Boinc Linux- OS (diskless)

Questions and Answers : Wish list : Boinc Linux- OS (diskless)
Message board moderation

To post messages, you must log in.

AuthorMessage
Calculator
Volunteer tester

Send message
Joined: 30 Sep 06
Posts: 62
Credit: 69,529
RAC: 0
Germany
Message 458272 - Posted: 15 Nov 2006, 11:39:35 UTC

A good thing would be a small linux system that boots linux and runs boinc in ramdisk, so that no harddrive is needed. Save the wu's and boinc settins on a sub stick or something. So that a reboot could be easily done without re-setting everything (or even copy the stick to run many other pc's)
ID: 458272 · Report as offensive
Dotsch
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 9 Jun 99
Posts: 2422
Credit: 919,393
RAC: 0
Germany
Message 458424 - Posted: 15 Nov 2006, 19:29:49 UTC - in response to Message 458272.  

A good thing would be a small linux system that boots linux and runs boinc in ramdisk, so that no harddrive is needed. Save the wu's and boinc settins on a sub stick or something. So that a reboot could be easily done without re-setting everything (or even copy the stick to run many other pc's)

There is a linux diskless project, which has a package for setup a diskless linux client.
It would be save the complete BOINC directory to a USB stick or a network drive.

But I am not shure if it is a good idea, to transfer the WUs with a USB stick, because a lot of things are stored in the xml files. So I would prefer so save the complete BOINC directory on a network drive or an USB stick.

If you would make it save, you can setup a proxy server on the server (where your clients get the boot images) and setup the server with a external LAN and a internal LAN, where the diskless clients are connected. The diskless clients connecting over the proxy server to the seti server, but have no network connection.
ID: 458424 · Report as offensive
Calculator
Volunteer tester

Send message
Joined: 30 Sep 06
Posts: 62
Credit: 69,529
RAC: 0
Germany
Message 458797 - Posted: 16 Nov 2006, 6:21:33 UTC

I have already started to write some scripts for slax. It runs from a 200mb cd or usbstick. the scripts will hopefully create a ramdisk for seti, and when shutting down it stores the seti ramdisk on the usbstick....
ID: 458797 · Report as offensive
Dotsch
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 9 Jun 99
Posts: 2422
Credit: 919,393
RAC: 0
Germany
Message 458805 - Posted: 16 Nov 2006, 6:50:08 UTC - in response to Message 458797.  

I have already started to write some scripts for slax. It runs from a 200mb cd or usbstick. the scripts will hopefully create a ramdisk for seti, and when shutting down it stores the seti ramdisk on the usbstick....

I see the some problems with the ramdisk...
On a power outage, crash or reboot of the system the entire data will be lost. So it would the best, to create a backup script which make a periodical backup (for example every hour) of the whole BOINC directory to the USB stick.

Also, I think booting from the network and storing or backuping the BOINC directories of the diskless clients on a network share (NFS) would be the safest and practical method.
But if you store directly to the network shares and your fileserver crash, your diskless clients will stop.
If you make a backup script and copy data from the ramdisk to the NFS share, would not harm the diskless clients, if the fileserver crashs or reboots.
ID: 458805 · Report as offensive
Calculator
Volunteer tester

Send message
Joined: 30 Sep 06
Posts: 62
Credit: 69,529
RAC: 0
Germany
Message 458866 - Posted: 16 Nov 2006, 10:05:57 UTC
Last modified: 16 Nov 2006, 10:06:30 UTC

Okay, didn't expect a client to crash :-)) but thats a good thing to think about!
how would a backup look like? -> stop boinc, save files and then start boinc again; or can I just copy the files while seti works with them? (Dont know how file access etc is implemented in seti and boinc)


I think I would rather save every 3 or 4 hours as a usb stick is flash...
Running diskless saves a lot of HDD power consumption... My file server spins down the disks as I never use them while Iam asleep or @ work, so I dont want to store to the nfs share periodically (of course thats only for my case).
ID: 458866 · Report as offensive
Dotsch
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 9 Jun 99
Posts: 2422
Credit: 919,393
RAC: 0
Germany
Message 459135 - Posted: 16 Nov 2006, 18:09:57 UTC - in response to Message 458866.  

Okay, didn't expect a client to crash :-)) but thats a good thing to think about!
how would a backup look like? -> stop boinc, save files and then start boinc again; or can I just copy the files while seti works with them? (Dont know how file access etc is implemented in seti and boinc)

I have made a script which backups, when the boinc client is running. I had never any problems, and the restore worked, too.
But I think it is no problem to backup online, because SETI writes every 60 seconds some KBs.


I think I would rather save every 3 or 4 hours as a usb stick is flash...
Running diskless saves a lot of HDD power consumption... My file server spins down the disks as I never use them while Iam asleep or @ work, so I dont want to store to the nfs share periodically (of course thats only for my case).

It is a good idea, to save energy.
ID: 459135 · Report as offensive
Dotsch
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 9 Jun 99
Posts: 2422
Credit: 919,393
RAC: 0
Germany
Message 459136 - Posted: 16 Nov 2006, 18:10:02 UTC - in response to Message 458866.  

Okay, didn't expect a client to crash :-)) but thats a good thing to think about!
how would a backup look like? -> stop boinc, save files and then start boinc again; or can I just copy the files while seti works with them? (Dont know how file access etc is implemented in seti and boinc)

I have made a script which backups, when the boinc client is running. I had never any problems, and the restore worked, too.
But I think it is no problem, because SETI writes every 60 seconds some KBs.


I think I would rather save every 3 or 4 hours as a usb stick is flash...
Running diskless saves a lot of HDD power consumption... My file server spins down the disks as I never use them while Iam asleep or @ work, so I dont want to store to the nfs share periodically (of course thats only for my case).

It is a good idea, to save energy.
ID: 459136 · Report as offensive
Profile swmpthng

Send message
Joined: 10 Nov 06
Posts: 19
Credit: 453,976
RAC: 0
United States
Message 462882 - Posted: 21 Nov 2006, 12:40:18 UTC - in response to Message 458272.  

A good thing would be a small linux system that boots linux and runs boinc in ramdisk, so that no harddrive is needed. Save the wu's and boinc settins on a sub stick or something. So that a reboot could be easily done without re-setting everything (or even copy the stick to run many other pc's)


http://www.myurl.net/seti/minipc.htm

at this link you can find info on how to do it, i don't know anything at all about linux,i'm hoping for a windows version in my stocking, but here is your linux version it requires that you have a second pc set up and floppies for downloading and uploading wu's and stats hope this helps----------------swmpthng
team overclockers
ID: 462882 · Report as offensive
Profile mikey
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 17 Dec 99
Posts: 4215
Credit: 3,474,603
RAC: 0
United States
Message 463076 - Posted: 21 Nov 2006, 22:28:00 UTC - in response to Message 462882.  

A good thing would be a small linux system that boots linux and runs boinc in ramdisk, so that no harddrive is needed. Save the wu's and boinc settins on a sub stick or something. So that a reboot could be easily done without re-setting everything (or even copy the stick to run many other pc's)


http://www.myurl.net/seti/minipc.htm

at this link you can find info on how to do it, i don't know anything at all about linux,i'm hoping for a windows version in my stocking, but here is your linux version it requires that you have a second pc set up and floppies for downloading and uploading wu's and stats hope this helps----------------swmpthng
team overclockers

That link is for Seti Classic.
There are 'Live' versions of Linux that can run off a cd/dvd and not install themselves to the harddrive, but I am not sure how you would get Seti to run if you couldn't install it. There are discussion elsewhere on these boards about findng a Linux Distro with Boinc built in. I have not seen where they have actually found one yet though.
You could go here and scroll thru all the different versions and look though http://www.linuxlinks.com/Distributions/

ID: 463076 · Report as offensive

Questions and Answers : Wish list : Boinc Linux- OS (diskless)


 
©2025 University of California
 
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.