BOINC Virgin

[Digital Parasite]

Hi guys,

I have been AWOL for a bit which is not suprising considering I have been working full time, doing my Masters part-time, and just had our first child almost 4 months ago. But now that I am getting a little more sleep I am trying to get back into DC more.

Anyways, even though BOINC has been out for a while, I have never actually installed/used BOINC or any of the projects yet. :looney:

I am very interested in this Rosetta project as I used to be a big DF fan (any of you ran dfGUI?). I have a few questions about BOINC before I jump in.

First, on Windows, can you install it as a service?

Can you no-net BOINC at all? I have a few machines without network access that I could put on the project if that were possible.

Does BOINC support proxies? So if I have 1 box connected to the Internet and a bunch of others that or not, but connected to that Internet box, is it possible to send/receive WUs through a proxy?

Are there any good third party apps for BOINC that you guys are using? I'm assuming that Bok already has kick-ass stats for Rosetta so that I'm not worried about.

Thanks,
Jeff.

[Bok]

Hey Jeff,

long time no see. Congrats on the baby, I got another coming VERY soon now :)

We'd certainly welcome you to our Rosetta team. Doing ok right now...

As for BOINC, I'll answer a couple of the questions.

Yes, it can be installed as a service under windows. It's an option when you do the install, though I've not tried it personally..

Not sure on no-netting it. I guess so as you could probably just copy the files in the projects/ directory across, but I'd wait till someone who has tried answers that one..

Third party, you want BoincView (http://boincview.amanheis.de/) A very nice app. Boinc has in built remote code to allow applications like this remotely handle clients on other machines on the network.

Stats, well as a matter of fact.... ;)

here (http://stats.free-dc.org/new/projpage.php?proj=rah)

I've just been finishing up boinc stats for all the projects out there.. allteams/allusers.. :) Seti was the only one that took a long time, but that was only 24mins to do the initial run..

Bok

[Digital Parasite]

Thanks for the info and congrats on your upcoming bundle of joy!

We had a boy and he is growing like a weed. Only 4 months old and already more than 15 pounds and longer than 26". He is fitting in 6-12 month clothing now and already outgrew his infant car seat. It must be the "magic" food we give him. :smoking:

[CaptainMooseInc]

it's that DCing...must be the DCing...

[Angus]

Welcome Back!

BOINC does not lend itself very easily to no-netting, by design purpose.

It uses some sort of host-based signature to verify that work is being processed and returned by the same host it was issued to.


that being said, I have seen some 'unauthorized' workarounds on some of the BOINC message boards. I'll see if I can round up a link.

[Digital Parasite]

Thanks Angus. Is there at least a way to specify how many "days" of work you want so you can download multiple WUs and not have to connect every time you finish one?

CaptainMooseInc, hehe, but I bet the radiation coming from all the computers in the house probably helps... :spray:

[Angus]

The queue size is determined by the "Connect every xx days" option in the General Preferences found under the Your Account link on the project site.

There's some complicated stuff the BOINC scheduler does with this setting, particularly if you are running more than 1 project. It uses the expected time to complete each result that the project provides to fill your queue up to the desired setting. Some of the newer Boinc core clients will modify this time to completion by a factor based on learned history on the particular host, so if the project says it will take 4 hours, and you can do them in 2, the time to completion will slowly move toward 2 hours, and your queue will get larger.

I'd start with a 1 or 2 day setting and play with it. If you set it much larger, it seems to want to wait too long to upload finished results. I like a nice smooth work return rate, rather than the big dump every couple days thing. It keeps the stats graphs prettier :)

[Digital Parasite]

Is there any way to force it to connect and upload/download WUs if you are before your XX days set?

For me its more of a logistics thing. It would be too difficult to get all my machines to upload every day or 2 so doing it once a week helps me keep my sanity since there is manual intervention with the network and other stuff.