>
      <net_end_hour>0.000000</net_end_hour>
   </day_prefs>
</global_preferences>

You'll need to click "Advanced - Read local prefs file" (or restart BOINC) to force BOINC to apply the changes.

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"The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Nice but the moment the local prefs are entered via the GUI again and saved you get an error message i.e. from thereon you're confined to manually editing the xml. Certainly when trying and setting the Network based on prefs and this time sequence got:

18/08/2009 15:37:06 Suspending network activity - time of day

So that's a good work around to actually schedule something I wanted for longer, set the general to 24:00-00:00 i.e. no scheduled contact except only on Sunday for a time segment I wanted on a special client.

Edit: A nice trick to include in the advanced BOINC hackers BFS quide till BOINC does go the 'intuitive' route ;>)

LOL...

Like that's ever going to happen! ;-)

Thanks to TL for refreshing my memory on the workaround for this little gotcha.

Alinator

You can manually set the network disable pattern you require by saving the following in global_prefs_override.xml in your BOINC data directory...

Nice workaround! Thanks and much appreciated.

Trac ticket #357 was opened 2 years ago for this problem. I've just posted a fix to the BOINC developers mailing list (ticket update has been disabled because of excessive spamming).

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"The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer