Is the CPU timer on the tasks tab of the advanced view supposed to start at 0 everytime? Happens with Rosetta but not with WCG (aids at home)

No. But it is certainly possible to configure things such that you might see this. If your General Preference specifies that you do not want BOINC to run while the computer is in use, and that you do NOT want to leave applications in memory while preempted, then BOINC is doing exactly what you've asked it to do.

If you do not allow the tasks to remain "in memory" (it's just virtual memory here, not physical), then any work done since the last checkpoint is lost. This is typically less then 20 minutes of work, but there are specific types of tasks that take longer between checkpoints. It is a balancing act between checkpointing all the time, and getting useful crunching done.

If the task has not reached a checkpoint yet, and then you come back and use the PC, and thus (assuming the configuration mentioned above) remove the task from memory, you are throwing away all the work done since the last checkpoint. In your case, it sounds like the task has not reached the first checkpoint yet. And so you are throwing away all of the progress it has made so far. When you then restart the task, the time shown will match that of the last checkpoint saved. Since you haven't reached the point where a checkpoint is saved, it is restarting at zero.

If you allow it to run longer before using the machine again, it will save a checkpoint and preserve some of the progress made. In most cases, leaving BOINC applications in memory is best. That allows all the work to be preserved and generally doesn't cause any noticible slowdown on the machine.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

So does Aids at home have a check point every .001% or something? I quickly exited it at 58.3%, and then it came back to 57.9% and chugged along. On the other hand, Rosetta seems to be indefintely on 1%.

I see why it's hard to calculate %, but can't there at least be a "raw" counter of how much has been crunched or something?

And my memory settings are the same for WCG as they are for Rosetta but I'm not having to deal with all the quirks of Rosetta.

If you exited at 58.3% and it restarted with 57.9%, then no it is not checkpointing every .001%. In fact you crunched .4% without a checkpoint. How much more would you have lost if you happed to try it again at 59%?

Different applications are able to checkpoint a different points in their execution. Rosetta, for some task types, requires significant time before it reaches a point in the run where a checkpoint can be taken. Some BOINC applications do not checkpoint at all, and must run from start to finish in one stretch without interruption.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense