Sorry if this issue has been discussed already. Since I installed 6.10, boinc keeps asking my projects for GPU work only. Many projects dont have GPU WU, so I get the reply: No Work Available when their server status shows work units availabe (not GPU). How to I get Boinc to ask for both CPU & GPU work?
Sorceress

It'll do that automatically when it needs work for the CPU.

The GPU request you see will automatically back-off until it's done once every 24 hours. This one is only there in case the other projects start using a GPU application, then that work will come in automatically.

The GPU back-off will reset though when you click Update to do a manual update on any project.

One P.S: If you set up a cc_config.xml file in the past and set <ncpus>0</ncpus> in it, you will have disabled the CPU work request. Either remove the line, or change it to <ncpus>-1<ncpus> (minus one), save the file, restart BOINC.

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Have a good look at the messages BOINC puts out as it starts up. Often there's a clue in there, like "Preference limit number of CPUs to 0", in the case Jord mentions.

Hello,

Interesting thread. I can assure you I did never go sneaking or editing the cc_config.xml file, thus I got the famous line with ncpus = 0...

Just after upgrading to Boinc 6.10.18 (x64) on a QuadCore + GPU CUDA system, I saw the line "Preference limit number of CPUs to 0", then all projects only ask for GPU tasks... Thanks to your explanation, I stopped Boinc, modified cc_config with ncpus = -1, and hop tada! all projects ask again for both CPU and GPU tasks.

Are we sure that there isn't some glitch in the installation process, which could set the ncpus value to 0 by default?

By the way, on BAM work preferences form, which value match this ncpus value?

Regards.

Are we sure that there isn't some glitch in the installation process, which could set the ncpus value to 0 by default?

By the way, on BAM work preferences form, which value match this ncpus value?

None.

Pretty sure as BOINC doesn't install or make the cc_config.xml file. The user must at all times make and edit this file. You probably set <ncpus> in the cc_config.xml file when you were using BOINC 6.4.5 to 6.5.0, to use this trick to run with your complete number of CPUs plus GPUs without BOINC running the work only on either the one or the other.

When BOINC 6.6 came along, it had separate schedulers which could do that out of the box, so you set the line to zero.

At the end of 6.6's lifetime a change was made. It was made possible to use the GPUs only, not the CPUs. So <ncpus>0</ncpus> meant that you wanted to use zero CPUs, while <ncpus>-1</ncpus> meant for this line to be disabled.

But this change was never correctly back-ported to 6.6, it was very much available in 6.10, so when the time came for you to change to 6.10, your CPU preference went from all to nothing.

All on your own edits and doing. :-)

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BoincView has a (slightly clunky) way of creating and managing cc_config.xml files. It's a long time sine I used that particular feature (although I use BV itself constantly, I do the config files with notepad).

IIRC, BV comes with a cc_config.xml template file, and if you edit even one value, you get default settings for all the others too. Since some tags have been renamed or deprecated since BV was written, you tend to get parsing errors (unrecognised tags) and defaults whose meaning has changed. Anyone round here been using BoincView?

Ah - here's the culprit from BV's 'list_config.xml' file. Note that he's set a 'min' value:

        	<item>
                <tag>ncpus</tag>
                <name>Override number of CPUs</name>
            	<text>Act as if there were N CPUs: run N tasks at once. This is for debugging, i.e. to simulate 2 CPUs on a machine that has only 1. Don't use it to limit the number of CPUs used by BOINC; use general preferences instead.</text>
        		<type>integer</type>
                <default>0</default>
	            <min>0</min>
    	        <max>255</max>
        	</item>

Thanx for these clever responses. I learned something!

As I do not edit manually my config files, I think it's definitively BoincView which has made this change, since I have this combination on my station from ages!

Anyway, with these explanations, I better understand the scheduling mechanisms.

Regards.