Windows S5R2 App 4.28 available for Beta Test
16 Jul 2007 9:58:27 UTC
Topic 13567
(moderation:
A new Windows App is available from our Beta Test Page.
This App is part of a new generation of Apps that follow our attempts to track down and fix the remaining problems of the new software we're using since S5R2 (There will soon be a MacOS PPC App once I've fixed a CPU-specific problem there).
This may remain an intermediate release that will never make it to become official Apps if we get enough feedback from running the Beta Test Apps that we can fix some more problems for the next "official" Apps.
Following a suggestion from Gary these Beta test packages feature an app_info.xml that should allow for continuing a Task that has been assigned to and possibly partially crunched with an older App version with this Beta App (keeping the old App version number, though). Note that there are some clients with which this doesn't work as desired, i.e. that reset the project when switching the platform (I've seen this behavior with the first Universal (PPC+Intel) MacOS Clients). So this Beta Test also covers this app_info.xml scheme. If in doubt, wait at least until the currently running Task has finished, report it manually and install the Beta App then.
gcc-compiled Apps such as the ones from MacOS and Linux apparently get a little speedup from using ftol() instead of modf() (which we originally did to fix problems of the Windows App), but this release is not primarily meant to improve speed. We'll work on this not before we have the validation problems found solved.
Please test&report here.
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Windows S5R2 App 4.28 available for Beta Test
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Well, the BOINC client is rather eager to delete files that he thinks are no longer needed. I thought that the file entries at the beginning of the app_info.xml should prevent the older App versions from being deleted (and just issue the warning you mentioned if they have already been deleted earlier), but apparently that's not the case; in fact it looks like it has the opposite effect.
As for the l1_* files:
Unfortunately we can't issue delete requests automatically (by the scheduler(!)) for l1_ files where a single workunit is still in the database that uses that file, which makes this cleanup rather slow (checking whether it's this particular host that got a WU that blocks this file is too slow for a scheduler request).
If the disk gets filled to the point where the host gets no work because of diskspace, the scheduler should send a request to delete the present datafiles, so the old l1_* files will be deleted this way, too.
To manually free up diskspace it should be safe to delete those l1_ files that don't have a matching h1_ file in the same directory.
Though actually the cleanup is a feature of the BOINC Client triggered by the scheduler, it sounds like an interesting idea to put some cleanup feature into the App for this case. I'll think about it.
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RE: Looking at the results
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That's a (desired) effect of the app_info.xml. Tasks that are interrupted and crunched halfway with an older App will keep the old number, only Tasks that have been ran completely with the new App will show up with the new version number.
Note that the new App doesn't do anything with the calculations that have already been done; it might even be that "mixed" results are less likely to validate correctly than "pure" ones from the old App, though these cases should be rather rare. Another edit: thinking about the changes in the App this shouldn't apply here at all - there should be no such case with this new App.
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Thank you! Any noticeable
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Thank you!
Any noticeable difference in speed from the official App?
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RE: I realise that I can
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We distribute the files (data files and Apps, too IIRC) with a list of sites where these files are availble, i.e. our download mirrors. The order of the list you get, however, depends on the timezone your machine is set to, so it should list the nearest server first.
In principle we could issue a first line referring to, say, a local download mirrot the client would then look at first (say einstein-download.local). If you have a local DNS server or proxy you could point it to a local mirror for your LAN. But I'm not sure this wouldn't cause security or bandwith issues. I'll probably need to think about it.
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Please try out the new Beta
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Please try out the new Beta 4.30.
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