One thing that I often do is to use boinc_cmd to view checkpoint info, especially in Rosetta and CPDN where the time between checkpoints can be quite long.

Do other people use boinc_cmd for other purposes? If so I'd be interested in your ideas too.

This works, with minor changes, on both linux and windows machines - thanks to FC for pointing out to me the minor sytax change needed to do this on win - for over a year I'd imagined this was a linux only facility :(

Checkpoint info

Windows

Start a command window.

cd to the boinc folder. If you let the installer use the default location this will be

c:
cd program filesboinc

(note the space in the filename is accepted by the win command line interface)

Then enter the command

boinccmd --get_results|more

and scroll down through your results. Every result held on the local machine will be shown - find the one you are interested in by name and look at the cpu time and last checkpoint. The difference between these wil let you know how much work, in seconds, you will lose if you stop boinc or reboot at this time.


Linux

Start up a console or terminal window or shell

cd to the BOINC directory

use one of the following commands

./boinc_cmd --get_results|more
./boinc_cmd --get_results|less

and scroll through the output. Every result held on the local machine will be shown - find the one you are interested in by name and look at the cpu time and last checkpoint. The difference between these wil let you know how much work, in seconds, you will lose if you stop boinc or reboot at this time.

The difference between the two commands given is that |less allows you to scroll backwards as well as forwards, with the |more filter you can only scroll forwards.

Those familiar with grep might want to try using that on the output instead, but this is not a linux tutorial so I will leave that as an exercise for you.


Other uses of boinc_cmd

This is quite a powerful utility. Use the --help option to see all the command your version can do.

Windows users beware a little trap: the --help output quotes the command name linux style, with the underscore in it, boinc_cmd. You have to remember to leave this out when typing boinccmd, but leave in all the underscores in any other position (eg --get_results).

River~~

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