Switching host's

Fred J. Verster
Fred J. Verster
Joined: 27 Apr 08
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Topic 193696

Have a stupid combination off host's and E@H and want to change this.
Can i copy Einstein WU's to another host, after i installed BOINC + E@H .

This host is almost without work and want to use this one for E@H, was crunching for S@H.

{I use 1 Q6600 @ 3150MHz for S@H & E@H (50/50)}and want to run Einstein@home on 1 or 2 separate host's .A P4Dual 820 and/or HP-LT with a T2400 CPU.

Thunder
Thunder
Joined: 18 Jan 05
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Switching host's

I don't know of any way to only move WU's of one project (if that's what you want to do), only whole installations from one computer to another.

Personally I take the opposite order of what you suggested to accomplish this.

I shut down BOINC on the old computer, then copy the entire BOINC directory tree to the same location on the new computer (Program Files/BOINC for example on windows), then install BOINC on the new computer.

The BOINC installer is smart enough to recognize that an "old" installation is already present and it will resume all work from where they left off on the old machine. At this point you should make sure not to ever start up the old installation, so I usually delete it completely unless the computer is just being scrapped.

If the new computer is significantly faster, you'll notice oddities like unrealisticly long completion times for WU's already downloaded and result duration correction factor being off for a bit, but they work themselves out in about 2 weeks or so at most.

The only "manual" intervention I usually do is to run the benchmarks on the new computer since BOINC will not do this automatically until 5 days since the last one.

This may not be the method everyone uses, but I've probably done it 30+ times over the last several years and it always works fine.

I'm not sure if this will be applicable in your situation, but I hope it helps.

Gary Roberts
Gary Roberts
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RE: Have a stupid

Quote:

Have a stupid combination off host's and E@H and want to change this.
Can i copy Einstein WU's to another host, after i installed BOINC + E@H .

This host is almost without work and want to use this one for E@H, was crunching for S@H.

{I use 1 Q6600 @ 3150MHz for S@H & E@H (50/50)}and want to run Einstein@home on 1 or 2 separate host's .A P4Dual 820 and/or HP-LT with a T2400 CPU.

It's not 100% clear to me what you are trying to do but here are my assumptions. Note: S=Seti and E=Einstein.

  • 1. You have a host (A) running E & S 50/50
    2. You have a second host (B) on which you want to run the E from A
    3. A will be left running S only?? - you don't make that clear
    4. You have a possible third host (C) on which you might also run E
    5. It's not clear if B & C are running anything at the moment. Perhaps they are already running S and you would like them to be dual S and E hosts???
    6. Perhaps (on rereading your description) B already has an E installation that is almost out of work and you want to dump it and replace it with the E from A???
    7. There are probably other possibilities that I'm not even getting from your brief and ambiguous description.

There are lots of ways to achieve things with BOINC but all of them require a very clear picture of the actual starting point and the desired ending point.

Please understand that it's unlikely to be a matter of just "shifting some files" since a lot of critical state information is held in each host's client_state.xml file. It's entirely possible to do surgery on each copy of the state file for each host but it's not for the faint hearted, it's tedious (to make sure you don't miss anything), it's all too easy to make a critical mistake and it's usually not worth the effort. It is often possible to "fool" BOINC into doing some of the state file editing for you but that depends on exactly what you are trying to do.

If all this hasn't scared you off, please describe fully what you want to achieve and I'll respond with a list of steps if I think it's achievable :-).

Cheers,
Gary.

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