configuration/preference questions
15 Jan 2008 21:06:18 UTC
Topic 193442
(moderation:
I would like E@H to use my secondary hard drive rather than the primary. #2 is rarely used and has more free space.
how often does E@H really need to write to the disk? its at the default setting of 60 seconds but to reduce wear and tear I'd like to extend that.
so far I seem to be able to do anything I normally do while the application is running in the background, what concerns should I have about my CPUs running at 100% 24/7?
Dell Inspiron 1505 Centrino dual core
Genuine Intel(R) CPU T2500 @ 2.00GHz [x86 Family 6 Model 14 Stepping 8]
2046.37 MB RAM
1839 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
3602 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU
Microsoft Windows XP
Home Edition, Service Pack 2, (05.01.2600.00)
configuration/preference questions
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Hi,
Welcome to the project. Thanks for joining us.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't your machine a laptop? Do you really have 2 separate HDs or do you only have one disk but two separate partitions?
If you really do have two disks, just install BOINC on the disk you want to use. If BOINC is currently running on the wrong disk, just stop it, uninstall it, shift the remnant BOINC folder to the desired new location and then reinstall BOINC, making sure to correctly specify the new folder location during the install procedure. You will not lose nor do you have to worry about any work in progress. The new installation of BOINC will find all data and configuration files in the new location. So correctly shifting the remnant BOINC folder to the new location is most important.
E@H writes a checkpoint file every minute or so. If you make the interval much longer than the default, you risk losing a much larger amount of calculations if the machine has to be stopped and restarted for any reason. On a restart, the science app will read in and restart from the last available checkpoint.
My own opinion is that stopping and restarting a HDD is more likely to cause it to fail than allowing it to run continuously. YMMV.
BOINC runs the science apps at low priority and is quite adept at getting out of the way when you need your machine for your own higher priority tasks. For example, I don't even bother to stop BOINC when burning CDs anymore.
If your machine is a laptop, your biggest problem will be poor heat dissipation. You can usually solve this on a desktop but it is much harder to get adequate cooling for 100% CPU usage on a laptop. The biggest problem is that airways clog up with fluff very rapidly on many laptops. Also, the CPU cooling fan always seems to be unable to shift sufficient air for proper cooling even when the passageways are not clogged with fluff.
Cheers,
Gary.
RE: If you really do have
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Or you could use the cc_config.xml file with the tag. Then you're BOINC 6 compatible as well.
How to do that? You need BOINC 5.10.20 at minimum. So if you have a lower version, update to the latest available. Exit BOINC, making sure it's not running. (BOINC Manager->File->Exit; or in case you're running as a service, Start->Run, type net stop boinc, press OK)
Navigate to your BOINC directory.
First check if you already have a file called cc_config.xml; if you do not, make one with Notepad, make sure you save it as an All Files option, so it doesn't get the .txt extension.
Open cc_config.xml with Notepad.
Here's what should be in it:
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D:\\BOINC Data\\
Save cc_config.xml to your BOINC directory.
OK, now we'll make sure that BOINC can find the data on that path. Make a directory on D: called \\BOINC Data\\
Copy the following directories (and everything in them) from your BOINC directory to D:\\BOINC Data:
\\BOINC\\projects\\, \\BOINC\\slots\\, \\BOINC\\skins\\, \\BOINC\\locale\\
Next copy all these files from your BOINC directory to your BOINC Data directory:
All account_*.xml files.
All master_*.xml files.
All sched_*.xml files.
All statistics_*.xml files.
client_state.xml and client_state_prev.xml
gui_rpc_auth.cfg
global_prefs.xml and (if applicable) global_prefs_override.xml
And if you want to, stderrdae.txt and stdoutdae.txt
(we copy, in case it doesn't work for some reason; you can always delete the originals after a week of flawless operations.)
Make sure that the BOINC Data directory and subdirectories have full read/write permission for your user group. To do so, right click on the \\BOINC Data\\ directory in the tree, Properties, Security.
OK, that should be it. Restart BOINC: Open BOINC Manager, or in case you're running as a service, Start->Run, type net start boinc and press OK.
Check in BOINC Manager that the path to the data dir is shown correctly.
Day-month-year Time [---] Data directory: D:\\BOINC Data\\
RE: how often does E@H
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While the E@H app is writing to disk at the configurable interval you mentioned, I think BOINC itself will update the client_state.xml file more frequently, is this righht? Anyone? I also think, depending on Window's settings, not every write request is executed physically on the drive immediately, so it's possible that the physical drive access will be somewhat less frequent, but still more frequently than the E@H app's. I would not be surprised to see the client_state.xml file updated on the disk like every 2 or 3 seconds.
This is no issue for harddisks, they are designed for this, but I wonder about the feasibility of running BOINC on a flash memory stick.
On one hand, this would reduce your concerns about hard drive tear and wear, the hard disk might even go to idle mode then. OTOH, flash memory has a limited life-time in terms of write-cycles, e.g. the flash memory will just die after a couple of (??) 100,000 (??) or millions of write accesses to the same memory location. So if BOINC really updates client_state.xml very frequently, running BOINC on a flash stick would not be a good idea.
I'm frequently running BOINC on two notebooks 24/7, on one of then for quite some time now. No problems so far and none expected. Modern hardware (CPUs, motherboards) have sensors integrated that will either throttle down or outright power-down the system if it gets too hot. It can be a bit unnerving if the fan keeps spooling up and down in response to heat levels, but otherwise I think running BOINC on a quality brand notebook like yours is not only ok but actually the ecological sound way of doing BOINC.
Happy crunching
Bikeman
Excellent advice I used
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Excellent advice
I used Gary's advice on switching drives which worked flawlessly, but I will hold on to Ageless' instruction for future reference.
Heat dissipation: I had trouble with the add-ons Threadmaster and BES but found another ditty called Speedfan to monitor the thermal load. The internal temp jumps 30-50% but stays within safe operating specs.
If we're supposed to to learn something new every day, I'm good til next week
My laptop is a Compaq
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My laptop is a Compaq Presario 2500 running XP. I have had laptop overheating shutdowns for various reasons over the years. A couple of times dust accumulated in the air cooling path, and some canned air I bought at Radio Shack worked miracles - no need to open the laptop case.
I played with SpeedFan once and recall that it was unable to control the CPU speed, at least not on my machine. (Can't recall if the feature was lacking or if it didn't work.) While you can set the BOINC CPU usage, in my case I was running some non-BOINC CPU-intensive programs and needed another way to control the temperature.
More recently, one of the fans went bad. Although I bought a replacement, I haven't yet worked up the courage to go through the tricky procedure of opening my laptop to replace it. In the meantime I've been using the (free) Notebook Hardware Control Pre-Release-04 - Personal Edition because I can control the effective CPU speed. Here are some tips on using it, since some of the controls can be misleading.
The
CPU Speed -> CPU Speed settings
are ignored by my laptop, which just shuts down without warning if it overheats. Instead, I brute forced the CPU speed by setting
CPU Speed -> Clock Modulation
in my extreme case (bad fan), to 50%. Basically you experiment and watch what happens to the temperature.
The
ACPI -> CPU temperature shutdown
setting is ignored by my laptop. Instead,
ACPI -> Show ACPI temperature details
shows the "real" (hardwired?) shutdown temperature of 73 deg C, which is apparently not changeable. I have
ACPI -> CPU temperature warning
set to 70 deg C, which does work when the laptop fans get blocked, giving me some time to reposition the laptop to cool it down before it shuts down. I also keep an eye on the temperature by displaying it in the System Tray with
Settings -> Show advanced NHC settings -> Show CPU Temperature
Hope this helps anyone who might need this tool.
Norm
simply said : how to get the
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simply said : how to get the bloody thing started m?
You got 4 tasks downloaded.
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You got 4 tasks downloaded. Any one of them should be running. Nothing else for you to do, but sit back and watch the show.