Transfering workunits

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Tomxl203

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Joined: 21 Jan 08
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Message 15058 - Posted: 21 Jan 2008, 7:29:11 UTC

Hope the right forum. Port is closed by proxy at work and so needed transfer programm for finished work units to my pc at home. Are there any?
Best regards, Tom
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mo.v
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Message 15060 - Posted: 21 Jan 2008, 11:46:16 UTC
Last modified: 21 Jan 2008, 12:04:54 UTC

I'm assuming you have permission to use the work computer but just can't upload from it.

You need to

* Back up the complete contents of the BOINC folder onto something portable. Call this Backup A. I would want to make a spare backup if possible.

* If the home computer's already running BOINC, you'll need to empty its BOINC folder so it can receive Backup A. So you need to back up the complete contents of the home computer's BOINC folder first. Call this Backup B. I'd also want to make a spare backup. Backup B can be put somewhere within the home computer eg in My Documents.

Note that you have to completely exit from BOINC before making a backup of the folder contents.

* Empty = delete the complete contents of the home computer's BOINC folder. All the files will go to the recycle bin. Don't clean out the recycle bin until you've finished the entire job successfully. (If anything went wrong, all the BOINC stuff in the bin could be sent back to where it came from and should run again.)

* Paste Backup A to the empty BOINC folder on the home computer. This is like restoring a backup, but to a different (not the original) location.

* Start up BOINC on the home computer. Let it run for a minute to check everything's working. Allow network connections, let everything upload.

* Exit from BOINC on the home computer. Empty this BOINC folder. Paste/restore Backup B to the empty BOINC folder.

* Start BOINC up again on the home computer.

* If you can continue crunching on the work computer, reset all the projects then let them download new work. If you can't download WUs at work and can only crunch there, you'll need to download new work at home, make an extra Backup C then transfer/restore this to the work computer after emptying its BOINC folder.

* If you didn't have BOINC installed on your home computer, you'd need to install it before doing any of the above.

* As far as I know it doesn't matter if the home and work computers have different versions of BOINC. (It probably WILL matter in future if one has v.5 and the other has v.6.)

* If you need to know how to back up and restore the contents of a BOINC folder, see link #2 in this CPDN README collection - Les's click-by-click guide:

http://www.climateprediction.net/board/viewtopic.php?t=5895
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mo.v
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Message 15061 - Posted: 21 Jan 2008, 12:13:56 UTC
Last modified: 21 Jan 2008, 12:16:18 UTC

Note that if you download WUs on a slow computer then transfer the BOINC folder contents to a much faster computer to run the tasks, you need to edit an xml file for every individual task to avoid them timing out and crashing with a max CPU time exceeded error.
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Tomxl203

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Message 15064 - Posted: 21 Jan 2008, 14:30:16 UTC

Thanks to Sekerob and Mo.v, I will try to do the backup on my work computer and let my home computer transfer it (already running Boinc on it). The CPU speed is nearly the same. I wish myself good luck ;-)
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mo.v
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Message 15069 - Posted: 21 Jan 2008, 18:50:35 UTC
Last modified: 21 Jan 2008, 18:57:45 UTC

Hi Sekerob

The maximum CPU time exceeded problem is described here for CPDN members, with a solution (for some). For 'model' read 'task'.

http://www.climateprediction.net/board/viewtopic.php?t=7215

Crunchers of short WUs would usually only run into this problem if the (upper) fpops bound has been accidentally set too low by the project programmers. But because CPDN models run for so long, some of them do get moved and completed on newer and faster, or upgraded computers.

If a person downloaded tasks at home to be processed on another much faster computer, they would only be likely to run into this problem if they partially processed the tasks on the slow computer and then transferred them.

It's a rare problem but something to be aware of if you move a BOINC package from one computer to another.

If you moved a BOINC package containing a lot of tasks in progress to a slower computer, you could of course run into problems meeting the task deadlines.
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mo.v
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Message 15070 - Posted: 21 Jan 2008, 19:04:52 UTC

Tom, the important thing is not to delete any of the backups until you have everything up and running again on both computers. So if you make a mistake, you can try as many times as necessary.
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Tomxl203

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Message 15074 - Posted: 22 Jan 2008, 12:38:26 UTC

Yes, yes, I made the backups and the hole procedure is running well at home.
I have 2 computers at work and today I backup the slow one, yesterday it was the quicker one. Let's see whether there will be a problem - I don't think so.
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mo.v
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Message 15075 - Posted: 22 Jan 2008, 13:22:30 UTC

Congratulations on managing all that! I hope the rest of the job works equally well.

Once you've made a backup of the BOINC folder contents, it isn't actually much more difficult to restore the backup to a different computer.

Very occasionally people have reported that a BOINC package backup failed to restore successfully and run. Often it's because they'd forgotten to exit from BOINC before backing up. But not always. This is why it's a good idea for really important backups to make a spare one if possible.
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Message boards : Server programs : Transfering workunits

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