I have a dreadfully slow internet connection that I'm sharing with other computers, and I've been having some difficulty downloading BOINC files since sometimes multiple projects are all competing for what little bandwidth I have available.

Is there any way to limit downloads in the Transfers tab of the BOINC Manager to one file at a time? I think this would reduce the occurrence of retries and download failures.

Thanks.

There are options in the Network usage part of preferences, to limit the transfer rate.

That only controls how fast or slow the downloads are though, correct? What I'd like is to be able to dedicate all available bandwidth to a single file at a time instead of downloading multiple files concurrently (and thus extremely slowly).

There's no hidden configuration file to do this like you can in Firefox or uTorrent or whatever?

You can also create a cc_config.xml file in your BOINC data directory and enter options to limit the number of simultaneous file transfers:

<max_file_xfers>N</max_file_xfers>
Maximum number of simultaneous file transfers (default 8). 
<max_file_xfers_per_project>N</max_file_xfers_per_project>
Maximum number of simultaneous file transfers per project (default 2).

Gruß,
Gundolf
[edit]You posted your second entry while I was composing mine :-)[/edit]

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Computer sind nicht alles im Leben. (Kleiner Scherz)

This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!

Edit: I'm a total Linux newbie and while I was able to find the cc_config.xml file I need to edit, it is Read Only and I don't know what to do about that. How would I temporarily change the file permissions so that I can add that bit of markup to the file?

I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 if that matters...

That would be the chmod command.

I found it by entering "unix access rights" in a google window. ;-) (My last unix experience dates back a few years.)

If you need more info on chmod, try the unix manual pages (RTFM;-).

By the way, what BOINC version do you run? I'm asking because usually there's no cc_config.xml on a new install.

Gruß,
Gundolf

There IS by default a cc_config.xml, at least the packages 6.10.17 and 6.10.58 from Synaptic have a fully populated version put under Ubuntu in its own dir /etc/boinc-client, isolated from the rest of the data_dir (linked file), so its less likely to mess up things.

Edit is simple by doing a sudo gedit /etc/boinc-client/cc_config.xml without having to meddle with ownerships and whatnot. If one does and not set it back, it could result in the daemon not starting up at boot time.

Thanks SekeRob2, that did the trick. :)

Gundolf, I did search... I don't want you to think I didn't try to figure it out myself first. I was missing the gedit portion of the command I needed. I thought I could do that sudo bit on the file and then open it to edit it. I must stress I'm a complete Linux newbie (brand new computer, first one with no Windows), learning as I go.

Thanks again.

Please, consider reading "Debian Reference". It's quite big, but it's good reading anyway. And consider moving to any other distribution.

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I'm counting for science,
points just make me sick.