Miscalculating Disk Size and Free Space

[KSMarksPsych]

Posted by: Date: 9:54 AM 02-09-2007 Messages tab says "No disk space"

Message tab says 256 TB total, 0 free space; pie chart says 'free disk space 17206.29 TB'; while in reality the C: drive has 6GB free and the D: has 229GB free.

All processing stops on this machine b/c it thinks there is no disk space.

This is on a Windows 2003 SERVER machine -- I tried to follow the instructions for running as a service more securely by denying boinc access to everything except the BOINC directory and children. Possibly related. -? (Unrelated, but I really would like a dumbed-down installer for the enterprise that allows schedules including weekend issues.)

What folders and permissions do I need to allow the BOINC service access to so it'll work? (ugh)

Posted by: Date: 10:07 AM 02-09-2007 yep sure enough - I removed the prohibitions from BOINC writing anywhere EXCEPT the BOINC directory and the numbers corrected themselves and stuff started working.

BUG: when you get the error "you can't read this disk to find out how much is free" b/c you don't have permissions -- this shouldn't be interpreted as meaning you have a 17206.29TB or 256 TB sized disk with 0 bytes free.

also -- this great CRITICAL instructions: ​http://boinc.truxoft.com/security.htm are crap when using the 5.8.8 client since if you follow the instructions then boinc stops working since it can't figure out what disk space is free

PLEASE somebody write an installer for server machines to run in the nighttimes and weekends. There's a lot of unused horsepower out there with machines doing nothing right now--they need a good installer that will install more safely with restricted use.

Posted by: Date: 10:09 AM 02-09-2007 This was happening on Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition but might happen on any XP box when invoking the restrictions suggested on truXoft.com

[KSMarksPsych]

Image from original reporter

[Didactylos]

Also getting odd (completely wrong) figures when using disk quotas. With quota set to 50MB:

21/04/2007 13:24:27 | | Disk: 50.00 MB total, 14.08 GB free

And the disk tab: used by other programs - -15071182848 bytes.

[davea]

Fixed in 5.9.13+. -David

[Pepo]

B-6.12.15 displays negative disk usage

[Pepo]

Not fix anymore :-(

I've installed the 6.12.15 on a new Win 7 x64 machine - a compatibility mode installation (to be able to try out GPU) into default location. It has a 500 GB HDD (450.4 GB available on a system partition, 59.2 GB used, 391.1 GB free). Both Manager and client and apps were running under my user account (a plain user).

I believe this all is happening because the disk quota management is switched on, set to 35 GB for the user running BOINC apps (= myself). According to the quota manager and Windows Explorer, this user has currently 31.2 GB free.

global_prefs_override says:

<global_preferences>
   <disk_max_used_gb>2.000000</disk_max_used_gb>
   <disk_max_used_pct>2.000000</disk_max_used_pct>
   <disk_min_free_gb>5.000000</disk_min_free_gb>
</global_preferences>

The Event log says:

Disk: 35.00 GB total, 391.14 GB free
max disk usage: 0.70GB

Finally, the BOINC Manager's Disk usage tab diplays:

• used by BOINC: 54.60 KB (no projects so far)
• free, available to BOINC: 716.75 MB
• free, not available to BOINC:390.44 GB
• used by other programs: -373444662.60 KB

(can be seen in the attached image)

The client is apparently mixing the quota-limited size with partition free space...

---

There was a fix in changeset:23079 for this, unfortunately it did not made it from trunk into 6.12 area (for testing).

---

I've later installed 6.12.18 as a service and modified the quotas for newly created boinc_master (8 GB) and boinc_project (6 GB). And off course BOINC disk usage settings accordingly. This confirmed that the Manager displays disk usage according to the boinc_master's quotas.

I understand and see that files written by these accounts are counted against their own separate quotas...

I guess that if quotas are noticed being in use, it could be sufficient to:

• take both boinc_master's (directly by the client, as it is done now) and boinc_project's (by launching some tiny test app under boinc_project account) quota free space and use the smaller of them as reference,
• in Manager's Computing Preferences dialog,
  • append "Use at most [ xx ] GB disk space" and "Use at most [ xx ] % of total disk space" with something like "might be limited by disk quotas, if in use",
• in the "Total disk usage"graph,
  • use the lower quota free reference as an upper cap for the conventionally (i.e. from the whole disk partition) calculated "free, avaliable to BOINC: xx GB" value,
  • correct the "used by other programs" value.