Xsos Usb V0.7

Well today we have a brand new version of XSOS, this edition should support different media types, so we NEED it to be tested on Hard drives, Compact flash, USB thumb drives, or any other storage device you feel like playing around with. Also we have added a remote control application, which if you run a WCG Farm you might like. You can download V0.7 here http://nnstep.com/boinic/garbage/XSOS_USB.v0.7/
Please please please please please read the manual included in the rar.
Installation just like all previous editions.

I'm having trouble with the file. When I try to unpack it, it gives an error.

Crc failed in OS\OS.r00 : file is broken

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Originally Posted by xVeinx

I'm having trouble with the file. When I try to unpack it, it gives an error.

Crc failed in OS\OS.r00 : file is broken

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did you download all of the files and check to make sure that the MD5 matched?

I re-downloaded the files and checked the MD5, and everything is fine now.

D/loading now and will report back tonight :)

NOTE Please use windows XP drivers

I've been lurking for a while now and thought I'd join XS to post my results with XSOS. I tried it on my primary rig (QX6700, P5B Deluxe) but couldn't get the network working. Setup.exe from the LAN driver wouldn't run and using the device manager to update the driver wouldn't work either, said it couldn't find the drivers no matter where I pointed it to look.

So I tried it on one of my farm animals (Q6600, DS3). Same results with the device manager but low and behold setup.exe for the LAN drivers worked! :D It's been up and crunching for about 6 hours now....sweet! OS is installed on a 1GB OCZ Rally, boot-up is slow but not too bad. About 3 minutes from hitting the power button to the reaching the desktop. BOINC benchmarks are identical to before with a stripped down XP installed on an old IDE 40GB drive.

The only issue I have now is that I'm unable to change the computer name. I can make the change in the network manager and it sticks, but the change does not show up on the WCG site or in BOINCview. Rebooting reverts the computer name to minint and restarting the network manager has no effect. Any tips here? It's not an issue for the time being since I only have this installed on 1 rig but I plan on installing it on 3 more so it could get confusing.

Keep up the great work guys! You're very close to having a perfect crunching OS! :cool:

I'm more interested in getting rid of 4 ancient, noisy, hot, power sucking HD's than benchmarks. I'm using BOINC version 5.10.7 which seems to have a more reliable and stable benchmark routine than the 5.8.x versions so maybe that explains my observations. Also, OCZ Rally dual-channel drives are very fast compared to many on the market.

working perfectly from a usb stick (4gb corsair voyager gt) using the BadAxe sys in sig.
installed network drivers, started the network app, loaded boinc and after filling in my details, was off crunching

i'll have to see if i can get hold of an old hard drive to test :)

ok, what is XSOS?

I have it working using the Win2003 driver. The color is rough though.

Kingston DataTraveler 512mb

nn-step said to use XP drivers

what am I? Chopped liver?

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Originally Posted by RSmura

what am I? Chopped liver?

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A very lean OS made by nn_step. The idea is to use it as a crunching and benching OS that is light on resources and size.

this version is not for benching

it is only for crunching so u won't need to use a hard drive in the crunchers

If I have some time tonight I'll dig the HD out of my crunching box, format it, drop XSOS on it and do some BOINC benchmarks. I can't imagine there will be much of a difference because the BOINC benchmark only measures CPU performance as far as I know. Plus the HD I'll be using is old and slow. But I'll let the numbers speak for themselves once I have them.

Does the "Computer Name" function work for anyone? I just can't seem to get it to work. I even went into the registry and changed every reference I could find like "Computer Name" and "Host Name" with no joy. Where exactly is XSOS pulling the name "minint" from?

Alright people, understand that you are to report everything. It is my job to decide how important the feedback is. If something is beyond understanding, tell/ask me. If you don't like something or for some strange reason when you do a few things, stuff starts to crash, tell ME. If the difference in points between a hard drive and the Flash drive, tell me. I don't have time to chase down every last single minor detail, thus I NEED HELP and all you need to do is tell me: Thoughts, concerns, problems, ideas, and suggestions. The More you put into it, the better it will become

Some BOINC benchmarks:

Test configuration

Q6600 356x9 3.2GHz
Gigabyte DS3 Rev 3.3
2x1GB Crucial Rendition dual channel 5-5-5-15 1:1 712MHz
BOINC version 5.10.7

XSOS USB v0.7 installed on a 1GB OCZ Rally dual channel flash drive:

Boot time, power on to desktop: 3 minutes.

BOINC Benchmarks
Whetstone, Dhrystone
3148, 6887
3161, 7000
3141, 6998
average: 3150, 6962

XSOS USB v0.7 installed on a 15GB IDE Maxtor HD 5400RPM.

Boot time, power on to desktop: 3 minutes.

BOINC Benchmarks
Whetstone, Dhrystone
3150, 7237
3151, 7203
3151, 7180
average: 3151, 7207

So there's about a 3.5% gain in Dhrystone when using a HD. Maybe the difference is greater with a a newer, faster drive. But IIRC, BOINC mainly uses Whetstone when calculating the amount of points per hour a machine should claim. Somebody correct me on this if I'm wrong.

Been very crook last few days so testing has been on hold :(
I hope to try out in the next day or so

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Originally Posted by fallwind

Does the "Computer Name" function work for anyone? I just can't seem to get it to work. I even went into the registry and changed every reference I could find like "Computer Name" and "Host Name" with no joy. Where exactly is XSOS pulling the name "minint" from?

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Open the network parameters by double clicking the network Icon you should see in your system tray. In there, you'll see some icons down the left side of the window. Click on the one called "computer". You will see the name "minint" and can change away......

My test results.

Farm 02 Q6600 ASUS P5B Deluxe. Everything came up fine, used the "wiki" from the 0.60 thread and it came up without problems. The network comes up by itself on reboot and everything appears to be good.

Farm 03 Q6600 EVGA 680i . Not so good on this machine. It gives the following blue screen on boot. "A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.....blah, blah, blah..."
STOP 0x0000007B (0xF78AE524, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

I tried two different sticks on this, no luck. It will not boot.

EDIT: I also tried unplugging the HD in that machine, no luck.

Regards,
Bob

nice, I am glad that I can boot from both sticks and memory cards,
but best option is a fast USB stick - Buffalo Firestix is my choice,

is it possible to add a 1680x1050 resolution? or any graphics driver?

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Originally Posted by Aerosupra

nice, I am glad that I can boot from both sticks and memory cards,
but best option is a fast USB stick - Buffalo Firestix is my choice,

is it possible to add a 1680x1050 resolution? or any graphics driver?

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in theory but the real question is why do you need better graphics for a cruncher?
(we are going to include GPU folding later on, so we do understand that possible aspect)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by nn_step

in theory but the real question is why do you need better graphics for a cruncher?
(we are going to include GPU folding later on, so we do understand that possible aspect)

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so should I understand that this version is meant for crunchin purposes?

only thing I wanted was support for a native resolution of my screens - 1680x1050 and 1280x800

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aerosupra

so should I understand that this version is meant for crunchin purposes?

only thing I wanted was support for a native resolution of my screens - 1680x1050 and 1280x800

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Ah, I see. I'll look into it :toast:

I keep on getting bluescreen after reboot, that says to run chkdsk.
Thanks

I have not have any problems getting the os up and running and it seems to run well.
I don't have it in service yet but hope to do some more testing soon.
I did want to know tho if there was a way to change the size of the secondary partition that it makes when you boot it up? The reason I am asking is I would like to be able to run a web browser like Firefox on it so I can do things like download the FAH client (assuming that it works on this os. I have not tried it yet.). The other reason I wanted it was I thought that this would make a good os that I could keep on a pen drive and take with me and run with firefox on other computers. I have not tried to boot it on another computer after I booted it on the first one.
I have tried to run the Firefox extract/setup and it does not load at all.
I then extracted the files and tried to run the setup program and It loads the first screen but as soon as you hit next it closes.
I then tried copying the installed files over from the other computer and entering in the registry information but I don't have enough space for the profile files on that secondary partition. I don't know it this will work any way.

other wise it looks great.

I did install a graphics driver with out any problems
I did have to install the chipset driver before It would find the network card so I could install the driver for it.
System specs tested so far
Albatron SLI Nforce4 motherboard
dual evga 6600GTs in sli
1gb geil ram 2x512
amd 3200 939
memorex 1gb pen drive

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BugsBMD

I have not have any problems getting the os up and running and it seems to run well.
I don't have it in service yet but hope to do some more testing soon.
I did want to know tho if there was a way to change the size of the secondary partition that it makes when you boot it up? The reason I am asking is I would like to be able to run a web browser like Firefox on it so I can do things like download the FAH client (assuming that it works on this os. I have not tried it yet.). The other reason I wanted it was I thought that this would make a good os that I could keep on a pen drive and take with me and run with firefox on other computers. I have not tried to boot it on another computer after I booted it on the first one.
I have tried to run the Firefox extract/setup and it does not load at all.
I then extracted the files and tried to run the setup program and It loads the first screen but as soon as you hit next it closes.
I then tried copying the installed files over from the other computer and entering in the registry information but I don't have enough space for the profile files on that secondary partition. I don't know it this will work any way.

other wise it looks great.

I did install a graphics driver with out any problems
I did have to install the chipset driver before It would find the network card so I could install the driver for it.
System specs tested so far
Albatron SLI Nforce4 motherboard
dual evga 6600GTs in sli
1gb geil ram 2x512
amd 3200 939
memorex 1gb pen drive

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Did you manage to enable SLI?

Try this:
http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/por...1.0.6_beta.zip

That version is totally self contained, all user info resides in the same directory...I've used it for years, simply drop it in and have all your bookmarks, passwords and cookies right there:up:

Simply drop it on the stick.:D

for additional apps that will always work
http://portableapps.com/apps

Just experienced a major crash. 3 days worth of work units errored out with zero CPU time and the message log saying that the files relating to the WU's were missing or corrupt. I tried resetting the project with no success. Removed the flash drive and ran some tests on it an it appears to be OK. I'm not sure what happened here but the machine is back running on a HD for now.

OK I will try that firefox edition. I have not tried to enable SLI. I will see if I can but I don't think that it will do much since thats not the purpose of this OS. I will report back when I can get time to run it again.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by fallwind

Just experienced a major crash. 3 days worth of work units errored out with zero CPU time and the message log saying that the files relating to the WU's were missing or corrupt. I tried resetting the project with no success. Removed the flash drive and ran some tests on it an it appears to be OK. I'm not sure what happened here but the machine is back running on a HD for now.

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Definately USB stick related, the OS won't cause that.

Yeah, my thoughs exactly but my initial tests on the stick came up negative. Maybe I'll try copying a large .rar file on and off of it a few times to see if there's any corruption.

Whats the best why to install this onto a hd. I tryed just pluging in the hd i wanted it on on another pc then formated the drive and droped the files on it but that just gives boot fail.

look around for XSos v.2.02 for a hdd

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Originally Posted by [XC] Luckygriff

Whats the best why to install this onto a hd. I tryed just pluging in the hd i wanted it on on another pc then formated the drive and droped the files on it but that just gives boot fail.

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You need to have a bootsector on the HD, format only will not suffice.

There are numerous ways to arrange that, a few software out there that can handle that.

In worst scenario you can simply start an regular Windows install on the disk, and after the formatting is done and the filecopying starts simply turn off the PC and you have a bootsector on it;)

After that you delete any files that has been copied there and drop the files from the XSOS there as per instructions.

Well before I could have a reply with problems some one give me more answers got to love this forum

I'm happy to be of any help, that's what makes this forum great!..:up:

Yea that way worked great just started xp install then powered off at 4% and just copied files over to that hd booted up just fine. Now for driver fun :D

as Clint said there are many ways to do it but it is made to fit on a usb drive where as v2.02 is made for the hard disk

I was looking to just use a usb drive but the mobo would not boot from it :( . Poor old 939 agp board :( . But got it on a pos 10gb ide drive :D oh anyone having problems with the wcg right now I cant seem to login.

hey anyone know how to make the ram drive lager need like 10mb or so nf2 driver install sigh :(

Formatted my hard drives with a XPpro install and then copied files onto them. Both servers I am testing on went great. Nn_step, I am impressed.

But… I cannot get install programs to run. I wanted to upgrade the boinc client and it starts to go, asks where to put it and goes away – on both machines. I tried to load firefox portable as well and got the same problem.

I'm having trouble loading the os.

It is the ntoskernel.exe is not there or the inf file.

Edit: Downloaded it again same problem tried 2 diff sticks.