Periodic tasks

BOINC supplies a number of programs and scripts intended to be run as periodic tasks. The project configuration file created by the make_project script runs some of these. You can also write your own tasks.

Tasks for batch management

submit_retire.php

To avoid running out of disk space, batches must eventually be retired. This script does the following:

• If a batch has been completed or aborted at least 7 days ago, the submitter is sent an email asking them to retire it.
• If a batch has been aborted for more than 14 days, it's retired.
• If a batch has been completed at least 30 days, it's retired.

delete_batches.php

This deletes retired batches with no workunits.

batch_accel.php

This accelerates batch completion. You must run your feeder with the --batch_accel option.

Other tasks

antique_file_deleter

It removes output files that are older than the oldest WU in the database (not including "no_delete" WUs). These files are typically created when BOINC clients return results after the corresponding WU has been deleted from the database.

The antique files are deleted by using a Unix 'find' command to locate files that are older than the oldest workunit. The find command will work on NFS mounted file systems, and will ignore .nfs stale file markers. The output of find is limited by a 'head' to 50000 files by default.

If the web-server account on your system is not 'apache', add a <httpd_user> element to your config.xml file. Otherwise antique deletion won't work.

Command-line options:

-d N

set debug output level (1/2/3/4)

--dry_run

don't delete any files, just log what would be deleted

--usleep N

sleep this number of usecs after each examined file (Throttles I/O if there are many files.)

badge_assign.php

Assign badges based on credit percentiles.

Removes files from the upload hierarchy that are older than any workunit.

census

Compute the shares of different homogeneous redundancy classes.

clean_cache.php

Delete files from the web cache until free-space criteria are met.

db_dump

Write statistics data to XML files for export. Recommended period: 1 day.

delete_expired_tokens.php

Delete tokens stored on the token table (such as tokens used in confirming email address change or confirming the user wants to delete their account). Recommended period: 1 day

delete_expired_users_and_hosts.php

Delete users and hosts off of the user_deleted and host_deleted table when they are older than 60 days. This is the final step in the delete account process. Recommended period: 1 day.

delete_spammers.php

Detect and remove various types of spam.

get_versions.php

Download current BOINC client info from the main BOINC site. Use if your project uses simplified attach.

notify.php

Send notification digest emails to users. Recommended period: 1 day

team_import.php

Import new BOINC-wide teams from a central repository.

update_forum_activities.php

Recompute 'popularity' estimates for threads and posts in the Questions and Answers message boards. Recommended period: 1 hour.

update_profile_pages.php

Generate HTML files with lists of links to user profiles, organized alphabetically and by country. Recommended period: a few days.

update_stats

Update the recent average credit fields of users, teams, and hosts. This is important if you use send personalized mass emails or reminder emails, or use recent credit to enable message-board posting. Recommended period: daily.

update_uotd.php

Select a new User of the Day. Period: 1 day.