Bug#636075: boinc-client: Boinc is (too) disk intensive

[franck]

Package: boinc-client
Version: 6.12.33+dfsg-1
Severity: important

Boinc is (too) disk intensive.

Hello Boinc users and maintainers,

I was shocked to see that boinc is a writing a lot on disk.
Several Gigabytes in a few hours seems usual !

This is simply too much.
As the default installation path is /var/lib/boinc-client this happens to be on /dev/sda in my case (and probably for most). This will just kill my SSD at the end.
But even by manually relocating it to a HDD, I think this is too much disk usage.

So I would suggest:

1. Short time countermeasure
- boinc users: check with 'iostat' you disk usage. Especially if you have SSD.  Move boinc somewhere else if your SSD suffers.
- boinc maintainer:
-- better to put a warning somewhere before user activates boinc "Warning: important disk writing can occur (several Gb/hr disk) => avoid installing on SSD"
-- install by default in /home/boinc (create a specific user). This will increase the chances to land on a HDD and not on a SDD.

2. Best
Investigate why the hell does boinc need to write so much.
As writing >> reading amount, I guess it is just to backup intermediate results that are not needed for further calculations.


Notes:
- 'Task checkpoint to disk at most every' initially set to 60s. I tried 1000s but saw no change. In both cases several Mb are written before any 60s interval.
- I am not sure if this is dependant of the tasks or not.
- from my side I will deinstall boinc :-(

I do hope above will prevent others from beeing suprised of premature SSD failure (unfortunately SSD are silents & quick so I didn't notice anything before playing with iostat).

Thanks for the long reading.
Franck


-- Package-specific info:
-- Contents of /etc/default/boinc-client:
# This file is /etc/default/boinc-client, it is a configuration file for the
# /etc/init.d/boinc-client init script.

# Set this to 1 to enable and to 0 to disable the init script.
ENABLED="1"

# Set this to 1 to enable advanced scheduling of the BOINC core client and
# all its sub-processes (reduces the impact of BOINC on the system's
# performance).
SCHEDULE="1"

# The BOINC core client will be started with the permissions of this user.
BOINC_USER="boinc"

# This is the data directory of the BOINC core client.
BOINC_DIR="/var/lib/boinc-client"

# This is the location of the BOINC core client, that the init script uses.
# If you do not want to use the client program provided by the boinc-client
# package, you can specify here an alternative client program.
#BOINC_CLIENT="/usr/local/bin/boinc"
BOINC_CLIENT="/usr/bin/boinc"

# Here you can specify additional options to pass to the BOINC core client.
# Type 'boinc --help' or 'man boinc' for a full summary of allowed options.
#BOINC_OPTS="--allow_remote_gui_rpc"
BOINC_OPTS=""

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.0.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages boinc-client depends on:
ii  adduser                 3.113            add and remove users and groups
ii  ca-certificates         20110502         Common CA certificates
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]   1.5.41           Debian configuration management sy
ii  libc6                   2.13-11          Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libcurl3                7.21.6-3         Multi-protocol file transfer libra
ii  libgcc1                 1:4.6.1-5        GCC support library
ii  libssl1.0.0             1.0.0d-3         SSL shared libraries
ii  libstdc++6              4.6.1-5          GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii  python                  2.6.7-2          interactive high-level object-orie
ii  zlib1g                  1:1.2.3.4.dfsg-3 compression library - runtime

Versions of packages boinc-client recommends:
ii  ia32-libs                     20110609   ia32 shared libraries for use on a

Versions of packages boinc-client suggests:
pn  boinc-app-seti            <none>         (no description available)
ii  boinc-manager             6.12.33+dfsg-1 GUI to control and monitor the BOI
ii  x11-xserver-utils         7.6+3          X server utilities

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/boinc-client/global_prefs_override.xml changed:
<global_preferences>
   <run_on_batteries>0</run_on_batteries>
   <run_if_user_active>1</run_if_user_active>
   <run_gpu_if_user_active>0</run_gpu_if_user_active>
   <idle_time_to_run>3.000000</idle_time_to_run>
   <suspend_cpu_usage>55.000000</suspend_cpu_usage>
   <start_hour>0.000000</start_hour>
   <end_hour>0.000000</end_hour>
   <net_start_hour>0.000000</net_start_hour>
   <net_end_hour>0.000000</net_end_hour>
   <leave_apps_in_memory>0</leave_apps_in_memory>
   <confirm_before_connecting>0</confirm_before_connecting>
   <hangup_if_dialed>0</hangup_if_dialed>
   <dont_verify_images>0</dont_verify_images>
   <work_buf_min_days>0.050000</work_buf_min_days>
   <work_buf_additional_days>0.400000</work_buf_additional_days>
   <max_ncpus_pct>100.000000</max_ncpus_pct>
   <cpu_scheduling_period_minutes>120.000000</cpu_scheduling_period_minutes>
   <disk_interval>1000.000000</disk_interval>
   <disk_max_used_gb>5.500000</disk_max_used_gb>
   <disk_max_used_pct>50.000000</disk_max_used_pct>
   <disk_min_free_gb>2.000000</disk_min_free_gb>
   <vm_max_used_pct>50.000000</vm_max_used_pct>
   <ram_max_used_busy_pct>25.000000</ram_max_used_busy_pct>
   <ram_max_used_idle_pct>50.000000</ram_max_used_idle_pct>
   <max_bytes_sec_up>0.000000</max_bytes_sec_up>
   <max_bytes_sec_down>0.000000</max_bytes_sec_down>
   <cpu_usage_limit>100.000000</cpu_usage_limit>
   <daily_xfer_limit_mb>0.000000</daily_xfer_limit_mb>
   <daily_xfer_period_days>0</daily_xfer_period_days>
</global_preferences>