Crashing WU's when shutting down or restarting?

[Polizei]

Running the SMP client as a service on XP Pro. How can I restart or shut down my computer without crashing or ending a WU? Every time I do this, fahmon shows a new WU downloading and 0% progress.

Really frustrating. :down:

[sc00p]

I've to take back-ups every time I'll stop client (by CTRL+C, not running as a service) or reboot... and use those back-ups before launching clients again. For a back-up you'll need only Work-folder.

And I'm using lots of runs with -oneunit-flags.

[MikeB12]

actually, and I know it goes against al the things you hear.

my most successful method (especially on Vista) is to let the clients run, and use windows start menu shutdown or restart to close everything...
but absolutely no hard shutdowns, windows has to do it... so if you're on a comp that won't power itself completely off with the start button shutdown, then it's irrelevant..

but using that method, I rarely ever lose wu's anymore. and I used to lose them all the time using cntrl c or x, then waiting 5 min...
the key to using cntrl c aor x is you have to wait for the client to write all it's wu files to the work folder. which means waiting until task mgr has no process for fah running anymore. which seems to be forever sometimes..

anyway, try the windows restart method while the clients are running, i swear it works... I used to get so po'ed at lost wu's.. now the only time I lose wu's is on power failures.. hard shutdowns are always a crap shoot, 50/50 on restart loss..

[sc00p]

Funny though... I've had few Windows self-inspired reboots while running dual-smps... and not lost wus :confused:

[MikeB12]

yeah, that's what I'm saying, it's weird fah doesn't say anything about this method.. but from trial and error it's worked for me. let windows shut the client down during a normal windows restart or shutdown.

try it out, it really caught me by surprise when I stumbled onto this about 6 months ago... I never thought it would have worked from what I've read about having to use ctrl C, but it does...

just leave the clients running, click:
http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/8599/97452150xm6.jpg


and just incorporate this method into your routine..
so if you want to play a game without the client running.
restart the pc with the clients running to kill them.
play your game or whatever you want to do.
when finished, restart again to give the os a fresh slate for the clients.
then restart the clients. no wu loss...

(of course you can eliminate the second restart after the game if you want, but i find I like to give my clients a fresh boot to run on again.. I've had instances where affinity changer got kinda fubarred as a service during gameplay and the frametimes were all whacked out when the client restarted. probably because vista played around with the services list during game play. the reboot after gmeplay gives you a fresh servises list for the clients to run on)

[sc00p]

Hmm... IIRC... it was UncleFungus who taught us to just take backs of Work. It's easy and takes just couple of seconds of time. I'm a bit vary of unnecessary boots to just to game or do something else.


While I believe what you found... something caught my eye you saying "but using that method, I rarely ever lose wu's anymore". Do you miss wus by other reasons, not because of this shutdown procedure?

Taking & using back-ups won't let you lose any wus which is, well... what we want.
:yepp: have to test myself your method... would it make any difference: I've only 32bit_XPs? EDIT: oh you said this was especially for vista :)

EDIT: oh sahit... me needs more coffee, brains functiones notts. worst mornings herer...

[MikeB12]

yeah, the backup method works great too, just a little more work...

my xp's are actually resilient to hard shutdowns most of the time too. imo, xp is a lot more resilient to wu loss than vista

it's vista that gave me lost wu issues, that's where the whole reboot windows/restart client came from. I was trying everything. it was quite frustrating for a while..

I have 2 quads on xpsp3, and 1 on vista64.. 6 windows smp's total. it works on all of them. but most helpful on the vista pc. the xp pc's really don't have lost wu issues for me. but then again, I may have forgotten what they were like, I haven't uses ctrl c or "x" in probably 6 months or so...

as far as losing wu's to other reasons, yeah... smp is a babysit client.. I guess that won't change for any of us. I have some periods where it will fold without error for a month or so.. then a full moon happens or something and I get a sporadic 1-4 long iteration or eue... one of the quads I built in March started file io erroring all over the place about a month ago-found out it was the bad 97432 batch of ballistix... I replaced it with a spare set of gskill and it's been fine since.. posted here about it http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=186780&highlight=97432


anyway, try the restart method.. it's easy and eliminates the backup work of copy/pasting..

[Polizei]

I run it as a service, not as a console app... I'm all about no clutter and having the command prompt window open was clutter to me.

I crash WU's when I use Start > Shutdown or restart... I go into the logfile and it says:
[21:52:20] Completed 330000 out of 500000 steps (66 percent)
[22:04:18] Writing local files
[22:04:18] Completed 335000 out of 500000 steps (67 percent)
[22:14:44] CoreStatus = 7B (123)
[22:14:44] Client-core communications error: ERROR 0x7b
[22:14:44] Deleting current work unit & continuing...
[22:16:08] - Warning: Could not delete all work unit files (5): Core returned invalid code

[MikeB12]

yeah, I run all mine in 5.91 console mode (non-service)...
so everything I've claimed only applies to 5.91 console dual/single smp's with/without affinity changer.

but I've had quite a bit of practice... all these are console 5.91's, no service mode clients...
http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/350/43540553vp0.jpg

[SparkyJJO]

Polizei, maybe if you try it in non-service mode for a bit (and deal with the taskbar button for the moment, just to test) and see if it works better that way? If it does, I have a little utility (once i dig it up) that will load the client up and then hide the taskbar button so you won't see it and it won't be in the way but it is running in non-service mode so it might work better.

[The_Barnacle]

And don't worry if it changes your user name to SparkyJJO, that's normal...:para:

[SparkyJJO]

And don't worry if it changes your user name to SparkyJJO, that's normal...:para:

:rofl: