Hi,

I have my setting set to use 2.2GB, leave at least 0.25GB, use no more than 80% (have tried lots of other combos too).

I run climateprediction, seti, einstein, rosetta. Climate is so thirsty on disk, it is 12% through a WU and is consuming coming up to 800MB.

I am getting insufficient free space messages saying I only have 53MB free when I try to download new work units for einstein and predictor.

Basic maths is telling me that BOINC is doing its calculations on about 900MB of disk, despite it being set to 2.2GB.

Some of the projects seem to ask for a lot of disk space, despite the total size of the software and data being downloaded.

Is there a 1GB limit in BOINC, it seems to be the case. It makes sense to me if the size field is insufficient to store more than 1GB (an easy mistake to make when coding software).

Also is there any way of reducing the disk usage by Climateprediction?

Regards

Dave

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cp questions are best asked on the cp site.
However, some of us wander over here, so: disk space used depends on which model you've got.
Both slab and sulphur leave behind data for the cruncher to look at; about 660Megs & 1Gig. You can delete the folders if you don't want them.
The latest, TCMs, clean up after them on completion.

It's CPDN that is using up the space. Depending on what result you got.

The normal Slab results take up 750MB a piece, while the Sulphur_Cycles take up 800MB to begin with, slowly growing to 2.7GB!

Old CPDN results with up to 1GB of data in them are also not always deleted from the drive.

So if your partition or drive is bigger than the 2.2GB you told it to use, increase that number first. The first two entries (use no more than x GB and leave at least x GB) are absolute numbers. These get overriden by the "Use no more than x% of total disk space".

80% of 2.2GB = 1.76GB
If you have 2 Slab results for CPDN, or one Slab and one Sulphur Cycle, you can imagine that your space is already filled.

Nothing said about what the rest is taking up.

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By CP do you mean client program ie SETI or similar? I know the question I had about climateprediction was specific, but it is also a contributor to the disk usage problem.

The root problem I am experiencing is BOINC manager related in that is does not seem to recognise >900MB of free disk space (current actual free space on my HD is 5GB).

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I have tidied up all completed CPDN files, just a single running WU in there now and is approaching 800MB. rosetta (17.5MB and accepting more work), einstein (2.9MB and not accepting more work), predictor (2.25KB and not accepting more work), Seti (3.5MB and accepting more work), World Comm (37.7MB and accepting more work).

I know that it is the growth in CPDN (Sulphur) that is causing the most pain in terms of disk usage.

But it seems to be a problem with disk space calcs in BOINC manager as there seems to be recognition of only 900MB-1GB in free space.

Has anyone else managed to get BOINC Manager to exceed 1GB in total disk usage for all projects??

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One other thing, everything is stored in my program files\\BOINC directory (programs, project info, and data) and this folder has a total of 903MB used.

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BOINC only checks the disk space when it starts up. It'll show you what amount is free in its startup message.

Have I tried BOINC with an amount of space larger than 1GB? Yep.
My settings have been since I started in Boinc Beta:

Use no more than 4 GB disk space
Leave at least 0.1 GB disk space free
Use no more than 50% of total disk space
Write to disk at most every 60 seconds
Use no more than 75% of total virtual memory

The total disk space is 6GB.
I run 7 projects.
I have not problems.

Then again, I dropped CPDN a long time ago, since it was undoable on my Celeron 2.3GHz. And with the new Work Scheduler arriving in Boinc 4.38 and afterwards, it was undoable even more.

Decide what you do the projects for. Credits? Science?
If Credits, take quick running projects.
If Science, then give it space enough and time.

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The replies to this thread seem to miss that there is a mathematical difference between reality and processing so maybe the following might give an "expert" some idea of what I am talking about.

I used BOINCview to give me the following info re disk usage:

Free Disk space total: 4.22GB
Free Disk for projects: 1GB
Total Used by projects: 860.7MB
Rosetta 17.51MB, Climateprediction 799MB, Einstein 2.9MB, Predictor 2.3KB, Seti 3.5MB, World Community Grid 37.8MB.

But as you can see from the message log below, when attempting to get new work it reports only 65MB free.

So can someone explain the missing 1GB or so in the mathematics being used??

It seems to me that BOINC cannot calculate free space beyond 1GB when calculating space as part of downloading new work units. This is occuring in multiple projects so I am asuming it is in BOINC.

In simple terms is the difference between 2 to the power of 30 (2^30) and 2 to the power of 31 (2^31) in terms of maximum value in a variable in the program. I am not sure how the code is written or language, but this could be as simple as the difference between a signed and unsigned 32 bit variable.


Following is my general preferences and message log from BOINC:


Processor usage
Do work while computer is running on batteries?
(matters only for portable computers) no
Do work while computer is in use? yes
Do work only between the hours of (no restriction)
Leave applications in memory while preempted?
(suspended applications will consume swap space if 'yes') no
Switch between applications every
(recommended: 60 minutes) 60 minutes
On multiprocessors, use at most 2 processors
Disk and memory usage
Use no more than 2.2 GB disk space
Leave at least 0.1 GB disk space free
Use no more than 95.0% of total disk space
Write to disk at most every 600.0 seconds
Use no more than 90.0% of total virtual memory
Network usage
Connect to network about every
(determines size of work cache; maximum 10 days) 0.05 days
Confirm before connecting to Internet?
(matters only if you use a modem) no
Disconnect when done?
(matters only if you use a modem) no
Maximum download rate: no limit
Maximum upload rate: no limit
Use network only between the hours of
Enforced by versions 4.46 and greater (no restriction)
Skip image file verification?
Check this ONLY if your Internet provider modifies image files (UMTS does this, for example).
Skipping verification reduces the security of BOINC. no



20/04/2006 16:53:54||Starting BOINC client version 5.2.13 for windows_intelx86
20/04/2006 16:53:54||libcurl/7.14.0 OpenSSL/0.9.8 zlib/1.2.3
20/04/2006 16:53:54||Data directory: C:\\Program Files\\BOINC
20/04/2006 16:53:54||Processor: 1 GenuineIntel Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.73GHz
20/04/2006 16:53:54||Memory: 511.23 MB physical, 1.22 GB virtual
20/04/2006 16:53:54||Disk: 53.42 GB total, 4.21 GB free
20/04/2006 16:53:54|rosetta@home|Computer ID: 192991; location: home; project prefs: default
20/04/2006 16:53:54|climateprediction.net|Computer ID: 407733; location: home; project prefs: default
20/04/2006 16:53:54|Einstein@Home|Computer ID: 586851; location: home; project prefs: default
20/04/2006 16:53:54|Predictor @ Home|Computer ID: 165307; location: home; project prefs: default
20/04/2006 16:53:54|SETI@home|Computer ID: 2239584; location: home; project prefs: default
20/04/2006 16:53:54|World Community Grid|Computer ID: 31323; location: home; project prefs: home
20/04/2006 16:53:54||General prefs: from rosetta@home (last modified 2006-04-20 16:22:54)
20/04/2006 16:53:54||General prefs: using separate prefs for home
............
............
20/04/2006 16:54:28|Einstein@Home|Sending scheduler request to http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/EinsteinAtHome_cgi/cgi
20/04/2006 16:54:28|Einstein@Home|Reason: Requested by user
20/04/2006 16:54:28|Einstein@Home|Requesting 8640 seconds of new work
20/04/2006 16:54:33|Einstein@Home|Scheduler request to http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/EinsteinAtHome_cgi/cgi succeeded
20/04/2006 16:54:33|Einstein@Home|Message from server: No work sent
20/04/2006 16:54:33|Einstein@Home|Message from server: (there was work but you don't have enough disk space allocated)
20/04/2006 16:54:33|Einstein@Home|Message from server: Not enough disk space (only 65.0 MB free for BOINC). Review preferences for maximum disk space used.

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cp = climateprediction
cpdn = climateprediction dot net

My C: drive is 62Gig, with about 50G free
My prefs say:
use no more than 10Gig
leave at least 0.1Gig
use no more than 95%

When I had 2 BBC, a sulphur at 95%, an old slab, and spinup, BOINC reported well over 1Gig in use. (Can't remember now.)

You've got 2.2Gig minus 0.1Gig. This is NOT enough for sulphur!

To satisfy those that have replied so far:

I have 5GB of actual disk space free, changed my BOINC general preferences to allow 99GB usage.

When seeking a new work unit for Einstein or Predictor it still says I have only 44MB free despite all projects adding up to only 869MB (From BOINCview) now and the total occupied by the BOINC folders being reported by Windows as being 911MB. I am running BOINC Manager 5.2.13. I do not use disk quotas or other limiting options, other than those set by BOINC.

So I stand by my claim that the Windoze version of BOINC Manager cannot see beyond 1GB of free disk space.

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Do NOT tell BOINC that it can use more space than you have actual free space!
This is how we used to prevent the download of new work in climateprediction before the arrival of version 5.*

Is pretty interesting that people want to make all sorts of comments except comments on the actual problem that the software cannot recognise more than 1GB of disk space in total in a Windows environment.

It does not amtter whether I have 2, 3, 4, 5 or 99 GB as my max disk space usage figure it still does not recognise more than 1GB

Oh well, I'll go back to doing what I do best

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Let's review your disk space and preference settings Dave, starting with what's on the BOINC message tab.

20/04/2006 16:53:54||Disk: 53.42 GB total, 4.21 GB free

Physical disk space is 53.42GB, with 49.21GB in use and 4.21GB free. So your disk is currently 92.1% used.

Disk and memory usage
Use no more than 2.2 GB disk space
Leave at least 0.1 GB disk space free
Use no more than 95.0% of total disk space

The last setting from your disk preferences means that BOINC can't allow your total disk usage to be more than 50.75GB, so it would appear that BOINC can use up to 1.54GB of additional disk space on that basis. But BOINC has a disk space limit of 2.2GB, so this has to be reduced if BOINC is using more than 0.66GB of disk space.

BOINCview is telling you that your projects are using 860.7MB, but that's not the full story. That only includes what's in the projects and slots directories, but the free space calculation includes everything in your BOINC installation directory. To see what the scheduler is basing its free space calculation on you need to look at the value of the <d_boinc_used_total> tag in the sched_request*.xml file.

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"The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer