Problems about temporary data and offline about BOINC

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hank08tw

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Joined: 28 Oct 19
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Message 93346 - Posted: 28 Oct 2019, 8:06:10 UTC

Hello,
I am a student working on project related to BOINC. And I have a question: When Boinc assigns computational task to personal PC, it must send tasks to PC, which file in BOINC directory contains the task? And does BOINC create temporary file to store the temporary computational result? Where is the temporary file? Can anyone tell me the position of these file in BOINC directory or give me some web page to study? Another question is that is it possible to download task, then finish every computation offline, then upload the result to science research for BOINC?
my email: hank08tw@sjtu.edu.cn
Thanks
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Profile Jord
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Netherlands
Message 93351 - Posted: 28 Oct 2019, 10:14:44 UTC - in response to Message 93346.  

When Boinc assigns computational task to personal PC, it must send tasks to PC, which file in BOINC directory contains the task?
Tasks are saved in the file format they're sent by the project to the project sub-directory of the BOINC Data directory.
Depending on operating system, this may be in C:\Programdata\BOINC (Windows), MacOS /Library/Application Support/BOINC Data and Linux /var/lib/boinc-client

I'll use the Windows directory as an example:
For instance, Seti@Home will store all its data in C:\Programdata\BOINC\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edu\

And does BOINC create temporary file to store the temporary computational result? Where is the temporary file?
Yes, it does. It will create such a file in the slots/N directory, where N is an integer number from 0 to anything above that. That usually depends on how many CPU cores and GPUs are allowed to have work.

Can anyone tell me the position of these file in BOINC directory or give me some web page to study?
A lot of information can be gotten from the user manual at https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/User_manual and if you're into the development of BOINC, at https://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/SoftwareDevelopment

Another question is that is it possible to download task, then finish every computation offline, then upload the result to science research for BOINC?
Yes, an always on connection isn't necessary for BOINC. When it finds it cannot upload, it'll back-off until it can. You can also set BOINC up to have communications between the hours of X and Y, per day or per one or more days of the week.
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Richard Haselgrove
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Message 93354 - Posted: 28 Oct 2019, 10:30:09 UTC

BOINC also stores instructions about how each task is to be processed in a complex (and fragile) file called client_state.xml. Some projects only issue processing instructions (parameter strings) for that file, and don't download a separate data file.
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Profile Dave
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Message 93356 - Posted: 28 Oct 2019, 11:10:09 UTC - in response to Message 93354.  

BOINC also stores instructions about how each task is to be processed in a complex (and fragile) file called client_state.xml. Some projects only issue processing instructions (parameter strings) for that file, and don't download a separate data file.


A few years ago now but I remember editing that file when restoring tasks to a point before a backup had been taken. It even worked occasionally. BOINC version at the time was about 4.5 and I installed it then in a folder in my home directory.
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Richard Haselgrove
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Message 93357 - Posted: 28 Oct 2019, 11:25:49 UTC - in response to Message 93356.  

A few years ago now but I remember editing that file when restoring tasks to a point before a backup had been taken. It even worked occasionally. BOINC version at the time was about 4.5 and I installed it then in a folder in my home directory.
It works the same now, but with GPUs it's got a little more complex and much, much longer.

A recent Manager bug marked well over 1,000 tasks as 'aborted'. Fortunately, I was only reporting 128 tasks at a time: I managed to save about 800 of them at the third attempt.
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Message boards : Questions and problems : Problems about temporary data and offline about BOINC

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