I'm a new BOINC user, and I'm unable to get it to download any work. When I connect to projects I get the following messages:

Message from server: No work sent
Message from server: (there was work but you don't have enough disk space allocated)
Message from server: Not enough disk space (only 100.0 MB free for BOINC). Review preferences for maximum disk space used.

After looking in vain through the application UI for disk space preferences, I came here to the forum and discovered the web-based preferences (very non-obvious and confusing, please fix this in the next major release by making all preferences accessible from the application UI). However, the web-based preferences say:

Use no more than 100 GB disk space
Leave at least 0.1 GB disk space free
Use no more than 50% of total disk space

I have more than 9GB free on C: and 54GB free on D: (where BOINC is installed). It seems to me that the error messages are incorrect, and that my disk space preferences allow much more than 100MB of space for the projects.

Am I missing something, or is this a bug? How do I work around it?

Thanks,
Pat

Don't set 'Use no more than' to a value greater than your available disk sapce.

Don't set 'Use no more than' to a value greater than your available disk sapce.

Thanks for the fast response; that seems to have fixed the problem.

I would respectfully like to suggest that the next major version of BOINC should go through formal usability testing before the user interface is solidified. We need to make it as easy as possible for novice users to join the BOINC community.

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I would respectfully like to suggest that the next major version of BOINC should go through formal usability testing before the user interface is solidified.

It is being tested by a lot of people.

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I would respectfully like to suggest that the next major version of BOINC should go through formal usability testing before the user interface is solidified. We need to make it as easy as possible for novice users to join the BOINC community.

Yes, it seems obvious doesn't it.

In fact, it has been undergoing usability testing for over 2 years. That is why it is so much better than the stand alone DC projects. I can run 7 projects I am interested in all at the same time.

The suggestion that the preferences would be better on the client is one that is in the list of things to do. But, I will say that there is some merit in the web based preferences. BUt, over time, new features like this are added to make the system better.

But, one side note, much of the work concentrates on the making improvements in BOINC to better support the project's needs. All that said, there are things coming down the pike that *MAY* make things easier ...

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I also had the "not enough disk space" problem, and also looked at my prefs., etc. to no avail. Finally, I found the problem. I THOUGHT I had plenty of disk space, but there was a file in the BOINC directory, BOINC/SLOTS/0/STDERR.TXT, that had ballooned to 586 MEGABYTES and eaten-up all my free disk space. It had to do with repeating error messages that just accumulated. I deleted it and now BOINC works OK. In my case, BOINC is installed in drive D. I thought the free space requirement was for drive C and only realized what was going on when drive D ran completely out of space for no apparent reason and I was finally forced to investigate the matter in depth. I looked at the D drive with "Tree Size" and the bloated folder popped-up immediately.

I would agree in that there are some aspects of BOINC that could definitely be improved

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GL

To pause/resume tasks hit CTRL-C, to exit hit CTRL-BREAK
2005-12-29 09:43:26 [---] Starting BOINC client version 4.45 for windows_intelx86
2005-12-29 09:43:26 [---] Data directory: C:\\Program Files\\BOINC
2005-12-29 09:43:31 [---] Couldn't modify the state file. Make sure you have permissions configured for BOINC to run on this system under this user account
gstate.init() failed: -109

I know this is a bit of a different problem, but it was the closes discussion to the problems I am encounter on one installtion. I have Boinc installed on three other Windows machines working fine. This installation is a running on a Dell Laptop running Win XP Pro. I use to run the old Seti version on this machine and it worked fine. I have tried the latest verion of Boinc manager as well and received the same message. I tried installing this version and compared installation to the other installations that are working fine.

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The suggestion that the preferences would be better on the client is one that is in the list of things to do. But, I will say that there is some merit in the web based preferences. BUt, over time, new features like this are added to make the system better.

I was trying to work out what the heck this was (as a big advocate of client side preferences) today... and it suddenly clicked... if you've machines in a dozen locations and can't access them all from one manager (either the default or something like BoincView then it lets you update the one web preferences and as if by magic all clients will be brought back into sync.
One small question... if I'm siged up with 5 projects how to they sync my 'general' preferences... or do I have to update them all? (not quite sure how they tie projects back to each other) and it would be very cool if they all updated back to here (to keep our stats in order as well ;) )

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Random Thoughts

One small question... if I'm siged up with 5 projects how to they sync my 'general' preferences... or do I have to update them all? (not quite sure how they tie projects back to each other) and it would be very cool if they all updated back to here (to keep our stats in order as well ;) )

This is my understanding of it: When your host contacts the server, if the preferences have changed, they are downloaded to the client. When it contacts another server, if the local preferences are newer than what that server has, they are uploaded to that server. Once you've contacted each project once, the prefs are in sync everywhere.

If "local" prefs setting is desired, I see no reason why someone couldn't write an external utility program to do that. All that should be necessary is storing the right values in the right place in the global_prefs.xml and account_projectname.xml files. I don't know if the sched_reply and sched_request files would need to be touched, they might be updated automatically.

Not sure what you mean about "updated back to here" - this site has no database for hosts, prefs, stats, etc., it's just the message boards portion of the BOINC server software, for "generic BOINC issue" support. All the stats from all projects are exported as xml and retrieved then linked by the various stats sites.

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They Must be linked for update to work, you have 4 computers running projects as follows,

1. SETI and PP@H 2. SETI and Einstein 3. Einstein and LHC 4.CPDN

They all link until you get to CPDN, so CPDN will not update new settings....

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