Preference

From Unofficial BOINC Wiki

Contents 1 General 2 Editing Preferences 3 Location-Specific Preferences 4 General Preferences 5 Project Preferences 6 Forum Preferences 7 Also See 8 UCB Source 9 Copyright ©

[edit] General

BOINC Preferences are settings which control how the BOINC Client Software operates. They are alterable via Project Web Sites. Preferences are divided into 3 types, with General Preferences and Project Preferences each having 3 Venues each (there is also the 4^th "default" set); and a Preference Set to control the "look-and-feel" of the Project's Web Site Forums.

[edit] Editing Preferences

You can view and edit your preferences via the project's web site. Click on the 'Your Account' link, then 'View or edit preferences'. This shows you the preferences. If you want to change anything, click on 'Edit preferences'.

When you change your preferences on the web, the changes won't take effect immediately on your computer; they'll take effect the next time your computer connects to the project's server. If you want this to happen immediately, bring up the BOINC Manager on your computer, select the project, and click 'Update'.

If you're running the BOINC Client Software on several computers, preference changes will eventually propagate to all of them.

If you participate in multiple BOINC projects, click here for information about preferences.

[edit] Location-Specific Preferences

If you have computers at several locations (e.g. home, work and school) you may want to use different preferences for different locations. The preferences editing system (see above) lets you create (or delete) separate preferences for home, work, and school.

Each computer attached to your account has a location. To view this, go to the project's web site, then click 'Your account' and 'View Computers'. Click on the ID of the computer you're interested in. At the bottom of the page there's a popup menu that lets you see or change the location. A change to a computer's location will take effect only when that computer contacts the server; you can make this happen immediately using the BOINC Manager's Update command.

If a computer has its location set to 'home' (for example), and you've defined separate preferences for home, it will use those preferences. Otherwise it will use your default preferences.

Your account has a 'default location' (home, work, or school). New computers attaching to your account will be given the default location. The default location is part of your project preferences, so to change it, edit your project preferences.

[edit] General Preferences

General preferences apply to all BOINC projects in which you participate. They include:

Computing Preferences
When to work	You can specify whether work (computation and network transfer) should be done: if the computer is in use (i.e. during keyboard and mouse input); if the computer is being powered by batteries (for laptop users). You can also specify a range of hours when work should be done.
Leave applications in memory while preempted	If yes, applications will be preempted by suspending and resuming, rather than quitting. This uses more Virtual Memory, but uses CPU Time more efficiently.
Switch between applications every X minutes	This determines how often the BOINC Client Software switches between Projects.
Virtual memory	Limit the virtual memory used by the BOINC Client Software.
Disk Preferences
Usage limits	You can limit the disk space used by BOINC in any of three ways: Maximum disk space used by the BOINC Client Software; Maximum percentage of total space that can be used by the BOINC Client Software. Minimum disk space to keep free.
Access interval	A suggested interval between disk accesses. Useful on laptops where the disk may be spun down for long periods.
Network Preferences
Bandwidth limits	Limit the number of bytes per second uploaded or downloaded by the BOINC Client Software.
Network connection preferences	Whether to wait for confirmation before making network connections, and whether to disconnect when done.
Time between network connections	Target time between network connections. When your computer asks a server for work, it will try to get enough work to last for this long.

[edit] Project Preferences

There is a separate set of project preferences for each Project in which you are a Participant. These include:

Preferences
Resource share	If Projects contend for resources, the amount allocated to a Project is proportional to this number.
Email prefs	Whether the Project should send you newsletters by email.
Hide computer information	Whether the project should show information about your computers (their CPU and OS type, benchmark ratings etc.; not their names or addresses) on its Web Site.
Default computer location	The location assigned to computers that attach to this Account.
Project-specific preferences	Defined by the project; e.g., to specify graphics color schemes.

[edit] Forum Preferences

Preferences
Reset Preferences	A button that allows the Participant to restore the default set of Forum Preferences.
Avatar	???
Avatar Preview	Allows the Participant to validate that the Avatar looks the way that it is expected to look.
Sort Styles	???
Display and Behavior	???
Filtering	???
Filtered Users	???
Signature for Message Boards	???
Signature Preview	???
Update Info	Saves the current set of Forum Preferences.

[edit] Also See

• GLOBAL_PREFS Structure

[edit] UCB Source

Preferences

[edit] Copyright ©

• 2005 University of California
• 2005 Paul D. Buck

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.