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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: don't run BOINC on a travel/flash drive; use UD interface instead |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 16
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retsof
Former Community Advisor USA Joined: Jul 31, 2005 Post Count: 6824 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I just set up a Windows BOINC directory on a travel/flash drive and retsof/Vulture Central III is now contributing a bit more than usual. I used the boinc account key in my profile and attached to WCG with no problem. It is running on yet another computer on the travel drive itself and I can move it around at my leisure. I don't want to leave it there all of the time, and will only have access to that computer for another couple of weeks anyway. I set it to "network activity suspended". I want to move it to my regular computer at some point for transfers when the workunit is complete. Today was just an experiment to get it started.
----------------------------------------I'm not sure that it would run on the same computer as a regular WCG UD program, but I can always exit the other and run BOINC there if I need to. (I THINK....) Opinions <--------<<<<
SUPPORT ADVISOR
----------------------------------------Work+GPU i7 8700 12threads School i7 4770 8threads Default+GPU Ryzen 7 3700X 16threads Ryzen 7 3800X 16 threads Ryzen 9 3900X 24threads Home i7 3540M 4threads50% [Edit 3 times, last edit by retsof at Mar 20, 2006 2:49:47 PM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I just set up a Windows BOINC directory on a travel/flash drive and retsof/Vulture Central III is now contributing a bit more than usual. I used the boinc account key in my profile and attached to WCG with no problem. It is running on yet another computer on the travel drive itself and I can move it around at my leisure. I don't want to leave it there all of the time, and will only have access to that computer for another couple of weeks anyway. I set it to "network activity suspended". I want to move it to my regular computer at some point for transfers when the workunit is complete. Today was just an experiment to get it started. I'm not sure that it would run on the same computer as a regular WCG UD program, but I can always exit the other and run BOINC there if I need to. (I THINK....) Opinions <--------<<<< Wow, it is great. Can you describe the steps to do this? Thanks.  |
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Dirk Gently
Senior Cruncher England Joined: Mar 1, 2005 Post Count: 153 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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What a great idea!
----------------------------------------I had never thought, but this must mean that installing BOINC does not make any registry entries that are required to run it. This makes it a portable application as you describe. If it works, this means that we can make use of a number of temporarily available machines without the chore of installing/uninstalling BOINC on each machine. I have a flash drive, but no spare machine at present, so I will watch this thread with interest. |
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keithhenry
Ace Cruncher Senile old farts of the world ....uh.....uh..... nevermind Joined: Nov 18, 2004 Post Count: 18665 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I just set up a Windows BOINC directory on a travel/flash drive and retsof/Vulture Central III is now contributing a bit more than usual. I used the boinc account key in my profile and attached to WCG with no problem. It is running on yet another computer on the travel drive itself and I can move it around at my leisure. I don't want to leave it there all of the time, and will only have access to that computer for another couple of weeks anyway. I set it to "network activity suspended". I want to move it to my regular computer at some point for transfers when the workunit is complete. Today was just an experiment to get it started. I'm not sure that it would run on the same computer as a regular WCG UD program, but I can always exit the other and run BOINC there if I need to. (I THINK....) Opinions <--------<<<< You should be able to run both BOINC and UD on the same machine. When I switched my machine from UD to BOINC, I had both running until the UD WU completed. What I did see was that each was using one-half of my idle CPU. That is, both ran at half the speed they would have alone. So it sounds like you could continue to run UD on your machine and run BOINC on it just when you need to update your flash drive. Of course, I do wonder about a couple of things. If you have everything you need to run BOINC on the flash drive, couldn't you just le it connect to the network and update on whatever computer you attach it to either once a day or when you attach/detach it? Now if you're attaching the flash drive to machines that don't have any network connectivity ever, then you'll have to use your regular machine for doing those updates. In that case, you do want to be mindful of not only the report deadline dates (doubt those will be a problem for you) but also that if you go more than 3-4 days without connecting and updating, you could be adversely impacting the WCG projects as WU's you may have finished but not yet uploaded and reported could have already been sent out to additional devices in order to get a quorum of results. That would mean other users are crunching those WU's needlessly. Basically, you will do best to ensure you are always able to connect at least every 3-4 days. On another tack, if your regular machine is a high-end or fairly decent one, you may do well to switch it to BOINC altogether. However, as to then using it to connect and report your flash drive work, I can think of trying to dump the BOINC WU data files from the flash into your regular machine (yuk to say the least) or you somehow identify it as if it was another device. Then you'd suspend/shutdown the WCG project on your regular machine, attach the flash drive, start its BOINC Manager and update, shut back down and detach. I suspect you're best off treating the flash drive as a totally separate device. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
One problem with running BOINC from a flash drive is that the servers will sometimes reject a task that is not downloaded, processed, and returned using the same host. So it may work or all of your work may be automatically marked invalid without even being checked.
It was done this way because probably the most common cheat in SETI was to almost finish a workunit and then copy it to multiple computers to return it. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
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Dirk Gently
Senior Cruncher England Joined: Mar 1, 2005 Post Count: 153 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Microsoft is giving away flash drives. Get yours for free.  Only to US Customers...this is in the very small print.  |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Microsoft is giving away flash drives. Get yours for free. Only to US Customers...this is in the very small print. Oops. Sorry. |
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retsof
Former Community Advisor USA Joined: Jul 31, 2005 Post Count: 6824 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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You should be able to run both BOINC and UD on the same machine. When I switched my machine from UD to BOINC, I had both running until the UD WU completed. What I did see was that each was using one-half of my idle CPU. That is, both ran at half the speed they would have alone. So it sounds like you could continue to run UD on your machine and run BOINC on it just when you need to update your flash drive. More testing...Boinc and UD were running together, with both getting about 50%. NOW for the fun. I was out of town for a couple of days so turned off the computers. I rebooted and started both programs. The timer got corrupted and set the boinc deadlines to 1901 for the running workunit and waiting workunits, including those that had been previously downloaded. I aborted everything and requested new work. Nothing was happening for a few minutes so I exited and went back to UD crunching. I'll take the travel drive to the other computer tomorrow. I will continue to try this, but will cause UD to exit before running BOINC, or vice versa. I think that the 50% UD 50% BOINC situation on the same machine will cause problems. Running BOINC on a travel drive should still be a neat idea to occupy some idle computers and travel drives, and I'll keep the UD off when boincing.
SUPPORT ADVISOR
----------------------------------------Work+GPU i7 8700 12threads School i7 4770 8threads Default+GPU Ryzen 7 3700X 16threads Ryzen 7 3800X 16 threads Ryzen 9 3900X 24threads Home i7 3540M 4threads50% [Edit 3 times, last edit by retsof at Mar 18, 2006 4:42:05 PM] |
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retsof
Former Community Advisor USA Joined: Jul 31, 2005 Post Count: 6824 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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What a great idea! UD doesn't make any registry entries. I hope that BOINC doesn't either, but more observations continue. I'll swap it between a couple of machines for the next couple of weeks. My intent is to run UD on this internet machine while BOINC is running elsewhere on the travel drive. I would then take UD down after a checkpoint and start boinc to exchange data.I had never thought, but this must mean that installing BOINC does not make any registry entries that are required to run it. This makes it a portable application as you describe. If it works, this means that we can make use of a number of temporarily available machines without the chore of installing/uninstalling BOINC on each machine. I have a flash drive, but no spare machine at present, so I will watch this thread with interest.
SUPPORT ADVISOR
Work+GPU i7 8700 12threads School i7 4770 8threads Default+GPU Ryzen 7 3700X 16threads Ryzen 7 3800X 16 threads Ryzen 9 3900X 24threads Home i7 3540M 4threads50% |
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