Mmmm, now that you mention it...yes. I was moving large video files around, approx. 4GIG each. For sure I placed one temporarily on my "G" drive (which is where BOINC is installed). Although I don't recall the free space ever dropping below 1GIG.
Quote:
The fact that you may give BOINC permission to use more space does NOT cause BOINC to actually use more than it otherwise would. There is nothing to free up. You don't need to worry about it. BOINC is not using one extra byte, no matter what preferences you set.
What I'm wondering about is if it's 1/2 way through a project and it becomes suspended (for whatever reason) the project must be saved on the HDD. I suspect these files are relatively small, but is it possible they're huge and I go nuts wondering what happened to a chunk of my free space?
If this is the case can I purge this "work in progress" file if I need the extra space? Even if it means re-doing the calculations at a later time.
So, when he gets up in the morning and starts to use his computer to see what's been happening overnight, isn't his "use" of the computer going to suspend whatever was running and unless he waits the full 3 minutes before he hits the next key the science app is going to remain suspended, isn't it??
And here I thought my cat was computer proficient.
Makes perfect sense.
Quote:
Guido,
If you would like to see a bit more work than just two for EAH and two for rosetta, just increase your "Connect to network every X days" from the default 0.1 to say 0.5 but please don't go beserk until you see what it does.
Thanks for the advice, I did that.
Everyone here has been a great help. I think I'm getting the hang of this. Besides a couple erros from rosetta, E@H has been working great since I did the Preference Update recommended here. Back in business...
Mmmm, now that you mention it...yes. I was moving large video files around, approx. 4GIG each. For sure I placed one temporarily on my "G" drive (which is where BOINC is installed). Although I don't recall the free space ever dropping below 1GIG.
It wouldn't have to drop below 1GB. You said that BOINC is on a partition whose size is 25.1GB and that normally there is 6.79GB free. If your third disk preference was set to "Use no more than 50% of total disk space" and if that really means "free disk space", BOINC would need to see a minimum free space of around 3.9GB. If you drop a 4GB temp file in there and the free space drops from 6.79GB to 2.79GB, and then if BOINC sees this, you would get the error condition as 2.79GB is less than 3.9GB. Then, once the 4GB file is gone, so is the error condition and BOINC is happy again. Your type of report is leading me to the conclusion that "X% of total disk space" really means "X% of total free disk space". Otherwise I really can't make any sense of what happened to you.
Many people will create temp files from time to time that are nothing to do with BOINC. If you want to use your free space in this fashion, I think it's wise to set that pref to a very large value eg 95%. In other words BOINC only needs to see 5% being kept free. There is still more to find out about this though.
Quote:
What I'm wondering about is if it's 1/2 way through a project and it becomes suspended (for whatever reason) the project must be saved on the HDD. I suspect these files are relatively small, but is it possible they're huge and I go nuts wondering what happened to a chunk of my free space?
If this is the case can I purge this "work in progress" file if I need the extra space? Even if it means re-doing the calculations at a later time.
When a project is suspended, the state is saved in checkpoint files. These files are created at regular intervals during normal running anyway. I think that mostly they are relatively small, but it doesn't make any ultimate difference. If you are willing to have a project running - you have checkpoint files. If you suspend a project - you have the same checkpoint files. If you really need to reclaim the space occupied by projects, you would need to detach the projects concerned. Unless you are running CPDN, don't expect to reclaim much space as BOINC's use of your disk is actually relatively small by today's standards :).
...BOINC's use of your disk is actually relatively small by today's standards :).
This is what I figured also, but I raised the question because if these files are small, I don't know why BOINC would be so picky if I have "only" 2.79GB of free space compared to the 3.9GB that it's looking for. This option seems like an easy way to unnecessarily restrict BOINC's capabilities.
It seems like this "leave X% space free" option should be eliminated and we either control BOINC's resource limit with one of two options:
1) Leave minimum X MB free space at all times. BOINC can use as much memory as it wants until this limit is reached. Or...
2) BOINC is allowed a maximum of X MB of memory. If these files are as small as we suspect, then I think 100MB should be more than enough for a BOINC temp directory.
Your type of report is leading me to the conclusion that "X% of total disk space" really means "X% of total free disk space".
This is what it seems, but it would be a strange way to program it. It's like trying to hit a moving target: when does BOINC decide to take a free space reading when this free space is constantly changing as a user does other work on the computer (and BOINC itself is consuming free space)?
If I start the day with 4GB free space, and BOINC is set to use 50%, then it has 2GB to work with. As I use the computer during the day and create a 3GB file, this brings my free space to 1GB. BOINC is set to use 50% of this, or 500MB, which is still above the "leave minimum 0.1GB free space" setting so BOINC should continue to operate smoothly. In fact, the only way BOINC would give an error in this instance is if I have less than 200MB free space as this would violate the "leave minimum 0.1GB free space" setting. So in other words, this is the only setting required as BOINC should operate in all other cases. But it's not, so something strange is really going on.
2) BOINC is allowed a maximum of X MB of memory. If these files are as small as we suspect, then I think 100MB should be more than enough for a BOINC temp directory.
The amount of disk space needed varies by project. CPDN is currently the largest user and you will need at least 800 MB to run it.
There is also an option for the projects to use participants computers as storage space. Currently CPDN is the only project that even partially uses this function.
RE: Just hightlight the
)
Hehe, how come I didn't see that before?. I guess sometimes I like to make things more complicated for myself. Thanks!
RE: Do you recall doing
)
Mmmm, now that you mention it...yes. I was moving large video files around, approx. 4GIG each. For sure I placed one temporarily on my "G" drive (which is where BOINC is installed). Although I don't recall the free space ever dropping below 1GIG.
What I'm wondering about is if it's 1/2 way through a project and it becomes suspended (for whatever reason) the project must be saved on the HDD. I suspect these files are relatively small, but is it possible they're huge and I go nuts wondering what happened to a chunk of my free space?
If this is the case can I purge this "work in progress" file if I need the extra space? Even if it means re-doing the calculations at a later time.
RE: So, when he gets up in
)
And here I thought my cat was computer proficient.
Makes perfect sense.
Thanks for the advice, I did that.
Everyone here has been a great help. I think I'm getting the hang of this. Besides a couple erros from rosetta, E@H has been working great since I did the Preference Update recommended here. Back in business...
RE: Mmmm, now that you
)
It wouldn't have to drop below 1GB. You said that BOINC is on a partition whose size is 25.1GB and that normally there is 6.79GB free. If your third disk preference was set to "Use no more than 50% of total disk space" and if that really means "free disk space", BOINC would need to see a minimum free space of around 3.9GB. If you drop a 4GB temp file in there and the free space drops from 6.79GB to 2.79GB, and then if BOINC sees this, you would get the error condition as 2.79GB is less than 3.9GB. Then, once the 4GB file is gone, so is the error condition and BOINC is happy again. Your type of report is leading me to the conclusion that "X% of total disk space" really means "X% of total free disk space". Otherwise I really can't make any sense of what happened to you.
Many people will create temp files from time to time that are nothing to do with BOINC. If you want to use your free space in this fashion, I think it's wise to set that pref to a very large value eg 95%. In other words BOINC only needs to see 5% being kept free. There is still more to find out about this though.
When a project is suspended, the state is saved in checkpoint files. These files are created at regular intervals during normal running anyway. I think that mostly they are relatively small, but it doesn't make any ultimate difference. If you are willing to have a project running - you have checkpoint files. If you suspend a project - you have the same checkpoint files. If you really need to reclaim the space occupied by projects, you would need to detach the projects concerned. Unless you are running CPDN, don't expect to reclaim much space as BOINC's use of your disk is actually relatively small by today's standards :).
Cheers,
Gary.
RE: ...BOINC's use of your
)
This is what I figured also, but I raised the question because if these files are small, I don't know why BOINC would be so picky if I have "only" 2.79GB of free space compared to the 3.9GB that it's looking for. This option seems like an easy way to unnecessarily restrict BOINC's capabilities.
It seems like this "leave X% space free" option should be eliminated and we either control BOINC's resource limit with one of two options:
1) Leave minimum X MB free space at all times. BOINC can use as much memory as it wants until this limit is reached. Or...
2) BOINC is allowed a maximum of X MB of memory. If these files are as small as we suspect, then I think 100MB should be more than enough for a BOINC temp directory.
RE: Your type of report is
)
This is what it seems, but it would be a strange way to program it. It's like trying to hit a moving target: when does BOINC decide to take a free space reading when this free space is constantly changing as a user does other work on the computer (and BOINC itself is consuming free space)?
If I start the day with 4GB free space, and BOINC is set to use 50%, then it has 2GB to work with. As I use the computer during the day and create a 3GB file, this brings my free space to 1GB. BOINC is set to use 50% of this, or 500MB, which is still above the "leave minimum 0.1GB free space" setting so BOINC should continue to operate smoothly. In fact, the only way BOINC would give an error in this instance is if I have less than 200MB free space as this would violate the "leave minimum 0.1GB free space" setting. So in other words, this is the only setting required as BOINC should operate in all other cases. But it's not, so something strange is really going on.
RE: 2) BOINC is allowed a
)
The amount of disk space needed varies by project. CPDN is currently the largest user and you will need at least 800 MB to run it.
There is also an option for the projects to use participants computers as storage space. Currently CPDN is the only project that even partially uses this function.
BOINC WIKI
BOINCing since 2002/12/8