BOINCpe - FAQ
Please find below some of the most common questions about BOINCpe. For questions not specific to BOINCpe, please also have a look at the official BartPE FAQ.
Q: My network adapter (NIC) is not recognized while booting up BOINCpe. What to do?
A: Probably your NIC is pretty new. You simply have to add your Windows driver to the directory .\drivers\Net. Please also have a look at: BartPE: Adding drivers.
There is also a package available containing drivers for the most common types of network adapters available by n4tune8 called “Additional Network Adapter drivers plugin“.
Q: Can I change the default keyboard layout?
A: Definetely! Simply change the layout in file .\plugin\keyboard\keyboard.inf. Default layout is: English (United States).
Q: My machine has plenty of RAM (> 256 MB). Is it possible to increase the size of the RAM disk?
A: Sure. The size of the RAM disk is configured in file .\plugin\ramdisk_v5.2.7.0\ramdisk.inf. All common Hex values are already denoted there.
In our tests, half of the RAM installed in the machine seems to be a proper size for the RAM disk. Supposingly, you have 512 MB of RAM installed in your machine. Then, 256 MB for your RAM disk is ideal…
Q: Disk space and memory is pretty limited compared to a usual machine. Which BOINC powered projects will run on BOINCpe?
A: In general, every of the projects should be enabled to run on BOINCpe. However, it depends on your individual hardware. The least powerful configuration (256 MB of RAM = 128 MB RAM Disk + 128 MB remaining memory) will already enable you to run a number of the most popular BOINC projects including SETI@Home, SIMAP@Home, Einstein@Home, and LHC@Home. Please note that this list is not extensive. There might be other projects that can be run on a low-end computer using BOINCpe.
You can check the following requirements table for the most common BOINC projects at the BOINC Wiki. The columns for Memory and Disk Space requirements are of particular interest for you. You can check them against your system’s resources to determine which projects are suitable for your individual host.
Q: All my machines appear with the host name ‘boincpe’ in my host list. Can I change the individual names in order to distinguish between them?
A: Of course! However, you will have to modify the name for each host separately. The name is configured in file .\plugin\penetcfg\penetcfg.ini (not penetcfg.inf). You can also change the workgroup for the machine.
Q: Can I add network shares to be mounted on startup?
A: You can add network shares in file .\plugin\penetcfg\penetcfg.ini (not penetcfg.inf). The options are to be set in the sections [FileSharing] and [NetDrive1].
Please do not use drive T: for one of your custom shares since this is used by BOINCpe already!
Q: I’m not sure about storing all BOINC data on a RAM disk. All data is lost on reboot. What can I do to prevent this?
A: You’re right! Thing is though, a typical machine being used with BOINCpe will be running continuously for days, weeks or even longer. A sudden reboot (e.g. on power failure) is generally not to be expected. And if it happens, the loss of data is not very severe since BOINC follows a long-term strategy. In my opinion, losing data for 24 hours of BOINC computation once a year is not as critical as running several hard disk drives for a year!
There is an optional plugin called ‘Persistency Service’ provided with BOINCpe, which performs four backups per day to a specified network share (at 12:00 AM, 6:00 AM, 12:00 PM, and 6:00 PM). This gives a chance to backup at least all computations and general BOINC data changed within the last 6 hours. Please see: BOINCpe Advanced Configuration
Q: I’d like to change the time when the BOINCpe Persistency Service backs up the data? Or can I even configure my box to more often perform a backup? How to do this?
A: Since v0.5.0 we are using Gerhard Kalab’s cron scheduler for the backups. You can easily configure cron to more often perform a backup at the time you want.
To do so, you need to edit the file .\plugin\BOINC_persistency\files\crontab. By default, 4 backups are performed a day:
0 0,6,12,18 * * * X:\BOINC\Persistency\persist_BOINC_data.bat
By changing the line to the following, a backup will be performed every 3 hours instead of every 6 hours as before:
0 0,3,6,9,12,15,18,21 * * * X:\BOINC\Persistency\persist_BOINC_data.bat
Please see the full reference taken from Gerhard Kalab’s site:
Each line of CRONTAB has the following structure:
<Minute> <Hour> <Day> <Month> <Day of Week> <Command line>
| Position: | Values: |
|---|---|
| Minute | 0-59 |
| Hour | 0-23 |
| Day | 1-31 |
| Month | 1-12 |
| Day of week | 0-6 (0=Sunday, 1=Monday, …, 6=Saturday) |
Instead of minute, hour, day, month or day of week it’s also possible to specify a *. A * represents all possible values for that position (e.g. a * on 2nd position is the same as specifying all the possible values for hour)
It’s also possible to specify several values separated by commas: e.g. if you want a command to be executed every 10th minute so you can specify 0,10,20,30,40,50 for minute. A range of values can be specified with a -: e.g. value 0-12 for hour -> every hour a.m.
Q: Can I boot BOINCpe from a USB stick/key or from an external HDD?
A: Yes, you only need to follow this guide on how to prepare a USB drive for use with BOINCpe/BartPE.
Q: Burning a separate CD for each of my hosts sucks. What about PXE/BOOTP/TFTP network boot?
A: Good point! I feel the same way. However, I didn’t have a lot of time to look into this issue so far.
There are ways for booting BartPE this way. See these links:
Please let me know about your findings… 
Q: I want to switch a current host to BOINCpe. Can I keep all data and preferences?
A: Yes. If you are using Persistency Service, you can copy your existing data to the network share before booting the BOINCpe machine. A subdirectory according to a MAC address of your computer will be created in the network share provided. You can create it manually before starting the machine and copy the old BOINC data to it.
Q: You are using global_prefs_override.xml file. What is it used for?
A: Compared to a common crunching machine with gigabytes of disk space, we will be running BOINC with on a pretty small RAM-Disk of only 128 megabytes (by default). Please see above for further information on the RAM-Disk’s size. Anyway, it is necessary to configure the BOINC client in order to run in such an unusual environment.
BOINC tries to leave a certain amount of disk space free for your daily work. This is fine if your host has a large hard disk drive. In our case, we are running the host for BOINC only and its HDD is really small. Thus, we have to tell BOINC that we’re generous: it is allowed to take (almost) all disk space available.
The file global_prefs_override.xml allows to set some parameters specifically for your small “HDD” that are necessary for download of projects. You can either leave the global_prefs_override.xml file in the BOINC data directory or do the following. In the project’s settings: change the General Preferences setting “Leave at least X.XXX Gb free” to 0.001 GB for your host’s location (see screenshot). It is recommended that you set this setting for your default location. If a new host connects, this is likely to be a host running BOINCpe.
Q: I’d like to remote control the whole BOINCpe machine not only the BOINC client. What to do?
A: You might want to consider enabling the UltraVNC plugin provided with BOINCpe. Read more…
Q: I like your approach, but I do not like Windows because <insertWhateverReasonHere>. Why didn’t you simply create a Linux/Unix distribution for this purpose?
A: I do agree that Windows is not the ideal platform for this purpose. However, there are arguments for Windows as well: Everyone will be able to use it right away. It doesn’t eat up your ressources as you might be expecting. The BartPE community has a set of pretty useful stuff, which eased up development of BOINCpe.
Anyway, I might be developing a Linux Live-CD distribution in a next life. Time will tell. Wanna help me? 
Q: What’s the difference between BartPE and BOINCpe?
A: Actually, BOINCpe is nothing more than an original BartPE plus a set of pre-configured plugins. Therefore, BOINCpe is not a revolution in any sense. But it is an extremely easy way to get your spare machines or your BOINC cluster running in no time.
Q: There’s not even a Web Browser included in BOINCpe. Where do I find one?
A: BOINCpe can be extended by usual BartPE plugins. There is a Firefox plugin available (by Sherpya). And if you got some time, you might want to give Sherpya an even harder time by asking him to offer the plugin in a different format as the annoying 7Zip only…
Q: Can I add additional BartPE plugins?
A: That shouldn’t be much of a problem. You can find a list of some plugins here. But you should leave all original BOINCpe plugins where they are!
Related Articles
Reader Comments
Hi Torben,
meine letzte New York Reise führte mich zu Weihnachten in diese wahnsinns Stadt. Dass war sicher nicht das billigte Weihnachten was ich verlebt abe, aber mit Sicherheit das schönste. New York ist persönlich für mich eine der schönsten und gigantichsten Städte die es gibt auf der Welt und wer noch nicht in New Yorkwar, kann sich nicht vorstellen was dort abgeht.
LG
Karo
BoincPE seems to do excellently on my XP computers.
I now have some Vista computers. Does BoincPE work at all on Vista systems, if so, how do I get it to set-up. Do I simply make a copy in an XP computer and boot up the Vista computer with it?
Ob der Kerkeling auch schon in New York war?
Hi Torben
After a few power outages, and loss of some workunits, I think I might be on to something. Some Boinc projects tasks only take about 3 hours to run. So even persisting the data to a network share every 24 hours will result in some loss of WU’s. Also, you can never be sure the state of the data when the persistency service runs is a ‘valid’ checkpoint. Also when having several machines run their backup at once, it saturates the 100MB network. So what I have decided to do is eliminate the persistency service altogether, and instead, when mapping the network share, I just set that directory (the folder with the machines unique MAC id) as the BOINC data directory. And voila! No more lost workunits (even when power is restored, the last checkpoint has almost always worked, and no more duplicate ID’s). Also network traffic is much slower, and nearly unnoticable hard drive activity. Even when 2 machines are downloading new workunits, even the slowest hard drive can more than keep up with the data flow off the internet (very few people in the world have more than 10-25MB sustainable download speeds). Here is the main modifications I made to a couple batch files:
First is inti_boinc:
@ECHO OFF
REM This File is launched from PeNetCfg.ini (section [PostNetAutoRun])
ECHO.
ECHO Setting BOINC paths…
ECHO ======================
ECHO.
SET BOINCbase=%SystemDrive%\BOINC
SET BOINCclient=%BOINCbase%\Client\Standard
CALL setSysVar BOINCbase %BOINCbase%
CALL setSysVar BOINCclient %BOINCclient%
ECHO.
ECHO Processing Network Share Data
ECHO.
CALL %BOINCbase%\Persistency\network_share_data.bat
SET ERRORLEV=0
SET PersistDrv=T:
SET PersistDrvBase=Q:
CALL setSysVar PersistDrv %PersistDrv%
ECHO This system’s MAC addresses:
%BOINCbase%\Persistency\GetMACAdapters.exe
for /f “tokens=1 delims=;” %%i in (’%BOINCbase%\Persistency\GetMACAdapters.exe’) do Set MAC=%%i
ECHO.
CALL setSysVar MAC %MAC%
ECHO.
ECHO Mapping temporary share %PersistDrvBase%…
net use %PersistDrvBase% “%Share%” “%Password%” /user:”%User%”
if exist %PersistDrvBase%\%MAC%\ goto ShareExists
if exist %PersistDrvBase%\ goto CreateFolder
SET ERRORLEV=1
ECHO.
ECHO FAIL: Share %Share% does not exist…
ECHO.
goto end
:CreateFolder
ECHO.
ECHO Creating dir based on MAC address…
md %PersistDrvBase%\%MAC%
:ShareExists
ECHO.
ECHO Removing temporary share %PersistDrvBase%…
net use %PersistDrvBase% /delete
ECHO Mapping share %Share%\%MAC% to %PersistDrv%
net use %PersistDrv% “%Share%\%MAC%” “%Password%” /user:”%User%”
SET BOINCdata=%PersistDrv%\Data
CALL setSysVar BOINCdata %BOINCdata%
if exist %PersistDrv%\Data goto launch
xcopy %BOINCbase%\InitData\*.* %BOINCdata%\ /e /s /v /y /h /r /d
:launch
ECHO.
ECHO Launching BOINC
ECHO ===============
ECHO.
REM Start BOINC launcher
CALL %BOINCbase%\Client\launch_boinc.bat
:end
EXIT
Then launch_boinc was modified slightly (the new client 10.45 doesn’t like the switch “return_results_immediately”:
@ECHO OFF
start /D%BOINCclient% /low %BOINCclient%\boinc.exe -dir %BOINCdata%
start /D%BOINCdata% %BOINCclient%\boincmgr.exe
:end
EXIT
Next I moved the 2 batch files, load_boinc_data, and persist_boinc_data out of the “Files” subdirectory so those 2 options would be correctly greyed out in the NU2 Menu.
Also the restart and shutdown commands modified to remove the calls to the persistency service:
NT Shutdown command script:
@ECHO OFF
ECHO Shutting down BOINCpe now…..
ECHO ==============================
ECHO.
@%systemroot%\system32\nu2shell.exe -s
EXIT
and NT reboot command script:
@ECHO OFF
ECHO Rebooting BOINCpe now…..
ECHO ==========================
ECHO.
@%systemroot%\system32\nu2shell.exe -r
EXIT
So far (about 1 week) everything is working good, and I this will be much easier and cheaper in setting up a headless and diskless ‘farm’. First the main advantage is more consistent uniform network traffic, more reliable restarts in the event of a power failure. Also, the size of the Ramdisk can be greatly reduced, allowing the machines to be built with probably as little as 512KB of ram (256+256 Ram drive). The RAM drive is still needed to allow for the creation of some folders that WindowsPE needs, like the My Documents folder etc. What I did to reduce hard drive activity is set global preferences in either a Account Manager or the project itself is to set the “Write to Disk at most every XXX seconds” paramenter to about 600 (10 min) on all “slave machines”. This is like persising every 10 min, but only changing files that are needed, rather than re-writing and backing up of the entire Network Share, which is time consuming, and can easily saturate a 100MB LAN.
Cheers!
This is for Markcbq
There really is no such thing as a “XP” or “Vista” computer. Any system that will run Vista will work just fine with the ‘mini-XP’ that BartPE uses. Just be sure to use a Windows XP CD when building the image, dont use a “Vista” CD. You might need to put a driver for the network card into the proper folder in BoincPE before building it.
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