I just got the same message. I couldn't see where the problem was, but I clicked "Your Account" in BOINC Manager. Choose General preferences. Make sure everything there looks right (mine looked right, no changes made) and click "update preferences".
I'm not getting any new work because I don't have enough disk space allocated. I don't know how to change that. There is plenty of space on my drive.
Hi Janet,
Welcome to Einstein!! We hope you have an enjoyable time here.
As paulcet suggested, you can view or edit your preferences by going to your account page on the website. Click on the "View or edit general prefs" option and on the page that comes up you will see a block of 5 values associated with disk and memory usage. Here are the values I use which should just about work for anybody:-
* Use no more than -- 10GB (leave it large)
* Leave at least free -- 0.2GB (keep it small, particularly if you don't have much free space.
* Use no more than -- 75% of total disk (leave it large)
* Write to disk every -- 60 seconds (leave this at the default value)
* Use no more than -- 75% of virtual mem (leave it large)
If you want to change anything click the "edit" button and make the changes on the next page. Make sure you "Update" before you leave the edit page.
Now that's one thing I disagree with. If the harddrive is a smaller one or a smaller partition, it's useless to leave it at 100 or set it to large. It's (in my optinion) better to set it to the amount the harddrive or partition that BOINC runs on has free! You cannot use more than what you have.
So if your partition is 4GB, you set this setting to use no more than 4GB.
Yet if your harddrive is just one partition, is 160GB big and has just 7GB free, you set it to around the free number of that time (7GB).
As for the Update, don't forget to also updat BOINC Manager: Open BM, go to the Projects tab, press once on the Einstein project to select it, press the Update button. This will make sure BOINC knows your new preferences.
Now that's one thing I disagree with. If the harddrive is a smaller one or a smaller partition, it's useless to leave it at 100 or set it to large. It's (in my optinion) better to set it to the amount the harddrive or partition that BOINC runs on has free! You cannot use more than what you have.
Let's imagine a new user joins a single BOINC project with an old clunker of a box with a 2Gb total hard drive with about 500MB free if they are lucky. So they follow your advice and set the value to somewhere between 500MB and 2GB. A few months pass and they forget all about their preferences because things are working and they have become hooked on the stats. So they start saving up their pocket money and justify to anyone who will listen why they really need a bigger faster box.
Well Christmas comes around and there under the tree is that shiny new box with the A256 18800+ octuple processor, 100GB RAM and twin 20TB hard disks. They just *have* to hook it up to 50 projects, simply because they can. Now which of the following preference sets is going to work, for both machines, without having to go through and diagnose the error messages:-
Use no more than (MB) is the maximum total amount of disk space that can be used by BOINC Client Software and all the Projects it's running. It won't apply if your disk is smaller than the value you've set.
Leave at least is the absolute amount of free space that the BOINC Client Software must leave on the disk.
Use no more than (% of total space) is the one that's causes most confusion. I would hope the percentage is based on the amount of disk space used by BOINC Client Software plus the free space, and the setting defines the maximum percentage of this that's available to the BOINC Client Software.
The first 2 settings are absolutes and the last one varies depending on how much disk space everything else is using.
If BOINC detects that any of these thresholds has been exceeded it has to start releasing some of the space it's using. It doesn't necessarily have to be BOINC Client Software that causes a free space threshold to be breached.
B. (if it says 2GB, as that really is the maximum you can use) will always work.
Of course option B starts off working (on the second machine with the excess of projects) until the log files start growing and the extra work files and project executables are downloaded. Then, all of a sudden, the limit is triggered and the poor user doesn't know why they suddenly have problems, because, as they correctly state, they've got all this huge amount of free disk space. Since BOINC can only use whatever free space you actually have, it does no real harm to pretend that you have a larger disk than you really have. The only reason to not go totally beserk with that setting is that if you have some sort of runaway process in the BOINC suite, you could potentially gobble up a whole lot of disk space until the disk was completely full or you triggered the limit whatever it was.
Quote:
Besides, if you get a whole new computer, you ought to check the preferences anyway. Even if you add it to the group.
So, with your new machine added to your growing farm, of course you remember to go and check all your preferences and of course you are switched on enough to spot that 0.5GB value straight away that you initially set because that was the sum total of free space you had on your first machine. Well let's assume you are correct and the user makes the correct judgement to increase the value to 10GB because he is prepared to give that much to BOINC on his new machine. Will the first machine now suddenly start refusing to work?? Couldn't the user have just set it to 10GB right from the start??
I just think it makes sense to look at the various machines you currently have or may have in the near future and make that value large enough to not restrict your faster, bigger machines, supporting more projects and needing more disk space. After all, as you yourself have correctly stated:-
Quote:
It won't apply if your disk is smaller than the value you've set.
BTW, thanks very much for that reference from the Wiki. I knew I had read exactly what you had quoted somewhere but couldn't remember where. It's a very valuable link for the people who are currently having disk space errors to go and digest.
Since BOINC can only use whatever free space you actually have, it does no real harm to pretend that you have a larger disk than you really have.
In all the times I tested it, it did harm my trying to run without errors. I've got BOINC running on the E: partition, NTFS, 6GB only for BOINC. I've never had a problem with the following settings:
Use no more than 4 GB disk space
Leave at least 0.1 GB disk space free
Use no more than 50% of total disk space
Write to disk at most every 60 seconds
Use no more than 75% of total virtual memory
Quote:
So, with your new machine added to your growing farm, of course you remember to go and check all your preferences and of course you are switched on enough to spot that 0.5GB value straight away that you initially set because that was the sum total of free space you had on your first machine.
If you added the new machine, you should go check up on your preferences anyway, if only to...
Quote:
Will the first machine now suddenly start refusing to work?? Couldn't the user have just set it to 10GB right from the start??
...set up the machine as the main new one with the correct preferences for all machines to follow.
Remember, the maximum amount you tell it to use is for all projects you are attached to added up. If you only run Einstein, do you need 100GB? Will it ever give out 5GB work units?
I've been attached to up to 10 projects on my computer with the above settings. The biggest project at the time was CPDN, with its 600MB work unit. It wasn't a problem.
So just add up your cache, add up the amount of projects you are attached to.
Leaving the first absolute as big as possible is not necessary. It can backfire.
Although this was an interesting discussion, I think it missed the point. If I read paulcet correctly, his problem (possibly) was that his disk preferences in BOINC Manager were somehow corrupted. That is, he simply went to the Einstein web page, reviewed his settings, made no changes, but did an "Update" and that fixed things. I think it would be interesting to know if Janet and flthompson report similar success after updating. And we should be alert to the possibility that there may be a BOINC Manager problem relating to preferences. EDIT: It appears that all three were successfully processing and returning work before the disk space issue cropped up.
That is, he simply went to the Einstein web page, reviewed his settings, made no changes, but did an "Update" and that fixed things.
The thing is, the preferences are written to local disk, in the global_prefs.xml file. If this file becomes corrupt due to whatever is happening to your drive (anti virus scan, scandisk or defrag while BOINC is on, such things), a simple rewrite as paulcet did is useful.
no disk space
)
I just got the same message. I couldn't see where the problem was, but I clicked "Your Account" in BOINC Manager. Choose General preferences. Make sure everything there looks right (mine looked right, no changes made) and click "update preferences".
That seemed to fix it for me.
HTH
Paul
RE: I'm not getting any new
)
Hi Janet,
Welcome to Einstein!! We hope you have an enjoyable time here.
As paulcet suggested, you can view or edit your preferences by going to your account page on the website. Click on the "View or edit general prefs" option and on the page that comes up you will see a block of 5 values associated with disk and memory usage. Here are the values I use which should just about work for anybody:-
* Leave at least free -- 0.2GB (keep it small, particularly if you don't have much free space.
* Use no more than -- 75% of total disk (leave it large)
* Write to disk every -- 60 seconds (leave this at the default value)
* Use no more than -- 75% of virtual mem (leave it large)
If you want to change anything click the "edit" button and make the changes on the next page. Make sure you "Update" before you leave the edit page.
Cheers,
Gary.
RE: * Use no more than --
)
Now that's one thing I disagree with. If the harddrive is a smaller one or a smaller partition, it's useless to leave it at 100 or set it to large. It's (in my optinion) better to set it to the amount the harddrive or partition that BOINC runs on has free! You cannot use more than what you have.
So if your partition is 4GB, you set this setting to use no more than 4GB.
Yet if your harddrive is just one partition, is 160GB big and has just 7GB free, you set it to around the free number of that time (7GB).
As for the Update, don't forget to also updat BOINC Manager: Open BM, go to the Projects tab, press once on the Einstein project to select it, press the Update button. This will make sure BOINC knows your new preferences.
RE: Now that's one thing I
)
Let's imagine a new user joins a single BOINC project with an old clunker of a box with a 2Gb total hard drive with about 500MB free if they are lucky. So they follow your advice and set the value to somewhere between 500MB and 2GB. A few months pass and they forget all about their preferences because things are working and they have become hooked on the stats. So they start saving up their pocket money and justify to anyone who will listen why they really need a bigger faster box.
Well Christmas comes around and there under the tree is that shiny new box with the A256 18800+ octuple processor, 100GB RAM and twin 20TB hard disks. They just *have* to hook it up to 50 projects, simply because they can. Now which of the following preference sets is going to work, for both machines, without having to go through and diagnose the error messages:-
A. Use no more than 100GB of disk space.
B. Use no more than 0.5GB of disk space.
Cheers,
Gary.
B. (if it says 2GB, as that
)
B. (if it says 2GB, as that really is the maximum you can use) will always work.
Besides, if you get a whole new computer, you ought to check the preferences anyway. Even if you add it to the group.
Vishnu says: Use no more
)
Vishnu says:
Use no more than (MB) is the maximum total amount of disk space that can be used by BOINC Client Software and all the Projects it's running. It won't apply if your disk is smaller than the value you've set.
Leave at least is the absolute amount of free space that the BOINC Client Software must leave on the disk.
Use no more than (% of total space) is the one that's causes most confusion. I would hope the percentage is based on the amount of disk space used by BOINC Client Software plus the free space, and the setting defines the maximum percentage of this that's available to the BOINC Client Software.
The first 2 settings are absolutes and the last one varies depending on how much disk space everything else is using.
If BOINC detects that any of these thresholds has been exceeded it has to start releasing some of the space it's using. It doesn't necessarily have to be BOINC Client Software that causes a free space threshold to be breached.
RE: B. (if it says 2GB, as
)
Of course option B starts off working (on the second machine with the excess of projects) until the log files start growing and the extra work files and project executables are downloaded. Then, all of a sudden, the limit is triggered and the poor user doesn't know why they suddenly have problems, because, as they correctly state, they've got all this huge amount of free disk space. Since BOINC can only use whatever free space you actually have, it does no real harm to pretend that you have a larger disk than you really have. The only reason to not go totally beserk with that setting is that if you have some sort of runaway process in the BOINC suite, you could potentially gobble up a whole lot of disk space until the disk was completely full or you triggered the limit whatever it was.
So, with your new machine added to your growing farm, of course you remember to go and check all your preferences and of course you are switched on enough to spot that 0.5GB value straight away that you initially set because that was the sum total of free space you had on your first machine. Well let's assume you are correct and the user makes the correct judgement to increase the value to 10GB because he is prepared to give that much to BOINC on his new machine. Will the first machine now suddenly start refusing to work?? Couldn't the user have just set it to 10GB right from the start??
I just think it makes sense to look at the various machines you currently have or may have in the near future and make that value large enough to not restrict your faster, bigger machines, supporting more projects and needing more disk space. After all, as you yourself have correctly stated:-
BTW, thanks very much for that reference from the Wiki. I knew I had read exactly what you had quoted somewhere but couldn't remember where. It's a very valuable link for the people who are currently having disk space errors to go and digest.
Cheers,
Gary.
RE: Since BOINC can only
)
In all the times I tested it, it did harm my trying to run without errors. I've got BOINC running on the E: partition, NTFS, 6GB only for BOINC. I've never had a problem with the following settings:
Use no more than 4 GB disk space
Leave at least 0.1 GB disk space free
Use no more than 50% of total disk space
Write to disk at most every 60 seconds
Use no more than 75% of total virtual memory
If you added the new machine, you should go check up on your preferences anyway, if only to...
...set up the machine as the main new one with the correct preferences for all machines to follow.
Remember, the maximum amount you tell it to use is for all projects you are attached to added up. If you only run Einstein, do you need 100GB? Will it ever give out 5GB work units?
I've been attached to up to 10 projects on my computer with the above settings. The biggest project at the time was CPDN, with its 600MB work unit. It wasn't a problem.
So just add up your cache, add up the amount of projects you are attached to.
Leaving the first absolute as big as possible is not necessary. It can backfire.
Gary and Ageless, Although
)
Gary and Ageless,
Although this was an interesting discussion, I think it missed the point. If I read paulcet correctly, his problem (possibly) was that his disk preferences in BOINC Manager were somehow corrupted. That is, he simply went to the Einstein web page, reviewed his settings, made no changes, but did an "Update" and that fixed things. I think it would be interesting to know if Janet and flthompson report similar success after updating. And we should be alert to the possibility that there may be a BOINC Manager problem relating to preferences. EDIT: It appears that all three were successfully processing and returning work before the disk space issue cropped up.
Stick
RE: That is, he simply went
)
The thing is, the preferences are written to local disk, in the global_prefs.xml file. If this file becomes corrupt due to whatever is happening to your drive (anti virus scan, scandisk or defrag while BOINC is on, such things), a simple rewrite as paulcet did is useful.