I just installed the BOINC client, and selected BOINCsaver as my screen saver module.

When I trigger the screen saver to start (using a hot corner), I'll see the graphics flash briefly and then the screen goes all black. This happens whether I have the option "go to blank screen" selected or not.

Summary: I cannot get the full screen saver to display for more than a split second.

What am I doing wrong?

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Let's see (first of all, welcome aboard) - simple things first: the BOINCManager must be running (even in the background) for the screensaver to work. Is this the case?

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Let's see (first of all, welcome aboard) - simple things first: the BOINCManager must be running (even in the background) for the screensaver to work. Is this the case?

Hi. I have recently sined up and also have the same problem. Yes BONIC Manager is runing. Still the screen saver flashes up for a moment then the screen goes to blank. Suggestions?

Hi.

I'm a new user as well and i've been having the same issue. i've tried SETI and rosetta, both do the same thing. the screensaver flashes for 1 frame, then goes black.

What's going on? I've been through all the prefences in both boink and my system prefs for the screen saver, to no avail.

Thanks.

~ andy.

Mac G4 - Dual 1.2 Gig OS X 10.4.7

My BOINC/Rosetta installation is cranking out results (on a dual-G5 Mac, OS 10.4.11), but the screensaver doesn't work: It flashes "Connecting to BOINC application", then the screen goes black and stays black. Prolonged searching has turned up nothing on this problem. It would be nice to see the pretty graphics.

Advice?
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As a bonus, after the above, Activity Monitor reported that one of the two "Rosetta Beta 9.5, boinc_project" processes was "Not responding". I killed it, which required using my administrator password. BOINC promptly started a fresh process -- which was running as root!!!

I replicated this by trying to run the screensaver (in test and regular mode)... no problem... then switching back to my usual screensaver ("Flurry")... whereupon one process was not responding. When I killed it, it was again replaced with a process running as root.

I urge responsible parties to look into this. Something related to security is very badly broken.

My BOINC/Rosetta installation is cranking out results (on a dual-G5 Mac, OS 10.4.11), but the screensaver doesn't work: It flashes "Connecting to BOINC application", then the screen goes black and stays black. Prolonged searching has turned up nothing on this problem. It would be nice to see the pretty graphics.

Advice?
--------------

As a bonus, after the above, Activity Monitor reported that one of the two "Rosetta Beta 9.5, boinc_project" processes was "Not responding". I killed it, which required using my administrator password. BOINC promptly started a fresh process -- which was running as root!!!

I replicated this by trying to run the screensaver (in test and regular mode)... no problem... then switching back to my usual screensaver ("Flurry")... whereupon one process was not responding. When I killed it, it was again replaced with a process running as root.

I urge responsible parties to look into this. Something related to security is very badly broken.

Not sure if this will help. I'm running on Windows and encountered a similar symptom...screen saver starts up...see the boinc loading message and then screen goes to black. After some fiddling, I lowered the maximum cpu usage from 100% to 80% and then the screen saver appeared. From what I can tell, it looks like the screen saver and the model computation are running at the same low priority contending for processor time. By lowering the maximum amount processor usage by model computation, this allows the screen saver access to the cpu to display the images.

Jim

After some fiddling, I lowered the maximum cpu usage from 100% to 80% and then the screen saver appeared.

That fixes the problem, and I can finally see what the program is doing.
Thank you!

Now, if only the OS software weren't so stupid about authority and process ownership...

My BOINC/Rosetta installation is cranking out results (on a dual-G5 Mac, OS 10.4.11), but the screensaver doesn't work: It flashes "Connecting to BOINC application", then the screen goes black and stays black. Prolonged searching has turned up nothing on this problem. It would be nice to see the pretty graphics.

Advice?
--------------

As a bonus, after the above, Activity Monitor reported that one of the two "Rosetta Beta 9.5, boinc_project" processes was "Not responding". I killed it, which required using my administrator password. BOINC promptly started a fresh process -- which was running as root!!!

I replicated this by trying to run the screensaver (in test and regular mode)... no problem... then switching back to my usual screensaver ("Flurry")... whereupon one process was not responding. When I killed it, it was again replaced with a process running as root.

I urge responsible parties to look into this. Something related to security is very badly broken.

Not sure if this will help. I'm running on Windows and encountered a similar symptom...screen saver starts up...see the boinc loading message and then screen goes to black. After some fiddling, I lowered the maximum cpu usage from 100% to 80% and then the screen saver appeared. From what I can tell, it looks like the screen saver and the model computation are running at the same low priority contending for processor time. By lowering the maximum amount processor usage by model computation, this allows the screen saver access to the cpu to display the images.

Jim

I've just d/led the BOINC Rosetta client, and I haven't seen any graphics At All. I have reduced my CPU usage to 80, but this doesn't fix the black screen problem. It says "Loading Screensaver", and then I get the BOINC logo with a percent of work completed underneath. Is there something else I may be doing wrong?

Thanx

Renae

Let's see (first of all, welcome aboard) - simple things first: the BOINCManager must be running (even in the background) for the screensaver to work. Is this the case?

Hey~
So basically i have a hot corner that goes to screen saver but when i do that the boinc screen saver doesnt come back and its just my normal screen saver... help please... ^.~

I'd like to revive this old thread because four years after the original posts, I get exactly the same problems with Rosetta. Fiddling with CPU percentages does not help. Is there any other known solution for this or any idea how to debug the problem?

Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 Starting BOINC client version 6.10.58 for x86_64-apple-darwin
Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 log flags: file_xfer, sched_ops, task
Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 Libraries: libcurl/7.19.7 OpenSSL/0.9.7l zlib/1.2.3 c-ares/1.6.0
Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 Data directory: /Library/Application Support/BOINC Data
Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 Processor: 2 GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz [x86 Family 6 Model 23 Stepping 10]
Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 Processor features: FPU VME DE PSE TSC MSR PAE MCE CX8 APIC SEP MTRR PGE MCA CMOV PAT PSE36 CLFSH DS ACPI MMX FXSR SSE SSE2 SS HTT TM SSE3 MON DSCPL VMX SMX EST TM2 SSSE3 CX16 TPR PDCM SSE4.1
Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 OS: Mac OS X 10.6.5 (Darwin 10.5.0)
Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 Memory: 4.00 GB physical, 160.02 GB virtual
Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 Disk: 201.00 GB total, 159.78 GB free
Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 Local time is UTC +0 hours
Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 NVIDIA GPU 0: GeForce 320M (driver version unknown, CUDA version 3020, compute capability 1.2, 253MB, 91 GFLOPS peak)

I'd like to revive this old thread because four years after the original posts, I get exactly the same problems with Rosetta. Fiddling with CPU percentages does not help. Is there any other known solution for this or any idea how to debug the problem?

Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 Starting BOINC client version 6.10.58 for x86_64-apple-darwin
Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 log flags: file_xfer, sched_ops, task
Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 Libraries: libcurl/7.19.7 OpenSSL/0.9.7l zlib/1.2.3 c-ares/1.6.0
Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 Data directory: /Library/Application Support/BOINC Data
Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 Processor: 2 GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz [x86 Family 6 Model 23 Stepping 10]
Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 Processor features: FPU VME DE PSE TSC MSR PAE MCE CX8 APIC SEP MTRR PGE MCA CMOV PAT PSE36 CLFSH DS ACPI MMX FXSR SSE SSE2 SS HTT TM SSE3 MON DSCPL VMX SMX EST TM2 SSSE3 CX16 TPR PDCM SSE4.1
Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 OS: Mac OS X 10.6.5 (Darwin 10.5.0)
Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 Memory: 4.00 GB physical, 160.02 GB virtual
Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 Disk: 201.00 GB total, 159.78 GB free
Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 Local time is UTC +0 hours
Thu Nov 25 10:10:46 2010 NVIDIA GPU 0: GeForce 320M (driver version unknown, CUDA version 3020, compute capability 1.2, 253MB, 91 GFLOPS peak)

I don't have an answer for you but until someone more knowledgeable comes along perhaps I can help clarify the problem.

When you say you have the exact same problem do you mean that you "see the graphics flash briefly and then the screen goes all black" or you "get the BOINC logo with a percent of work completed underneath" or "just (your) normal screen saver"?

Are you attached to other BOINC projects? Do their screen savers work? What about the generic BOINC screen saver?

When you say you have fiddled with CPU percentages could you be more specific? There are several preferences related to CPU use which can be set either locally or via the project website. Are you aware that if you open the local preferences and then close the window by clicking "OK" you have created a local preferences file which overrides the choices you made on the website general computing page? If you go back to your messages tab and look beneath the lines you posted you should see first lines with the URL for each project to which you are attached and then a line indicated when and on which project site you last modified your general preferences. If you have, either intentionally or inadvertently, created a local preferences file you will see the line "Reading preferences override file".

Can you open the graphics window through the BOINC manager? I do not use a screen saver but I frequently view the graphics this way. Be sure to highlight the running task to activate the "show graphics" button. Usually this works just fine but occasionally it doesn't work at all. Problems seem to be confined to specific batches of workunits but I couldn't guess as to whether this is due to an error in creating those batches or due to some resource conflict caused by the heavier demands of those specific workunits.

If you have confirmed that the problem is limited to rosetta and affects more than one type of workunit then perhaps it's time to experiment with the rosetta specific preferences. On your account page under the preferences section the third option will take you to the rosetta@home specific preferences page. There you will find an option to set the percentage of CPU used for graphics. I don't know if this applies to the screen saver, the separate graphics window or both. When I open the graphics window I can see (in Task Manager) that its CPU use fluctuating quite dramatically but it might well be averaging 10% (the default). I also noticed it was claiming about a third less of real memory and a third more of virtual memory than the actual workunit. Your preferences for memory use might also be coming into play here.

And finally I noticed you don't yet have any credit. Not a big deal as you've only just joined but as your computers are hidden I can't tell if this lack of credit is because you simply haven't yet reported any workunits or if they have been reported but deemed invalid. If it's the later a link to the task details might provide important clues. If it's the former I would wonder if you are using the default three hour runtime and would want to confirm just how much CPU time rosetta is actually getting. It's possible there are other problems effecting the running of the workunits which will have to be solved before the graphics can be made to work.


Best,
Snags

I see the graphics flash briefly and then the screen goes all blank. I am also attached to climateprediction, where the screen goes black without any flashing of graphics. The generic BOINC screensaver works as do the graphics of the projects when I start them via the BOINC manager. I have tried both the project specific CPU preferences as the local CPU preferences, also I limited computation to one of my two CPUs. Nothing helped. I also increased the CPU available for the graphics in the Rosetta preferences.
I have not yet started running BOINC permanently, as I still have to figure out how to best minimize heat and fan activity. I am a bit unhappy with the options available to control this, but that is another subject. For the moment I thought I might just run one project as screensaver that is disabled as soon as I come back and using less than 80% of CPU capability.

A quick search on the BOINC boards uncovered this post. Try forcing your computer to stop automatically switching between gpus and see if that makes any difference. The discussion in the links is referring to crunching with a gpu but the OP found the fix solved his screen saver issue. Note that this will increase the drain on your battery.

If you want BOINC to run only when you are not using your computer you have to set "suspend work while computer is in use?" to yes (if using web preferences) or uncheck the (Computing allowed)"While computer is in use" box (if using local preferences*). The screen saver has nothing to do with this and has no effect on the actual crunching. It's pretty and can give a bit of info on the work currently being done but it's superfluous to the running of BOINC and the completing of workunits. It reduces the amount of resources available to crunch the workunits and many folks avoid using it for this reason.

As far as the heat goes I'm afraid you are going to have to experiment with the settings until you get the results that suit you. If you attach to additional BOINC projects you will find that some applications run more intensely (efficiently) than others and thereby create more heat. The only solid advice I can offer on that issue is to blow out the dust on a regular basis.



Best,
Snags

*I am using an older version of BOINC so your wording may be different.