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21)
Message boards :
Questions and problems :
boinc "box" with DCLinux
(Message 42079)
Posted 14 Jan 2012 by (banished: ID 2516) Post: Glad to hear you have something working :-) It's probably irrelevant now but I tried DCLinux last night and it didn't install using the instructions from the website and I don't intend to play with it. I know you found an HD to use but if you are still interested in a small Linux and a boot from USB device then take a look at Dotsch/UX , a Ubuntu derivative by Dotsch. Dotsch/UX can boot from a USB device but it also has tools to configure a diskless server to allow the host to boot from a networked drive and use the networked drive for storage. Your BIOS must be capable of booting from a server for that option to work. |
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22)
Message boards :
Questions and problems :
running 2 BOINCs ?
(Message 42066)
Posted 14 Jan 2012 by (banished: ID 2516) Post: I reviewed the thread and see that Claggy was able to make 2 BOINCs work on Windows so perhaps I was hasty in saying it doesn't work on Windows. Perhaps Claggy can help you get it going on Windows. That would be the least work and disruption for you. In the meantime we can talk a bit about Linux in case you can't get 2 BOINCs going on Windows, if you want to. You mention that you used Linux quite some time ago, perhaps back before the GUI was mature, perhaps even further back when it didn't have a GUI. It's very different today. The GUI is very mature and the desktop(s), you have a choice of 4 different desktops, are easy to use. The KDE desktop is probably more like Windows desktop than the other desktops available for Linux and it's the desktop I prefer. Other members of your household won't have a lot of trouble adapting to it. You don't need to be Linux literate, just computer literate. If you install Linux in a dual-boot configuration they can boot back to Windows if they don't cotton to Linux. If you install a Windows virtual machine on Linux there is no need to reboot and your BOINCs will continue to run. An alternative is to install a Linux virtual machine on Windows but then your experiment would be tainted by the overhead of running in a VM and so far I have not found a way to get BOINC to recognize my NVIDIA GPU when it's installed in a VM. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that I have never found a way. The only virtual machine I am familiar with is VirtualBox and there is a tutorial on creating a VBox VM here . There may also be a tutorial on the VBox site, their docs are very complete. Regarding SUSE... I have no experience with it. I recommend Kubuntu 11.10 because it will install the NVIDIA driver for you and setup permissions to allow BOINC access to the GPU. I am not sure what it will do for an AMD GPU but I am quite sure you can configure it for AMD manually if the installer doesn't do it automatically. So what brand of GPU do you have and are there Linux versions of the science apps you want to test? I guess that would be the very first consideration. |
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23)
Message boards :
BOINC Manager :
Problem with BOINC manager from v 6.12.n onwards
(Message 42056)
Posted 13 Jan 2012 by (banished: ID 2516) Post: Those are the libs those of us running Ubuntu, Fedora and Debian have trouble with too: gtk+ and wxwidgets for the manager and libcurl, libcrypto and libssl for the client. The only difference is for us the client refuses to run so you're luckier than most. I don't know which versions the manager has been compiled against. In this thread 0d0a says installing libwxgtk2.8-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libxss-dev cured his problem but he runs Ubuntu so those package names/versions might not apply to Slackware. |
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24)
Message boards :
Questions and problems :
running 2 BOINCs ?
(Message 42055)
Posted 13 Jan 2012 by (banished: ID 2516) Post: Well ... another good try but another no-go ... Yep! It works on Linux so ditch Windows and install Linux. Probably you're not doing anything on Windows that you can't do on Linux. If you can't let go of Windows then install a Windows virtual machine on Linux and enjoy both worlds without having to boot back and forth between Linux and Windows as you would with a dual-boot setup. |
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25)
Message boards :
Questions and problems :
boinc "box" with DCLinux
(Message 42046)
Posted 13 Jan 2012 by (banished: ID 2516) Post: A 10 GB USB thumb drive will work as well as an SSD and they're cheap. May I suggest asking the guys who maintain DCLinux what version of BOINC it comes with and if they plan to offer DCLinux with an updated BOINC. It might already have 6.12.34 or they might update it to 6.12.34. If has only 6.10.58 and they plan to never update it then 6.10.58 will probably work fine for a long, long time. If you plan to put DCLinux on a thumb drive and boot from the thumb drive then you need to first make sure the machine can boot from a USB device. If it has only 512 MB RAM it might be old enough that it can't be configured to boot from USB devices. In that case you'll need an HD or an SSD. HDs don't use a lot of power once they've spun up to operating speed. What you will pay for an SSD will cover the cost of power for a disk for a long time. And since SSDs wear out I wouldn't buy one off Ebay but that's up to you. If you tried Ubuntu then you probably installed it with the Gnome desktop which is a bit different from Windows desktop. Kubuntu installs the KDE desktop which is a little more like Windows and is the desktop I prefer. I'm not sure which desktop Mint uses. |
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26)
Message boards :
Questions and problems :
running 2 BOINCs ?
(Message 42045)
Posted 13 Jan 2012 by (banished: ID 2516) Post: I see a /d parameter when I do "boincmgr /help" but I use Linux. I'm pretty sure the Windows version has /d too but maybe not. If it doesn't then put a copy of boincmgr in the 2nd data dir and cd to that dir before you start boincmgr. That should force it to use the 2nd data dir. |
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27)
Message boards :
Questions and problems :
boinc "box" with DCLinux
(Message 42041)
Posted 12 Jan 2012 by (banished: ID 2516) Post: The operating system itself will work well with 512 MB RAM but you should be aware that it likely won't have a desktop or X-session. It sounds like it's Linux stripped down to the bare minimum, it might not even have a terminal. It's configured to use a RAM disk for the BOINC data directory to reduce writes to the USB stick if you set it up to boot from USB stick so there would be some possible limitations there. Some projects write large data files that might be too big for the RAM disk, CPDN I think is one of those projects. If you set it up to boot off an HD and keep the BOINC data directory on the HD then you likely won't be bothered by that limitation. The only project I know of that uses very little RAM and disk space is ABC@home. There are probably plenty of other projects in the same category but I don't which ones. You should also be aware that DCLinux is built from Debian Lenny Linux and BOINC is likely installed from Debian repositories. I am not sure how old Lenny is but it might provide an older BOINC version, I am guessing around version 6.10.58 which was and still is a good version that may serve you well for a long time. If you want a newer BOINC version you will probably find that Lenny does not have a package with a more recent version and you will be forced to update the OS to get the newer BOINC. DCLinux might not provide an OS update so you would be stuck updating the OS yourself. That isn't difficult to do but if you have no idea how to do it and don't feel like learning then that might be sufficient reason to not install DCLinux. Upgrading the OS might be as simple as doing "apt-get upgrade" or something similar or it may require more, I don't know. I installed Kubuntu 10.10 on a 512 MB RAM machine a while ago and it worked well for crunching. It was a "full" install, X, KDE with plasma, file indexing and a ton of stuff totally unnecessary for a dedicated crunching box but it all ran no problem. GUI apps were a little slow but I expected that and it didn't affect how fast it crunched. I would think a full Ubuntu with a lightweight desktop like XFCE (Xubuntu) would suit that machine better. A setup like that might suit you better if upgrading is a concern. And you can just boot it to a terminal and/or disable service daemons you won't need. A 10 GB HD would accommodate that. |
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28)
Message boards :
BOINC Manager :
Problem with BOINC manager from v 6.12.n onwards
(Message 42025)
Posted 12 Jan 2012 by (banished: ID 2516) Post: Heh! That's one of the the stranger glitches I've heard of. It sounds like it's not initializing the coordinates and sizes of the controls properly. I dunno, might have something to do with skins. What happens if you shrink the window to a small size then maximize it? Does that have the same effect as switching to Simple View and back? If you have to do that switch to Simple View and back every time you start the manager and you get sick of it you can always run an older manager with the 6.12.34 client or even 7.0.x client. And BoincTasks for Windows is said to run great under WINE. |
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29)
Message boards :
BOINC Manager :
Feature request
(Message 42022)
Posted 12 Jan 2012 by (banished: ID 2516) Post: The description is weird but that IS the option you want. If you put 60 seconds for the setting then tasks are supposed to wait 60 seconds between checkpoints. The reason they don't is because BOINC has no way to enforce the setting. It is a suggestion, some apps respect the suggestion, many do not. I watched the video and it seems to be WCG apps writing to the disk. You can talk to the project(s) in question and ask them to make their app adhere to the checkpointing interval you specify. Another suggestion is to put the BOINC data directory on a USB thumbdrive. They don't make any noise. |
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30)
Message boards :
BOINC Manager :
Problem with BOINC manager from v 6.12.n onwards
(Message 42021)
Posted 11 Jan 2012 by (banished: ID 2516) Post: I read this forum daily and nobody has mentioned the same problem you are having but IMHO it sounds like there is an incompatability with Gtk or x-widgets. The fact that the manager starts and runs with no complaint suggests you have all the shared libraries installed. You can check by running the ldd command against boincmgr, it will give you a list of libs boincmgr needs and give the directory where the lib is located if you have it and say "Not found" if you don't have it. Up until about 6.10.58 the Linux builds were pretty much static builds. More recent builds are dynamic and are guaranteed to be compatible only with the current Ubuntu LTS distro. Other distros should install BOINC from repositories using their package manager. Though the repository may not have the most recent version it will be a stable version and the package will include all dependencies. You may have to add the BOINC repository to your list of repositories in order for your package manager to locate it. |
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31)
Message boards :
BOINC Manager :
Feature request
(Message 42017)
Posted 11 Jan 2012 by (banished: ID 2516) Post: There is a setting for that already in local preferences on the Disk and Memory Usage page. It's named Tasks Checkpoint At Most Every __ Seconds. Unfortunately many projects do not respect that setting so it might not help you. In your preferences on the Processor Usage page there are various settings that might help. They restrict the times that BOINC allows crunching and they work automatically so you don't have to worry about turning BOINC back on. If the problem is simply that you cannot fall asleep while the drive is making noise then try unchecking the "While computer is in use" box and setting the "Only after computer has been idle for" to 60 and under Activity Menu select "Run based on preferences". That pauses the crunching for 60 minutes which might give you enough time to fall asleep. Of course that won't work if the noise wakes you after you have fallen asleep. |
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32)
Message boards :
Questions and problems :
Why does wiki say ignore_nvidia_gpu
(Message 42007)
Posted 11 Jan 2012 by (banished: ID 2516) Post: Which BOINC version are you using and which wiki are you reading? The link in my sig below points to the official wiki so I assume you're referring to that one. <ignore_nvidia_dev>N</ignore_nvidia_dev>, <ignore_ati_dev>N</ignore_ati_dev> The < symbol creates a contradiction. A > symbol would make sense. What I found with BOINC 7.02 for Linux, it will accept either of the following two: <ignore_nvidia_gpu>N</ignore_nvidia_gpu> <ignore_cuda_gpu>N</ignore_cuda_gpu> It will not accept: <ignore_cuda_gpu>N</ignore_nvidia_gpu> Don't ask me why I tried the third line. For the <exclude_gpu>, 7.0.2 seems to accept either nvidia or cuda. I'll change the wiki if it's necessary but I'm not sure what to change it to. |
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33)
Message boards :
Questions and problems :
Possibility of Tax Deductions for Donating Computing Resources to BOINC Projects...??
(Message 41990)
Posted 10 Jan 2012 by (banished: ID 2516) Post: Actually, the expenses a corporation would incur running BOINC (electricity, hardware, administration) can be deducted from a corporation's gross income as standard costs of doing business so really there is no need for BOINC projects to issue receipts to corporations for donated resources. |
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34)
Message boards :
Questions and problems :
Possibility of Tax Deductions for Donating Computing Resources to BOINC Projects...??
(Message 41989)
Posted 9 Jan 2012 by (banished: ID 2516) Post: You've hit on a number of reasons why corporations don't want to install BOINC. IMHO the biggest reason is security. It is every hacker's dream to trick you into downloading their executable onto your computer and running it yet BOINC volunteers download and run some stranger's executable every day. To counter this kind of threat you can install BOINC in PAE mode (as a daemon/service) so that it runs on an unprivileged user account which prevents BOINC (more specifically project science application) from doing any damage. An even more secure solution is to install BOINC as a daemon/service in a Virtual machine. Using a virtual machine incurs overhead but if it's the only way to get General Motors, for e.g., to install BOINC on 10,000 computers then it doesn't matter. Deducting BOINC related expenses is also a big deal. I don't know how tax law in your country treats charitable donations but I think the whole matter could be simplified somewhat if BOINC projects would take the time to register as charities, non-profit organizations or whatever it takes to make it easier, in the legal sense, for volunteers to declare a deduction. Another thing you might be able to use to make deductions easier is the fact that all projects with recent server code have a Certificate link on their front page (if it's enabled). Click the link and you receive a document stating how many cobblestones/flops your account has donated to the project. If one can place a reasonable value on what it costs them to donate a cobblestone and present some reasonable paper trail to back it up and the donation is made to a registered charity/non-profit/whatever then it should fly, IMHO, at least I think it would in my country, YMMV. It would be good to hear from a tax accountant on this issue. |
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35)
Message boards :
Questions and problems :
running 2 BOINCs ?
(Message 41954)
Posted 6 Jan 2012 by (banished: ID 2516) Post: I see a couple possible mistakes in the command line you're using: 1) don't use the /n=hostname option, omit that completely because you'll enter localhost:9999 later in the box 2) the /b parameter should also have the port number (9999) in the list of arguments to start the 2nd boinc.exe with else it will use the default port (31416) which is the port the first boinc.exe will be using unless you changed it For the sake of simplicity, I would start the 2nd boinc.exe from its own command line rather than having boincmgr.exe start it. Start it with the /dir and /gui_rpc_port parameters then check in Task Manager that it is running. Then start boincmgr.exe with the /d parameter pointing to the 2nd data dir, the /g parameter set to 9999, the /m parameter and the /p set to the password. If the manager can't connect to the client, check in Task Manager again to see if the 2nd client is still running. |
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36)
Message boards :
Questions and problems :
How do I optimise my laptop/boinc for the best performance?
(Message 41934)
Posted 5 Jan 2012 by (banished: ID 2516) Post: You should take a good look at the official BOINC wiki . When you understand that BOINC consists of 2 parts, BOINC manager and BOINC client, and that the client does most of the work you will have the foundation required to go further. You also need to understand that BOINC merely downloads science applications from the projects you join and data for those science applications to crunch. Crunching loads your computer's CPU severely and laptops often have a problem with overheating. The first thing you should do is install an application like Speed Fan to monitor CPU temperature. There is also an excellent application by Fred Efmer created especially for BOINC users and it is discuused in the automatic temperature regulation thread . If you have HT enabled in BIOS then BOINC will see your i3 as 4 CPUs and try to run 4 tasks at once. The science applications that do the crunching run at low priority so that even if all 4 cores are occupied your personal tasks should not be slowed down. If they are then you have options to prevent the science apps from using too much CPU time. Click Tools -> Computing Preferences -> Processor Usage to see the options. Unchecking the "While in use " box will cause BOINC to suspend the science applications whenever it senses that you are using the keyboard or mouse. At the bottom of that page you can use the "On Multiprocessor Systems Use at Most" setting to limit how many CPUs BOINC will use and thus how many tasks it will run. Setting that to 50% on your i3 with HT on will limit BOINC to 2 tasks, 25% will limit it to 1 task. It is recommended to leave the "Use at Most __ % of CPU time" at 100% for reasons I won't bother explaining here. Note that if you want the preferences you set on that page to be honored then on the Activity menu you must select "Run based on preferences". If you select "Run always" then BOINC will not suspend the science applications even if you have elected to do so on the Processor Usage preference page. The Suspend option on the Activity menu suspends all tasks regardless of your other preferences. Your laptop also has a GPU that can be used for crunching. In order to use it you must install the Catalyst drivers for your GPU from the AMD website. Then you must join a project that has an application designed to use your GPU. Only a few projects use GPUs and not all of those support both NVIDIA and AMD so you have to read the forums/documentation at the project to find out if they use GPU and if they use your model/brand of GPU. I think Einstein, Milkyway and SETI use AMD GPUs but I could be wrong. GPUgrid uses only NVIDIA. If you decide to use the GPU for crunching then be sure you have GPU temperature monitoring tool(s) installed before you start crunching on the GPU and make sure you know how to use said tool first else your GPU temp will shoot up in a matter of seconds and fry your GPU. Don't take ANY shortcuts with that or you will lose your GPU or else cause it irreparable damage and drastically shorten its life. Your GPU is NOT an add-on card in an expansion slot so if you fry it your laptop is toast. |
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37)
Message boards :
Questions and problems :
How do I delete a project?
(Message 41913)
Posted 4 Jan 2012 by (banished: ID 2516) Post: In BOINC manager's Advanced View, click the Projects tab, select the project (click on it) then click the Remove button. |
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38)
Message boards :
Questions and problems :
running 2 BOINCs ?
(Message 41911)
Posted 3 Jan 2012 by (banished: ID 2516) Post: I have only 1 project running on the 2nd installation and it's a project that the first installation is not attached to so I guess I've unwittingly avoided the problem with the same CPID being assigned to both installations. If one wanted to have both installations attached to the same project(s) then one might have to attach them to two different accounts? One thing I discovered was that the manager will not connect to the 2nd boinc.exe if you click Advanced -> Select Computer and enter a name like localhost:9999. It doesn't seem to like the :9999. However you can start a 2nd instance of the manager with the following command line: boincmgr.exe --multiple --datadir={path to 2nd boinc data dir} You'll get a popup saying there is already an instance of the manager running and it will ask for the host name and password. Put localhost:xxxx for the name and the password for the 2nd instance of boinc.exe. The xxxx is the port number you use to invoke the 2nd instance of boinc.exe. I don't know why the manager won't accept the port number when only 1 instance of the manager is running but it does accept it when you start a 2nd instance of manager. |
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39)
Message boards :
Questions and problems :
running 2 BOINCs ?
(Message 41906)
Posted 3 Jan 2012 by (banished: ID 2516) Post: I have it working with BOINC 7.0.2 and I am pretty sure I did it with 6.12.x a few months ago. I think it might not work on Windows, just Linux. |
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40)
Message boards :
Questions and problems :
running 2 BOINCs ?
(Message 41900)
Posted 3 Jan 2012 by (banished: ID 2516) Post: Check in task manager and see if you have 2 instances of boinc.exe running. If you do then you might have screwed up the gui_rpc_auth.cfg file in the second BOINC data directory you created. Look in that directory and see if you have a gui_rpc_auth.cfg.txt. If you do then delete gui_rpc_auth.cfg and rename gui_rpc_auth.cfg.txt to qui_rpc_auth.cfg. If you're not careful, Notepad will add a .txt extension to a file when you save it, maybe that's what happened. Also, if you edit gui_rpc_auth.cfg while boinc.exe is running, you must shutdown and restart boinc.exe to make the new password take effect. |
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