I have Boinc 7.2.42+dfsg-1 installed using synaptic.

I wish to keep the work on a flash drive since it's taking lots of space and I don't have much left on the msata drive, causing VirtualLHC and others to stop due to running out of drive space.

I tried this:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=9633&postid=56258

But it's not working for me. Boinc gui starts and appears for a few seconds then disappears. When started from the command line as instructed from the above posting I get this:

sudo service boinc-client start
* Starting BOINC core client: boinc_data [ OK ]
* Setting up scheduling for BOINC core client and children: [ OK ]

But there is no indication of work happening on the workunits I had from before I followed the suggestion. That is to say, I see no boinc activity showing on System Monitor in the Processes tab. I normally see activity here before I followed the directions in the link above.

Thanks.

Could you expand a bit on what exactly have you done so far and especially how have you set up that other drive?

Thanks for responding.

I tried to follow the directions in the referenced post, 3 times.

I've removed and reinstalled boinc from synaptic a few times, trying the directions in the referenced post after that.

I'm willing to start over completely but would like to continue work on the work units in progress...if that's doable.

I have read that when boinc is installed via synaptic (designed for the system by the maintainers) that it is more efficient and better in a few ways, that when installed from the one downloaded from boinc but I don't know. I like that it sets up to work automatically when starting the operating system.

Your suggestions are invited.

With that flash drive do you mean the same thing as USB flash drive or USB stick and not SSD?

How are you mounting it = making it available to apps?

What directory you want to use as the new data directory?

It's a 32gb micro sd card in a usb to sd card adapter. I can see the volume in the linux file manager.

I was thinking something like boinc-data in the root of the sd card.

Apologies for keeping you waiting for an answer this long.

First of all, if you haven't formatted the SD card it probably has FAT32 filesystem. FAT doesn't support Unix file permissions and BOINC needs those permissions to work. It might be possible to tweak some settings to make FAT work but it'll be much easier if you just re-format the card with, say, ext4 filesystem.

Now, you didn't say how exactly you have made the SD card available to programs. I imagine you do something like this: you open file manager and in the devices list you click the SD card. When you do that an eject symbol like icon appears next to the SD card's entry. Path to the new BOINC data directory would look something like /media/IsleVegan/sdcard/boinc-data.

If that is how you do it then it's not going to work. In that scenario the SD card is mounted when you click it. Since BOINC is started at system boot the SD card needs to be mounted before that, in particular well before you have logged in. The file manager also sets permissions so that only you can access the files in the SD card. BOINC runs under its own user account and in that case won't be able to access files on the SD card.

To get the card mounted at system boot you need to edit /etc/fstab either by hand or by using some tool. If you prefer a GUI tool GNOME Disks(/GNOME disk utility/palimpsest) works fine. You may need to install it, I'm not sure if it's installed by default.

In GNOME Disks select the SD card and the partition in it. From the gear icon under the partition display select Edit mount options. In there you need to switch off Automatic mount options and select Mount at startup. Then you need to decide where in the directory tree you want to mount it. A directory under /mnt like /mnt/sdcard is traditional choice but you can use almost any other location just as well. Don't put it under /media though, that location is best left for GNOME and better leave /home/IsleVegan for your own files. Which ever location you choose you need to make sure boinc user account can access it. Every directory up to the mount point must have read and execute permissions for boinc or for others. You then put the location in Mount point. In Identify as use you'll want to use either the filesystem label or UUID.

When you have done the settings in Disk utility reboot to make sure the card is mounted correctly.

If the card is mounted at startup then you can follow BobCat13's instructions on how to move the data directory. Although I would change them a bit. Instead of editing /etc/default/boinc-client I would make /var/lib/boinc-client a symlink to the new location. /etc/default/boinc-client is not the only place where the location of the data directory is stored. Keeping /var/lib/boinc-client around keeps other parts of the system happier.

It's easy to go the symlink route:

sudo mv /var/lib/boinc-client /var/lib/boinc-client.bak
sudo ln -s /mnt/sdcard/boinc-data /var/lib/boinc-client

The first command renames the old data directory so you'll have a backup and the second command then creates the symlink.