My Dell 9200 Q6600 quadcore arrived today.

Long story short, the only internet access I will have for the next two weeks is via my laptop at the local library.

Once or twice before when I've lost internet access, I've tried unsuccessfully to "sneaker-net" my AMD desktop results to the laptop, and bring the laptop to internet access.

To potentially gain two weeks of 100% Rosetta crunching on a quadcore, I'm willing to try one more time.

If anyone can suggest how I can use a laptop and flash drive to get an isolated quadcore to run Rosetta workunits, I'm game.

Worst that can happen is it doesn't work, and Rosie has to wait two more weeks for my RAC to start increasing again.

Thanx in advance.

Haul that puppy into the library, load it up, and take it home again :)

My Dell 9200 Q6600 quadcore arrived today.

Long story short, the only internet access I will have for the next two weeks is via my laptop at the local library.

Once or twice before when I've lost internet access, I've tried unsuccessfully to "sneaker-net" my AMD desktop results to the laptop, and bring the laptop to internet access.

To potentially gain two weeks of 100% Rosetta crunching on a quadcore, I'm willing to try one more time.

If anyone can suggest how I can use a laptop and flash drive to get an isolated quadcore to run Rosetta workunits, I'm game.

Worst that can happen is it doesn't work, and Rosie has to wait two more weeks for my RAC to start increasing again.

Thanx in advance.

Don't think that I haven't thought about doing just that, lol !!!

Haul that puppy into the library, load it up, and take it home again :)

If you could fit the entire BOINC subdirectory structure on a memory stick, then it should be portable for you. Just change your BOINC icon to direct it to the .exe on the drive letter used by the stick.

To reduce the memory footprint, you would want to set your preference to crunch 24hrs per task. That way you need fewer tasks to keep your 4 cores busy.

If it doesn't fit, you could zip up the whole structure for the transport. And if you get deeper in to it, you can find the slots directory where the currently crunching tasks are, and the results files where the compelted tasks are and just copy those... but that sounds like where you may have run in to trouble in your prior attempt.

And the transport could be a memory stick, USB to a SD-RAM, a CD-R, a rewritable DVD... it doesn't matter.

Just to be clear... you'd set up a NEW BOINC environment on your laptop (i.e. a new install path). Then download all of the work units and preferences. Then exit BOINC, bundle it up and load it on to the quad, and may as well delete it from the laptop. Run on the quad. Then when you are ready to report in the results, you'd just exit BOINC, bundle it all back up, restore it to the laptop and run BOINC from the new pathname. It should pick up right where the quad left off. Just as it does when you power up. It would then detect internet connection, report the results and get more work.

You might want to dummy up the benchmarks (i.e. make the ops/sec figures much higher) to help the laptop download enough work to keep 2 to 4 times more cores busy. That or get it used to a 1hr runtime preference, then change your runtime pref. to 24hrs, and your connect to network every... days at the same time and you'll have plenty of tasks.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

As Above, but I would install BOINC on the Quad to the USB drive.
Remembering to set it to No Network when it's not connected to the net ;-)


Then just attach to laptop when you need it and enable network and for it to do it's stuff.
(though close any existing boinc's running/services when you do this)

It works well like this, all of boinc will easily fit on a£10 flash drive ;-)

I used to do it a year and a half ago when I used Uni computers. I could even move from computer to computer around the uni.

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Team mauisun.org

what i would do is:

1. On laptop, install boinc to the memory stick.
2. Set the location for that computer using the online settings page.
3. Adjust the 'Connect to network about every' to 10.
4. Set the disk usage 'Use at most' settings very high, and the 'Leave at least' very low.
5. I would also increase the 'write to disk at most' setting (on my compactflash computer I use 600s) to reduce the number of writes to the flash drive.
6. Update BOINC to pick up these settings (using 'Update' under the Projects tab - or is it 'Retry Communications' in Tasks?)
7. After the queue has downloaded, now adjust the 'Target CPU run time' in the R@H preferences to something big - 24hrs would be good.
8. Exit BOINC and move memory stick to quad core.
9. If the drive letter is the same on the laptop and quad then you can skip this step. Otherwise, you need to go into the boincslots folder and edit the init_data.xml file to correct the path given in these tags:
<project_dir>
<boinc_dir>
Then save and close.
10. Start it crunching.

When moving this stick back to the laptop, don't forget to change the paths back before running boinc again! If running from the memory stick its probably easiest to set the drive letters to match on the two computers rather than having to edit init_data.xml every time. Easier still, install it to c:rah and then copy it to the same on the quad...

HTH
Danny

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As Above, but I would install BOINC on the Quad to the USB drive.
Remembering to set it to No Network when it's not connected to the net ;-)


Then just attach to laptop when you need it and enable network and for it to do it's stuff.
(though close any existing boinc's running/services when you do this)

but make sure the path is the same, or edit init_data.xml!

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Great idea dcdc. If those are the settings you setup I think you would not need to network for 10 days this way.

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Jmarks

Thanks for adding those key details. I guess I always ended up with same drive letter, and so was unaware of them.

I wanted to just remind you about the 10day deadline to report back results.

Also, I wanted to add the disclaimer for future readers that at this point Rosetta is not optimised for specific CPUs, only specific operating systems. In the description here, we are all assuming that the two machines are running the same operating system. If, in the future, CPU-specific optimizations are made to the application, then all of this would only be expected to work properly if the two machines were both running the same OS and using the same CPU type.

This also implies these steps may not work for other BOINC projects.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

Drive letters has never been a problem for me even with it changing.


I would not set the setting online in a different profile but use local preferences to set everything up. You have far more intant control...
The connect to every shouldn't matter but set get 7 days of extra work to err 7. (that's if our deadlines are still at 7?)

Though it has been a while and the boinc versions have changed since I used to do it... (about 1.5yrs difference)

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Team mauisun.org

Why is boinc using absolute paths when they should be relative paths ?

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Team mauisun.org

Thanx everyone !

I'll be attempting this a little later today. Will let you know how it goes.

what i would do is:

10. Start it crunching.

When moving this stick back to the laptop, don't forget to change the paths back before running boinc again! If running from the memory stick its probably easiest to set the drive letters to match on the two computers rather than having to edit init_data.xml every time. Easier still, install it to c:rah and then copy it to the same on the quad...

HTH
Danny

I just run it all from a USB drive. Copy and paste the BOINC folder from program files to anywhere on you USB drive and open the boincmgr.exe directly. Like mod.sense says set work to be 24hours and run the show from the stick. The only downside is that a computer (your laptop) will get credit for work it hasn't done. But at least useful work is still being done and the credit is still being added to your name. It works for me :)

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I just run it all from a USB drive. Copy and paste the BOINC folder from program files to anywhere on you USB drive and open the boincmgr.exe directly. Like mod.sense says set work to be 24hours and run the show from the stick. The only downside is that a computer (your laptop) will get credit for work it hasn't done. But at least useful work is still being done and the credit is still being added to your name. It works for me :)

That's why you install it from the Quad, when the quad eventually goes online it will be the owner of the account and hence keeps all the credits it has crunched.

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Team mauisun.org

[quote]

That's why you install it from the Quad, when the quad eventually goes online it will be the owner of the account and hence keeps all the credits it has crunched.

But BOINC just seems to give the cred to whichever comp returns the results...

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[quote]

That's why you install it from the Quad, when the quad eventually goes online it will be the owner of the account and hence keeps all the credits it has crunched.

But BOINC just seems to give the cred to whichever comp returns the results...

It gives it to the 8installation* that returned the result, if you copy an already running BOINC directory, then all credit will go to that, but since you installed a fresh BOINC when it uploads and gets data it will go to that account (as such), and the computer information will be whatever it was last sent from, so if the Quad is the final resting place for that installation it will all be from the Quad.

Note: that's how it used to work last time I used the method.

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Team mauisun.org

My Dell 9200 Q6600 quadcore arrived today.

Looking forward to your results.
After reviewing the way the quad core works on the Intel site, I have to wonder if it really will help much when running a single instance of BOINC manager. Sounds like to really push this puppy you need to try 4 instances to keep the processors busy.
Or (question to all out there) does BOINC/Rosetta create multiple threads to take advantage of a multi-CPU machine?

My Dell 9200 Q6600 quadcore arrived today.

Looking forward to your results.
After reviewing the way the quad core works on the Intel site, I have to wonder if it really will help much when running a single instance of BOINC manager. Sounds like to really push this puppy you need to try 4 instances to keep the processors busy.
Or (question to all out there) does BOINC/Rosetta create multiple threads to take advantage of a multi-CPU machine?

rosetta is single threaded so boinc will run four instances of rosetta on a quad. HTH
Danny

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rosetta is single threaded so boinc will run four instances of rosetta on a quad. HTH
Danny

...if your BOINC general preferences are changed to a maximum number of CPUs of 4 (or more).

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

rosetta is single threaded so boinc will run four instances of rosetta on a quad. HTH
Danny

...if your BOINC general preferences are changed to a maximum number of CPUs of 4 (or more).

good call!

...and your maximum memory useage will allow four threads to fit!

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