I've just upgraded my MacBook Pro (Intel) to OS 10.5 (Leopard). I had to install the latest version of Boinc to get it to work (the one I had before dated from about May this year), and it does work now, but inelegantly.

The problem is that when I hit the update button, it's slow to respond and it gives me the "spinning beach ball" cursor indicating that the program is not responding. This lasts for up to 30s, every time, during which time I can't do anything else in Boinc. It's not a big deal but it is annoying.

FYI I'm attached to einstein, seti and rosetta on this machine.

Edit: sorry, I just realised there's another forum for Boinc Manager. Then again, I'm not sure whether this problem relates more to that or to the core client.

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Not even Vista is fully supported by BOINC yet, can't expect Leopard to be supported two days after its release.

Can you give exact version numbers for the one you had (that didn't work at all), and the one you upgraded to?

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Not even Vista is fully supported by BOINC yet, can't expect Leopard to be supported two days after its release.

Well, I didn't really. Just passing on my observations to people who might want to know ;)

Can you give exact version numbers for the one you had (that didn't work at all), and the one you upgraded to?

The version I'm using now is 5.10.20, the current release version. Unfortunately I didn't think to take a note of the previous one, but it was the most recent release version in early May '07.

One other thing - the cc on the mac gives me this problem, but when I use the mac boincmgr to check out the cc on my linux machine I don't get any problems. The linux boinc version is 5.8.15.

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See this post and then try if you want BOINC 5.10.28.

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Thanks for the tip. I've installed 5.10.28 but unfortunately it didn't help.

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I'm running BOINC 5.10.28 on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and my tasks are being run as a user process not as a nice process as was the case using Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.

Is this a known issue?

I just upgraded to Leopard on a dual core Mac Mini. I was running a slightly older version of BOINC at the time (I am not in front of that computer now and cannot recall which exact version it was but I think it was 5.8.17).... it started a bit funny after loading the new OS, in a 'simple' screen mode I had not seen before, but eventually I found the menu item to get back into full detailed mode. A couple of days later I upgraded to the most recent stable version, 5.10.28 I think it is. Now when the computer reboots, BOINC seems to start, the BOINC Manager window flashes on the screen for just a moment but then disappears and I cannot get it back. Nothing seems to work. As far as I can tell, work is being continued to be run, but nothing can be viewed.

Has anyone else seen this problem ? Thanks.

Richard

Now when the computer reboots, BOINC seems to start, the BOINC Manager window flashes on the screen for just a moment but then disappears and I cannot get it back.

This has been fixed in [trac]changeset:14089[/trac], probably will be on the next version (5.10.29?).

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Now when the computer reboots, BOINC seems to start, the BOINC Manager window flashes on the screen for just a moment but then disappears and I cannot get it back.

This has been fixed in [trac]changeset:14089[/trac], probably will be on the next version (5.10.29?).

Actually, the serious problem (not being able to open the window) should be fixed in 5.10.28, though it still flashes for a moment on system reboot. The cosmetic problem (the momentary flash) will be fixed in the next version.

First, please confirm that you are actually running 5.10.28, which specifically addresses this problem.

If you are indeed running 5.10.28 and can't get the BOINC Manager window to open, have you tried selecting Open BOINC Manager from the Dock icon rather than the menubar icon? You need to hold the mouse down over the Dock icon for a couple of seconds before the menus appear.

A quick click on the Dock icon should also open the BOINC Manager window.

If the brief flash in 5.10.28 bothers you, you can fix it yourself by going into the Accounts pane of System Preferences, selecting the Login Items tab, and setting the "Hide" checkbox for BOINCManager.

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Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

I'm running BOINC 5.10.28 on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and my tasks are being run as a user process not as a nice process as was the case using Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.

Is this a known issue?

I'm not clear what you mean by "user process" and "nice process." Could you explain? Do you mean it is running as the logged-in user rather than users boinc_master and/or boinc_project?

If so, have you tried running the BOINC 5.10.28 installer again?

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Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

I'm not clear what you mean by "user process" and "nice process." Could you explain? Do you mean it is running as the logged-in user rather than users boinc_master and/or boinc_project?

On Tiger the BOINC process, SETI@home etc..., were run with a nice factor greater than 0 therefore they were essentially treated as idle process that were only given CPU time when the machine wasn't doing anything else. But in Leopard they are being run as standard user processes, nice factor 0, and therefore have the same scheduling priority as regular processes. This causes problems whenever you run a CPU intensive process in the foreground, as the CPU is giving equal priority to the BOINC process and the regular user process. Hope that clears things up.

See the "nice" and "renice" man pages for details on the scheduling priorities.

This "not nice" problem was also reported on a cpdn board:
here.

But in Leopard they are being run as standard user processes, nice factor 0, and therefore have the same scheduling priority as regular processes. This causes problems whenever you run a CPU intensive process in the foreground, as the CPU is giving equal priority to the BOINC process and the regular user process.

I think you may have been misled by an apparent bug in the Activity Monitor utility. Notice that it always shows a %nice value of 0%. On OS 10.4, the %nice value is always greater than 0%, even when BOINC is not running.

Checking the Activity Monitor's help documentation, the %nice value is the % of cpu time being used by applications with a non-zero "nice" value. Now run Terminal and type the following:

ps -ahxcopid,nice,command

You will see that the BOINC projects, such as SETI@home, are running at a "nice" value of 19, the same as under OS 10.4.

Watching Activity Monitor, if I run a full-screen movie using QuickTime, the CPU usage of SETI@home drops to accommodate QuickTime. (I have a second monitor on my Mac which allows me to watch Activity Monitor while QuickTime is running full-screen on my main monitor.)

These observations lead me to conclude that the problem is with the Activity Monitor, not with BOINC.

Can you point me to a CPU intensive application which performs badly when BOINC is set to "run always" but performs well when BOINC is suspended or not running? If so, I will run further tests.

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Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

Hi.

I haven't read the whole thread (yet) but I've posted a problem with BOINC & Leopard on the einstein@home forum and was redirected to this forum.

Additional Info: Im using BOINC 5.10.28
I'll try to monitor this thread and give additional information if needed

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I'll just copy my msg from the e@h forum

I've running BOINC with E@H under OS X 10.5 and noticed a problem. I set BOINC to run always, but use only 1 core (I'm on a 1st gen CoreDuo iMac here).

When BOINC and E&H runs sound playback in iTunes gets "jerky" e.g. every few seconds there's a hiccup (like some buffer is running empty). The problem vanishes when closing BOINC.

Also this is not Itunes specific, because it happens with VLC to (albeit it may be using the same QT libs iTunes does).

I already tried manually renice the e@h process to 19, but this doesn't help.

Another interesting thing is, that Leopard seems to ping-pong the process fomr one core to the other: Looking at the activity monitor with e@h running and nothing else that demands any CPU power, I see e@h consuming 100% CPU on one core, while the other is idle and a few seconds later core 2 is us 100% while the other idles.

Whether this is a problem I do not know, since I haven't checked with Tiger because I had no such problems there. Perhaps someone with Tiger can check the behaviour. Normally switching cores would of course be bad for caching reasons, but since the CoreDuo has this fancy shared cache I am not sure whether sharing actually means that both cores can use the same cache entries (would be no prblems then) or whether it's just some sort of dynmically allocating the cache to each core.

I tried to find a way to bind the e@h process to a specific core (I think I've seen a pbind or something commando on some unix box which can do this), but haven't found a way to do so.


Has anybody experienced the same problems and might even propose a solution?

The PROBLEM I want to solve is jerky audio playback while running BOINC.

The whole mumbojumbo about cores, caches and such where just my speculations what might be the problem, and in fact they may be totally irrelevant :)

Thanks
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You will see that the BOINC projects, such as SETI@home, are running at a "nice" value of 19, the same as under OS 10.4.

Yes, I see this as well.

These observations lead me to conclude that the problem is with the Activity Monitor, not with BOINC.

Makes sense, however I think the problem goes deeper than just the Activity Monitor as top on the terminal also reports that these processes aren't nice processes - although they both probably get the process information using the same Framework. I've reported a bug on this to Apple.

Can you point me to a CPU intensive application which performs badly when BOINC is set to "run always" but performs well when BOINC is suspended or not running? If so, I will run further tests.

iChat is the worst, with Leopard I need to put BOINC on snooze whilst on a chat other wise the video is really jerky and the sound keeps dropping out. This was not a problem under Tiger.

[iChat is the worst, with Leopard I need to put BOINC on snooze whilst on a chat other wise the video is really jerky and the sound keeps dropping out. This was not a problem under Tiger.

When BOINC and E&H runs sound playback in iTunes gets "jerky" e.g. every few seconds there's a hiccup (like some buffer is running empty). The problem vanishes when closing BOINC.

Also this is not Itunes specific, because it happens with VLC to (albeit it may be using the same QT libs iTunes does).

These things do seem to indicate that the problem is real. The fact that ps shows BOINC projects as running with a nice value of 19 leads me to suspect the problem is in Leopard itself, not BOINC.

Have you submitted a bug report to Apple indicating that Leopard is not honoring nice values?

top on the terminal also reports that these processes aren't nice processes

Other than %cpu, I don't see where top reports which processes are nice. Can you point me to how to get this info from top?

Are you running with the option "run only when user is idle?" Does this help?

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Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

Have you submitted a bug report to Apple indicating that Leopard is not honoring nice values?

I've submitted a bug, but I'd like to request that people who are running Leopard and are running into this problem also submit a bug as this will give Apple more information and hopefully lead to a quicker fix.

Have you submitted a bug report to Apple indicating that Leopard is not honoring nice values?

I've submitted a bug, but I'd like to request that people who are running Leopard and are running into this problem also submit a bug as this will give Apple more information and hopefully lead to a quicker fix.

Is the bug database publicly-visible? Submitting duplicate bugs is counter-productive. It's much better if people can comment adding information on the bug you already submitted.

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Is the bug database publicly-visible? Submitting duplicate bugs is counter-productive. It's much better if people can comment adding information on the bug you already submitted.

Unfortunately not, if the bug you submit is a duplicate then you receive an email saying so. However everything you submit will be attached to the original bug report, and I've been told that the number of duplicates is sometimes treated as a way to prioritise the fixing of bugs.

My impression is that the more people submit the bug, the more attention it will get and the faster it will get fixed.

Is the bug database publicly-visible? Submitting duplicate bugs is counter-productive. It's much better if people can comment adding information on the bug you already submitted.

Unfortunately not, if the bug you submit is a duplicate then you receive an email saying so. However everything you submit will be attached to the original bug report, and I've been told that the number of duplicates is sometimes treated as a way to prioritise the fixing of bugs.

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Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer