Add a project backup function

[KSMarksPsych]

Posted by: Date: 6:03 PM 10-01-2005 A nice feature addition for some projects (CPDN currently) would be an automatic backup of the state of that project.

The project state would be backed up something like daily. If the workunit crashes then the backup copy would be moved back into the working spot and tried again before reporting a client error.

This would have to be set on a project by project basis, since there is little point to doing this for projects other than CPDN at this time.

[MikeMarsUK]

This would be extremely useful from CPDNs viewpoint. The vast majority of crashes are due to transient problems during the 3 months or so the model needs to run (windows killing the workunit at shutdown, files locked by antivirus programmes, the graphics drivers collapsing, general PC instability).

​http://climateapps1.oucs.ox.ac.uk/beta/forum_thread.php?id=84&nowrap=true#506

One problem with current ad-hoc backup strategies is with multicore systems and multiproject systems - everything has to be rolled back as a unit even if it was only one result which crashed.

For reference here is an autobackup tool which was written by RRodway (a participant on the BBC project): ​http://bbc.cpdn.org/forum_thread.php?id=2748

[Didactylos]

This should be resolved by treating transient errors correctly, and restarting from checkpoints.

There's still a case for a backup feature, though, so I'm leaving this open. Let's reassess during 6.0 alpha testing, and decide whether BOINC's error handling still needs supplementing.