At a location that has agreed to let me volunteer their spare cycles for Rosetta, there are four small-form-factor Dell boxes that live in conference rooms (for A/V display). The variable-speed fans in these systems produce an undesirable amount of noise when crunching for times when the conference rooms may be occupied.

So I have them scheduled for Rosetta only during off hours, which solves the problem for weekdays nicely.

I'd like to cut them loose for 24-hour operation on the weekends, but (remembering) to do so via the web interface isn't going to work consistently. Can I change the scheduling time within BOINC via some programmatic means that I can script? Command-line options, or a machine-local edit to the configuration-related XML files?

I'm assuming this is really a BOINC issue ... If anyone could point me in the right direction for this kind of BOINC documentation, that would be a great help.

Thanks,
Alan Roberts

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I recall hearing about a BOINC file you could create, and if it existed, then BOINC would use that for preferences. I'm sorry, I've been unable to locate the reference. Yes, it's a BOINC question.

But the idea would be that you could schedule a Windows process to kick in Friday night, replace the local file with one that does not have the time of day limits imposed.

Another way to ask the same question would be:

Is there any way to easily change the location preferences used by a PC?

Then you could just change from say "work" which has the time of day restriction, to default which does not.

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Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

If you scheduled Rosetta and Boinc to stop on Friday at 5pm - copied the weekend settings in - and then restart them both to pick up the Weekend settings; and did something similar on Monday morning to switch back to weekday settings - you'll have to update the files for every change to Boinc/Rosetta that makes changes to the local settings file.


Are the AV machines doing anything that requires accurate time during the weekends? Can you setup a batch file that would set the local time back to Friday Midnight at 6am Saturday.. set it back to Friday midnight at noon Saturday. At 6pm Saturday switch to 6pm Saturday.. then 6am Sunday, switch the time to midnight Saturday, noon Sunday switch to midnight Saturday, and at 6pm Sunday switch to 6pm Sunday and leave the time alone until the next weekend?

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Here's the Boinc link to the file referred in the earlier post by Feet1st Preferences override file
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If I read the instruction properly all you need to do is place the file in the Boinc folder on Friday night and do an update. Remove it on Monday morning and do an update to restore preference.
I'm not sure but I believe you may need to use Boinc V 5.4.9

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Questions? Answers are in the BOINC Wiki.

Boinc V6.12.41
Win 7 i5 GPU Nvidia 470

Here's the Boinc link to the file referred in the earlier post by Feet1st Preferences override file
edit
If I read the instruction properly all you need to do is place the file in the Boinc folder on Friday night and do an update. Remove it on Monday morning and do an update to restore preference.
I'm not sure but I believe you may need to use Boinc V 5.4.9

I think that you mean restart the client rather than update it.

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BOINC WIKI

BOINCing since 2002/12/8

Here's the Boinc link to the file referred in the earlier post by Feet1st Preferences override file
edit
If I read the instruction properly all you need to do is place the file in the Boinc folder on Friday night and do an update. Remove it on Monday morning and do an update to restore preference.
I'm not sure but I believe you may need to use Boinc V 5.4.9

I think that you mean restart the client rather than update it.

I should have read the last sentenced. :)

Thanks for the pointer. The global_prefs_override.xml looks like just the answer I was looking for; and it seems that boinc_cmd has a --read_global_prefs_override switch. A bit of testing and I should be all set to do more over the weekends, without having to count on my memory (always a good thing)!

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