Can Boinc be run off a memory stick ?

Just as the title says!
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Alez
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#1 Can Boinc be run off a memory stick ?

Post by Alez »

Would like to set up a boinc client to run off a memory stick so that I can simply plug it into a computer rather than install on the computer.
I can get boinc to run from a memory stick successfully but only on one host. Plug it into another and it finds no projects etc. on the stick. Think I need to set a local config file telling boinc manager where everything is rather than using the default directory structure ? would this be correct. If so how do i do it?
Basically I want boinc to run totally self contained on the memory stick so I can run on computers that have no internet access whilst uploading/downloading from a different computer.
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#2 Re: Can Boinc be run off a memory stick ?

Post by Janos (retired) »

alezevo1 wrote:Would like to set up a boinc client to run off a memory stick so that I can simply plug it into a computer rather than install on the computer.
I can get boinc to run from a memory stick successfully but only on one host. Plug it into another and it finds no projects etc. on the stick. Think I need to set a local config file telling boinc manager where everything is rather than using the default directory structure ? would this be correct. If so how do i do it?
Basically I want boinc to run totally self contained on the memory stick so I can run on computers that have no internet access whilst uploading/downloading from a different computer.
BOINC was just never designed to do this.

I searched about a year ago for this problem. Unless someone has written new code this will be challenging to say the least.

The only way I can see this working is to boot from USB to BOINC running on a Linux image on the USB stick. You would need to disable CPU benchmarking and run BOINC using anonymous clients. Even then I fear you will still have issues getting WU's uploaded and accepted, especially if the hardware between machines is very different.

Would love to hear if you get it working!

Janos
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#3

Post by Alez »

So far doesn't seem to be a go-er. All PC's in question are same architecture intel but running windows. Not an option to install linux for duel boot and that seems to be the only way.
What I really need is a client that is installed to the USB that would simply accept any host for internet communication. Can get it to run from USB no problem , but only on that computer, transfering the USB results in not finding any project info which is no use. Multiple pc's available but only 1 log in for t'internet for upload / download = pain in the derrier !!
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#4

Post by Alez »

I believe I have got this working, from windows, no linux installs etc. Testing, but so far all is well.

Does anyone know if this flag

<skip_cpu_benchmarks>1</skip_cpu_benchmarks>

set in you're cc_config file is still valid. Can't find it in the boinc wiki but inserted in my cc_config.xml and no complaints so far..
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#5

Post by Janos (retired) »

alezevo1 wrote:I believe I have got this working, from windows, no linux installs etc. Testing, but so far all is well.

Does anyone know if this flag

<skip_cpu_benchmarks>1</skip_cpu_benchmarks>

set in you're cc_config file is still valid. Can't find it in the boinc wiki but inserted in my cc_config.xml and no complaints so far..
I'm impressed! How did you get it to work?

I've used <skip_cpu_benchmarks>1</skip_cpu_benchmarks> before and never had any issues.
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#6

Post by Alez »

How did you get it to work?

By being a devious so and so with time to burn offshore :lol:
So far everything testing out ok. In fact I think it's actually working better than I first thought. Give me a day or so to check it out that there are no nasties waiting to happen or if you want to try it yourself then pm me.
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#7

Post by Alez »

And so far bar one crash , well more crunch as I walked into a door with the mem stick still in the laptop ( despite intensive surgery it never made it :shock: ) this seems to work remarkably well. Not sure how it copes with different architecture ( that will have to wait until my feet are dry ) but all the projects have accepted the stick as a VM i would guess from the original host. Only Ddm is an issue but that's a portable java path issue that I havn't solved yet.
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#8

Post by Janos (retired) »

So, how did you get it to work?
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#9

Post by Alez »

I hung off posting this up as to be frank I was amazed that no-one seems to have done it before and I expected all forms of nasties, trashed accounts etc. but nothing.....
Go here http://en.prayaya.com/download.html and download parayaya V3.
Install it to a mem stick. A fast stick on USB3 is best but any fast stick will do. Run Parayaya and do everything else from within the virtual windows environment it creates.
After that I installed firefox portable but that's only because I hate IE so much.
Plug the stick into the host you wish to use to download and upload. You must use the same host each time for this so I used my laptop thats always with me. Ensure on the host you have at least one project set with get no new tasks and no tasks waiting to be crunched
Install Boinc onto the stick from within Parayaya obviously. Set Boinc for min download and then connect to Bamstats as the manager. Once you have done this the same projects as the host will populate in boinc. Abort the downloaded units for the projects that have work on the host or the servers will abort it for you when you connect to them. Set all these projects to no new tasks on the stick. Crunch the projects on the stick that are not on the host ( on any computer you care to use ).
After a few results have been reported you will find that all the projects have accepted the stick with the same name as the host but with a different ID number. Once this has happened you are free to treat the stick as a VM of the original host , crunching on any project that is available on the host and as long as you upload / download from the host you can crunch on any computer by simply running parayaya off the stick.
Poem and einstein seem to accept the new VM immediately, some other projects take longer. dDM I still can't get to run but thats due to issues with java portable.
I thought that benchmarking would be an issue but it's not. Havn't tried it with GPU projects, but can't see it being an issue once the stick has been accepted with it's own ID.
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#10

Post by MacDitch »

I have a completely different solution that I used for years.

If you go back to the older versions of BOINC (I used 5.10.45) you can pick up the entire BOINC folder and move it around. In my case I transferred it between the internet machine and a standalone, but you can use the same method transferring between as many machines as you need if, for example, you couldn't determine what machine you will have access to on any given day.

For simplicity I actually transferred the folder each time (which amongst other things gets rid of the need for a fast USB) but have (occasionally) run it from the USB directly and it worked fine.

The only warning I would give is USB keys have a finite Read/Write count and BOINC does a lot of reading & writing. There have been several reports of keys failing and all data being lost...
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