Good evening. If this topic is already addressed somewhere else, I'll be happy to study there.

I am currently on the BOINC 6.12.4 (x64) executive and run two projects: Rosetta and SETI. I am looking for a way to draw in additional work on the SETI project, because SETI has weekly outages for maintenance purposes. These outages usually last 3 days. However I would like to do so without drawing additional work in on Rosetta. When I draw too much Rosetta work and am not watching things, I run the risk of blowing the deadlines. Priority does not help in this case because Rosetta runs on all the CPU threads; SETI on the GPU threads.

Currently when I want to fill up on SETI tasks, I use a process of setting Network Access and Additional Work Buffer high with No New Work set on Rosetta. To allow Rosetta to run normally again then I set the parameters back to normal and resume taking tasks on Rosetta. I must do this because these attributes are global and not local to a project.

Is there a more elegant way to do this in a manner that does not require manual intervention?

I have enjoyed donating my CPU (and now GPU) time to these distributed computing applications ever since I started running SETI as a screen saver. I hope there is some trick that the more seasoned pros have come across to address is issue.

Take care and have a good holiday season.

Rich Seyfert

{UPDATE #1}Additional information requested in general posting note:

Event log:
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | Starting BOINC client version 6.12.4 for windows_x86_64
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | log flags: file_xfer, sched_ops, task
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | Libraries: libcurl/7.19.7 OpenSSL/0.9.8l zlib/1.2.5
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | Data directory: D:\ProgramData\BOINC
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | Running under account SeyfertR
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | Processor: 8 GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz [Family 6 Model 26 Stepping 5]
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | Processor: 256.00 KB cache
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | Processor features: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss htt tm pni ssse3 cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 syscall nx lm vmx tm2 popcnt pbe
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | OS: Microsoft Windows 7: Ultimate x64 Edition, (06.01.7600.00)
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | Memory: 5.99 GB physical, 11.98 GB virtual
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | Disk: 558.76 GB total, 464.00 GB free
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | Local time is UTC -5 hours
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | NVIDIA GPU 0: GeForce GTX 480 (driver version 26099, CUDA version 3020, compute capability 2.0, 1503MB, 778 GFLOPS peak)
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | SETI@home | Found app_info.xml; using anonymous platform
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | rosetta@home | URL http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/; Computer ID 1353899; resource share 100
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | SETI@home | URL http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/; Computer ID 5437839; resource share 100
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | SETI@home | General prefs: from SETI@home (last modified 21-Dec-2010 03:53:36)
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | SETI@home | Host location: none
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | SETI@home | General prefs: using your defaults
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | Reading preferences override file
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | Preferences:
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | max memory usage when active: 4601.34MB
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | max memory usage when idle: 6135.12MB
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | max disk usage: 1.00GB
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | don't use GPU while active
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | suspend work if non-BOINC CPU load exceeds 25 %
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | (to change preferences, visit the web site of an attached project, or select Preferences in the Manager)
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | | Not using a proxy
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | SETI@home | Started upload of 01jl10ac.3379.288409.11.10.155_1_0
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | SETI@home | Started upload of 01jl10ac.3379.288409.11.10.160_0_0
12/22/2010 12:18:37 AM | rosetta@home | Restarting task rhoA8Dec2010_1lb1_1zn6_ProteinInterfaceDesign_8Dec2010_22762_1632_0 using minirosetta version 217

global_perfs.xml:
<global_preferences>
<source_project>http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/</source_project>
<source_scheduler>http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi</source_scheduler>
<mod_time>1292921616</mod_time>
<run_on_batteries>1</run_on_batteries>
<run_if_user_active>1</run_if_user_active>
<run_gpu_if_user_active>0</run_gpu_if_user_active>
<idle_time_to_run>3</idle_time_to_run>
<suspend_if_no_recent_input>0</suspend_if_no_recent_input>
<suspend_cpu_usage>25</suspend_cpu_usage>
<leave_apps_in_memory>1</leave_apps_in_memory>
<cpu_scheduling_period_minutes>60</cpu_scheduling_period_minutes>
<max_cpus>8</max_cpus>
<max_ncpus_pct>100</max_ncpus_pct>
<cpu_usage_limit>100</cpu_usage_limit>
<disk_max_used_gb>1</disk_max_used_gb>
<disk_min_free_gb>100</disk_min_free_gb>
<disk_max_used_pct>1</disk_max_used_pct>
<disk_interval>60</disk_interval>
<vm_max_used_pct>75</vm_max_used_pct>
<ram_max_used_busy_pct>75</ram_max_used_busy_pct>
<ram_max_used_idle_pct>100</ram_max_used_idle_pct>
<work_buf_min_days>1</work_buf_min_days>
<work_buf_additional_days>5</work_buf_additional_days>
<confirm_before_connecting>0</confirm_before_connecting>
<hangup_if_dialed>0</hangup_if_dialed>
<max_bytes_sec_down>0</max_bytes_sec_down>
<max_bytes_sec_up>0</max_bytes_sec_up>
<daily_xfer_limit_mb>0</daily_xfer_limit_mb>
<daily_xfer_period_days>0</daily_xfer_period_days>
<dont_verify_images>0</dont_verify_images>
</global_preferences>

global_perfs_override.xml:
<global_preferences>
<run_on_batteries>1</run_on_batteries>
<run_if_user_active>1</run_if_user_active>
<run_gpu_if_user_active>0</run_gpu_if_user_active>
<idle_time_to_run>3.000000</idle_time_to_run>
<suspend_cpu_usage>25.000000</suspend_cpu_usage>
<start_hour>0.000000</start_hour>
<end_hour>0.000000</end_hour>
<net_start_hour>0.000000</net_start_hour>
<net_end_hour>0.000000</net_end_hour>
<leave_apps_in_memory>1</leave_apps_in_memory>
<confirm_before_connecting>0</confirm_before_connecting>
<hangup_if_dialed>0</hangup_if_dialed>
<dont_verify_images>0</dont_verify_images>
<work_buf_min_days>0.000000</work_buf_min_days>
<work_buf_additional_days>0.000000</work_buf_additional_days>
<max_ncpus_pct>100.000000</max_ncpus_pct>
<cpu_scheduling_period_minutes>60.000000</cpu_scheduling_period_minutes>
<disk_interval>60.000000</disk_interval>
<disk_max_used_gb>1.000000</disk_max_used_gb>
<disk_max_used_pct>1.000000</disk_max_used_pct>
<disk_min_free_gb>100.000000</disk_min_free_gb>
<vm_max_used_pct>75.000000</vm_max_used_pct>
<ram_max_used_busy_pct>75.000000</ram_max_used_busy_pct>
<ram_max_used_idle_pct>100.000000</ram_max_used_idle_pct>
<max_bytes_sec_up>0.000000</max_bytes_sec_up>
<max_bytes_sec_down>0.000000</max_bytes_sec_down>
<cpu_usage_limit>100.000000</cpu_usage_limit>
<daily_xfer_limit_mb>0.000000</daily_xfer_limit_mb>
<daily_xfer_period_days>0</daily_xfer_period_days>
</global_preferences>

EOM

Is there a more elegant way to do this in a manner that does not require manual intervention?

No, it's how we all do it.

By the way, if you do want to run development versions of BOINC, make sure to update to the latest available, when available. We're at 6.12.8 (6.12.9 for Mac) since the 2nd of December. This to make sure that if you do find some weird bug, that it isn't one that was fixed already in a version after yours.

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