I would like to have more preferences to select what I want on specific systems. We have now 4, but with beta apps I can think of at least 5 preferences I would use. But perhaps this is a BOINC setting and not at project level?
____________
Greetings from TJ

seems like he means Default, Home, Work, School. And he wants more.
____________
XtremeSystems.org - #1 Team in GPUGrid

seems like he means Default, Home, Work, School. And he wants more.

Aha, that´s what I thought, thanks for the explanation.
Well not problems, but I can´t run all. My GTX550Ti can only do SR in reasonable time, more than 9 hours. A LR would take more than 36 hours. So I have put that to Home, SR only. Other card has All applications, but last week the beta was for the Titans and I don´t have one (yet), so I needed a setting with All applications but no beta.
Anyhow I understand that this will not be changed and I have set the GTX550Ti to Einstein@home. So I have no enough on 3 Preferences.
____________
Greetings from TJ

...It's been demonstrated that a good mixed balance of CPU task types is more productive (typically 10 to 15%), and yet when we update now we get blocks of work from one project queue at a time. Of course only Berkeley could implement this.

I agree with your suggested settings. They are very close to what I generally use and what I recommend for here.

However, with other configurations problems arise. So it should be looked at by the Boinc devs.

When I increase the work cache (beta testing, short runs, for other projects) Boinc tends to predominantly run one CPU project, then another, and doesn't mix and match as well. In fact it does annoying things such as suspend GPU projects to run CPU work and then starts running new GPU tasks or the same tasks on different cards; it's also the case that some CPU projects don't have accurate runtime estimates, &/or use short deadlines, which throws Boinc out. You can easily end up with several days of work even with with a short cache, or you can run out of work (don't download new work before existing work finishes). It's probably the case that many researchers take shortcuts when releasing tasks at different projects, but there is a reason for that...

When panic sets in it's often the case that only one CPU project runs. Then there are projects such as TheLaticeProject which starts off using a few hundred MB of RAM but mid-run start using 7GB RAM - everything else has to wait only to resume in bonkers mode.

I think Boinc needs to be able to handle different configurations a lot better. The project and system requirements for Climate, GPUGrid and fightmalaria are very different, but plenty of users crunch many different and requirement-diverse projects at the same time.

My main system has 8 logical CPU cores, two NVidia GPU's an ATI, an Intel iGPU and for some projects I run more than one WU on the same GPU at the same time.

It allows me to contribute to a diverse range of projects. In many ways it's amazing that Boinc can actually accommodate setups like the one I have, given it's origins, but such setups are becoming more common and can already be even more complex; some CPU's have 12threads, some workstations have 2 CPUs and servers can have 4 or 8 CPU's. Some systems also have 4 to 7 GPU's, and the future will bring Maxwell GPU's with integrated ARM processors.

At present Boinc is overly reliant on projects to setup their task properties in a user friendly way, and projects are still largely at risk of unfriendly bespoke configurations. Yet users struggle with increasingly complex settings and cannot specify what they want to crunch accurately enough or what resources to allocate to what project.

...It's just a fact that new projects mean new scientists and existing projects replenish their researchers on a regular basis. Boinc has to be developed in a way that assumes the researchers don't know everything and that busy scientists are not always able to keep up with changes. The friendliness of Boinc might be simplified by changing to a unit orientated system with different work caches and configurations for different hardware units, or groups of hardware. This would also be more granular and thus more accommodating.

Another option for TJ (the original poster), and any others wanting to specify "don't use this app on this GPU", is to implement <exclude_gpu> within their cc_config.xml file, being sure to specify the optional <app> parameter.

For instance, I have a GTS 240 in my system. Obviously I can't have GPUGrid running on that GPU at all! So, I've excluded it from running GPUGrid.

More information can be found here:
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Client_configuration

In case anyone really wants to see how I roll on my system, here's my cc_config.xml file (note some xml blocks are intentionally commented out so they are not currently effective) ... The "SETUP GPUS" section is most relevant to this thread.

Well, I did spot something recently that sort of blew my mind. Did you know you can use BOINCStats (and presumably any other BOINC Account Manager) to set per-device-resource-shares? I've tested it, and it works!

I looked at the website a bit closer, and it looks like you can even set up your own sets of custom preferences (in ADDITION to Global/Home/School/Work... you could have as many as you want, I think!). (This may be the answer that this thread was looking for.) Though, it seems the original poster wanted more-than-3 custom settings of project settings (including work queues), which an Account Manager would not be able to do.

Regarding how BOINC does settings, you have to remember that any computer-specific configuration (such as <exclude_gpu> and app_config.xml) needs to be on the machine, and not on the web. I think BOINC has done a good job to make that distinction, but I do wish the advanced configurations were all available via GUI. But anyway, check into how BOINCStats does per-device resource shares, and custom work preferences, you might like it. You can even tell a host "No new tasks" or "Suspend", via their website! It's neat, and I didn't know about it until recently.

First of all, to get setup, you have to:
- Create a BOINCstats account http://boincstats.com/
- In BOINC, add an Account Manager, choose BOINCstats, and provide login info
- Make sure that succeeds without error

Then, on the BOINCstats website, you can do the following:
- Click "Work preferences", and then you can "Add preference" for as many preferences as you'd like. You can see here that, in addition to "Global / Home / School / Work", you can add an additional one with any name that you want to use.
- Click "Host list", click the computer that you want to modify, click "Edit", change the "Work preference" drop-down to be whatever you'd like, click "Save"

Then, in BOINC, you can
- Click "Tools" -> "Synchronize with BOINCstatsBAM!"

This will only give you an unlimited amount of sets of "regular BOINC preferences", not "GPUGrid project-specific preferences", so it's probably not going to be what you want. But that's how it works.

PS:
You can also, in the "Host list", click a computer, then click "Edit projects", to define per-host values for:
- resource shares
- project attach/detach
- no new tasks
- suspend
- disable CPU / GPU
..... and the "web-request" should trickle to the host within 24 hours I believe.

Kinda neat. But again, may not be helpful toward your situation. I tried.

You might be better off trying to limit applications via <exclude_gpu> in cc_config.xml, but... That's a bit dangerous, because the client does not tell the host that it doesn't want certain apps, and if the host gives it one, the client won't run it, and you'd be stuck with a task you cannot execute, which will prevent you from requesting other tasks. Basically, if you need to exclude "an application", it's recommended to use the "Home/School/Work" settings instead of <exclude_gpu>. I hope that makes sense to you.

Thanks for the thoroughly explanation Jacob.
I think it could be very useful for others as well. Perhaps one of the forum moderators can make a sticky note of it. "How to connect to and use BOINCStatsBAM!"

I followed it step by step and have made "Test". However I see only one host, the rest of the options, (My projects, Task list, Group list) is all empty but I guess I have to wait a while (day or so) to get it filled with information. I will check out later today, when the Sun is up again.

If I in "Test" can set that I want only Short Run, only Long Run, or other options/combinations, than that is exactly want I would like.

Edit: It just comes to my mind that I need to synchronize every host via BOINC to work with the account manager.
____________
Greetings from TJ

That's the thing -- I don't think projects support "setting project-specific settings in a custom setting profile". "GPUGrid preferences" only knows about Global, Home, School, Work. It has no way to know about "Test".

I don't think you're going to be able to use BOINCstats to have any GPUGrid-specific settings outside of the normal Global, Home, School, Work.

By GPUGrid-specific settings, I of course am referring to the page where you set "Run test applications" and "Run only the selected applications".

I see that I must manually add my projects, but that is not working, I got the message: "Email address not unique" and "Incorrect password".
I have to think about this, I go to sleep first.
____________
Greetings from TJ

The intent of an Account Manager is to, I believe, manage the BOINC client-project attachments, all via a single web interface. So yes, you hook up the Account Manager to the projects, then you hook up your client to the Account Manager, and then BOINC can auto-attach projects, auto-detach projects, and set things like No New Tasks and Suspend, all via the Account Manager interface.

Fun. Good luck with it when you try it again.
PS: Looking at the BOINCstats stats pages is nice too - here's mine http://boincstats.com/en/stats/-1/user/detail/4275/lastDays :)

You are right Jacob. Indeed I can make as many venue settings as I like, but they will not visible and thus selectable in any project.
The settings we can make in these extra venues are general options, not project specific and that is what I wanted in the first place.
Well at the moment I have only 2 rigs for GPUGRID, so I can make 4 different combinations of WU types with global/home/school/work and that is enough. Especially as there are no beta´s to run. Perhaps that I in the future will expand my cc_config.
But thanks again for all your input and effort for this.
____________
Greetings from TJ