Hello all;

I have a screen saver issue with Rosetta:
When I just run Mapping Cancer Markers from World Community Grid, everything is fine.
But as soon as I add Rosetta, the screen saver locks up after some time, showing only a small turning circle, and sometimes even fails to load.
Then I need to press ctrl-alt-del to get back to the Windows screen.
I have this issue on both an Atom x5-z8350, and on a Celeron N4100.
So both have an integrated Intel GPU chip.
The CPU continues its work though while this happens, or at least I think it is.
Has anyone else seen this behaviour?
Is it Rosetta-related or Intel driver stuff?
My Windows installations are 100% up to date.

Thank you in advance for your reply;
Carl

Just curious, does the R@h screen saver have any issues when only R@h tasks are active?

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

Hi;

Well, I have not tried that yet. Good idea.
I will set World Community Grid to "Don't accept new work units" , and let it finish its current work units.
And then I will have only Rosetta work units.

I will keep you informed in the coming days.

Thanks for the reply;
Carl

Hi again;

I have been able to do what you asked:
Let Rosetta@Home run alone, with no other science projects in parallel.

The problem still persists though.
And I have been able to reproduce it on 3 different PCs: An Atom x5, a Celeron N4100 and an AMD A6-1450.
I guess that means it cannot be a driver issue or a Windows issue.

Whenever I run ONLY other science projects (Mapping Cancer Markers and/or Microbiome Immunity Project, even both in parallel) there is no issue.

Mind you, it takes time for the issue to appear:
Sometimes the Rosetta screensaver runs just fine for 1-2 hours, before it turns into a blank screen with just a small blue turning circle.

So it must be something Rosetta-related (or maybe the settings of the screen saver?).
I know: Is the screensaver stops working after 1-2 hours, that is not a big problem.
But its annoying.

Your sincerely;
Carl

You have 3 Windows machines with 4 processors. 2 have 4gb of memory and the AMD machine has 8gb of memory.
I would suspect that you are running out of physical memory and paging to disk. Rosetta becomes a memory hog at the checkpoint times and uses 1gb of memory or more.

Start up the TASK MANAGER and select the PERFORMANCE tab. When it happens and you get control back, check the memory usage history. I think you will find available memory was exhausted.
The RESOURCE MONITOR also provides some more detail on the disk usage.

Possible solutions:
1. buy more memory
2. don't start unnecessary programs that take memory (screensaver, browser, ...)
3. limit the number of concurrent Rosetta WU with an app_config.xml file
4. Don't run Rosetta

Ok, thank you for the input!
I don't think that memory usage is an issue, but I will double check to be sure.
And otherwise I'll limit the number of Rosetta WUs as you said.
Those from "Mapping Cancer Markers" and "Micriobiome" don't take more than +-500Mb of RAM.
So if I run 3 of those in parallel with 1 Rosetta WU, there should be no problem.

Thanks again;
Carl

You have 3 Windows machines with 4 processors. 2 have 4gb of memory and the AMD machine has 8gb of memory.
I would suspect that you are running out of physical memory and paging to disk. Rosetta becomes a memory hog at the checkpoint times and uses 1gb of memory or more.

As usual: the possibility to select this kind of simulations in user's profile (like gpugrid - LARGE wus, LITTLE wus)

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Ok, thank you for the input!
I don't think that memory usage is an issue, but I will double check to be sure.
And otherwise I'll limit the number of Rosetta WUs as you said.
Those from "Mapping Cancer Markers" and "Micriobiome" don't take more than +-500Mb of RAM.
So if I run 3 of those in parallel with 1 Rosetta WU, there should be no problem.

Thanks again;
Carl

WCG work units seem well behaved and your estimates are close. One of them is actually Rosetta code.
Rosetta is not well behaved and the WU seem to do very ugly things that I have seen take 1.5gb each. The 64-bit binary is the worst.

On my Windows machine, I use BOINCTASKS with the MEMORY column on the TASKS page enabled so I can watch usage.

Another "knob" that you have is the BOINC Manager:
OPTIONS -> COMPUTING PREFERENCES -> DISK AND MEMORY -> PAGE/SWAP FILE: USE AT MOST option.

You can set that to use a low % on the PAGE/SWAP memory option and if one of the WU goes rogue, jobs will fail quickly without affecting Windows and stalling with high disk activity.

I chose a BLANK screen saver. The BOINC screen savers looks nice but takes some CPU and memory away from crunching.

Carl, another thing to check would be the preference configured via the R@h website, so the venue of the machines in question, for the "Percentage of CPU time used for graphics" that is specified. Perhaps a complex graphic would exceed that preference.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense