Questions and Answers :
Windows :
service
Message board moderation
Author | Message |
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Dave(The Admiral)Nelson Send message Joined: 4 Jun 99 Posts: 415 Credit: 22,293,483 RAC: 1 |
what does the phrase "run as a service" mean? Dave Nelson |
Jord Send message Joined: 9 Jun 99 Posts: 15184 Credit: 4,362,181 RAC: 3 |
When a program runs as a service under Windows, it will run in the background, at Windows log on and even when no one is logged on, but the computer is still on. You can see what kind of services run on your Windows by searching for services.msc and starting that when found. When BOINC runs as a service, it can do science at the log-on screen with no one logged in. It doesn't need the BOINC Manager (but then it doesn't need that for the user install either, the client can run perfectly fine by itself). Two things though, when checking in Windows Task Manager, you'll have to click "show processes from all users", because the BOINC processes run under BOINC's own limited user accounts. The other thing is that GPUs cannot be used for calculations, because the drivers run in a different session from the user account. This is a Windows security measure, it cannot be fixed or circumvented by BOINC. Without being able to see the driver components needed to do calculations with, BOINC cannot detect capable GPUs. |
Dave(The Admiral)Nelson Send message Joined: 4 Jun 99 Posts: 415 Credit: 22,293,483 RAC: 1 |
Thank you, I don't understand a lot of that but it gives me something to work on. Dave Nelson |
antonny_LB_91 Send message Joined: 12 Sep 15 Posts: 1 Credit: 0 RAC: 0 |
Why BOINC cannot detect capable GPUs? |
rob smith Send message Joined: 7 Mar 03 Posts: 22158 Credit: 416,307,556 RAC: 380 |
Because of the way Windows manages GPUs in relation to a service. Bob Smith Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society) Somewhere in the (un)known Universe? |
OzzFan Send message Joined: 9 Apr 02 Posts: 15691 Credit: 84,761,841 RAC: 28 |
Why BOINC cannot detect capable GPUs? Because anything that runs as a service runs in the SYSTEM context. Because of security principles that have changed in Windows, the SYSTEM context has been sandboxed off from the user context to prevent malicious software in the user context from being able to corrupt the entire system, and to prevent buggy drivers from crashing the entire system. The libraries for GPU crunching are loaded in the user context, therefore a SYSTEM context application cannot access those libraries. There is no way for BOINC to fix or bypass this. |
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