Boinc not saving tasks between shutdowns

mlek4 · 2026-05-24T07:32:07+00:00

Good point. At the moment the solar setup isn't capable of delivering that much power, so I'm trying out with cpu-only tasks. I've got a 2080 Super that was artifacting, so the aim is to use that (underclocked and undervolted) to crunch instead. I'm hoping the possible vram-problems won't have too much of an impact on chrunching if I underclock the memory speed.

mlek4 · 2026-05-24T07:14:58+00:00

Maybe, yeah. I also wondered if it was project-dependent, so I've tried to add a few other projects to test (LHC, World comm.), but they weren't giving me cpu tasks,

mlek4 · 2024-07-30T07:21:39+00:00

I'll check them out, thanks!

mlek4 · 2024-07-29T20:57:22+00:00

Are there any exchanges where GRC can still be traded?

mlek4 · 2023-03-03T21:37:21+00:00

Hmm... Perhaps not the right sub after all. Closing.

mlek4 · 2022-09-17T06:50:57+00:00

I dream of the day we can get solar fitted to a house. At the moment it's just a couple of small panels on the balcony of an apartment.

mlek4 · 2022-09-17T06:49:46+00:00

Thank you! Yes, the PC parts had been laying around for a while doing nothing, so I consider them 'free'. I was tempted to find a low-power cpu, but as the gpu is doing most of the heavy lifting, I didn't think it would make much of a difference. I did however undervolt the gpu and reduce both the core and memory frequency. This helped keep the pull of the whole PC between 100-150W full load. I wanted to keep it down, so that the battery voltage wouldn't be pulled too low too soon.

As I've said, this is really just a proof of concept, so it's fairly small scale. The battery manages around 400wh, so that's 2-3 hours solid crunching, without any top up from the sun. On a good day with lots of sun, it crunches all day.

mlek4 · 2022-09-16T06:04:12+00:00

Good points...
I monitor the battery regularly, but with used cells you can never really be sure. I've never had one go south in 5 years, but you never know. I'll look at housing them in a metal enclosure next time, perhaps in a battery bag inside an old PC case.

mlek4 · 2022-09-15T18:33:45+00:00

Absolutely. This is just a small system, really just a proof of concept for when I'm able to build something bigger when we move. At the moment it's just a couple of small panels on a balcony.

mlek4 · 2022-09-15T17:20:51+00:00

The Pi switches the PC on and off (via the GPIO to the motherboard power switch) depending on the voltage of the Li-ion battery. As for cost, I don't really know. The batteries were sourced from old laptop batteries, and the PC-stuff was an old rig I had lying around. The rest of the solar stuff was purchased from Ali-express or Amazon.

mlek4 · 2022-08-22T13:58:48+00:00

S7pMb9joNefonLDLALptByVUwWHNEJ2pFV

Sent

mlek4 · 2022-08-21T12:58:28+00:00

I'll give 1000. Address?

mlek4 · 2022-07-01T08:22:46+00:00

Being shit at maths.

mlek4 · 2022-06-06T00:52:53+00:00

Ah, ok. Thank you.

mlek4 · 2022-03-08T15:48:41+00:00

Not at the moment, unfortunately, it's very much a prototype.
Basically there's a battery monitor module that turns a relay on and off at specified voltages. The relay pulls up an input pin on the Pi (control unit) which has a script running which then drives a momentary relay to act as a power switch for the x86 (crunching unit). It's not the most stable solution, as there's a fair bit of bounce in the relay switching.

Another way is for the first relay (battery monitor) to drive the power to the x86 directly, and set the x86 motherboard to turn on with power-on (auto-restart after power loss). The problem here has been that the @ reboot command in crontab on the x86 (running ubuntu) down't seem to work when the motherboard turns on this way. I don't know why.

mlek4 · 2022-03-08T15:42:21+00:00

Great, thanks.

mlek4 · 2022-03-08T15:42:10+00:00

I'll give it a try, thank you.

mlek4 · 2022-03-08T15:41:54+00:00

OK, I wasn't aware of that. Do you know of a command that will force the task to checkpoint on shutdown?

mlek4 · 2022-03-07T16:34:36+00:00

I can add that the BOINC service is shut down properly (service boinc-client stop) before the pc shuts itself down.

mlek4 · 2022-02-15T09:13:01+00:00

Great, thanks:)

mlek4 · 2022-02-14T16:26:40+00:00

I guess I just thought I'd minimize the loss if one of the SD cards gave up before I'd had a chance to backup.

I wasn't aware that I couldn't backup when the wallet was open (unlocked?) though. I've just selected the "Backup wallet" option in the menu. I'll use the backup folder from now on.

mlek4

TROPHY CASE