Big Lunatics Question?

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Profile Cliff Harding
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Message 1357517 - Posted: 16 Apr 2013, 12:49:26 UTC

Unlike most of the crunchers here, I do not have the data directory on my system drive (C:\Program Files\BOINC), but on my data drive (D:\My Documents\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edu). When Lunatics was installed, all of the files required for execution (.exe, .dll, etc.) was placed in the data directory. In the next day or two I will be installing a Samsung 840 Pro 128Gb SSD to replace the failed system drive on my i7/950 machine.

The question is this -- is there any way to successfully move the Lunatics executables from the (D:) drive to the newly installed (C:) and still have them connected to the data directory on (D:)?


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Profile HAL9000
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Message 1357530 - Posted: 16 Apr 2013, 13:35:53 UTC
Last modified: 16 Apr 2013, 13:45:12 UTC

One way would be to edit the registry values to to new location.

The defaults look like so.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Space Sciences Laboratory, U.C. Berkeley\BOINC Setup]
"INSTALLDIR"="C:\\Program Files\\BOINC\\"
"DATADIR"="C:\\ProgramData\\BOINC\\"

If you will be installing BOINC after putting on the new drive. You could just point to your preferred data directory path and then copy the data to that location.
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Profile William
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Message 1357537 - Posted: 16 Apr 2013, 14:01:08 UTC
Last modified: 16 Apr 2013, 14:04:17 UTC

Why do you think the default is the most widespread option in use? ;)

Lunatics installers get the directory information from the registry, same as Boinc itself does when upgrading boinc versions.

As I understand it, your current setup is to have the program directory on C: and the data directory on D:, you will be putting C: onto the SSD and D: is a separate HD.

Boinc would pick up the Data directory path from the registry, but if you are starting from scratch (fresh OS install) you just have to open the advanced options when you install Boinc and replace the default data directory path with the one that holds your boinc data. No need to move anything, no need to rerun Lunatics installer, pick up crunching where you left off.

The Lunatics executables reside in the Data directory ;) - you can tell boinc that your data directory is someplace else (e.g. D:\MyDocuments) but you can't take the executables out of the data directory - boinc looks for the applications in the project dirs. The _boinc_ program directory only holds the boinc.exe, the boinccmd.exe (CLI), the screensaver and the manager (plus a complete set of language packs, dlls and such).

NB it's a boinc question, not a lunatics one ;)
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Profile Cliff Harding
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Message 1357542 - Posted: 16 Apr 2013, 14:15:07 UTC - in response to Message 1357530.  

One way would be to edit the registry values to to new location.

The defaults look like so.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Space Sciences Laboratory, U.C. Berkeley\BOINC Setup]
"INSTALLDIR"="C:\\Program Files\\BOINC\\"
"DATADIR"="C:\\ProgramData\\BOINC\\"

If you will be installing BOINC after putting on the new drive. You could just point to your preferred data directory path and then copy the data to that location.


Thanks Hal9000 for your suggestion, but I don't think that is what I am looking for. I believe your suggestion is what would happen if I did a default BOINC/Lunatics installation. What I need to do is relocate all Lunatics executables and any other required files onto the system drive (C:), where the BOINC executables already reside, and leave everything else in the data directory on the data drive (D:). By leaving everything but the executables on the data directory (D:), then all of my stats, data files, etc. remain in place and everything takes off just as I left them. If I can't move the Lunatics executables to the system drive (C:), then I will have to alter my plans and get an additional SSD. I would like all the executables to be on the system drive to take full advantage of the SSDs speed.


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Profile Cliff Harding
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Message 1357544 - Posted: 16 Apr 2013, 14:19:42 UTC - in response to Message 1357537.  

The Lunatics executables reside in the Data directory ;) - you can tell boinc that your data directory is someplace else (e.g. D:\MyDocuments) but you can't take the executables out of the data directory - boinc looks for the applications in the project dirs. The _boinc_ program directory only holds the boinc.exe, the boinccmd.exe (CLI), the screensaver and the manager (plus a complete set of language packs, dlls and such).

NB it's a boinc question, not a lunatics one ;)


Thanks William, you've answered my question. I will have to get another SSD for the data drive (D:).


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Message 1357548 - Posted: 16 Apr 2013, 14:29:18 UTC - in response to Message 1357544.  

The Lunatics executables reside in the Data directory ;) - you can tell boinc that your data directory is someplace else (e.g. D:\MyDocuments) but you can't take the executables out of the data directory - boinc looks for the applications in the project dirs. The _boinc_ program directory only holds the boinc.exe, the boinccmd.exe (CLI), the screensaver and the manager (plus a complete set of language packs, dlls and such).

NB it's a boinc question, not a lunatics one ;)


Thanks William, you've answered my question. I will have to get another SSD for the data drive (D:).


You could move the whole data directory onto C: (separate directory!). The problem with how the path you posted is that you don't appaer to have a separate 'boinc_data' directory - unless your 'mydocuments' is used only by boinc. It will be very difficult to find all the files boinc places in the top level data directory to move the whole lot to a different folder.
It might be easier to copy the whole 'mydocuments' folder and _remove_ non-boinc files [at least those you're completely sure don't belong to boinc. I'd rather have a few orphan files than lose boinc files.
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Message 1357553 - Posted: 16 Apr 2013, 14:37:43 UTC - in response to Message 1357544.  

The Lunatics executables reside in the Data directory ;) - you can tell boinc that your data directory is someplace else (e.g. D:\MyDocuments) but you can't take the executables out of the data directory - boinc looks for the applications in the project dirs. The _boinc_ program directory only holds the boinc.exe, the boinccmd.exe (CLI), the screensaver and the manager (plus a complete set of language packs, dlls and such).

NB it's a boinc question, not a lunatics one ;)

Thanks William, you've answered my question. I will have to get another SSD for the data drive (D:).

That way, you put the (faster-changing) project data on a SSD too - watch out for lifetime issues, though I gather the newer SSDs are better in that respect.

But apart from data loading, all you're gaining is a tiny fraction of a second loading the .exe file at the start of each task. It's worth it for a whole operating system (I have one, and the boot times are great), but not for one file.
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Message 1357562 - Posted: 16 Apr 2013, 14:59:47 UTC - in response to Message 1357548.  

The problem with how the path you posted is that you don't appaer to have a separate 'boinc_data' directory - unless your 'mydocuments' is used only by boinc. It will be very difficult to find all the files boinc places in the top level data directory to move the whole lot to a different folder.
It might be easier to copy the whole 'mydocuments' folder and _remove_ non-boinc files [at least those you're completely sure don't belong to boinc. I'd rather have a few orphan files than lose boinc files.


My data drive contains all of my data from all resources ( Word, Outlook, etc.), (\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edu) is just another sub-directory of the parent (D:)\My Documents\.

The main reason that this is so, and you can blame it on my 40+ years of mainframe experience, is exactly what is about to happen. After installation of the new drive and a re-image of the OS and all other programs that I need, all I have to do is point them to the data drive (D:). If anything happens to the system drive that requires a restore or re-image, as in this case, all existing data survives as I have not lost any of it. If an unrecoverable occurs on the data drive (D:), then the all data can be restored from my backup drive (E:). Even my Outlook data files are set up this way.

The only files that are not backed up are those contained in the Projects, Slots, & Symbols directories as they are too volatile. I this case I will have to spend the time to recover lost tasks. The files required to install BOINC and Lunatics are located in a different directory and can be easily restored and re-installed if necessary.


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Message 1357563 - Posted: 16 Apr 2013, 15:06:03 UTC - in response to Message 1357553.  

But apart from data loading, all you're gaining is a tiny fraction of a second loading the .exe file at the start of each task. It's worth it for a whole operating system (I have one, and the boot times are great), but not for one file.


Thanks Richard, you have given me something extra to thing about. I may not need the 2nd SSD after all. I can now go back to my original design to add a 2nd EVGA GRTX660SC 2GB to this machine and move the GTX460SE 1GB to the other machine to replace 2 extremely outdated GPUs. Again THANKS!!


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Message 1357564 - Posted: 16 Apr 2013, 15:08:46 UTC - in response to Message 1357562.  

The problem with how the path you posted is that you don't appaer to have a separate 'boinc_data' directory - unless your 'mydocuments' is used only by boinc. It will be very difficult to find all the files boinc places in the top level data directory to move the whole lot to a different folder.
It might be easier to copy the whole 'mydocuments' folder and _remove_ non-boinc files [at least those you're completely sure don't belong to boinc. I'd rather have a few orphan files than lose boinc files.


My data drive contains all of my data from all resources ( Word, Outlook, etc.), (\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edu) is just another sub-directory of the parent (D:)\My Documents\.

The main reason that this is so, and you can blame it on my 40+ years of mainframe experience, is exactly what is about to happen. After installation of the new drive and a re-image of the OS and all other programs that I need, all I have to do is point them to the data drive (D:). If anything happens to the system drive that requires a restore or re-image, as in this case, all existing data survives as I have not lost any of it. If an unrecoverable occurs on the data drive (D:), then the all data can be restored from my backup drive (E:). Even my Outlook data files are set up this way.

The only files that are not backed up are those contained in the Projects, Slots, & Symbols directories as they are too volatile. I this case I will have to spend the time to recover lost tasks. The files required to install BOINC and Lunatics are located in a different directory and can be easily restored and re-installed if necessary.


Its only Seti@Home. Not your quicken files for your employees pay. I think your makeing things way to hard on yourself. So what if you lose work units. Thats what resends are for.
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Message 1357566 - Posted: 16 Apr 2013, 15:12:56 UTC - in response to Message 1357562.  
Last modified: 16 Apr 2013, 15:20:03 UTC

The problem with how the path you posted is that you don't appaer to have a separate 'boinc_data' directory - unless your 'mydocuments' is used only by boinc. It will be very difficult to find all the files boinc places in the top level data directory to move the whole lot to a different folder.
It might be easier to copy the whole 'mydocuments' folder and _remove_ non-boinc files [at least those you're completely sure don't belong to boinc. I'd rather have a few orphan files than lose boinc files.

My data drive contains all of my data from all resources ( Word, Outlook, etc.), (\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edu) is just another sub-directory of the parent (D:)\My Documents\.

The main reason that this is so, and you can blame it on my 40+ years of mainframe experience, is exactly what is about to happen. After installation of the new drive and a re-image of the OS and all other programs that I need, all I have to do is point them to the data drive (D:). If anything happens to the system drive that requires a restore or re-image, as in this case, all existing data survives as I have not lost any of it. If an unrecoverable occurs on the data drive (D:), then the all data can be restored from my backup drive (E:). Even my Outlook data files are set up this way.

The only files that are not backed up are those contained in the Projects, Slots, & Symbols directories as they are too volatile. I this case I will have to spend the time to recover lost tasks. The files required to install BOINC and Lunatics are located in a different directory and can be easily restored and re-installed if necessary.

That's an excellent plan, but I'd recommend that you add one extra level to the directory tree:

D:\My Documents\BOINC_data\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edu

There are a lot of very important BOINC-related files (mostly logs and XML files, but not exclusively) which BOINC likes to keep in what it thinks is the root of its private data tree.

The way you've done it, you've told BOINC to use the same root as every Office program does - and any small mishap to - in particular - client_state.xml will cause BOINC endless problems.
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Message 1357567 - Posted: 16 Apr 2013, 15:16:43 UTC - in response to Message 1357562.  

The problem with how the path you posted is that you don't appaer to have a separate 'boinc_data' directory - unless your 'mydocuments' is used only by boinc. It will be very difficult to find all the files boinc places in the top level data directory to move the whole lot to a different folder.
It might be easier to copy the whole 'mydocuments' folder and _remove_ non-boinc files [at least those you're completely sure don't belong to boinc. I'd rather have a few orphan files than lose boinc files.


My data drive contains all of my data from all resources ( Word, Outlook, etc.), (\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edu) is just another sub-directory of the parent (D:)\My Documents\.

The main reason that this is so, and you can blame it on my 40+ years of mainframe experience, is exactly what is about to happen. After installation of the new drive and a re-image of the OS and all other programs that I need, all I have to do is point them to the data drive (D:). If anything happens to the system drive that requires a restore or re-image, as in this case, all existing data survives as I have not lost any of it. If an unrecoverable occurs on the data drive (D:), then the all data can be restored from my backup drive (E:). Even my Outlook data files are set up this way.

The only files that are not backed up are those contained in the Projects, Slots, & Symbols directories as they are too volatile. I this case I will have to spend the time to recover lost tasks. The files required to install BOINC and Lunatics are located in a different directory and can be easily restored and re-installed if necessary.

Good approach. The problem with boinc is that you _should_ have installed one level deeper i.e. d:\mydocuments\boinc_data\projects\.
That way all your boinc/seti data is contained in one directory. with your approach the toplevel files (e.g. client_state.xml, stdoutdea.txt are interspersed with whatever else you have in that directory (email, documetns etc.)
Too late now, methinks.
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Message 1357568 - Posted: 16 Apr 2013, 15:17:39 UTC - in response to Message 1357564.  

Its only Seti@Home. Not your quicken files for your employees pay. I think your makeing things way to hard on yourself. So what if you lose work units. Thats what resends are for.


I don't like resends, it ties up the servers to send me data that I could have saved by having them on a seperate physical drive. Even at the speeds that files are being transmitted after the move, out of consideration of the many other users, it is time spent that could otherwise be used to transfer data to others that may need it at that time. Call me old fashioned.


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Message 1357569 - Posted: 16 Apr 2013, 15:25:10 UTC

Richard & William - MANY THANKS!! for you suggestion on inserting the additional level between My Documents and Projects. I will be making that adjustment the first thing I do prior to installing BOINC.


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Message 1357571 - Posted: 16 Apr 2013, 15:32:40 UTC - in response to Message 1357569.  

Richard & William - MANY THANKS!! for you suggestion on inserting the additional level between My Documents and Projects. I will be making that adjustment the first thing I do prior to installing BOINC.

Yes, do that - and try to sort the sheep from the goats (your documents from BOINC's files) before you install BOINC. Your files go in \My Documents\, BOINC's go in \My Documents\BOINC_data\. Give us a shout if you're not sure where one belongs.
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