Diskless BOINC Farms

[elec999]

Is there anyway to get this on a usb stick.
Thanks

[Bender10]

You will need a utility called "PeToUSB".

http://gocoding.com/page.php?al=petousb

Run PeBuilder as normal, but just create the image file (Tell Pebuilder where to save it on your C:\ drive). You do not have to burn it to a CD.

When you have created your 'Image' file, Run PeToUSB to transfer the 'Image' file (I hope you remembered where PeBuilder put it ) to the USB Drive and you are done.

Insert your USB Drive into the chosen computer and Boot up (your computer bios has to be set to boot from the usb...)!

[LeBo]

Is there anyway to get this on a usb stick.
Thanks

Yes Check this site out it will make the USB stick bootable. It's called PE 2 USB

http://www.gocoding.com/

[elec999]

You will need a utility called "PeToUSB".

http://gocoding.com/page.php?al=petousb

Run PeBuilder as normal, but just create the image file (Tell Pebuilder where to save it on your C:\ drive). You do not have to burn it to a CD.

When you have created your 'Image' file, Run PeToUSB to transfer the 'Image' file (I hope you remembered where PeBuilder put it ) to the USB Drive and you are done.

Insert your USB Drive into the chosen computer and Boot up (your computer bios has to be set to boot from the usb...)!

Tried following you instructions, and when I try to boot off the usb it says insert valid system disk.
Thanks

[Bender10]

Well, your computer has to be able to boot from a usb (it should be a selection in the 'BOOT' section of your computer BIOS). If it will not do that (recognize a usb as a boot device), you are stuck with CD-ROM boot.

Have you successfully created a 'Bootable' BOINCpe CD-ROM? The process is a little tricky. And you can test the CD in any working computer without screwing up that computer. If you have a 'working' CD image. That image will work with PeToUsb.

The last thing is, PeToUsb seems to have problems recognizing some USB drives (i'm using some sandisk 1 gig micro cruzers) . You have to read the info on the PeToUsb download site.

The stuff works. You just have to stick with it.

[Bender10]

I just ran into a minor Glitch with my BOINCpe boxes. I have them set for a Ram Drive of 256 Mb. This has been working fine until last night.

I was attaching to Cosmo to run a few wu's off this weekend. But I ran out of Ram Drive (or maybe just Ram?) space . I got a BOINC (Cosmo?) transfer message that I needed another 450Mb to download the required files.

Well, I'm running on 1 Gig of Ram. But a few days ago, I picked up 3 more Gigs to augment my crunchers. So, I'll add the ram this weekend, and see if that solves the problem.

These boxes all run from a 1 Gig Thumb Drive. But that space is only used by the OS and programs installed on the Thumb Drive...

I may also have to upgrade my BOINC version while I'm at it...

[mitchellds]

Hey Bender,
I ran into the same thing with Cosmo using BoincPe and a 1gb thumb drive. Cosmo is a hog for both memory and diskspace. I switched to a 2gb thumb drive and expanded the ram drive to 1.5gb. Even then I only able by adjusting the local boinc pref to run only 2 cores of the 4 cores on this quad cpu, due to the high memory demand. If I ran more than 2 cores, I'd get errors in the WU's sometimes that were generating.

After toying with this a bit, my conclusion is that you need more. I think a 4gb thumb with most space alloted to ramdrive would do cosmo fine on a quad. Also, as a note, I used the imdisk plugin to get the expanded ramdrive working.

As a side note, I ran other projects on this same setup, like Rosettta, Seti, WCG, etc. and they ran fine. Cosmo was the picky one due to its hog like nature.

[LeBo]

Cosmology is a memory hog...

[Bender10]

Thanks Guys,

That's what I thought. I had actually picked up the extra Ram because of Lattice using so much Ram...

Looks like this should help solve the problem.

[mitchellds]

oops, I meant to add, that I also doubled the real memory to 2gb from 1gb, and the thumdrive to 2gb from 1gb also.