Hypography Distributed Computing Team

[alexander]

just put up my third system on this

 

this one is nix, and its supposed to run transparently (shhh)

 

my biggest problem is that on nix, boinc has not provided a way to limit cpu usage, and for me, it's a big deal, when i am installing it on a future router....

 

i think i may have found a solution though

//cpulimit.c
/**
* Simple program to limit the cpu usage of a process
*
* Author: Angelo Marletta ([email protected])
*/

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <signal.h>
#include <sys/resource.h>

//pid of the controlled process
int pid;

//SIGINT signal handler
void quit(int sig) {
//let the process continue if it's stopped
kill(pid,SIGCONT);
exit(0);
}

int main(int argc, char **argv) {

if (argc!=3) {
fprintf(stderr,"Usage: %s {pid} {max cpu percentage}n",argv[0]);
exit(1);
}
pid=atoi(argv[1]);
int limit=atoi(argv[2]);
if (limit>100 || limit<0) {
fprintf(stderr,"limit must be in the range 0-100n");
exit(1);
}
//if possible renice this process, so it has more responsiveness
if (setpriority(PRIO_PROCESS,getpid(),-20)!=0) {
printf("Warning: cannot renice.nTo work better you should run this program as root.n");
}
signal(SIGINT,quit);

//time quantum in microseconds
int period=100000;
struct timespec twork,tsleep; //time to work, and time to sleep
twork.tv_sec=0;
twork.tv_nsec=period*limit*10;
tsleep.tv_sec=0;
tsleep.tv_nsec=period*(100-limit)*10;

while(1) {
if (kill(pid,SIGSTOP)!=0) break;
nanosleep(&tsleep,NULL);
if (kill(pid,SIGCONT)!=0) break;
nanosleep(&twork,NULL);
}

perror("kill()");
exit(1);
}

[alexander]

(note, for some insane reason VB blocks anything with a $ in front of it... so i HAD to not use the code tags)

 

Here's what i did so far to get limiting, working:

 

after following the normal installation steps do the following:

 

copy the code above into limiter.c file in wherever your BOINC directory is.

 

compile it:

 

gcc limiter.c -o limiter

 

now lets go and edit an init.d script:

nano -w /etc/init.d/boinc

 

first, you will see a lot of defined values. Take a moment and add one more to it

 

MAX_FREQ=60

 

now go to section that says

 

echo -n "Starting BOINC client as a daemon: "

su $BOINCUSER -c "$BOINCEXE $BOINCOPTS" >>$LOGFILE 2>>$ERRORLOG &

sleep 1

PID=`pidof -s -x -o $$ -o $PPID -o %PPID $BOINCEXE`

if [ $PID ]; then

[ -d $LOCKDIR ] && touch $LOCKDIR/boinc

 

 

 

add this just after that line

 

# rather dirty way of doing this

./limiter $PID $MAX_FREQ &

 

 

this will start the limiter when you start the service

 

now only to kill it when you are done

 

go to section that says:

 

 

cd $BOINCDIR

if [ ! -f lockfile -a ! -f $LOCKDIR/boinc ] ; then

echo -n "BOINC is not running (no lockfiles found)."

echo_success

else

echo -n "Stopping BOINC client daemon: "

killproc $BOINCEXE && echo_success || echo_failure

# clean up in any case

rm -f $BOINCDIR/lockfile

rm -f $LOCKDIR/boinc

 

 

now lets add one more line to it

 

killall limiter

 

 

save, restart service, do a ps -ef f, make sure limiter is in there, do a top, to make sure that whatever boinc is doing, it is not exceeding whatever max percent utilization, and we are in game ;)

[alexander]

just outcomputed T in the einstein project :shrug: and i have over 8000 credit pending :hihi:

 

Hypography