All:

I have R@H running on lots of Windows PCs and now I am working on my first Linux build. I need lots of help because I know almost NOTHING about linux. To make things more complicated, this system boots from a USB thumbdrive so I have some limitations....

I am running xPUD distribution of Linux. I have downloaded BOINC version 6.4.5 and I think I have it installed. When I run the run_manager, I see the graphical interface but at the command line I receive several errors:
Xlib: extension "Generic Even Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "Generic Even Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "Generic Even Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "Generic Even Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "Generic Even Extension" missing on display ":0.0".

After several min. I receive:
connection: connection timed out
Error: cannot get the official host name (error 0: Success)
connect: operation now in progress
Error: cannot get the official host name (error 0: Success)

BOINC Client reveals -
Linux OS 2.6.28

I recall there are some .xml files that control the host name - maybe some command line arguments I can pass to get the system working.

Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated.

thank you.

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Thx!

Paul

It looks like I will also need to create a RAM drive as this is a diskless system or I need someone to help with the local prefs to make this not be an issue.

It looks like if we can fix the official host name issue, we will have most of the work done.

thx for any help you can provide.

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Thx!

Paul

Ignore this thread. Got Ubuntu installed on a USB flash drive - very slow device but everything is working now.

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Thx!

Paul

Ignore this thread. Got Ubuntu installed on a USB flash drive - very slow device but everything is working now.

The one thing to remember is that USB flash devices have a limited number of writes you can do to them over their lifetime. When you hit that magic number...poof the drive no longer works, AT ALL! I have lost one drive to that already, nothing related to Boinc though. It is usually around 10,000 writes or so, reads are not a problem just writes.

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I started to wonder how long this USB device would work. For $15 I am not too worried but I guess I should get a hard drive ordered so I have it in stock when the USB drive dies.

I used all of the tricks I could find to decrease swap, cache dirty writes, ... and things are better but the device is still so slow.

thanks for the warning. Any idea how long it will take to get to 10K writes? It is the only storage device in the system so I would assume with all of the logs and save points and writing to disk every 1200 seconds, I will hit 10K writes in a month or so.

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Thx!

Paul

I started to wonder how long this USB device would work. For $15 I am not too worried but I guess I should get a hard drive ordered so I have it in stock when the USB drive dies.

I used all of the tricks I could find to decrease swap, cache dirty writes, ... and things are better but the device is still so slow.

thanks for the warning. Any idea how long it will take to get to 10K writes? It is the only storage device in the system so I would assume with all of the logs and save points and writing to disk every 1200 seconds, I will hit 10K writes in a month or so.

I did some simple math and 1200 seconds is 20 minutes, 10,000 divided by 20 equals 500. 3 times per hour, times 24 hours, equals 72 times per day, divided into 500 equals about 7 days. Which is how many times you can write before it becomes susceptible to dying, more or less. You should be able to get a cheap hard drive at a computer show, on line, wherever, if you look a little bit. I just did a fast look up at tigerdirect.com and found this http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=533139&CatId=134 A 40 gig hard drive for $40.00US with no rebate but plus shipping. Ebay is of course cheaper but you never know what you are getting.

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I did some simple math and 1200 seconds is 20 minutes, 10,000 divided by 20 equals 500. 3 times per hour, times 24 hours, equals 72 times per day, divided into 500 equals about 7 days. Which is how many times you can write before it becomes susceptible to dying, more or less.

Why did you divide 10,000 by 20?

10,000 writes divided by 72 writes per day gives 139 days.

I did some simple math and 1200 seconds is 20 minutes, 10,000 divided by 20 equals 500. 3 times per hour, times 24 hours, equals 72 times per day, divided into 500 equals about 7 days. Which is how many times you can write before it becomes susceptible to dying, more or less.

Why did you divide 10,000 by 20?

10,000 writes divided by 72 writes per day gives 139 days.

Because 20 is how often it writes, so 10,000 writes divided by a write every 20 minutes gives me the number of writes which can then be translated to hours. I like your math better, but either way you NEED a hard drive. I used to run Seti on a floppy way back when but I do not think you can do it that way anymore. Someone may be able to setup Boinc to use a floppy as the database storage site instead of a USB disk though, but that is beyond me.

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I don't really care about the $15 USB thumbdrive and I kinda want to test and see if it will last 4 months.

I found an 80 gig SATA drive on ebay. It should be here tomorrow or the next day. Once I have Ubuntu installed and running on that HDD this weekend.

thx for the help.

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Thx!

Paul

I don't really care about the $15 USB thumbdrive and I kinda want to test and see if it will last 4 months.

I found an 80 gig SATA drive on ebay. It should be here tomorrow or the next day. Once I have Ubuntu installed and running on that HDD this weekend.

thx for the help.

Sounds perfect! I too have several cheap USB drives I bought and don't much care what happens to them, seems funny thinking back, USB drives as 'disposable' items! They used to be sooo expensive when they first came out. Now here is a $4.99 one brand new from Tiger http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4833076&CatId=904 That is a TON of floppies for only 5 bucks!!

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I did some simple math and 1200 seconds is 20 minutes, 10,000 divided by 20 equals 500. 3 times per hour, times 24 hours, equals 72 times per day, divided into 500 equals about 7 days. Which is how many times you can write before it becomes susceptible to dying, more or less.

Why did you divide 10,000 by 20?

10,000 writes divided by 72 writes per day gives 139 days.

Because 20 is how often it writes, so 10,000 writes divided by a write every 20 minutes gives me the number of writes which can then be translated to hours. I like your math better, but either way you NEED a hard drive. I used to run Seti on a floppy way back when but I do not think you can do it that way anymore. Someone may be able to setup Boinc to use a floppy as the database storage site instead of a USB disk though, but that is beyond me.

It'll go a lot further than that. Flash memory units do all sorts of tricks to shuffle around where they're writing to extend the life. This page on wikipedia covers it in some detail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_levelling

Bottom line, your flash drive will last a great deal longer than the hypothetical 139 days

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Now I want to build a system with USB SSD just to see how long it will run. The worst case in the SANDisk WhitePaper was 79 years.

I bet we could burn a 4GB USB device in far less time.

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Thx!

Paul