is there another option to running Rosetta besides installing it on every machine?

in other words, if i have a bunch of machines networked together, can i install the core (BOINC Manager) to a shared folder on one machine and have all the other machines map to this folder and run the client remotely or some sort of 'stub' program.

having this ability would facilitate multiple installs and i imagine it would cut down on unnecessary WU redundancy.

thanks.

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- team XPC - 'Where merry times and good crunching meet head-on!'

Not that I'm aware of - but I never tried. You should give it a go and let us know.

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Team CFVault.com
http://www.cfvault.com

I don't believe this is possible due to the security processes built into the client. We have about 200 machines and did an automated install via startup script on our domain. . it went very smoothly.

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I don't believe this is possible due to the security processes built into the client. We have about 200 machines and did an automated install via startup script on our domain. . it went very smoothly.

That's bad and I don't understand that there will be security reasons...

I have some GHz crunchonlies but only one machine can connect to the internet.
At FAD there was no problem at all....

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Teddies....

So set up a proxy on that machine and point all of the other boinc clients through it...

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Free-DC

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At the moment there is no way to indirectly connect machines (except via a proxy as stated), where machines physically isolated from the internet can be used. There is a tentative plan to add this capability in the future, but it is of very low priority as it is felt that there are not that many places that need this.

If you do need this, well, the current thought is that the people that need it will develop it and make the changes available to all ...

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I would like something like this as well. At work, I am allowed to run DC projects on some 50 or so machines, but if, and only if :

- There's no install on the machines
- It doesn't use an internet connection

Coming from find-a-drug, I just shared the find-a-drug directory on one machine (which WAS allowed to have an install and internet connection). So, this machine, called let's say "fadserver" would share it's find-a-drug directory with sharename "fad". On any machine I'd want to run find-a-drug on, i'd type a single command :

\fadserverfadloader.exe

And the machine would start crunching, getting it's work from, and returning the result to, the machine called fadserver which took care of downloading/uploading work.

Any suggestions for setting up BOINC in this fashion? Using third-party software maybe? Or hints on writing a program which would make this possible? Any thoughts on the matter would be appreciated, and might help me contribute way more power...

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I would like something like this as well. At work, I am allowed to run DC projects on some 50 or so machines, but if, and only if :

- There's no install on the machines
- It doesn't use an internet connection

We wanted to do a similar install, but ended up deploying it via active directory and installing it on each machine. . . since the functionality wasn't supported.

Would they allow you to create a Ram drive on your workstations and connect via a proxy? The ram drive wouldn't need to be that large, I have a dual cpu workstation with 30 work units queued and the entire Boinc directory takes up 25 megs.

You could create the batch file that creates the ram drive, installs boinc, and connects to rosetta (we do the latter two via AD) and have it on your proxy server, that way nothing is ever installed on the workstations.

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I would like something like this as well. At work, I am allowed to run DC projects on some 50 or so machines, but if, and only if :

- There's no install on the machines
- It doesn't use an internet connection

Would they allow you to create a Ram drive on your workstations and connect via a proxy? The ram drive wouldn't need to be that large, I have a dual cpu workstation with 30 work units queued and the entire Boinc directory takes up 25 megs.

The problem with the ramdrive approach is saving the contents of it when the machine resets or powers down, and more importantly, what do you reload the ramdrive with when the systems comes back up? While we're at it, there are very few ramdrives available for 2K/XP, the only one that is free is a FAT 12 critter, so it'll be capped at about 30 MB. In it's current state, Boinc REFUSES to download unless there's at least a couple of hundred megs available, irrespective of what you set on your config page.

The other option is to create 50 or so copies of boinc on the "server" (ugh, hell of a waste of disk space), and just map to them on the network clients.

As for doing 50 installations, you don't need to. Install it once, and then just make 49 more copies of the folder. It'll take a while to settle, since the duplicates will need to assign themselves new host identifiers, but it should work itself out eventually.

25 MB is plenty enough to run Rosetta and one backup project, provided you steer clear of the "disk hogs" like climateprediction. 50 copies of that would be 1.25 Gb, to a first order approximation at least. You'd still have to do the proxy thing to talk to the outside world.

To be brutally honest, I suspect that a good many people could use this, I know it was a VERY common setup over at FaD.

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Thanks for the suggestion. A ramdrive isn't ideal, since that approach would still be an install, leaving entries in control panel etc even when the ramdrive is long gone. Not to mention stalled jobs after reboot and who knows what else.

As for the bunch of copies of the install directory and sharing those, one for each client, that sounds promising. I already tried sharing a directory and running multiple clients from that single directory, but that failed miserably, with error messages, project resets and more issues. Having a seperate directory for each client is a little more of a hassle, but since that should be a one-time setup (maybe again when and if more clients are added) that's ok.

One more question about this : should every client, after a reboot for instance, reconnect to it's own directory (the one it used before)? Or would it be ok if it connected to some other directory (continuing the work some other client started), as long as there is always only one client connected to any single directory?

I'll be testing this somewhere later this week. Thanks again!

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as some projects give out work units depending on os and processor, it would be best to have each host connect to the same share over and over again

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--
Florian
www.domplatz1.de

One more question about this : should every client, after a reboot for instance, reconnect to it's own directory (the one it used before)? Or would it be ok if it connected to some other directory (continuing the work some other client started), as long as there is always only one client connected to any single directory?

It would probably be preferable for each client to connect to the same folder, but it's by no means mandatory. I get a similar effect by having a small boinc installation that travels with me on a thumb drive. It gets thrown at all sorts of varied machines, and doesn't seem to suffer any ill effects.

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Thanks for the quick replies. I will try to have the clients reconnect to their previous share after reboot. However, clients come and go in this setup, so occasionally the need may arise (or some stupid error on my part may cause it) to have a different client connect to some directory. I don't want to end up with a bunch of directories that "were used once, and might be again in the near or distant future". What I would like to do in the case of some client being removed/replaced or whatever, is reuse that client's directory.

Well, from your replies I read that this shouldn't pose a real problem, but that a re-use by the same client would be preferred if possible.

Ok, I'll see if I can get it setup that way and take it from there.

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