Lab Environment
4 Jan 2006 22:36:03 UTC
Topic 190515
(moderation:
I have 600+ new computers in a lab environment. We utilize deep freeze and other applications which might interfer with this background engine.
An initial question
Does the program save intermediate results to a hard drive? How much, how often? Can it recover if abruptly shutdown?
Can the intermediate results be saved elsewhere, not on the machine doing the calculations?
The questions may sound funny, but the students that use the computers are pretty smart and we lock down the systems as much as possible to prevent from having to reimage them too frequently.
By setting aside disk space that can't be purged we open up all sorts of problems.
Thanks
Lab Environment
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BOINC will run off any drive you install it on. But each machine must be in it's own directory. So, yes you can run it off a server drive.
As for how to set it up, it must be set up as administrator. Since you do not want the kids playing too much, set it up as a Service. This will run as service background and will not be able to be played with as much. This will also allow you to hide the directories, since you give the software Admin rights.
It does write to disk, but you can change the "how often" on the General Preferences. It's set to 1 minute, but I put mine to 5 minutes.
The program does pretty well in abrupt shutdowns. Sometimes data gets corrupt, but if it does, new data should download and start running.
There is a great program called BoincView that will allow you to monitor all the machines from a centalized machine.
I hope this helps.
RE: BOINC will run off any
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One addition here: The "how often" preference does not affect all disk writes, but it will help reduce them, and each reduction will save a good deal of time on a network drive.
BOINC WIKI
BOINCing since 2002/12/8
RE: One addition here: The
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Thank you KK, should have thought of that myself.
RE: ... The "how often"
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With me it does nothing at all. Tried starting a thread about that, at http://einsteinathome.org/node/190524 .
Greetings, Mr Ragnar Schroder