mod app_info.xml to show version on boincmgr or boincview?

[BeemerBiker]

It appears there is no easy way to find which version of seti i am running other than to examine completed output "results".  I do see "enhanced 5.17" in boincmgr but I would rather see something like "R-2.2B|xT|FFT:IPP_SSE3|Ben-Joe" .  Is there a mod that xml file that can be made so that boincmgr (or boincview) can display the client version I am using?

Could I just replace the "5.17" that is in that xml with 2.2b_SSE3 identifier?

..thanks..

[Josef W. Segur]

It appears there is no easy way to find which version of seti i am running other than to examine completed output "results".  I do see "enhanced 5.17" in boincmgr but I would rather see something like "R-2.2B|xT|FFT:IPP_SSE3|Ben-Joe" .  Is there a mod that xml file that can be made so that boincmgr (or boincview) can display the client version I am using?

Could I just replace the "5.17" that is in that xml with 2.2b_SSE3 identifier?

..thanks..

No, if the parser didn't totally choke it would end up saying you were using version 2, and there's a good chance the project has a minimum version of 4 or 5 for the application.

Unfortunately when the anonymous platform approach was designed the BOINC authors were thinking about standard builds from the cvs sources, made to support some otherwise unsupported platform. So there's no mechanism to provide the detail you'd like.
                                                                                     Joe

[BeemerBiker]

OK - there seems to be another way.  BoincMgr reports the column "Application" which seems to be taken from app_info.xml as shown in this section:
 <app_version>
     <app_name>setiathome_enhanced</app_name>
     <version_num>517</version_num>
     <file_ref>
         <file_name>KWSN_2.2B_SSE2-P4_Ben-Joe.exe</file_name>

Is there any problem with replaceing "setiathome_enhanced" with, for example, "seti_enh_2200_SSE2" ?  That way one can spot which version, build and enhancement.   Alternately "seti_enh_SSE2_070420" for date of build.

This file is distributed by the optimizer (Ben-Joe) and they would modify the xml to show the new version whenver they release a new build.

my 2c.

I have a bunch of systems and found that by the time I got the last one upgraded the first one was sometimes running old software.

[ajs]

I have a bunch of systems and found that by the time I got the last one upgraded the first one was sometimes running old software.

I have some 40+ linux machines and suffer also from this.
to get around it, I wrote a script that can enquire of various thigs on each host
for example glibc version, chicken version, kernel version etc

[Josef W. Segur]

...
Is there any problem with replaceing "setiathome_enhanced" with, for example, "seti_enh_2200_SSE2" ?
...

Yes, the project currently only has work for "setiathome_enhanced" applications, and wouldn't send to any other. Before May 2006 it had work for "setiathome", sometime in the future it will probably have some work for "astropulse".
                                                                                     Joe

[BeemerBiker]

I have a bunch of systems and found that by the time I got the last one upgraded the first one was sometimes running old software.

I have some 40+ linux machines and suffer also from this.
to get around it, I wrote a script that can enquire of various thigs on each host
for example glibc version, chicken version, kernel version etc

I had a number of ancient RH9 linux running classic seti but was unable to run the new boinc when it first came out.  They were all command line, not gui, and I gave up trying to figure out how to get that old versoin of RedHat 2.4 to work and switched to win2k.   I would like to use a boot cd like koppix and just run linux and boinc from the boot.  These are mostly dual cpu P3 so I would need smp kernel.  I do not know enough about koppix to build a tailored boot cd that would be able to attached to my seti project automatically.  I see where boinc is offering BartPE.  I have used that as a recover tool but never to run seti.  Not sure about the licensing.  I am probably stretching our license agreement with m$oft using win2k licenses that were "abandond" when we switched to xp.

Anyway, if I was able to boot all of my "retired" dual p3's with a cd linux I would be interested in your script.   Every now and then we build a huge rack of systems and they need to be burned in like these dual 64 bit athlons http://tinyurl.com/qpbow  They sat idle for months, they were diskless except for a cd and would have made a good seti farm.

[ajs]

Anyway, if I was able to boot all of my "retired" dual p3's with a cd linux I would be interested in your script.   Every now and then we build a huge rack of systems and they need to be burned in like these dual 64 bit athlons http://tinyurl.com/qpbow  They sat idle for months, they were diskless except for a cd and would have made a good seti farm.

My script is nothing sprecial and I'm sure it would be ripped apart by others but it suits my needs.
It ends up running an ssh command to the remote hosts to get the info I want displayed.
There's a case statement to allow for different queries all within a for loop of the hostnames (or Ip addrs)

I can email it to you on monday

[ajs]

You should have an email mate

[Metod, S56RKO]

It appears there is no easy way to find which version of seti i am running other than to examine completed output "results".  I do see "enhanced 5.17" in boincmgr but I would rather see something like "R-2.2B|xT|FFT:IPP_SSE3|Ben-Joe" .  Is there a mod that xml file that can be made so that boincmgr (or boincview) can display the client version I am using?

Could I just replace the "5.17" that is in that xml with 2.2b_SSE3 identifier?

Recent versions ov BOINC Manager and BoincView support the use of <user_friendly_name> mechanism ... and some projects already use it (such as Einstein).

As others pointed out, one really mustn't change the name nor version of application ...

See an example below.

Code: [Select]

<app_info>
    <app>
        <name>seti_enhanced</name>
        <user_friendly_name>Seti 5.17 R-2.2B|xT|FFT:IPP_SSE2|Ben-Joe</user_friendly_name>
    </app>
    <file_info>
        <name>KWSN_2.2B_SSE2-P4_Ben-Joe.exe</name>
        <executable/>
    </file_info>
    <app_version>
        <app_name>seti_enhanced</app_name>
        <version_num>517</version_num>
        <file_ref>
            <file_name>KWSN_2.2B_SSE2-P4_Ben-Joe.exe</file_name>
            <main_program/>
        </file_ref>
    </app_version>
</app_info>

Hummm ... too bad you can't use colouring within [code ] blocks 

[Simon]

Hi Metod,

you can use it within a "quote" block though. Combine it with a "tt" one (the typewriter symbol above) and it'll look similar to the code one.

Anyway, seems like a worthwhile change. Do you know what minimum version of BOINC is needed to use the <user_friendly_name> XML field? Also, will older versions just silently ignore it or die?

Regards,
Simon.

[Josef W. Segur]

...Anyway, seems like a worthwhile change. Do you know what minimum version of BOINC is needed to use the <user_friendly_name> XML field? Also, will older versions just silently ignore it or die?

It was added in June 2006, but David forgot to say so in checkin_notes. That would be BOINC 5.5.1, maybe 5.5.0. In terms of release builds you'd need 5.8.x. Older versions won't die, at most they might show an "unparsed XML" warning. I'm running BOINC 5.2.12 and it just silently ignores that.
                                                                                       Joe

[Simon]

Okay,

I'll change future release XML files accordingly. Tested it on BOINC 5.4.9 and 5.8.15, both don't complain, but only 5.8.x reflects the addition in the BOINC manager, as expected.

Regards,
Simon.

[Pepo]

Tested it on BOINC 5.4.9 and 5.8.15, both don't complain

It was nice extension idea, so I've added "<user_friendly_name>Seti 5.15 R-2.2B|xB+GFX|FFT:IPP_SSE2|Ben-Joe</user_friendly_name>" only to my BOINC\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edu\app_info.xml. In BoincManager 5.8.16 everything is so far so good.

And now my BoincView 1.5.0 beta8 shows:

SETI@home Beta Test	- Seti 5.15 R-2.2B|xB+GFX|FFT:IPP_SSE2|Ben-Joe 5.17
SETI@home	- Seti 5.15 R-2.2B|xB+GFX|FFT:IPP_SSE2|Ben-Joe 5.15

Peter

[Metod, S56RKO]

And now my BoincView 1.5.0 beta8 shows:

SETI@home Beta Test	- Seti 5.15 R-2.2B|xB+GFX|FFT:IPP_SSE2|Ben-Joe 5.17
SETI@home	- Seti 5.15 R-2.2B|xB+GFX|FFT:IPP_SSE2|Ben-Joe 5.15

That's a known feature of BOINC CC ... It used to be far worse as CC was not able to distinguish between identically named applications for two different projects (SETI and SETIbeta). When an user introduced app_info.xml for say SETI, then SETIbeta started to crash because it had a bit higher version number.

[Pepo]

That's a known feature of BOINC CC ... It used to be far worse as CC was not able to distinguish between identically named applications for two different projects (SETI and SETIbeta). When an user introduced app_info.xml for say SETI, then SETIbeta started to crash because it had a bit higher version number.

I do remember the feature, I was immediately using the then-newer Boinc aplhas. But as I understood Joe's related changes from many months ago, the issue should be really away. And, BoincManager does not suffer from it... 

[edit]How to take a look at the GUI RPC data flow? It's a local client, so Wireshark is useless, and I'd have to make the authentication manually, if connected over telnet...[/edit]

Peter