Running BOINC from Linux tmpfs

user32094
user32094
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Topic 190741

I got mail from this project titled Einstein@Home needs your help again.

OK. I'll help if you tell me how make it run without the HDD spinning up every couple of minutes. I have latest Debian with 2.6.15.1 kernel and 1 GB RAM.

Bruce Allen
Bruce Allen
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Running BOINC from Linux tmpfs

Quote:

I got mail from this project titled Einstein@Home needs your help again.

OK. I'll help if you tell me how make it run without the HDD spinning up every couple of minutes. I have latest Debian with 2.6.15.1 kernel and 1 GB RAM.

Set your preferences for 'write to disk no more than once every X minutes' to a large value. Just remember that this is when checkpointing is done. So if you interrupt processsing you'll lose work.

Director, Einstein@Home

user32094
user32094
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I set disk_interval to

I set disk_interval to 9999999 and HD stand by time to 20 seconds and the HD won't still spin down. noatime mount option has no effect either. I ran the install script in tmpfs so the paths are right.

When I run prime95 torture test from tmpfs with output directed to log file the HD spins down as it should. Same with POV-Ray. Looks like BOINC is designed not to work with ramdisk.

At this point I'm looking for a solution which I can copy & paste into ssh console.

wumpus
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What happens if you set it to

What happens if you set it to a smaller number like 30 minutes? I see you posted this before quite a while ago and didn't get sorted out then either.

wumpus
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What client are you running?

What client are you running? I found a post that is close to what your are talking about.

http://einsteinathome.org/node/190524

user32094
user32094
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It now works as expected with

It now works as expected with 2.6.18.1 kernel and official boinc_5.4.9_i686-pc-linux-gnu.

Just install to /tmpfs and run from there:
nohup ./run_client -no_gui_rpc >& /dev/null &

The disk_interval is 120 s.

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