Mod Sense, thanks again. More experimentation is needed. I have only one i7 cpu
but I can tweak both ways for a couple of weeks and watch what happens. I'm hoping to install 64 bit windows 7 if I can get past some BIOS issues. I did watch while BOINC 'orphaned' off several of my nearly complete WU's as time expired and they were still 'waiting to run'. So that answered one question I had - BOINC will let the WU expire past it's due date and start newer WU's with
later deadline dates if you have memory issues like I do.

I have a Dell T7500 with dual 6 core Xeons (HT enabled) for a total of 24 threads available (boinc is set to use only 85%).

I'm seeing this same behavior and I have 48gb of ram. I will check to see how much I am allocating to boinc when I get home and adjust from there.

Sounds like I'm close to running out of headspace trying to do too much all at once (GPUGrid is also running with two GPUs at the same time).

Mike

My best guess is that this is a memory issue. What can happen, especially with a many core machine, is that a task reaches a point or a model that requires more memory then the rest of the execution has. The combination of all 4 running at the same time then exceeds your preference for how much memory BOINC should use and the task goes to a status of "waiting for memory"... and BOINC seems to take a note that indicates it was using xxx MB of memory when it got deferred to the waiting status.

And so it starts a new task, hoping it might run with less memory and often it can. At no point during the execution of the new task does the memory requirement of the 3 other tasks go low enough for this one that's waiting to run. And so BOINC continues to wait on that one.

Then you reboot your computer, or restart BOINC, and it knows how much memory that task needs, and it doesn't start it for the same reasons that existed when the machine was powered down. At this point, I believe I'm correct in saying it will show a "waiting to run" status rather then the previous "waiting for memory" status. The reason for this might be that it only shows the waiting for memory status when this run of BOINC has actually kicked it out due to the preference on how much memory to use for BOINC tasks. Since it hasn't run it yet this time, it shows the status differently. But the underlaying fact is that BOINC knows how much memory needs to be free for that task to run, and that is now why it is waiting.

Most people allow a higher percentage of memory to be used by BOINC when the machine is idle. And so often such tasks will be picked up and run when the machine is not in use and BOINC is allowed more memory. But BOINC strives to preserve as much completed work as possible as well, and so it probably wouldn't transition back to that task until another task reaches a checkpoint. So I wouldn't expect it to instantly pick it up when the machine is idle for the configured number of minutes.

BOINC is trying to meet your preferences. One presumably is to use all 4 CPUs, and another is for BOINC to live within your preference for memory usage.

What happens when the task approaches deadline? It sounds like it does eventually run... when it does run again, do you find you only have 3 active tasks? Or perhaps a fourth that is just getting started and is not using much memory yet?

How much memory does your machine have? How much is BOINC configured to use? (check the messages as BOINC starts).

If memory does prove to be the issue, there are only a few ways for it to run any differently then it already is:
1) Get more memory, or allow BOINC to use a higher percentage of memory (which may make your machine a bit sluggish, but try it and see. You can always set it back)
2) Keep the BOINC % of memory the same for when active, but allow BOINC to use more when idle. This can make it take a moment to wake up after you've been away for a while. Generally not a big deal, just don't panic fearing a blue screen of death. But it should give enough for the task to run when you are away.
3) Limit BOINC to using 3 (or less) CPUs. This would reduce the amount of memory BOINC needs to run, but also reduce your throughput.
4) Manually suspend tasks until your pesky one runs.
5) Don't worry about it. BOINC will "git 'er done" when the deadline approaches. No tinkering required.

These look like the "rama" work units that were posted last week. Your machines are hidden so I can't see the history of your specific WUs or when you got them to determine why it took you so long to run in to them. But, these have been discussed in some detail on the Number Crunching board.

this must be due to the upgrade not being quite completed yet:

01-Dec-2008 16:59:22 [rosetta@home] Message from server: Server error: can't attach shared memory

'patience is a virtue' my old girlfriend
used to claim. I'm still not sure I completely believed her...... 8^)

Now getting a message from BOINC

Mon 01 Dec 2008 07:49:39 PM EST|rosetta@home|Message from server: Server error: can't attach shared memory

This has been happening the last couple of hours...

Ditto for me. And before that, I was seeing all of my Rosetta Mini 1.40 "abinitio_nohomgraf_..." tasks failing to report in for at least several hours this morning. They never did successfully transfer. I've got them queued up.

Same here all of those work units done blowed up.

/amgthis

Are you from South Carolina?

No, Bruce. I was just practicing my NASCAR-speak.

8^)

If I could understand the error messages better I'd
forward them along but I think other people had that covered
already.

Of course! NASCAR speak. I used to live near Charlotte, a big NASCAR city (Lowe's Motor Speedway, but I bet you knew that).

My Rosetta trouble has cleared up.

Good Luck!

Bruce.

Same here all of those work units done blowed up.

/amgthis

Are you from South Carolina?

The mini rosetta 1.15 units just continually crash. Why keep queuing them to
distribute until the problems are sorted? People are wasting k watts of power
for nothing in the meantime...
I would think we would just line up 5.96 units until the bugs were sorted instead
of wasting thousands of watts of energy for nothing.

????

I just abort them as soon as I see them but I'm sure that may be a problem for someone such as yourself with 14K RAC, sadly I only have 1 computer...

I would set Rosetta to "no new work" for the time being and come back later when this gets all sorted out.

Yes, you are right. I should stop whining and do as you say or just run another
project in the meantime. Hopefully it will be sorted out soon.

/amgthis