From the mailing list. Boinc v6.10.3 released for Windows and Mac. Linux to follow shortly...

Changes From 6.10.0:

- Mac SS: Changes for compatibility with OS 10.6 while maintaining OS 10.3.9 compatibility.

- Mac: Add x86_64 screensaver for Snow Leopard OS 10.6.

Note: OS 10.6 is not yet released, so I am building the x86_64 screensaver separately using a beta version of OS 10.6 and its development tools, then merging it into the current build, so this change is to the release script.

- client: Attempt to prevent a crash via a C++ exception by checking for a -1 index before attempting erase the rest of the proxy list.

- Mac client: in procinfo_setup(), use rss keyword not rsz in ps command for compatibility with OS 10.6 while keeping OS 10.3.9 compatibility.

- manager: allow 24:00 to be used in advanced prefs dialog from Ian Hay; fixes #357)

- client and scheduler: lay the groundwork for "fractional coproc jobs",

e.g. the Milkyway@home ATI app, of which we can typically run 2 or 3 instances at once on a GPU.

Changes include:

- In APP_VERSION, don't use a COPROCS to represent the GPU requirements; just use doubles ncudas and natis.

- sufficient_coprocs() etc. are no longer members of COPROCS

- in HOST_USAGE, ncudas and natis are doubles

- in scheduler request, req_instances is now a double

This checkin doesn't include the job scheduling logic,

i.e. assigning jobs to GPUs. That will follow.

- client: finish the implementation of fractional coproc jobs.

- different data structure for keeping track of coproc usage;

instead of COPROC having per-instance pointers to ACTIVE_TASK, ACTIVE_TASK now has an array of device number indices for each instance that it's using.

- in enforce_schedule(), we call a new function assign_coprocs() that decides what coproc instances each job will use, and prunes jobs for which we can't get an assignment.

This function embodies lots of subtlety.

- coproc_cmdline() no longer deals with reserving instances; it just has to generate the --device X cmdline

- client: use the right library name for ATI on Linux

- client: check return values from ATI device detection functions

- client: in parsing <coproc> elements in <app_version>, use a new type COPROC_REQ for which the count field is a double. Otherwise fractional GPU jobs don't work.


Changes From 6.10.1:

MGR: on Linux, check list of running processes from procinfo_setup() to determine if BOINC core client is running.

MGR: on Linux, accept 2 optional arguments:

"--clientdir=<dir>" or "-e <dir>" for directory containing client executable, default is the directory containing the manager executable.

"--datadir=<dir>" or "-d <dir>" for BOINC data directory, default is the directory containing the client executable.

These are used by the manager when launching the client.

MGR: Bug fixes for Linux.


Changes From 6.10.2:

- reverted changes to PROXY_INFO which broke various things

- client: fix work fetch log message for ATI GPU

- client: NVIDIA offers an API which tells you whether a GPU is running a graphics application.

Change the semantics of the "don't use GPU while computer in use" pref to "don't use a GPU that's running a graphics app while computer is in use".

This will increase GPU utilization on multi-GPU systems.

- client: various bug fixes in job scheduling and work fetch for ATI. From Crunch3r.

- client: if project is anonymous platform, set the overall work req to the max of the requests for different resource types. Otherwise projects with old schedulers won't send us work.

- Mac installer: add logic for setting BOINC as screensaver under OS 10.6.

- Mac Sandbox: Security fixes for Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard. Mac OS 10.6 requires administrator authorization to run setgid applications if they use the AppKit (Cocoa) framework. The Mac installer adds all users with admin privileges(members of group admin) to group boinc_master. Since the Manager doesn't need to run setgid boinc_master if the user is a member of that group, we eliminate the setgid.

This means that non-admin users will be able to run the Manager only if the sysadmin adds them to group boinc_master, so we now create a login item or set the screensaver only for those users who are members of group boinc_master.

If a user who is not a member of that group runs the Manager, it displays an alert saying that in order to administer BOINC, he needs to ask the sysadmin to add him to group boinc_master.

- client: autoproxy detection should happen at startup too.

- client: when autoproxy detection is in progress don't attempt to use old values

- client: user defined proxies should take presidence over automatically detected ones.

- lib: Re-implement the assignment operator for proxy_info, http_curl.cpp uses it to clone the proxy information for each http op. See set_proxy();

- client:

- remove HTTP_OP::pi; just use gstate.proxy_info

- remove HTTP_OP::set_proxy()

- remove PROXY_INFO::operator=; struct assignment works

- client: Use HTTP_OP::pi to avoid a crash when using a proxy. libcurl uses the proxy information after the PROXY_INFO struct in setup_proxy_session()
had been popped off the stack.

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BOINC blog

From comments in the mailing list it may have issues with scheduling of tasks. Supposedly a fix has already been coded but they haven't done a new build yet.

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BOINC blog

I tried it and the only minor thing I have noticed so far is that it ran another cuda task instead of the one waiting. It was running prior to the upgrade and afterwards decided to run another one. All the tasks in question had the same deadline.

I have yet to install my ATI card so don't know how it will handle that, but overall cuda and cpu tasks seem to work fine. I even managed to run 3 GPUgrid tasks on my dual GTX260 rig but think they may have worked because of wu (they were OTTO ones). I might try a few more to see how it handles things.

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BOINC blog

Now superceeded by BOINC 6.10.4 for which I have started a new message thread.

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BOINC blog