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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: Distributed Computing Linux on 512MB USB stick |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 26
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I'll definitely be having a look at this for my crunching farm (when I get one
 ). USB sticks are cheap as chips, and beats spending say AU$70 on the cheapest SATA HDD.Two quick questions: 1) Does it have some sort of VNC installed for remote connections? Eg Ubuntu comes with VNC and VNC Viewer installed so that I can access them from my 'doze machine. 2) Roughly how long would the average USB stick last running this 24/7? 1 year? 2? 5? Eller |
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CADENCE
Cruncher Joined: Jan 15, 2005 Post Count: 13 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Two quick questions: 1) Does it have some sort of VNC installed for remote connections? Eg Ubuntu comes with VNC and VNC Viewer installed so that I can access them from my 'doze machine. 2) Roughly how long would the average USB stick last running this 24/7? 1 year? 2? 5? There is no VNC. There is no X-server either. It's supposed to be light-weight. You can access your boinc client via remote boinc manager. For example from your main Windows (or Linux with X-server) machine. During the first boot, it will ask you to specify password and IP of the machine that you run your BOINC Manager on (in your case your Windows machine). Then, start you regular BOINC on you Windows machine, select "Advanced->Select computer..." and type host name of your DC machine and the password that you configured. This way you can control everything remotely and don't need VNC. Yes, that assumes you have BOINC installed on your Windows machine :) You can also chose to start SSH daemon on your DC machine (also an option during first boot) and access you machine remotely in command-line mode (although using BOINC in command-line mode is quite difficult). I don't know how long the USB stick will last, but my guess is it should be fine for many years. It will write there just a few MB of data every 6 hours - it is not much. Even if the data was *always* written to exactly the same spot on the USB stick, you have only 4 write cycles every day. I think even cheap USB sticks can handle thousands of write cycles, so it should be good for many years. Let me know if you have any problems with setting things up. I will try to help. Regards. |
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Nick-MMX
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Dec 24, 2006 Post Count: 108 Status: Offline |
assuming that the flash memory can survive 10000 write cycles (industry standard) it will be:
((10000x6)/24)/365.25=6.844 years of 24/7 use |
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Nick-MMX
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Dec 24, 2006 Post Count: 108 Status: Offline |
please make a 32-bit version :D
question: does it require me to cd into the directory and ./boinc_cmd or does it auto-start?  |
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CADENCE
Cruncher Joined: Jan 15, 2005 Post Count: 13 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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please make a 32-bit version :D question: does it require me to cd into the directory and ./boinc_cmd or does it auto-start? I'm planning to make 32-bit version this weekend :) I wasn't originally planning to do this, but so many people asked for it that I just feel obligated to do it now. I will let you guys know when it's ready. It auto-starts BOINC. |
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andyarmstrong
Cruncher Joined: Jun 25, 2008 Post Count: 22 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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how does it hokoup with the specific world community grid team and member that i want also!
Cannot wait for the 32bit release - am waiting with baited breath! Also couldnt you just add an option to write mb to the ram - and thus you need not even leave the usb drive in the machine - if you plan on not turning the machine off, not a problem and even if you do - all you loose is the current work units progress.... |
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CADENCE
Cruncher Joined: Jan 15, 2005 Post Count: 13 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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@andyarmstrong
You can join whatever team you want and use whatever user you want. You do that when you first connect to your DC machine using BOINC manager. 32-bit version is coming soon. I'm hoping to find some time this weekend. Storing the whole system in the RAM would be too memory expensive. And it's probably not such a good idea to share one BOINC installation between two computers. It's really designed around the idea that you have dedicated USB stick for each of your crunching machines. 2GB USB flash drives cost less than $10 these days... If you lucky you can find a 1GB stick for $5. There is really not much to save here IMHO. |
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andyarmstrong
Cruncher Joined: Jun 25, 2008 Post Count: 22 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I guess but my flashdrive states its 512 but is actually 418mb only - makes it useless...
SO was wanting to use my external hdd - i put the image file on the hdd, reboot - make external hdd the 1st bootable device - but it fails and just boots windows as if nothing was on the external hdd at all - hmph. Any ideas! Will there be a possibility that the 32bit version will be out tonight - i really fancy setting this up this evening! |
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CADENCE
Cruncher Joined: Jan 15, 2005 Post Count: 13 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I will not finish 32-bit version today. It's not that trivial. I will start it today, but I will have to finish it tomorrow.
I haven't tried it on the external HDD, so I don't know how to help you. Maybe make sure that you do it exactly as described. Don't ungzip the image file and use 'zcat' command (not 'cat' nor 'dd' since they will not work with compressed image). |
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andyarmstrong
Cruncher Joined: Jun 25, 2008 Post Count: 22 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Well thats the thing - am in windows - so I downlaoded it , used winrar to untar it - and simply stuck the new single file on the externall....
The external did have other stuff on it though - so suppose that could have screwed it over! Brilliant - how was the development today on the i386 version - good? |
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