Recently I upgraded to 10.9 Mavericks and a new issue has appeared. When watching web video such as Hulu or Netflix, windowed or full screen, Gecko or WebKit, BOINC/BOINCManager is not seeing that the computer is in use and starts computing work on the ATI Radeon HD 5770 in my 2010 Mac Pro while the video is still playing. BOINC/BOINCManager respects the “Only after computer has been idle for x minutes setting, it just does not see the computer is in use unless there is activity on an input device. This was true in v7.0.65 and it still holds true in v7.2.23.

Thank you all for your hard work.

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Can you check whether the Event Log and Tasks tab show BOINC running or suspended, and if suspended what is the suspend reason shown?

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A couple of questions:
* Are you by any chance running the original Developer Seed of Mavericks GM (build 13A598) rather than the public release (build 13A603)?
* Are you viewing the videos using Safari 7 or a different browser?

I've been having lots of problems with my copy of Mavericks and especially with its Safari 7 browser, and just learned that Apple released the different, later build to the public without informing developers. So I'm in the process of downloading and reinstalling Mavericks now.

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Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

I reinstalled Mavericks, but Safari 7 is still acting weird. It hangs on any attempt to access YouTube and many there sites, but it all works if I log in as a different user. (Others have reported similar problems.)

Anyway, I don't have Hulu, Netflix or Gecko, but I viewed videos on YouTube with Safari 7 on Mavericks, and I could not reproduce your problem. BOINC 7.2.26 remained suspended while playing videos in this manner.

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Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

I have been unable to reproduce the problem. The OS 10.9 (almost wrote OS 9 there lol) build number is: 13A603

If I do see the problem again I will attempt to get some relevant information from the logs. Thank you.

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I have been able to boil the issue down to this - if I have BoincManager set to use GPU based on preferences, three minutes after the last user input (which is what BOINC - Preferences is set to) the video becomes jerky or jagged. If I set BoincManager to suspend GPU the video remains stable. This applies to streaming video, local VIDEO_TS and local compressed (m4v) files.

The logs appear fine, they show the GPU adhering to the preference settings, but the issue is real and now reproducible.

I do not know if it might be related or not but some apps have developed serious memory leaks under 10.9, DefaultFolder X and MPlayer X being two of them (I have installed patched versions of both).

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I wonder if this might be associated with a particular GPU application leaving the GPU in an incorrect state when suspended. Which project with GPU applications are you running?

Cheers,
--Charlie

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Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

If I understand correctly, BOINC is resuming your GPU applications after 3 minutes even though you are watching streaming videos. Is that correct?

I still can't reproduce this viewing YouTube videos with Safari 7. Please answer these 2 questions:
* Does BOINC resume GPU apps after 3 minutes when you watch YouTube videos with Safari 7? (You can check this by running /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.)
*Are you using Safari 7 to watch Hulu and Netflix?

You might try adding the applications you use to view the video to the list of Exclusive Applications in BOINC's Computing Preferences dialog. (This application may be your web browser.) Please let me know if that solves your problem.

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Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

Pretty much all of them that support Open CL for OS X I believe. Off the top of my head, Einstein, PrimeGrid, Collatz…

Do GPU process’ show up in Activity Monitor? Is there a specific name I should look for?

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Do GPU process’ show up in Activity Monitor? Is there a specific name I should look for?

They all have a CPU component, which does show up in Activity Monitor. You can see the application names in BOINC's Tasks tab (Advanced View) and look for those names in Activity Monitor.

It would be helpful to know the answers to my questions in my previous message 51410. Thanks.

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Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

If I understand correctly, BOINC is resuming your GPU applications after 3 minutes even though you are watching streaming videos. Is that correct?

I still can't reproduce this viewing YouTube videos with Safari 7. Please answer these 2 questions:
* Does BOINC resume GPU apps after 3 minutes when you watch YouTube videos with Safari 7? (You can check this by running /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.)
*Are you using Safari 7 to watch Hulu and Netflix?

You might try adding the applications you use to view the video to the list of Exclusive Applications in BOINC's Computing Preferences dialog. (This application may be your web browser.) Please let me know if that solves your problem.

I do not have Flash Player installed system wide so I cannot test YouTube with Safari 7, even though I signed up for the html 5 beta (thanks Google). Using Chromium Version 30.0.1599.69 (226629) the current GPU project goes active a few seconds after 3 minutes of no user input, just streaming video. I watch Netflix on Safari, it uses Silverlight, and the result is the same - the GPU project goes active a few seconds after 3 minutes of no user input, just streaming video.

I will try adding Safari, Chromium, both QuickTime Players, MPlayer X, and Movist to the list of exclusive applications and get back to you on the result.

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BOINCManager is not respecting the Exclusive Applications setting for browsers or players, at about 3:05 after the last user input the GPU resumes computation.

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You need to quit BOINC Manager and relaunch it for the exclusive apps to take effect. This is a bug which will be fixed in a release soon.

I have learned that SilverLight has a reputation for not blocking screen savers while people are watching Netflix. BOINC uses the same mechanism to detect activity as the one that OS X uses to block screen savers. If you have a screen saver enabled, does watching Netflix prevent the screen saver from activating? If not, then the problem is with Silverlight, not BOINC.

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Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

I rebooted after setting Exclusive Applications and the GPU still goes back to work about 3:05 after the last user input while playing video. The screen saver is not an issue, it recognizes Flash, Silverlight, QuickTime, VLC, etc… as being active and does not run until 10 minutes after the video ends. MPlayer X used to not keep the system active but they’ve since fixed that bug and I’ve had no problems with movies & screen saver since.

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Let me be a little more specific. If I’m watching web video windowed the screen saver will activate, if I’m watching full screen the screen saver does not activate.

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I signed into Netflix (using Safari on Mavericks) and installed the latest version of Silverlight (version 5.1.20913.0 dated 9/13/13.) To facilitate testing, I set BOINC 7.2.28 to compute after the computer has been idle for 0.25 minutes (15 seconds) and I selected the Flurry screensaver to activate after 1 minute. I have BOINC attached to Einstein@home's beta project Albert@home, and it is set to run only GPU tasks.

When Safari / Silverlight / Netflix was in full screen mode, BOINC remained suspended and the screensaver never activated. With Safari / Silverlight / Netflix not in full screen mode, BOINC resumed after its 15 second timeout, and the screensaver activated after its 1 minute timeout. Since the screensaver behaves the same as BOINC, the problem is with Silverlight, not BOINC.

I then set BOINC to include Safari in its list of exclusive applications as follows: In the Computing preferences dialog, select exclusive applications, click Add, select Safari, click Open, click OK, Quit BOINC, relaunch BOINC. After the 15 second timeout, BOINC then switched from "Suspended - computer is in use" to "Suspended - an exclusive app is running" and did not resume computation when Netflix was running whether or not in full screen mode, but after 1 minute the screensaver again activated if Netflix was not in full screen mode.

Finally I installed BOINC 7.2.33 (available here) and repeated the tests. Under 7.2.33, the exclusive application feature takes effect immediately upon pressing the OK button; there is no need to quit and relaunch BOINC.

Please make sure you are using the latest version of Silverlight.

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Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

I am using Silverlight 5.1.20913.0 which according to MacUpdate is the current version. Netflix is very strict about using the current version, if they detect a previous version they will tell you to upgrade and they will not let you use their streaming services until you do install the current version.

So windowed mode seems to be working correctly, it is just full screen mode that is not. I too am running BOINCManager 7.2.33 but getting different result. For the time being I have set the GPU to wait 120 minutes before starting to crunch BOINC projects which covers most movies.

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