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BOINC
Enhanced snooze features
(from Jacob Klein)
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How to set Snooze... User should be able to Snooze either all computing, or just GPU computing, or Network activity (so, can choose from all 3 activities)... with options "1 hour", "3 hours", "6 hours", "12 hours". There have been times when I wanted to snooze for a different time than default. The choices should be displayed as a cascading menu, that they must choose when setting snooze. They should be able to set it from the System Tray's right-click menu, OR set it the Advanced View Activity menu (as an option ABOVE "Suspend").
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How to display Snooze times... For Advanced View, show it in the Status Bar at the bottom of the Window. It's possible that all 3 activities could have different snooze times, so you might need to show all 3 if they've been set. For Simple View... uhh.... Hmph. We should show the snooze times in the System Tray tooltip, while keeping the "Suspend / Resume" button the way it is currently on Simple View.
I find it much easier to have a suspend feature which suspends boinc until user resumes.
I would like to have an automatic snooze when an exclusive GPU app is running like a 3d game or a video using dxva or OpenCL shaders. If this works I have no need to suspend GPU manually.
Already available. <exclusive_gpu_app>important.exe</exclusive_gpu_app>, see http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Client_configuration#Options
-- Jord van der Elst.
On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 2:22 PM, informatorius [email protected] wrote:
I would like to have an automatic snooze when an exclusive GPU app is running like a 3d game or a video using dxva or OpenCL shaders. If this works I have no need to suspend GPU manually.
— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/issues/1432#issuecomment-172205407.
Thanks @Ageless93 I didn't know that. But I thought of an automatic detection.
How do you want to automatically detect something that you didn't specify? With the <exclusive_gpu_app> option it will all happen automatically, as soon as BOINC sees the specified application in memory it will suspend calculations. The only thing you need to do is tell BOINC which applications it should suspend calculations on. You can have a whole long list. One requirement though is that you set BOINC to run based on preferences.
If there were an automated detection but without specifying what applications to suspend on, BOINC would suspend always when anything else is in memory, including OS parts. That's not something you'd want.
BOINC 7.6.22 has a GUI option through which you can set exclusive applications for CPU and GPU, so you don't have to manually mess with cc_config.xml and exclusion tags.
-- Jord van der Elst.
On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 7:41 PM, informatorius [email protected] wrote:
Thanks @Ageless93 https://github.com/Ageless93 I didn't know that. But I thought of an automatic detection.
— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/issues/1432#issuecomment-175166530.
Can I also specify a path instead of a process name? So the rule is valid for all processes from this path and subpathes?
I posted this suggestion in the community forums not long ago. For laptop users, and perhaps more generally, it is actually overriding suspension (regardless of any preconditions or preferences) that would be more valuable.
I posted the comments below to https://boinc.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=15151#113149 but was told developers rarely visit that forum and to check github instead. So I am reposting my original comments in this thread, as the topic seems to already be discussing possible changes to how the snooze feature works.
I have been using BOINC Manager for years and know about the two ways to stop jobs from being processed.
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Left click on the taskbar icon, select the "Snooze" option, and jobs pause for one hour. (No option to change this delay.)
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Select whole projects from the "Projects" tab or specific tasks on the "Tasks" tab and select "Suspend" to halt them from running until they are manually enabled again with the "Resume" button. (No option to automatically Resume after some delay.)
These are fine as very basic controls, and essentially do the same thing but in different ways. But they both could use improvements.
For "Snooze", add a user-updatable time field somewhere like in the settings menu to change the default 60-minute delay to something else (such as: 1 to 999 minutes). I often would like BOINC to be inactive for about 4 hours at a time when I work at home, but then automatically start back up without my intervention. Having to repeatedly hit the snooze every hour or so becomes annoying, especially when having to switch away from whatever active task I am doing at the moment to click on this setting over and over. While simple to click, it becomes a major distraction due to the repetition required.
For the last few months, I have been using other applications in full screen mode, so accessing the Snooze control has become more difficult (exit full screen mode, do the clicks to set the snooze, then re-enter full screen mode).
The longer delay would avoid messing with the snooze setting as often, and being able to stay in full screen mode longer. In addition, Ctrl-Tab allows me to select the BOINC Manager app, but there is no Snooze control in the main app to select this feature. It is ONLY available from the Windows task bar. Adding a Snooze control to a menu item (ie: an "Activity" option) would avoid disrupting my full-screen monitor, as the full-screen program runs on my left monitor, but BOINC and other apps run and are accessible on my right monitor at the same time. Finally, the BOINC taskbar icon is not available on my right monitor, so even with full access to the BOINC Manager app, the Snooze control remains buried out of sight. The Snooze control is simply not always as easy to access as many apparently believe it to be.
For the "Suspend" functions, please add a global user updatable time field for how long all suspended jobs will remain inactive. A setting of "0" would be the current default of "active forever", but a new range such as 1 to 999 minutes would then resume all suspensions. Users who setup complex job suspensions manually can continue to do this as they always have with the "0" default setting. But for simple suspensions that should automatically resume (much like the snooze feature) this would allow selected or all tasks to be stopped manually but then restart later without user intervention. I dislike the Suspend function because I often forget to Resume jobs or projects, and the computer ends up sitting idle for long periods with no tasks running at all because I forgot to manually reenable them.
Both of these features seem to do the same thing, but using different approaches. Improving one would likely reduce the need to also improve the other. I am describing what my current operating issues are, so the programmers can evaluate if modifying one would be better than the other (or both). For now, neither approach works that great. But because there are two different approaches available, past requests to make any improvements always seem to be met with "just use the other one instead". Using one method instead of the other does not always solve the problems experienced with both.
I often would like BOINC to be inactive for about 4 hours at a time when I work at home, but then automatically start back up without my intervention.
Doesn't the Suspend while computer is in use setting in BOINC's Computing Preferences dialog suspend BOINC while you are using the computer? Also, at least on some operating systems, some applications send a signal to the OS that the computer is in use while in full screen mode, so it doesn't go to sleep while watching movies, etc.
The automatic "Suspend while in use" settings can be fiddly, to the point I don't like to mess with them anymore. If I am doing non-computer stuff (like talking on the phone) the computer may still interpret my inactivity as being the computer's inactivity. But if I am still viewing a static document displayed on the screen while talking on the phone (so the mouse and keyboard are not being used) the computer is still not really idle even if the processors are doing virtually nothing for a long period of time.
For any programs failing to send the OS a message that it is in full screen and therefore not idle does not always work for me. This seems to happen mostly with basic subscription streaming media players that already have poor GUI controls, so there is nothing I can do to change that aspect of its operation.
The snooze control is a hard "don't do anything" control that is simple and easy to use. Turn it on, forget about it, and just know BOINC is completely stopped until the snooze period ends. It does not rely on the computer trying to figure out anything automatically. But for now I have to keep refreshing the snooze every hour, which means multiple times per day. Providing a user defined snooze period would allow me to select a proper delay period for my situation before it returns to full operation.
Not allowing the user to set the delay period is my #1 issue with the snooze function. Not being able to toggle the snooze on and off from the GUI menu bar is my #2 issue. If these two items were fixed, I would be OK with everything else as it is now.
At the very least, the snooze menu item should say 1 hour; currently it doesn't indicate the duration.
But I agree: the duration should be selectable, and there should be a snooze item in the Activity menu.
By analogy, the Do Not Disturb function on Android lets by select the duration in 1-hour increments.
I envision the current snooze control continuing to operate as an on/off control as it does now. Only that the current fixed delay be adjustable as a setting instead, much like the computing preference for the switching between tasks can by adjusted by some amount of minutes. Complicating the on/off snooze control toggle to also allow on-the-fly delay adjustments is not what I am asking for.
The separate addition of the on/off snooze toggle as a GUI item in the Activity menu (such as adding it as an option in the "Run Always, Run based on preferences, ((Snooze)), Suspend" selections) would provide an additional location to access that control besides the task bar icon using Right-Click, Snooze. Someone mentioned that the Linux taskbar lost the snooze option due to changes with how that OS GUI works. Adding a Snooze selection to the Activity menu would return the snooze feature to Linux users who have apparently have lost it altogether.