Conference PC's

lozcs · 2011-07-31, 00:10

Hi,

I have quite a few PC's that are reimaged every time they are used. I Haven't used them for GIMPS for this reason.

There are two partitions on the drives

1st partition C: Either runs XP or win 7
2nd partition holds the OS images (no drive letter assigned to windows)

In order not to have to worry about save files, is there a way to have Prime95 store data files on the partition with no drive letter assigned?

Thanks

Uncwilly · 2011-07-31, 05:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by lozcs

I have quite a few PC's that are reimaged every time they are used. I Haven't used them for GIMPS for this reason.

There are two partitions on the drives

1st partition C: Either runs XP or win 7
2nd partition holds the OS images (no drive letter assigned to windows)

In order not to have to worry about save files, is there a way to have Prime95 store data files on the partition with no drive letter assigned?

Thanks

To the best of my knowledge, if windows can't see it, you can't use it to store the data.

If you set them to do TF-LMH or ECM, you should be able to get some work done and turned in before being reimaged. Yes, you will lose some work, but they can still turn in work.

LaurV · 2011-08-01, 06:05

Why not trying to run P95 from an USB stick? It will run even from a much slower external support (floppy?) as P95 is not very... HDD-active. It runs ok from the network too, I used to keep all work in one place on a "server". This makes it easy for me to check the work progress without running around to each computer in the farm. Create a (shared) folder called P95 (or else) on a network computer (say it "server"), create inside folders like Computer1, Computer2, etc, (use the computer names you like), keep different copies of Prime95 in each folder, and then each computer runs its own copy of P95 from the "server" directly. This works fine for me (here we manufacture computers, and also "kill" periodically different OS installations, but then another machine can continue the work done by a former "killed" machine).

Edit: offtopic: why reimaging the machines every time they are used? isn't easier to use VirtualBox from Sun/Oracle? That is a pretty beautiful toy!

xilman · 2011-08-01, 09:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by LaurV

Edit: offtopic: why reimaging the machines every time they are used? isn't easier to use VirtualBox from Sun/Oracle? That is a pretty beautiful toy!

I like VirtualBox very much and use it on a couple of machines here, but it does have some issues with some hardware. It's entirely possible that the "conference" part of the description falls foul of VB's limitations.

Re-imaging can be very easy indeed, and hardly more difficult than firing up a VB image.

Paul

LaurV · 2011-08-02, 08:36

Of course I know that, but the idea was not to run P95 on a VBox image, but to run it in parallel with VBox (on the host system), and use different VBox images (eventually all in parallel on the same machine) for daily tasks. For most users that means Word and Excel :D and I don't think Vbox has limitations on that. I use VBox every time when playing with "dangerous" stuff (cracks, reverse engineering, viruses) for its "safety" mechanism. If something goes wrong, kill all, use fresh guest clone.

Christenson · 2011-08-09, 06:07

Another suggestion: If you can get these PCs to complete P-1 assignments (may or may not be reasonable, P-1 needs about 300M of memory and a few days to complete) that would also leave GIMPS with finished workunits at the end of a short period of time.

2011-07-31, 00:10	#1
lozcs May 2004 birmingham & manchester 1D₁₆ Posts	Conference PC's Hi, I have quite a few PC's that are reimaged every time they are used. I Haven't used them for GIMPS for this reason. There are two partitions on the drives 1st partition C: Either runs XP or win 7 2nd partition holds the OS images (no drive letter assigned to windows) In order not to have to worry about save files, is there a way to have Prime95 store data files on the partition with no drive letter assigned? Thanks

2011-08-01, 06:05	#3
LaurV Romulan Interpreter Jun 2011 Thailand 7·1,373 Posts	Why not trying to run P95 from an USB stick? It will run even from a much slower external support (floppy?) as P95 is not very... HDD-active. It runs ok from the network too, I used to keep all work in one place on a "server". This makes it easy for me to check the work progress without running around to each computer in the farm. Create a (shared) folder called P95 (or else) on a network computer (say it "server"), create inside folders like Computer1, Computer2, etc, (use the computer names you like), keep different copies of Prime95 in each folder, and then each computer runs its own copy of P95 from the "server" directly. This works fine for me (here we manufacture computers, and also "kill" periodically different OS installations, but then another machine can continue the work done by a former "killed" machine). Edit: offtopic: why reimaging the machines every time they are used? isn't easier to use VirtualBox from Sun/Oracle? That is a pretty beautiful toy! Last fiddled with by LaurV on 2011-08-01 at 06:09

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2011-08-02, 08:36	#5
LaurV Romulan Interpreter Jun 2011 Thailand 7·1,373 Posts	Of course I know that, but the idea was not to run P95 on a VBox image, but to run it in parallel with VBox (on the host system), and use different VBox images (eventually all in parallel on the same machine) for daily tasks. For most users that means Word and Excel :D and I don't think Vbox has limitations on that. I use VBox every time when playing with "dangerous" stuff (cracks, reverse engineering, viruses) for its "safety" mechanism. If something goes wrong, kill all, use fresh guest clone.

2011-08-09, 06:07	#6
Christenson Dec 2010 Monticello 5·359 Posts	Another suggestion: If you can get these PCs to complete P-1 assignments (may or may not be reasonable, P-1 needs about 300M of memory and a few days to complete) that would also leave GIMPS with finished workunits at the end of a short period of time.