One of my PCs is used as a DVR (Windows XP Pro MCE). BOINC tends to mess up recordings when it's crunching. I understand that it's may have something to do with concurrent HDD read/writes between the DVR recorder app and BOINC. I know the apps written for BOINC run at the lowest priority, but it would be nice if HDD access was/could be prioritized as well. I'm not a software guy - is this a reasonable request, or is it impractical/impossible? I don't notice any issues with my DVR when things like virus scans are running, only when BOINC is crunching (no issues when BOINC is in suspend mode).

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You're mixing two things: CPU priority and disk reads/writes.

Science applications may run (use the CPU and RAM) in lowest priority. But BOINC always uses normal priority. For the CPU.

And then it reads/writes to the disk every second to update its files.

My advice is not to run Boinc on the machine that acts as a DVR, or suspend its function while you record videos, then continue crunching when that's done. It can be automated: you install Boinc as a service and write a batch file that you can schedule that will net pause the service before your recording starts and net continue when you're done recording.

I'm sure someone on here can help you with that.

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Thanks Ageless.

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't know how to do that exactly. I'm a hardware guy, not a very good programmer. I'd assume I'd need to design a program that polls MCE to see if it's recording and then tell BOINC to either go into suspend mode or come out of suspend mode.

What I really need is a crash course in C.

Thanks again.

Macco

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you can set boinc to only write to disk once every x minutes - increasing that should alleviate your problem.

Another option would be to run boinc from a shared folder over the network if you have another computer to do that from? I run Rosetta@home like this on a comptuer that doesn't have a hard disk and it works fine - i just had to copy the install across and then edit a file in the rosetta folder to point to the new path.

HTH
Danny

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Thanks dcdc.

For the first solution, how would you do that? You just need to edit one of those .xml files? That may be the most painless, but I'd have to see how effective it would be.

That second option is pretty interesting. First I have to ask though...how the heck are you running a PC without a HDD? I have 3 pc's that I run this on, and two are always at home (htpc and a crappy old laptop). What would the exact procedure look like for this?

Thanks again,

Chris

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Macco.

Go to one of the project websites that you participate in.

Click on your account.

Click on view or edit your general preferences.

Click on edit preferences.

The field you want to change is "Write to disk at most every" in the section labeled "Disk and memory usage".

Click on update preferences.

Go back to BOINC Manager and update the project to get new preferences from the website.

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Kathryn :o)

Oh, yeah, well, this isn't the problem then. The problem is apparently that the BOINC manager itself is writing every second or so to the HDD. Others have let me know that this is the problem (Ageless).

I've gone so far as to prepare to code something that would fix the problem. I may still try writing something, but I've run into snags upon snags (I'm currently reinstalling windows mce on the machine on which I installed the tools - my crash course crashed my HTPC!)

Thanks for the suggestions anyway.

Macco

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That second option is pretty interesting. First I have to ask though...how the heck are you running a PC without a HDD?

Boots XP MCE2005 from a 1GB compactflash - very quick and silent too! ;) And I can record tv to the network drive! :D

I only run Rosetta so I don't know about other projects, but for Rosetta I just installed BOINC locally, and then moved it to a network folder. Then I edited the boinc\\slots\\0\\init_data.xml file - it has two lines near the start that contain the path which need changing to the new path to the network drive (i've only used mapped drives and not UNC paths). That's it...

HTH
Danny

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Pretty slick! How'd you fit MCE on a 1G flash?

I'll give this a shot and let you know how it works.

Macco

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Pretty slick! How'd you fit MCE on a 1G flash?

With great difficulty! Used a combination of nlite, xplite, regedit, and manual deletion of lots of files! I'm also using the XP embedded enhanced write filter so the CF is only written to at shutdown - all changes stored in RAM (which uses supprisingly little RAM).

CF's great for running crunchers on though - has a couple of advantages over netbooting, lots of advantages over HDs (v little power, heat & noise and v cheap) and is v easy.

Next step: CF RAID!

Good luck with the DVR.

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