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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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Dirk Gently
Senior Cruncher England Joined: Mar 1, 2005 Post Count: 153 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.  I have just done a search through my registry for "BOINC". There are quite a lot of entries to do with the Windows Installer. These are probably only related to Uninstalling via Windows Add/Remove Programs. There is one entry that looks like it is where BOINC Manager keeps a record of settings and workunit progress. This may only be a scratchpad which is created when BOINC is started, using info stored in last checkpoint. If this is true then the flashdrive could be moved from machine to machine during the progress of a workunit. Otherwise, it would be neccessary to wait for a WU to complete before moving the drive to another machine. The Registry item I found is :- [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Space Sciences Laboratory, U.C. Berkeley\BOINC Manager |
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retsof
Former Community Advisor USA Joined: Jul 31, 2005 Post Count: 6824 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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After aborting my 1901 year workunits, I wanted more work. BOINC set my quote of 1 workunit as already reached, and will not send any more today. (This is a mechanism to limit the number of bad workunits.) I'll go back to UD crunching on the system hard drive for now and try to get some new ones tomorrow. I will have to send in some successful results before the quota is increased. This AMD64 4000+ should be capable of completing several workunits per day. The remote computer I will try to use Monday is a Pentium 4/2.8 GHz. slower than the 2.4GHz AMD.
----------------------------------------The registry question asked in a previous message could still be concern if I'm stuck on 1901. I happened to be on the remote computer when I installed boinc on the travel drive.
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----------------------------------------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 1 times, last edit by retsof at Mar 18, 2006 7:31:57 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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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. That could also be part of the confusion. I will make sure that this computer is the only one used for internet connections (by adjusting the command to refuse network connections when the travel drive is on the remote computer.)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. Even being nonportable, I'm not sure what is happening now. I detached from the project and had the windows control panel remove boinc.. I got rid of everything on the travel drive except the berkeley boinc download file. I then reinstalled boinc and reattached to the project. All downloads are coming in immediately with a 1901 deadline for completion. I finished one and sent it in without complaint, but there is a lag on assigning credit. I'm not sure what's going on. It is becoming more doubtful that boinc is portable...or even nonportable at the moment. There could still be some timestamp artifact left over (or required) from the other computer. It might be in the registry, which makes it impossible to move things around. Since the regular UD interface doesn't interact with the registry, that was the reason that the original sneakernet strategy could be used. The time isn't checked until it is sent in. Some more BOINC hooks might have been left in there. The programs in the slots running on the UD interface needed to be reloaded after a result was sent in. Even going back UD/BOINC and forth BOINC/UD may be causing strange things to happen and some slots needed to be reinitialized. I'm back to UD on that system, and the newest UDMonitor slot was copied off and is happily running on the travel drive on a remote computer. If you are running BOINC, stay with BOINC. If you want to use the travel drive idea or sneakernetting to a remote computer, run the UD interface instead.
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----------------------------------------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 7 times, last edit by retsof at Mar 20, 2006 3:03:52 PM] |
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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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Hmm, I have to wonder. Supposedly, if you have a PC that is dying, you can rename the BOINC directory on a new machine, import the BOINC directory from the dying machine, set BOINC Manager to not get any new work, let BOINC finish processing what's left in the imported directory, toss it and switch back as a means of not losing the work in process on the old dying machine. If you treated the flash drive as the location of the BOINC directory for the current machine, then switch BOINC to point to the directory on the hard drive while the flash runs on other machines. You might be able to use the technique above to "drain" the flash drive and reload.
----------------------------------------I can see folks who travel a lot and don't necessarily have a machine that they lug around with them could use this type of approach to avail themselves of the available idle CPUs as they travel. It would seem WCG would benefit. You'd have to pay attention to timeliness so that you don't cause WU's to get assigned to additional users because you are slow to return them for the quorum. Generally though, if you are intent on squeezing every bit of idle CPU you can to WCG's use, you're going to have to be a bit more involved in the day to day running. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hi Guys,
Just for your info, BOINC itself does not require any registry entries to run. The registry only comes into play when you install BOINC as a service. Regards Slug |
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retsof
Former Community Advisor USA Joined: Jul 31, 2005 Post Count: 6824 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Hi Guys, Good deal. The slug should know, and we thank him for the extensive boinc installation instructions.Just for your info, BOINC itself does not require any registry entries to run. The registry only comes into play when you install BOINC as a service. Regards Slug I still had problems with boinc messing with the time, even with the time reset, and no more swaps to a remote machine. It also goofed up the times for the subsequent UD interface slots, which all had to be reloaded. The point of this exercise was to run some extra workunits on a computer not usually used, adding a bit of parallel power. Even after some boinc reinstallations from scratch, the deadline years were still coming in as 1901.  I gave up on it for now. The logger noted that they were several hundred thousand days overdue, and recommended aborting them.
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----------------------------------------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 1 times, last edit by retsof at Mar 22, 2006 5:08:51 PM] |
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