Hi folks,

found this interesting item on Siran's BOINC news page.

BoincPE -

BOINCpe: Live-CD for BOINC

With BOINCpe you can run a dedicated BOINC machine in-RAM (using a RAM disk) starting from only 256 MB of total RAM. This is useful to operate your BOINC farm more energy-efficient (without HDDs) or to temporarily activate machines without hard disk drives (HDD) for BOINC.

The fun part is, this is Windows, only minus all the background tasks. All you need is a working Windows XP or Vista CD and BoincPE.

BTW, PE means Preinstallation Environment. It's something Microsoft created to make system administrators' lives easier; you can boot off a CD and fully access all hard drives without having to boot Windows itself. Also, you can crunch without even needing a HD - useful.

So - for dedicated crunchers, this really works well. It's in beta, so there are some rough edges still. Also, you'll need some basic system administration skills, including finding suitable network drivers for your system. There is ample help available online (search for BartPE, not BoincPE though).

I'm currently testing it on my PD system; let's see how the times compare to ones run via Windows itself - should be some improvements to be had.

Regards,
Simon.

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Optimized SETI@Home apps + Information

Is it possible to have a menu with optimized apps for different processors?

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Most probably, yes. Easiest way would be to program a .cmd file that gives you a choice on startup.

For me, I run it once and attach to projects, then shut it down and "sync" the BOINC directory contents to another server (since it's running diskless, it makes backups via network). After that, I just put an app_info.xml and an optimized app in the projects/setiathome.berkeley.edu dir, and sync it back to the cruncher.

Basically, each time it shuts down (and regularly while running) it will back its data up via network, and each time it boots up again, this backup is restored and used to continue crunching from.

It works pretty nicely, I've been experimenting with it.

You'll have to integrate it yourself, though - or make a BartPE plug-in.

Regards,
Simon.

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...The fun part is, this is Windows, only minus all the background tasks. All you need is a working Windows XP or Vista CD and BoincPE.

[...]

I'm currently testing it on my PD system; let's see how the times compare to ones run via Windows itself - should be some improvements to be had.

On the same hardware, that will be a very interesting comparison for the percentage difference.

Is it really worth all the hassle of turning off all the services?...

Happy crunchin',
Martin

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Well, not enough basis for comparison, yet.

Still, I can say it's shaved about 300 seconds off 6x.xx WUs, not sure about other ARs, yet.

It won't be a large difference, in any case. It will, however, need just a CD and reduce the bill of materials for a dedicated cruncher.

Regards,
Simon.

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Well, not enough basis for comparison, yet.

Still, I can say it's shaved about 300 seconds off 6x.xx WUs, not sure about other ARs, yet.

That's still something.

Might you be getting some saving from just running from a RAMdisk? How much is the HDD IO overhead?

It won't be a large difference, in any case. It will, however, need just a CD and reduce the bill of materials for a dedicated cruncher.

But then there is a further reduced bill in the first place with a Linux LiveCD or even with PXE-boot from a server to a diskless client...

There's the various Linux LiveCDs around. And then there's also:

Linux Terminal Server Project
PXES Universal Linux Thin Client project


;-)

All interesting stuff,

Regards,
Martin

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Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
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Obviously true, Martin -

but then, this is Point-and-click-land ;o)

Also: right now, Linux only has the 1.3 apps; so using it would have effects on performance.

Windows will just be easier to use for a lot of people; making WinPE work is a matter of a few clicks.

Regards,
Simon.

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A new version of BOINCpe has been released (0.41).

It's even simpler to set up than before; works great for me.

You can have a diskless machine set up and crunching inside a few minutes.

How to set up BOINCpe
BOINCpe advanced configuration

You should read the "advanced configuration" section, though, to really make it work well - especially, check out the "BOINC Persistency Service" section.

I've noticed about 3-5% performance gain using WinPE vs. full-fledged Windows XP64 - may be due to reduced HDD overhead, may be due to no background services. Either way, it works well.

Regards,
Simon.

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Well....As usual I am having problems...I ran the PEbuilder and everything looked fine. Took a bit found the files on my CD and all...Well once I hit burn it cannot find setuphiv and I have no Idea where it got saved to. How do I find the files to burn once thay have been built?

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Well....As usual I am having problems...I ran the PEbuilder and everything looked fine. Took a bit found the files on my CD and all...Well once I hit burn it cannot find setuphiv and I have no Idea where it got saved to. How do I find the files to burn once thay have been built?

I was able to use Nero to burn my iso. To be able to see the iso's, I have to select it from the file menu, since they don't show automatically. It was in My Documents, where I put BartPE Builder.

Well....As usual I am having problems...I ran the PEbuilder and everything looked fine. Took a bit found the files on my CD and all...Well once I hit burn it cannot find setuphiv and I have no Idea where it got saved to. How do I find the files to burn once thay have been built?

I was able to use Nero to burn my iso. To be able to see the iso's, I have to select it from the file menu, since they don't show automatically. It was in My Documents, where I put BartPE Builder.

So you burned the ISO first from NERO? here is where my log says it went but the folder does not exist..
Copying file "d:\\I386\\setupreg.hiv" to "C:\\PROGRAMS\\BOINCPE\\BOINCPE_BETA_V0.4.1\\BARTPE\\I386\\SYSTEM32\\SETUPHIV

And it says it built the ISO..

C:\\Programs\\BoincPE\\BOINCpe_beta_v0.4.1\\mkisofs.exe -iso-level 4 -volid "BartPE" -b bootsect.bin -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -hide bootsect.bin -hide boot.catalog -o "C:\\Programs\\BoincPE\\BOINCpe_beta_v0.4.1\\pebuilder.iso" "C:\\Programs\\BoincPE\\BOINCpe_beta_v0.4.1\\BartPE"
Warning: Creating ISO-9660:1999 (version 2) filesystem.
Warning: ISO-9660 filenames longer than 31 may cause buffer overflows in the OS.
Size of boot image is 4 sectors -> No emulation
5.94% done, estimate finish Mon Mar 12 08:38:22 2007
11.86% done, estimate finish Mon Mar 12 08:38:22 2007
17.78% done, estimate finish Mon Mar 12 08:38:22 2007
23.70% done, estimate finish Mon Mar 12 08:38:22 2007
29.64% done, estimate finish Mon Mar 12 08:38:22 2007
35.56% done, estimate finish Mon Mar 12 08:38:22 2007
41.47% done, estimate finish Mon Mar 12 08:38:22 2007
47.40% done, estimate finish Mon Mar 12 08:38:22 2007
53.33% done, estimate finish Mon Mar 12 08:38:22 2007
59.25% done, estimate finish Mon Mar 12 08:38:22 2007
65.17% done, estimate finish Mon Mar 12 08:38:22 2007
71.10% done, estimate finish Mon Mar 12 08:38:22 2007
77.02% done, estimate finish Mon Mar 12 08:38:22 2007
82.95% done, estimate finish Mon Mar 12 08:38:22 2007
88.88% done, estimate finish Mon Mar 12 08:38:22 2007
94.80% done, estimate finish Mon Mar 12 08:38:22 2007
Total translation table size: 2048
Total rockridge attributes bytes: 0
Total directory bytes: 186682
Path table size(bytes): 1570
84399 extents written (164 MB)
Building ISO image done
Building done...



Should I copy the XP CD to a folder first instead of having it in my CD?

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Well tried again and this time all went smooth. I had used my XPpro upgrade that I have in another computer so it was for the best. Now I made it with the XP home Edition that isn't on any computers...I checked the disc in Explore and all seems to be on it. Will let you all know tonight if I can boot up and run Seti. Thanks.

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Should I copy the XP CD to a folder first instead of having it in my CD?

I made my BoincPE cd on my Pentium M laptop, which has Windows XP Pro. I built the iso and burned it and then put the cd into a Athlon 64 2800 machine. It booted up with a Windows XP Pro splash screen and then went into BartPE. I started up BOINC and attached to a project. There was no browser, so I had to switch back and forth between computers on my KVM switch, so I could make sure I got the url right.

I think if you use a machine that isn't Windows, you would just put the Windows CD in when it asked for it, like when you use a Windows Upgrade instead of a retail copy.

Well I decided to stay home and play for a bit...
This is an older machine with nothing on it. When I burned my CD and used the ISO files that came with BoincPE I got same error messages I get with windows cd and could not boot. When I burn just the ISO files emulating Floppy with NERO my computer will boot fine. I changed directoried and put in the BoincPE disk I made and it shows...

Boinc (dir)
I386 (dir)
PROGRAMS (dir)
WIN511C
WIN511C SP1
AUTORUN INF

What can I do next to make this load or does the boot and BoincPE need to be on same CD?
Right now the Computer says
[DR DOS] D:>

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After all this playing around this morning I finally tried a different power supply and Presto it all works even the first CD I made. What a cool program!

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Too Cool, I have this old machine running seti without even a hard drive in the machine. It connected and attached and downloaded work units without me doing anything except giving the URL and my password. This machine was heading for the Trash by this afternoon. Never saw a Power Supply boot but error on install. Now I have an old Emachine PS 175W and hopefully should be all I need. In my Your Computers page it is called BoincPE too Cool thanks again everyone especially SIMON!

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Just set up an old Compaq Deskpro 4000(233Mhz) with Boinc PE.
Plugged in a test data unit to try it out.
Seems to work very well (was awfully slow before).

After a lot of searching through the FAQ's I still have a questions to which I could not find an answers.

1. The above unit will not connect to any of my other computers on the same LAN. Is it possible to back-up the ramdisk to the units harddrive and reload it after a power failure?

2. If 'yes' to above, could this be plugged into BoincPE?

Will work on connection problem (have internet access) must be a way around this.

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Maybe I can figure this out yet...

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OK I need a bit of help. I managed to share my BoincPE Machine and I accessed the Boinc folder \\BOINC\\projects\\setiathome.berkeley I downloaded the 2.2B generic sse2 that is on my other 2.8 and copied the 3 files is said to install. I had about 20 errors and had to restart boinc after I deleted the 3 files. What do I need to do in order to put 2.2B on this machine or can I? I didn't delete any of the original files...

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After a lot of searching through the FAQ's I still have a questions to which I could not find an answers.

1. The above unit will not connect to any of my other computers on the same LAN. Is it possible to back-up the ramdisk to the units harddrive and reload it after a power failure?

2. If 'yes' to above, could this be plugged into BoincPE?

Will work on connection problem (have internet access) must be a way around this.

Hi,
currently, the answer to #1 is 'no'. At least not automatically. You can of course perform a backup manually before shutting down. BOINC data is located at

B:\\BOINC\\

I will work on this for one of the upcoming releases of BOINCpe (answer to #2).

Regarding your network sharing problems:
Are you having problems to access a share of another host using the persistency service or also using the A43 file manager for instance. What login information for the non-BOINCpe host are you using?

Please post your configuration of .\\plugin\\BOINC_persistency\\files\\network_share_data.bat (without password of course).

Regards,
Torben

Can I use simons apps with this? If so where do I put them?

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