Dotsch/UX - A USB/Diskless/Harddisk BOINC Linux Distribution
20 Jan 2009 20:19:39 UTC
Topic 194151
(moderation:
Last week, I have released Dotsch/UX 1.0. - Dotsch/UX is a Linux distribution for BOINC which easily installs and boot from a USB stick, hard disk and from diskless clients and also has some interfaces to setup the diskless server and the clients automatically.
For more informations have a look at http://www.dotsch.de/Dotsch_UX
Dotsch/UX - A USB/Diskless/Harddisk BOINC Linux Distribution
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I wonder whether BOINC's frequent write accesses to client_state.xml would have a negative effect on the life expectancy of a USB stick. Flash memory will last only so and so many write accesses. Modern sticks will move around files in physical memory to avoid stressing individual "areas" of the memory, simpler ones won't.
A problem?
CU
Bikeman
RE: Last week, I have
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Howdy,
hats off to this kind of enthusiasm !!!
However, I have problems with Dotsch/UX 1.0 .. First boot from burned ISO was succesfull and I did the first part of the installation, no errors etc .. When I try to boot from the USB-stick the boot loader gave the following errors:
cp: cannot create '/root/var/log/': No such file or directory
mount: mounting /root/dev on /dev/.static/dev failed: No such file or directory
mount: /sys on /root/sys failed: No such file or directory
mount: /proc on /root/proc failed: : No such file or directory
Target filesystem doesn't have /sbin/init
No init found. Try passing init=bootarg
BusyBox v1.10.2 ...
and the boot stops in initramfs-stage ?!?
Any thoughts what is the root cause? It seems that the first part could not create bootable stick for some reasons ( or it can not mount the /root-filesystem ).
'-- Lundi --
RE: Howdy, hats off to this
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Thank you very much !
Looks like the installation was not successfull. Could you please try to re install again from the first stage.
Not shure, if the image you have used is corrupted, or the image was not correctly installed on the USB stick, or the USB stick or the filesystem on the stick is corrupted. From which location have you downloaded it ? - Evtenutaly a download from a other location or via BitTorrent would help, if the reinstallation was not successfull.
Also, eventualy you can format it with vfat and verfiy if you get some errors on the stick.
RE: I wonder whether
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The manufactors guarantie about 100 000 to 300 000, some special 1 millon write cyles on a USB stick.
The german computer magazine (c't) has tested this with a lower guaranted cycles stick, and gave up at 6 million write cycles with no errors. I have found a other test, which had write errors at 19 million write cycles. But the stick was still readable...
Do you know at which cycle the BOINC client rewrites the client_state.xml ? - My tests showed about every 90..120 seconds. So at 100 000 write cycles the stick would be guaranted ok for about 4 to 5 month, with 300 000 for 12 to 15 month and at 19 million cycles about 54 years.
But, I am still working on a backup tool, which saves the important data to a other USB stick or disk or to a network share to prevent such problems.
RE: RE: I wonder whether
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Most recent flash devices use a "wear leveling" system whereby the write cycles count is spread across the entire device. Hence, you can write data to the entire device 100,000 times or you can write data to 10% of the device 1,000,000 times, etc. For small amounts of data, you're limited to the minimum write size of the 1kByte(?) device blocks. FAT reduces the life more quickly because of updates to the FAT for every file size change or rewrite.
By which time the USB stick can be replaced for 1/4 the cost of now.
There is also a preferences setting whereby you can reduce the disk write frequency for Boinc.
Very good work!
Regards,
Martin
See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)
Hi! I think the "write to
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Hi!
I think the "write to disk at most every ... seconds" preference will only apply to checkpointing , not to updates of the client_state.xml file. How often the client_state.xml file is updated may depend on the science app (???) but I had thoought it happened a lot more frequently, like every second or so.
CU
Bikeman
RE: Hi! I think the "write
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im unsure, i ran filemon for a while to see. maybe theres a better utility for this, but this is what it pickd up. note: i had it set to look for boinc.exe and not the manager as i think the manager only does disk access if its open.
6:33:41 AM boinc.exe:2928 OPEN C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BOINC\slots\0\ SUCCESS Options: Open Directory Access: 00100001
6:33:41 AM boinc.exe:2928 DIRECTORY C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BOINC\slots\0\ SUCCESS FileBothDirectoryInformation: *
6:33:41 AM boinc.exe:2928 DIRECTORY C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BOINC\slots\0\ SUCCESS FileBothDirectoryInformation
6:33:41 AM boinc.exe:2928 DIRECTORY C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BOINC\slots\0\ NO MORE FILES FileBothDirectoryInformation
6:33:41 AM boinc.exe:2928 CLOSE C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BOINC\slots\0\ SUCCESS
6:33:41 AM boinc.exe:2928 OPEN C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BOINC\projects\einstein.phys.uwm.edu\ SUCCESS Options: Open Directory Access: 00100001
6:33:41 AM boinc.exe:2928 DIRECTORY C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BOINC\projects\einstein.phys.uwm.edu\ NO SUCH FILE FileBothDirectoryInformation: h1_0656.95_S5R4__433_S5R5a_1_0
6:33:41 AM boinc.exe:2928 CLOSE C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BOINC\projects\einstein.phys.uwm.edu\ SUCCESS
6:38:42 AM boinc.exe:2928 OPEN C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BOINC\slots\0\ SUCCESS Options: Open Directory Access: 00100001
6:38:42 AM boinc.exe:2928 DIRECTORY C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BOINC\slots\0\ SUCCESS FileBothDirectoryInformation: *
6:38:42 AM boinc.exe:2928 DIRECTORY C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BOINC\slots\0\ SUCCESS FileBothDirectoryInformation
6:38:42 AM boinc.exe:2928 DIRECTORY C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BOINC\slots\0\ NO MORE FILES FileBothDirectoryInformation
6:38:42 AM boinc.exe:2928 CLOSE C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BOINC\slots\0\ SUCCESS
6:38:42 AM boinc.exe:2928 OPEN C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BOINC\projects\einstein.phys.uwm.edu\ SUCCESS Options: Open Directory Access: 00100001
6:38:42 AM boinc.exe:2928 DIRECTORY C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BOINC\projects\einstein.phys.uwm.edu\ NO SUCH FILE FileBothDirectoryInformation: h1_0656.95_S5R4__433_S5R5a_1_0
6:38:42 AM boinc.exe:2928 CLOSE C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BOINC\projects\einstein.phys.uwm.edu\ SUCCESS
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Today I have released
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Today I have released Dotsch/UX 1.1. Mayor changes are the availability of a 32 bit (i386) and 64 bit (x64) distribution, mixed i386 and x64 diskless client on one single diskless server, build in BOINC client 6.4.5 and bug fixes
 for the USB, hard disk, diskless server and diskless client Installation tools.
The distribution is available at dotsch.de/Dotsch_UX