Here is some feedback on the issue (from a company's perspective)

As I always thought, CEO is citing potential vulnerabilities problems. I know that BOINC science projects will try their best, with operating firewalled servers and signing executables on a non-Internet-connected PC, but I prefer to play it safe (especially since modern OSes make it easy).

QUOTE - source

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Anybody have any similar experiences? Any suggestions how I might politely address these concerns?"

Security: How can I be sure the program isn't searching my harddrive for private information?

I found this in the BOINC Wiki: Security but it doesn't explain how to protect your data.

Someone else pointed me to Trux: BOINC Security but it didn't seem to give me the warm fuzzy that installing BOINC is a safe thing to do. Keeps talking about exposures and risks and how you might not follow all of their suggestions and create an exposure.

I'm looking for something that would actually convince an IT director that BOINC might be an OK thing to allow on a company full of machines, and that explains how THEY control how things will run so that no exposures are created. In fact, something that says "If you're gonna do a DC project, do it with BOINC! ...and here's why". Does anything like that exist?

Hard drive wear: I mentioned Rosetta to a friend of mine that holds a few patents in the hard disk drive field. His first thought was that a standard PC disk drive isn't built to take the wear of being on 24/7, and actually being used.

I realize I can set my preferences to put a timer on how frequently BOINC writes to disk and reduce it's use. And this probably works well for reducing power requirements too, because I can set a high value and let the disk spin down and go idle for periods of time.

...but I was wondering if anyone has outlined how to size and utilize a virtual disk to bare the brundt of the workunit IO? The virtual disk could be on a mapped drive on a server, or a ramdisk or even a memory stick or something. But sizing it properly would seem important, and then how to get BOINC to use it just for specific files that are written during WU processing. Not for all the program code and input files that are only read once.

Overheating: Same friend also mentioned that many standard PCs have undersized heatsinks, and will tend to overheat if CPU is kept 100% busy the way these DC projects tend to do.

A resolution has been posted elsewhere, I wanted to add it here to make a more complete resource for people to reference.

You can use the ThreadMaster to turn the CPU neddle back a few notches and basically NOT be used 100% of the time, thus leaving more time for cooling air to flow through the box.

The Rosetta requirements page points out the overheating problem, but not the solution or how to determine if this will be a problem for you, or what harm (or lack thereof) occurs when your PC overheats.

I appreciate your honesty and not wanting to harm anyone's machine(s), but perhaps it could be reworded so as not to STOP you in the process you've gotten this far in to, to participate in the project. Some will see this as a red flag, and not continue... even though their PC will do just fine.

Power consumption: I read on another thread an estimate that a crunching CPU takes about 60 watts more power than a PC that's on but idle. Has anyone seen any reasearch confirming this number??

If that's right, then the incremental cost, 24/7/365 is about $42 per year (at 8 cents per Kwh). And if you live in Minnesota (like me) half of the year the electricity will actually help cut your heating bills (although if you live in California or other tropical clim. then the A/C costs must be factored in to the cost as well).

PC longevity: Will leaving my PC on more of the time, and running it harder, reduce it's lifespan?

For starters... what happened with your last PC? Did it reach the end of it's life? Or just the end of it's usefulness due to the bigger better faster more effect of time?

I know that from a chipmakers point of view, that with a multi-layered circuit-board you want to leave it at a steady temp. all the time (i.e. minimize expansion and contraction due to heat, by leaving it on all the time). And, therefore, microfractures between those layers won't occur, extending useful life. But is this true for the REST of the machine?

Network bandwidth: But our network is on the brink now! We can't add any workload to it.

For starters, sounds like a network upgrade may be due. But, otherwise, you can control the hours of the day and/or the bandwidth BOINC will consume in the General Preferences.

Let's say we configure a whole cube farm of PCs to allow network usage only between 7PM and 7AM each day (and we bump our General Preference for getting more than .1 days of work at a time). Do you know what happens? The PCs crunch WUs all day, each of them has SOMETHING completed by day end, and ALL the PCs try to send their results at the same time! Thus if anyone IS trying to use the office network at 7:01PM, they aren't able to get anything done.

Does anyone know of a way to tell BOINC to lighten up? "Hey, look man, we got ALL NIGHT to report these results...let's wait our turn". "Wait our turn" would be a solution where the PCs are coordindated by some scheduler or other signal (and if you're doing all that, then prioritize so the PC with no work left gets on the network first, and the one with a result that's almost past due is right behind him). But short of that, is there a way to somehow Randomize when each PC tries to jump onto the network? So maybe they each begin at some random time between 7:00 and 8:30PM, rather than all jumping on RIGHT AT 7:00?

I'm starting to see some new work units using a "(beta) strand pairing" search method.
Could someone knowledgeable on the subject of "(beta) strand pairing" elaborate, in layman's terms, what the term means and how it affects the way the search is performed?

Yes--these are my work units which are testing a new idea we have had. I'll give an explanation in my journal tonight or tomorrow.

I would be in favor of leaving the current message board topics the way that they are and just getting rid of the Q & A section. Those posts could easily fit in "Number Crunching" area.

hi, i was just wondering, does rendering the protein graphics not eat up a tiny bit of you processing power?
ie. would it be even more effective to set the screensaver to go blank after a minute or so so that no processing power is lost to rendering the protein graphics?

(i've got a pc with no screen/mouse/keyboard being controlled with remote admin tool that just runs Boinc/Rosetta all day, cos i don't use it, and was wondering if i could squeeze more out of it by turning of the graphics.....)

Q. Which ports does Rosetta@Home need open?


A. Port 80 (http) is used for most communications with the project servers. Port 443 (https) is used if the password is being exchanged . Ports 1043 and 31416 are used for local control as well as for remote control of a BOINC client. 1043 is preferred and 31416 is a fall back. Unless you are RPC'ing over the Internet don't open 1043 and 31416 in your non-local firewall specifically for BOINC.

Here's 6 of them, this individual is scaming the credit system bigtime!!!!

...only send one big job per dual core/dual cpu computer if that's possible.

THAT one's going to be tough. BOINC's rules aren't that complicated I don't think. But if they can establish the needed memory "PER CPU", then hopefully that achieves the same objective.

I would guess that the size of a small protein in its native state must be something like 50 atoms across, so the size of a protein would be a few Nanometers or more (I am not a bio science guy either, I am sure the experts will be able to give you more accurate numbers).

I see that, as requested, a moderator has created a thread for this

We do try ;>)

If I set my computer to power down my hard drive, BOINC will still run won't it?
Or how does that work? (gotta save every dime when it comes to electricity) :)