Dumb BAM question

[DrPop]

Now that I'm getting a little micro-farm going, this gets a little tedious when I want to switch projects (thinking of upcoming Pentathlon, PG Challenges, etc.)

If I switch everything over to BAM, what is the best / fastest way to do it so I lose the least amount of crunching time?
Do I detach from all the projects first, before I attach to BAM or ?:confused:
Thanks for helping a noob farmer. ;)

[Crazybob's Son]

All you have to do is create a BAM account, then on each computer you can attach to BAM and it will automatically pull whatever projects your computer is attached to. You don't have to detach or anything

[Bryan]

I haven't used BAM in a couple of years so things might have chagned a little.

You do NOT have to dump or detach from any projects. Just got to "tools" in the BOINC mgr. like you would to attach to a new project except you choose the 2nd option "Attach to a project manager". You must do this on each machine.

Once you have gone to BAM and filled out accounts and passwords from that point forward you can add, delete, suspend, etc projects on 1 or all machines. This can be done either on all machines or individual machines.

You can set your machines to contact BAM on an hourly basis (fastest) so changes you make to BAM will happen within an hour.

An alternative that I prefer is to control the machines using BoincTasks. Using that I can control all machines from a single PC and I can additionally see their status and what they are crunching in real time.

If you use BoincTasks and TeamViewer, a VNC program, you can remotely tie into your control computer and control all machines in realtime with BoincTasks.

I have run remotely for extended periods using BAM and the BoincTasks/TeamViewer and there is NO comparison between the flexiblity of the two. In the latter case you have full and instantaneous control of each machine.

The advantage to BAM is that if you choose you can make a single change that will appear on all computers. What you have told the machines to do should happen within an hour and then an hour after than you can actually check to see if it did happen.

One problem I had with BAM is if the project it was crunching went down and BOINC Mgr. went into the 24 hour backoff mode then the machine would NOT contract BAM except every 24 hours. This was extremely frustrating but using BAM when you aren't 1500 miles away from your computerss wouldn't be a problem :)

[Mumps]

Well, one other drawback to using something like BoincTasks is you have to be able to contact each machine. So if your hosts are behind firewalls, say your workstation at work, one at home and one at "Moms" house, it becomes a bit more difficult to remote control them. Similar problem if you're running VM's on your hosts using native NATing. The VM BOINC has the same "address" as the Host instance of BOINC, so you can't control both from something like BoincTasks without getting freaky with alternate ports and such.

Using a Manager like BAM, once you've set the hosts up, each host initiates the check to see if there are any changes. So, if it can "call out" to Projects to send/receive WU's, it can contact BAM to be controlled. Even if it's multiple VM machines running on a single Host.

[Bryan]

If the machines are in different locations as you mentioned (different houses) then just use TeamViewer and contact each machine from one machine. You don't have to move from console to console everything can be done from one location.

Additionally it gives you the ability to reboot if necessary.

To each their own, but having run my machines for 3 month intervals from 1500 miles away using both methods I find the capability of TeamViewer and BoincTasks works far far better for my needs.

If you have tons of machines like you do Mumps then BAM is probably the best way to go. You make one change at BAM and ALL machines will follow within the hour. That is unless the project went down in the middle of the night and BOINC goes into its 24 hour backoff mode. Then you are dead in the water for a full day. At least that was my experience multiple times year before last.

[Maxwell]

I run a hybrid approach, similar to what Bryan says - I use BAM for the lab computers where I never am, but manually control all the computers I am at frequently via TeamViewer. The BAM computers are my "less mobile" machines, while the other ones can be moved wherever whenever (usually).

[zombie67]

I just can't get Teamviewer to work. Although I have to admit, I never tried that hard to solve the issues when plain old vnc works just fine.

[dan]

I'm running BoincTasks and have a couple questions.

1. The name is eRMer BoincTasks?
2. I can connect to my window boxes, but can not connect to my linux box. I've updated the remote_hosts.cfg and gui_rpc_auth.cfg in the /var/lib/boinc directory. Any ideas?

Nice tool BTW. Now I never need to get up and go to the other boxes.

Thanks,

Dan

[Fire$torm]

I'm running BoincTasks and have a couple questions.

1. The name is eRMer BoincTasks?
2. I can connect to my window boxes, but can not connect to my linux box. I've updated the remote_hosts.cfg and gui_rpc_auth.cfg in the /var/lib/boinc directory. Any ideas?

Nice tool BTW. Now I never need to get up and go to the other boxes.

Thanks,

Dan

Sorry but you put them in the wrong sub-folder. Those two files should go into the /etc/boinc-client folder.

Edit: Also that is the folder where cc_config.xml goes if you use one.

[dan]

Sorry but you put them in the wrong sub-folder. Those two files should go into the /etc/boinc-client folder.

Edit: Also that is the folder where cc_config.xml goes if you use one.

There is an /etc/init.d/boinc-client script, but no subdirectory. /var/lib/boinc is the home directory for boinc and is read at startup.

[Fire$torm]

Sorry but you put them in the wrong sub-folder. Those two files should go into the /etc/boinc-client folder.

Edit: Also that is the folder where cc_config.xml goes if you use one.


There is an /etc/init.d/boinc-client script, but no subdirectory. /var/lib/boinc is the home directory for boinc and is read at startup.

Well, /etc/boinc-client is where it goes for my Linux distro, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx).

Try this. Do a file search from root for global_prefs_override.xml. That file exists by default in BOINC and the other files should reside where this one is.

[dan]

Well, /etc/boinc-client is where it goes for my Linux distro, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx).

Try this. Do a file search from root for global_prefs_override.xml. That file exists by default in BOINC and the other files should reside where this one is.

I'm running Fedora. I just figured it out. The port was locked down. Opened it up and it's all running fine. Just one more box to figure out (Win XP).

Thanks.

[Fire$torm]

Great. BTW I have an XP box and those files go in the BOINC DATA directory. So if you intalled BOINC using its defaults that directory is located.....

The default directory where BOINC will install the data files to is:
Windows 98/SE/ME: C:\Windows\All Users\BOINC\ or C:\Windows\Profiles\All Users\BOINC\ *
Windows 2000/XP: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BOINC\ *
Windows Vista/Windows 7: C:\ProgramData\BOINC\ *

The above came from here. (http://boincfaq.mundayweb.com/index.php?language=1&view=376)

Edit: Forgot to mention that BOINC's DATA directory may be a hidden folder. So you will need to disable hidden folders in Explorer in order to see it.

2nd Edit: How to show hidden folders in XP (http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windowsxp/ht/showhiddenfiles.htm)