Posts by Jazzop

1) Message boards : Questions and problems : WCG keeps inserting itself as my account manager (Message 78686)
Posted 6 Jun 2017 by Jazzop
Post:
You still have preferences from a project regardless if you ever touched them. They may be the default settings, but they always exist.

If you want to shift it to another project, modify the preferences at another project site, such as Einstein. Just slightly change something such as from 100 to 101 and then it' should shift off WCG.


The whole point of using BAM is to control preferences centrally. If I do what you suggest, will BAM eventually (through its periodic polling/updating) reset the change to conform with the preferences I have set in BAM? Now that I think about it, I guess I could change something like a PrimeGrid subproject, which BAM doesn't control...
2) Message boards : Questions and problems : WCG keeps inserting itself as my account manager (Message 78626)
Posted 5 Jun 2017 by Jazzop
Post:
Does it really say exactly that? I don't use an account manager, so I can't reproduce exactly, but I've looked in two places:

My Event Log says

30-May-2017 13:05:30 [Einstein@Home] General prefs: from Einstein@Home (last modified ---)
(there should be a date-stamp in there, but because of a long-standing bug in BOINC, it gets eaten during the transfer process)

And the local preferences dialog says

Using local preferences.
Click "Use web prefs" to use web-based preferences from http://einstein.phys.ewn.edu/
In both cases, the word is 'from' - that's where my chosen preferences must have been changed most recently. But it doesn't say 'managed by' - and I don't see any of the management tools like 'synchronise'.

If you feel that the dialog header should be modified when Account Manager tools are activated (i.e., when you have successfully attached your BOINC client to an Account Manager), I suggest you open an issue at https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/issues.


I would post screenshots, but the forum does not seem to have the capability to upload images. (If you can tell me how, I will do it. No results when I search for "upload image" or "post "image".)

Yes, the Computing Preferences window really says "Using web-based preferences from http://www.worldommunitygrid.org/", just to the right of the yellow bang and just below the window title bar.

My event log, upon launching BOINC from a dead stop, has the following lines in sequence (nothing omitted in between), after the hardware benchmarking and project URL run-down:
05-Jun-17 06:43:35 | World Community Grid | General prefs: from World Community Grid (last modified 27-Jan-2017 14:43:27)
05-Jun-17 06:43:35 | World Community Grid | Host location: none
05-Jun-17 06:43:35 | World Community Grid | General prefs: using your defaults
05-Jun-17 06:43:35 |  | Preferences:
05-Jun-17 06:43:35 |  | max memory usage when active: 2876.17MB
05-Jun-17 06:43:35 |  | max memory usage when idle: 3451.41MB
05-Jun-17 06:43:35 |  | max disk usage: 10.00GB
05-Jun-17 06:43:35 |  | don't use GPU while active
05-Jun-17 06:43:35 |  | suspend work if non-BOINC CPU load exceeds 25%
05-Jun-17 06:43:35 |  | (to change preferences, visit a project web site or select Preferences in the Manager)


From BAM's website: World Community Grid only supports reading data from the project. BAM! can't update settings! meaning that if you set the preferences at WCG, that BAM can only read them, but if you then set preferences through BAM, they cannot be updated on the WCG website.

But to get to the bottom of that, you best ask this at either the World Community Grid forums or the BAM forums, as they're better of answering these things than we are.


I have never used WCG's website to modify any preferences. It has been a long time, but I'm pretty sure I signed up for the project through BAM. I have used BAM exclusively for 6+ years. Pretty much the only time I even view a project site is usually when I want to modify subprojects, mostly PrimeGrid.

I asked this question here because the problem appears to be with BOINC Manager itself. Before popsting, I searched the BAM and WCG forums to see if anyone else had a similar issue, with null results.
3) Message boards : Questions and problems : WCG keeps inserting itself as my account manager (Message 78531)
Posted 2 Jun 2017 by Jazzop
Post:
Then why would the BOINC Manager display WCG as the web-based preference manager? Shouldn't that text field be off-limits to anything other than the actual web-based manager that I configured during the installation of BOINC (when it prompts you either attach to projects or use an account manager)?
4) Message boards : Questions and problems : WCG keeps inserting itself as my account manager (Message 78529)
Posted 2 Jun 2017 by Jazzop
Post:
I have used BAM as my account manager for years. I've been dormant with BOINC lately due to a move. I just launched BOINC (an existing installation of 7.6.33 that I did not allow to run for a few months), and I wondered why it didn't suspend while the machine was in use. So I pulled up the Computing Preferences and noticed that it said "Using web-based preferences from www.worldcommunitygrid.org". WTF?

I then went to Tools --> Synchronize with Boincstats BAM [notice that BAM was prepopulated in the drop-down menu]. After syncing, it accepted the preferences that are set in BAM, and BAM was returned to its rightful spot in the "using web-based preferences..." text of the Computing Preferences dialog box.

After letting it run untouched for 2 hours, I returned to the computer to find the WCG had again usurped BAM as the source of my computing preferences.

I have never used WCG as an account manager, and I even had to request a password reset when I went to their website to try and find out what was going on. I can't find anything on their site that even offers the possibility of using WCG as an account manager.

What gives?
5) Message boards : Web interfaces : Any plans to upgrade BOINC website SSL algorithm away from SHA-1? (Message 75295)
Posted 13 Jan 2017 by Jazzop
Post:
If Firefox and/or other browsers run on XP and support modern encryption, why should anyone make special concessions to those who want to use IE8?
6) Message boards : Web interfaces : Any plans to upgrade BOINC website SSL algorithm away from SHA-1? (Message 75100)
Posted 4 Jan 2017 by Jazzop
Post:
SHA-1 is marked for death by many industry giants like G**gle and Mozilla, which will impact many casual users who just trust whatever their browsers tell them is safe/unsafe. In my case, organizational networking/security policy is soon going to block SHA-1 except for an administrator-maintained whitelist, which means no user-added exceptions.

A search for "SHA-1" in these forums only brought up one post in a SETI thread, so I wonder if this is even on the radar for the folks who maintain this website. Perhaps the *.berkeley.edu TLD has some bureacratic baggage that the BOINC department can't control?
7) Message boards : Questions and problems : Proposal to deploy BOINC over workplace AD domain (30 clients) (Message 71170)
Posted 3 Aug 2016 by Jazzop
Post:
I recall seeing in the past a wiki or something about deploying BOINC in a workplace/enterprise setting, but I can't find it when I need it!

I work at a nonprofit biomedical research facility with about 30 client PCs (mostly Win 7) connected to an Acitve Directory domain. Informal discussions with the executive staff about BOINC have been productive and they are interested in running BOINC on all our PCs (crunching for existing projects that are related to our research disciplines). I am tasked with submitting a formal proposal.

The ideal scenario goes like this:
1. Install BOINC clients (without GUI) on a set of domain-connected machines over AD/WSUS.
2. Point all clients to a single app_config file on a network share.
3. Administer the clients centrally as needed.

My questions so far are:
1. Can the remote install be done using native Windows Server roles/features or do I need to use a custom installer program?
2. Are there any reasons why I shouldn't use a single BOINC account for the entire enterprise?
3. Is there an existing calculation or formula somewhere for estimating our increased power consumption by running BOINC? For my proposal to be convincing, I need to compare the delta-power consumption against the variable billing schemes available from the power company. I'd like to have a backup proposal that shows a lower cost if we suspend BOINC during peak energy billing hours.

(I know there is extra wear & tear on equipment and cooling costs, but the equipment is handed down for free from our sponsoring hospital and the offices where the PCs live are excessively cold because of poor HVAC design).

Network load should be irrelevant, as syncing can be scheduled for the middle of the night.

If anyone already has some canned proposals and/or deployment technical checklists, please share!
8) Message boards : Questions and problems : Do any projects currently run on Itanium (IA-64) under any OS? (Message 70889)
Posted 16 Jul 2016 by Jazzop
Post:
different physical machines is the requirement on those results needing verification, but if this is still ensured with the 'allow multiple clients' or multiple VMs on one device is doubtful.

Would it make any difference if the VMs are running on a blade server? The specific machine I had in mind when starting this thread is an SGI Altix 450 with 16 IA-64 (x2 CPUs each) blades. Sort of blurs the line separating "different physical machines", don't you think?

To add another wrinkle, what about blade servers that can handle blades with different CPU architectures? I think you can populate an IBM BladeCenter with x86/x64, POWER/PPC, Cell, and UltraSPARC blades simultaneously. If that doesn't count as different physical machines, I give up!
9) Message boards : Questions and problems : Do any projects currently run on Itanium (IA-64) under any OS? (Message 70859)
Posted 14 Jul 2016 by Jazzop
Post:
I see no problem with a user validating their own work as long as it is different machines.


But would they be "different machines" if they had the same client code compiled by the same person using the same compiler options, if those options were wrong?

The 2 results could be the same, while at the same time being the wrong answer.


The old "Precision vs. Accuracy" problem.
10) Message boards : Questions and problems : Do any projects currently run on Itanium (IA-64) under any OS? (Message 70852)
Posted 14 Jul 2016 by Jazzop
Post:
If the project requires a second copy for validation, they probably don't want those being used as the odds of having someone validate the work unit would be slim.


That's a good point; I didn't consider it. These days it seems like more projects are requiring the wingman thing. On that note, not to get too off-topic, would it be possible to be my own wingman with an Itanium bladeserver, which could run dozens of VMs, as long as some of them were registered under a different BOINC account?
11) Message boards : Questions and problems : Do any projects currently run on Itanium (IA-64) under any OS? (Message 70846)
Posted 14 Jul 2016 by Jazzop
Post:
Thread title says it all. Don't bring up http://dotsch.de/; all his ports are either for shut-down projects (R.I.P. SIMAP!) or too old for the current science applications.
12) Message boards : Questions and problems : Firewall log: traffic blocked to web.statseb.fr (Message 70569)
Posted 30 Jun 2016 by Jazzop
Post:
Is it the server for signatures on this BOINC forum or that of some project's site? I don't use signatures, so I assume it is trying to pull data for all the other forum participants' own signatures?

Regardless, the real questions are:

1. Why is this traffic originating from a machine that spends its time as a headless domain controller that crunches WUs in its spare time? What application could be triggering this, if not a web browser?

2. Why is this traffic flooding? Example:

Jun 30 02:04:10 LAN Default deny rule IPv4 (1000000103) 192.168.0.50:59589 91.121.40.124:80 TCP:RA
Jun 30 02:03:58
Jun 30 02:03:53
Jun 30 02:03:50
Jun 30 02:03:49
...etc.
13) Message boards : Questions and problems : Firewall log: traffic blocked to web.statseb.fr (Message 70316)
Posted 20 Jun 2016 by Jazzop
Post:
My firewall log shows a bunch of blocked TCP:RA traffic from one of my machines outbound to 91.121.40.124:80, which resolves as web.statseb.fr

That URL has something to do with BOINC signature stats, but I can't figure out what it is or why one of my machines wants to talk to it.
14) Message boards : GPUs : PCIe x8 GPUs that can crunch BOINC? (Message 65579)
Posted 24 Nov 2015 by Jazzop
Post:
I have no doubt that the RAID controller is the source of the problem. It's an Asus PIKE card, which is a proprietary adaptation of an LSI 1068E chipset. I would love to replace it with something more normal, but I'm not in a position to do that right now. The motherboard is PCIe ver. 2.1 I think. I currently have a GTX 750Ti humming along smoothly. The GPU I tried was a 8800GTS that I found collecting dust on my shelf. When I put it in, the computer wouldn't even boot far enough to enter the BIOS settings.

The other machine I really want to give a GPU is an IBM x3650, which is in a 2U case and only has x8 slots.
15) Message boards : GPUs : PCIe x8 GPUs that can crunch BOINC? (Message 65564)
Posted 23 Nov 2015 by Jazzop
Post:
I have a couple of servers that only support PCIe x8 slots. Are there any GPUs out there with a PCIe x8 form factor (preferably low-profile, so I don't have to get a riser card) that would be worth messing with to function strictly as BOINC processors? The only thing I could find for an x8 slot was an adapter that allowed connecting an external array of GPUs that was ridiculously expensive.

One of these servers has an x16 physical slot that is limited to x8 speed due to a RAID adapter that quasi-shares the bus channel. I tried plugging in an nVidia x16 card, but it caused serious problems. My guess is that this consumer-grade card did not know how to reduce its expectations to work in what is effectively an x8 slot. Is there a way to evaluate x16 form factor GPUs for their ability to function when the channel is reduced to x8 speeds?
16) Message boards : Questions and problems : Are workunits "owned" exclusively by one client? (Message 65178)
Posted 1 Nov 2015 by Jazzop
Post:
Bear with me, I have multiple questions revolving around a single idea...

1. Once a client begins a workunit, is it owned exclusively by that client?

2. Can multiple clients share the same directory (i.e., on a network drive)?

3. Can multiple clients take turns crunching a single workunit?

I would like to have a single pool of WUs shared by several physical machines/thin clients on a LAN with a shared data drive. I expect that this is only possible if the BOINC client is capable of locking out WUs while they are in use and returning them to the pool with a checkpoint/state file that allows a different client to resume the work properly. Even if this were possible under the BOINC framework (of which I am doubtful), I also expect that individual projects may have QA/QC restrictions that couldn't cope with multiple clients having their hands in the cookie jar of a single WU.

Despite increased network load (which is my decision to accept), I see the major advantage being fewer abandoned WUs due to unanticipated machine downtime. In my situation, this is a significant problem, as the machines in question are only used for BOINC and as a laboratory for playing with obscure and obsolete hardware & software. This tinkering often results in extended periods of downtime to deal with configuration issues and such.

Yes, I know that I have the option of attaching them only to projects with very short WUs. But I am an idealist, not a pragmatist.
17) Message boards : The Lounge : supercomputing power from e-waste - feasible? (Message 65174)
Posted 1 Nov 2015 by Jazzop
Post:
I've been doing this for years, although it's getting harder as fewer projects support orphaned hardware (e.g., MIPS, PPC, SPARC, DEC Alpha), and the workunits are more demanding of advanced CPU instruction sets, memory, and so forth. SETI is pretty much the only recourse for really old, slow, or weird machines.

I'm just about to fire up an old dual-CPU Pentium II server and see what I can get it to do. This tends to be a winter thing, since the heat generated by several old machines crunching at maximum load is unbearable in the summer.

It also helps to have all utilities included in your rent!
18) Message boards : Projects : Run VirtualBox projects under Hyper-V instead? (Message 65131)
Posted 29 Oct 2015 by Jazzop
Post:
Is there a simple way to run projects that use the vboxwrapper under Hyper-V instead of VirtualBox? Preferably by converting rather the existing image rather than building a Hyper-V image from scratch.
19) Message boards : GPUs : Laptop hybrid GPU woes (Intel HD4600 & AMD HD 8790M) (Message 64906)
Posted 16 Oct 2015 by Jazzop
Post:
So I have this Dell Latitude E6540 that apparently has two GPUs: Intel HD4600 and AMD HD 8790M). This seems like a really stupid design, but I assume the Intel GPU is integrated into the CPU or chipset somehow and it isn't powerful enough so they threw in the AMD.

When I first acquired this thing, I installed both the Intel and AMD drivers needed to enable BOINC to crunch on the GPUs. And it worked for a couple of months. Both GPUs got used by various projects. However, I kept having issues every few weeks with the HDMI port just quitting working, which is mission-critical for this laptop. Each time, I would have to reinstall the AMD drivers and CCC to make it work again. Now the whole thing is a mess. The AMD GPU is completely unrecognized in the device manager, showing as "Standard VGA graphics adapter". All Start Menu links to both the AMD and Intel graphics controls were gone, although the programs were still installed and I could launch them by CLI. So I unistalled ALL video drivers, used the AMD clean uninstall program, and reinstalled everything again. The Intel GPU is working. The AMD one is not. I tried the beta drver, to no effect. I tried the official Dell driver...nope.

Can anyone help me?

Dell Latitude E6540
Core i7-4600M
Win 7 x32
20) Message boards : Questions and problems : Resource sharing is not properly functional (Message 59194)
Posted 31 Dec 2014 by Jazzop
Post:
Stop trying to understand the work-sharing algorithm. I gave up a long time ago, when it was significantly changed after version 5.x or 6.x (I don't remember). There are plenty of detailed explanations floating around on this forum regarding the rationale behind the algorithm. I think it fails to satisfy the observer mainly because so many projects do a bad job of estimating their tasks' Time to Completion, especially when that results in a very short deadline and BOINC gets all panicky and urgent. To get the outcome you seek, you either have to micromanage BOINC constantly or leave it alone for a long period of time so it can "learn" how long the assortment of projects/tasks you have chosen actually perform on your machine.


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