current chess960 work units

[vaughan]

AMDave I'm glad you posted your observations because I thought it was just my Windows machines and my inexperience with Ubuntu Linux. I also find that if I exit BOINC that the Chess engine keeps running. Only killing the application via Task Manager gets rid of it.

I tried BOINC-view myself but couldn't get it to work across my network so now I rely on visiting each PC and checking the BOINC Manager status. I am running LogMeIn Ignition and it seems pretty good. I doubt it is worth 40USD per year though when the trial period ends. It appears that LogMeIn know how to charge more than the mighty Micro$oft.

[AMDave]

Yes the chess engines used by chess960 will continue running until they complete, even after you have stopped BOINC. This is because the wrapper starts them as a separate executable and there is no communication back to the initiating program, whether it be the BOINC client or the wrapper. The engines also do not support "suspension". Once started they will run until complete. The wrapper checks on the program to see if it is finished or not and hands back the result files if it is complete.

Some of the projects that use a BOINC wrapper have added in some more intelligence to check if the executable has hung by setting a drop-dead time limit after which it sends the kill command to the OS. From your initial text above it looks like either that limit is set much too high in this wrapper or it may not be there.


LogMeIn is certainly a convenient product and they do take out a lot of the hard work required to connect to a LAN behind a DHCP connection. I tried the free version and although I had a stability issue with it I was convinced at the time that it was of my own making as I had really screwed around with the rig I tried it on and it had other problems too. Although I have not used it since then, I have observed several of you extolling its virtues.

It is possible to achieve the same thing with a combination of free remote-GUI products and a free dynamic DNS service. Of course changing the TCP/IP and UDP ports helps, but it is better to secure the port than it is to try and hide it when a port scanner will eventually pick it up anyway. With a bit of messing around with your router and a PC you can even set up your own VPN tunnel to keep out the script-kiddies. It is more arduous but learning something for the first time often is

LogMeIn's selling point is that it combines these networking aspects and automates them as much as possible for you - Oh and the "LogMeIn Scout" is a little nifty.