3/29/2011 12:20:35 PM climateprediction.net Message from server: No work sent
3/29/2011 12:20:35 PM climateprediction.net Message from server: UK Met Office Coupled Model Full Resolution Ocean needs 146.21MB more disk space. You currently have 1653.79 MB available and it needs 1800.00 MB.
3/29/2011 12:20:35 PM climateprediction.net Message from server: UK Met Office HADAM3P European Region needs 253.55MB more disk space. You currently have 1653.79 MB available and it needs 1907.35 MB.
3/29/2011 12:20:35 PM climateprediction.net Message from server: UK Met Office HADAM3P Southern Africa needs 253.55MB more disk space. You currently have 1653.79 MB available and it needs 1907.35 MB.
3/29/2011 12:20:35 PM climateprediction.net Message from server: UK Met Office HADAM3P Pacific North West needs 253.55MB more disk space. You currently have 1653.79 MB available and it needs 1907.35 MB.

Models have gone from needing ~275 Meg to needing 1.5-2.0 Gig of space?

There have been several models over the years that needed up to a bit over 1Gig towards the end, just before the files were zipped.

I'm using a 10Gig partition for them.

The latest, the hadcm3n is a very long model, and WILL need a lot of space before they finish.

And, depending on where they crash, some models will leave behind some files (and folders), that need to be manually deleted.

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Backups: Here

Thanks Les. I was curious why my drive which has about 160 gigs free, would be a problem with a project that normally has 275 meg "packages", and suddenly jumps to needed 2 gigs. A sevenfold increase in the space needed for the workunits currently crunching on my machine. Then I realized it wasn't even looking AT the 160 gigs free on the drive - it was looking at Prefs which by default are set lower than your workunits size. Answered my own question, but posted it here for when someone else comes in and says "but I have a terabyte free!"...

There are 3 global preference parameters which affect how much disk space BOINC is allowed to use.

• Disk: use at most (GB) - the maximum total amount of disk space that can be used by BOINC.
  
  
• Disk: leave free at least (GB) - the absolute amount of disk space that BOINC must leave unused.
  
  
• Disk: use at most (% of total size) - percentage of the total disk size that BOINC is allowed to use.
  

The error message doesn't indicate which parameter has been breached.

The BOINC defaults (unless you change them locally) show:

Can be used to reduce CPU heat 100% of CPU time
Disk and memory usage
Disk: use at most 4 GB
Disk: leave free at least
Values smaller than 0.001 are ignored 2 GB
Disk: use at most 50% of total
Tasks checkpoint to disk at most every 30 seconds
Swap space: use at most 50% of total
Memory: when computer is in use, use at most 25% of total
Memory: when computer is not in use, use at most 90% of total


So having shown that, if BOINC by default has 4 gigs set aside, and is asked to leave 2 gigs aside (50% of total), and you have ANYTHING already downloaded for the project (existing work), then those 1.9 gig W/U's will never come down, based on the default settings shown above. I have of course now changed those defaults for this machine. Like I said in the earlier post - BY DEFAULT - your W/U's won't ever download unless someone has tweaked those settings to allow W/U's larger than the defaults set in BOINC on initial install. This machine only recently had BOINC installed on it, so thats what I'm basing these defaults on. Hope I made that more clear this time.

There's a difficulty with you you've just said.
For someone just installing BOINC for the first time, the defaults these days may well be the values stated.
But there wouldn't be any existing work.

If there's existing work, then the 'old' defaults should still apply after installing a newer version of BOINC.

And the values apply to the full disk size, which these days may well be 500 Gigs.

Personally, for many years I've had a max size of 10 Gigs, because some of the models years ago required a bit over 1 gig each near completion, and I've been running 4 models at a time.

If recent versions of BOINC default to small values of disk space, then this is probably because most projects don't use as much as cpdn.

Just one more thing about which to tell users. :(

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Backups: Here

Thats exactly it, Les.

My older machine has been on BOINC for ages (SETI says I've been doing work for them since May 2000, for instance). I just recently installed BOINC on a new machine. Since this (newer) machine never had BOINC on it before, when it installed, it used its "base" defaults, which as I've stated, are too low for the new 2 gig W/U's that you guys are putting out. I have since changed those defaults to "make room" for the new, bigger W/U's.

Two solutions come to mind.

1. Inform the BOINC team that their defaults are too low and hope that the next time they update the package they use bigger disc buffer allocation sizes.

2. Add it to your list of things to tell new users (sticky forum post? FAQ? News Page?) that would otherwise give up instead of coming to the forums and asking :)

Thanks again for the help!

Larry

I'm not sure about your 4 GB default.

Both of the machines I installed 6.10.58 on recently were given 10 GB defaults. Neither machine had ever had Boinc on them before.

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Two solutions come to mind.

1. Inform the BOINC team that their defaults are too low and hope that the next time they update the package they use bigger disc buffer allocation sizes.

The preferences being used depends on the scenario you're at:
1: On a completely new install, before you joins any projects, the client will use the default client-preferences, and it's maybe possible these is only 4 GB disk-usage (can't check at this point).
2: Then this client joins a project, on the 1st. connection to the project, the client will get preferences from the project.
3: The preferences from the project is either:
a: The project-defaults, if you've joining a project you haven't run before.
b: or, if re-joins a project you've ran before, you'll get whatever preferences you've had before.

So, the BOINC-client-defaults is only a problem on the 1st. connection to a project, not on any later connections.

As for the default preferences set by a project, since majority of users runs only a single project, the most relevant is CPDN's default preferences. Maybe these is too low, if it's only 4 GB it's definitely too low...


Note, the behaviour doesn't apply if you've set local preferences.

Oh, and if multi-project and you joins a completely new project (for you), there's a chance you'll get this projects defaults...

Just adding more info now have checked the defaults.

The BOINC client-defaults are:
10 GB total.
0.1 GB free.
50% total.

The CPDN default preferences are:
100 GB total.
0.001 GB free.
50% total.

So, neither of these should give any large problems...

But, for some strange reason, the CPDN-preferences aren't downloaded before going to preference-page on the web-page and hitting "Update preferences". Still, the BOINC-default at 10 GB should in most instances be enough, even for CPDN.