BoincTasks question

[Fardringle]

I decided to finally get BoincTasks set up to make it easier to bunker work for sprints and change projects when I reach milestones that I want. Going around to all of the computers (or connecting remotely) and changing things one at a time is a bit of a pain, even though I don't really have very many. I can't imagine doing it on the huge farms that some of you have!

I had some mild difficulty setting it up on one computer. It wouldn't connect at all until I manually created a port forwarding rule in the Windows firewall. Didn't have to do that on any others so I don't know why this one misbehaved, but it's working now.

For normal day-to-day processing, I have my clients set up to "Store at least 0.5 days of work" and "Store up to an additional 0.5 days of work". I tend to jump between projects a lot so I like having it set this way so I don't overlap work more than I want to and don't have to abandon a lot of extra tasks if I want to switch something very quickly - like when a sprint is announced. However, when bunkering for a sprint, I change that to store at least 2 days of work, so I'll be more likely to have enough work to keep the computers busy while network communication is disabled.

I can't find a way to configure that setting remotely in BoincTasks. Hopefully I'm just blind and not finding it.

If it's not an option, I guess I can just set the computers to all keep more work all of the time as it really doesn't hurt anything to abort tasks. I just don't want to... 😉

 

[StefanR5R]

First, select the desired computer in the computers tab, or a project of this computer in the projects tab, or a task of this computer in the tasks tab, or a transfer of this computer in the transfers tab.

Then use the menu item "Extra -> BOINC preference". In the dialogue, visit the "Network" tab. There, edit "Minimum work buffer" and "Additional work buffer" and hit "OK".

AFAIK you need to do this for each computer separately, i.e. can't apply it to multiple computers at once.

 

[Fardringle]

Ah, thanks! Not sure how I missed that. I looked right at it at least twice. 😀

Setting it individually in BoincTasks is still a lot easier than going to each computer to set it manually, so it will definitely save some time an annoyance.

 

[StefanR5R]

You can also access the other computers remotely through boincmgr, boinctui, or boinccmd.

If you have a limited number of computers, and your main console is a Windows PC, then you can create boincmgr shortcuts to remote computers, as described in section "Connecting BOINC Manager to the new instance. (Optional)" of mmonnin's guide. Just use the appropriate IP address or hostname instead of 127.0.0.1 in the command line, and omit the "/g portnumber" parameter if you access the primary instance on the remote computer (or specify the default port 31416 explicitly).