Do some good with your spare CPU time.

[cosmocat]

Im sure a lot of us here have GBPVR running on servers that run 24/7. GBPVR uses only a fraction of the available CPU tme, the rest going to waste heat ( and CO2 emissions).
You can put that spare capacity to good use by running BOINC.

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

BOINC turns your computer into part of a globally distributed supercomputer that scientists can tap into for research into big problems facing the world.
Projects being run include -
Climate modeling
Protien folding for cures of human deaseses
Malaria control
Search for Gravity waves
SETI
Tuning the new particle accelerator at CERN

Its simple to set up, free, and runs in the background so doesn't interfere with GBPVR operation. You accumulate credits so you can see how much you have contributed, and you can also join up with teams if you want to get competetive! It doesn't require a powerful system, If you can run GBPVR you can easily run BOINC.

I have been using BOINC on my GBPVR server and Linux web/mailserver for about a year without problem. BOINC is a background task so as GBPVR requires CPU and disk time , it gets it and you dont see any impact on the performance of GBPVR.

The only issue I had was with XDVD streaming to my MVPs, where the BOINC application and VLC fight over who has the lowest priority. VLC wins the fight so never starts when BOINC is running. My simple work around is to disable BOINC at the times of day that I am likely to use XDVD ( 3:00pm - midnight). and this can be scheduled in the BOINC manager.

So come on guys, you got GBPVR for free - so make a contribution this way and donate your spare CPU time to good causes.

[danIrl]

Will this interfere with the PC hibernating? I mean my machine hibernates after 30 mins idle time. I dont mind running a background process during that time... but not if it causes it to remain on at full power.

[cosmocat]

I don't have my pcs hibernate, so I havn't tested this myself, but I don't think it will effect its behaviour. When the PC goes to hibernate BOINC will stop, and restart again when the PC wakes up.

[herbs]

Yes it will as it maxes out the cpu, bonic will stop it hibernating.

[capone]

I'll try it on my server, which is always on for work and to host my son's videos. It will be interesting to see if it interferes w/ vids played from there, since accessing a file is not considered activity (so this set to run on idle will still run while a movie is accessed from the network).

[capone]

Nvr mind...couldn't find the options to control priority. It nice they made this all-in-one peer computing app, but it's not one of the better designed ones.

You may be better off going to the institution you want to help, and grab their client.

[SniperDude]

A bunch of friends and I used to do this along time ago... til they moved to the Boinc client... when they did that (and forced us to do the same) we quit... There were too many issues (that may have been cleared up since but I am not willing to try it anymore)... Issues were network socket errors that would popup because a server was not responding (even when I was playing a game on the pc... so for a client that backgrounded why was it popping in front of my game).. Shutting down the computer sometimes hung (and required hard off) ... there was a website that once used that Boinc client to distribute some sort of spam/denial attack, (course they got that fixed pretty quick) ... but after 4+ years of one client working great.. they moved to that one... and within 8 months forced it ... we said forget it...

[Murdock]

Same here for me and I have over 100,000 work units just my self.
It was a sad day for me when they forced the move...

[erik]

I bought a 7 Watt CPU (VIA C3) to run GBPVR recording, Web server, Mail server, file server, Skype phone, .......
Its quite busy as you can understand.
I tried to run some of these colaborative computing stuff but it was too much for the CPU.