Hi, I am halfway through 2 of the HADSM3 workunits on my Macbook and was reading through the forums on backups, but I can only find the instructions for Windows, can anyone give me instructions to backup and restore for Macs :-)

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Ex-Royal Navy

Ever since my proprietary AST with Windows 3.1, I\'ve avoided proprietary hardware like the plague. Hence I have no experience with MACs. However, unless MAC software has some clever algorithm that allows backup of a program in process, the same technique as for M$ and Linux boxes should apply. Stop CPDN, exit boinc, make a copy of the entire boinc folder, restart boinc and CPDN.

Because of the amount of \"stuff\" CPDN and boinc keep in memory, dynamic backups can\'t be relied upon. (Again, spoken from an M$ and Linux perspective.)

Welcome to the Boards.

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"We have met the enemy and he is us." -- Pogo
Greetings from coastal Washington state, the scenic US Pacific Northwest.

Ok what I have done so far is

1. Shut down my boinc manager completely, even checked in the Mac task manager to see if it was still running.

2. Made a copy of my folder at \'/Library/Application Support/BOINC Data\'

3. But have not attempted a restore yet so I might try the restore with only a small workunit project working. I read in some references that when you restore that renaming the workunit with a \'0\' at the end is needed?

4. Will leave this thread open a little longer to see if a Mac Wizard comes along

timmy

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Ex-Royal Navy

As far as I know we can\'t ever rename tasks ourselves because the names are decided in advance by the project server. The _0 or _1 or _2 etc at the end of task names show how many computers a task from the same workunit has already been sent to. So it\'s an integral part of the task name and it\'s unique to your task. Don\'t try to rename anything or change anything at all inside your backup before restoring it.

If you open up your BOINC Data folder to have a look at the contents, it should look the same as the contents of your backup BOINC Data folder. The same amount of stuff, identical files. It\'s worth having a look after making your first couple of backups to check that that everything has in fact copied and you haven\'t got an empty folder/directory.

Yes, the best time to check that your backup and restore methods work is when you have almost nothing to lose eg when you have only a short task from some other project, or you\'ve just started a new climate model.

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Cpdn news

Ok what I have done so far is

1. Shut down my boinc manager completely, even checked in the Mac task manager to see if it was still running.

You can leave BOINC manager running while you make the backup. It\'s the BOINC client which you must shut down. Remember, BOINC consists of 2 parts: the client and the manager. Shutting down the manager does not necessarily shut down the client.

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If you have BOINC installed as a service, the shutdown process has two stages:
first in BOINC Manager > Advanced view > Advanced > Shut down connected client. This shuts down the service. Then File > Exit to close down BOINC Manager.

If it isn\'t installed as a service you can just close the BOINC Manager using the X then right-cick on the BOINC icon and select Exit. Or else in the BOINC Manager select File then Exit.

Dagorath, I\'ve never tried a backup with the BOINC Manager running (I don\'t think this is possible if BOINC isn\'t installed as a service). Have you done this and checked that the backup is restorable?

Even if you say you\'ve checked, I think we\'ll have to keep our \'official\' README instructions saying to exit from BOINC in its entirety because some members don\'t know what sort of installation they\'ve got.

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Cpdn news

On the Boinc Mac install you are not given any service install options, it just asks you which drive you would like to install boinc and thats it ! Its not half as complex as the windows install

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Ex-Royal Navy

Dagorath, I\'ve never tried a backup with the BOINC Manager running (I don\'t think this is possible if BOINC isn\'t installed as a service). Have you done this and checked that the backup is restorable?

Even if you say you\'ve checked, I think we\'ll have to keep our \'official\' README instructions saying to exit from BOINC in its entirety because some members don\'t know what sort of installation they\'ve got.

The manager neither reads nor writes to any of the files in the BOINC directory or files in subdirectories. It doesn\'t create any lockfiles either. Though I have never actually checked a backup made while the manager is running, to see if it is restorable, logic tells me it works.

I agree that the official README instructions should say to exit BOINC in its entirety. I also agree that some members don\'t know what sort of installation they have. Unfortunately, some members also think that when they\'ve exited the manager they have necessarily shutdown BOINC in its entirety. As you have pointed out, whether or not the client has also been shutdown depends on how you shutdown the manager.

I probably should not have mentioned that one can leave the manager running when making a backup. I was only trying to emphasize to timmygadget that it\'s the client that must be shutdown prior to taking the backup and that he should be checking to see whether or not the client is still running rather than checking to see if the manager is still running. I am refering to where he says...

1. Shut down my boinc manager completely, even checked in the Mac task manager to see if it was still running.

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