Switching to Light CPU usage turns on Battery power limit

[Spiral]

Choosing "Light" mode sometimes causes folding to pause becasue, "Paused: on Battery" somehow turns on (after being un-selected in the advanced control settings). Without changing any setting, switching to another mode such as "Medium" turns this weird bug off.

[PantherX]

Welcome to the F@H Forum Spiral,

Could you please post your log file showing this behavior?

[Neil-B]

Is it the GPU slot that gets paused? The message might be missleading but iirc light will pause gpu slot whatever and halve core count on cpu slots ... I had always believed the pause on battery overode all slider settings and did just what it says hence why I think the message might be iffy ... but I might be totally wrong - if so sorry.

[Joe_H]

Known default for the 7.5.1 client, and I suppose for the 7.6 versions. The Light setting always turns on pause-on-battery, does not matter whether that has been set to false in the client.

On Medium and Full the battery setting can be overridden, but for a laptop that will run your battery down quite quickly. Useful only for a brief disconnect to relocate a laptop or its power adapter. Or if you have a cat, mine sometimes disconnects the MagSafe connector for my MacBook Pro.

If you have a desktop computer that is connected to an UPS, depending on how UPS monitoring is implemented, the pause-on-battery setting can also come into play. If that status is visible to the client, then when the power goes out, the client will pause folding and reduce the load.

One of the client versions before 7.5.1 separated the "On Idle" from the slider setting. The defaults are slightly different if your system is considered a laptop by the installer as compared to a desktop.

[Spiral]

To clarify, while plugged in to a power source, the client can be set to run at Light, Medium, or Full. When not plugged in, selecting Light pauses all folding and displays the message "Paused: on Battery" (even though I've unselected that option in the client settings). This is on a computer that has 1 CPU with 4 cores, and no GPU.

This is my log (while on Light, plugged in to not plugged in, nothing else changed):
00:41:43:WU00:FS01:0xa7:Project: 14620 (Run 475, Clone 0, Gen 52)
00:41:43:WU00:FS01:0xa7:Unit: 0x000000389bf7a4d55e876ccabb7510fb
00:41:43:WU00:FS01:0xa7:Digital signatures verified
00:41:43:WU00:FS01:0xa7:Calling: mdrun -s frame52.tpr -o frame52.trr -cpi state.cpt -cpt 3 -nt 1
00:41:43:WU00:FS01:0xa7:Steps: first=0 total=250000
00:41:44:WU00:FS01:0xa7:Completed 195819 out of 250000 steps (78%)
00:42:06:Removing old file 'configs/config-20200425-051000.xml'
00:42:06:Saving configuration to config.xml
00:42:06:<config>
00:42:06: <!-- Folding Core -->
00:42:06: <checkpoint v='3'/>
00:42:06:
00:42:06: <!-- Network -->
00:42:06: <proxy v=':8080'/>
00:42:06:
00:42:06: <!-- Slot Control -->
00:42:06: <pause-on-battery v='false'/>
00:42:06: <power v='LIGHT'/>
00:42:06:
00:42:06: <!-- User Information -->
00:42:06: <passkey v='********************************'/>
00:42:06: <user v='F-402'/>
00:42:06:
00:42:06: <!-- Folding Slots -->
00:42:06: <slot id='1' type='CPU'/>
00:42:06:</config>
00:43:22:FS01:Shutting core down
00:43:22:WU00:FS01:0xa7:WARNING:Console control signal 1 on PID 10652
00:43:22:WU00:FS01:0xa7:Exiting, please wait. . .
00:43:28:WU00:FS01:0xa7:Folding@home Core Shutdown: INTERRUPTED
00:43:28:WU00:FS01:FahCore returned: INTERRUPTED (102 = 0x66)

Is the client meant to "Paused: on Battery" while on Light and not plugged in, it seems that if at all, pausing when not plugged in should occur when "Full" is selected not Light.

[Joe_H]

As I said, yes that is the default. Normally it also applies to Full or Medium, but the override can turn it off then. The assumption was that someone who both turned off the default on a laptop, and ran it at a higher setting would know that it would not run long that way.

[Joe_H]

Currently No, it is built into the client and there is no setting to override that. Best you can do is enter the manual settings you want and run at Medium or Full. But, the reality is that on battery, it will not run long at just about any usage level.

[comixgoddess]

Thanks for the info, Joe_H. I'm a MacBook Pro user and as my laptop gets moved several times a day, this is good to know.

[Joe_H]

MacBook Pro user as well. I do turn off the pause on battery in my case, it takes care of the occasional disconnect of the MagSafe connector when I move the laptop, or the cat "assists" me.