Posts by rhb

1) Message boards : Questions and problems : Boinc tasks pause for one second about every five seconds (Message 35304)
Posted 20 Oct 2010 by rhb
Post:
OK, problem solved. I get my prefs from milkyway, which I was disconnected from. I reconnected, went in and looked at the prefs, and it showed 100. Since there is nowhere to set it in the client, I didn't expect it to be overridden.

I looked at the .xml's. The prefs had 100, but the override had 80. Maybe I put it in there manually or a different boinc manager wrote it. Thanks a lot for pointing me to the right place.
2) Message boards : Questions and problems : Boinc tasks pause for one second about every five seconds (Message 35266)
Posted 18 Oct 2010 by rhb
Post:
I noticed recently that cpu time drops to near-zero periodically on all four cores while Boinc tasks are running in the background. I may be losing as much as one second in every five.

I am running Boinc 6.2.18 on Ubuntu Linux 9.04, kernel 2.6.29-14-generic, 32 bit.
Four CPUs, Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q8200 @ 2.33GHz. 1.5GB RAM, 1.9GB swap.

The only way I know it pauses is from the system monitor "cpu history" graph. I originally had it sampling every 3 seconds, and saw an odd pattern. I changed it to sample every .25 seconds, and now see a clear 1-second "U" shape with all four processors dropping well below 40% every time. I did verify that a compute-bound program kept one processor graph up. I'm not fully convinced it's a Boinc bug, but it's clearly Boinc-related. The "waiting channel" for the Boinc tasks sometimes flashes "hrtimer_nanosleep", presumably in sync with the drop in cpu usage.

Mostly I want to know if anyone else has seen anything remotely like this. I wondered if it was configuration-dependent. Conceivably it might pause to check if the cpu is in use elsewhere by pausing. Either Boinc or my OS might have a "duty cycle" feature, possibly because of or to prevent overheating. I will submit config files if they appear to be relevant.


Here are the messages when I restarted the client:

Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:11 PM EDT||Starting BOINC client version 6.2.18 for i686-pc-linux-gnu
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:11 PM EDT||log flags: task, file_xfer, sched_ops
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:11 PM EDT||Libraries: libcurl/7.18.2 OpenSSL/0.9.8g zlib/1.2.3.3 libidn/1.10
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:11 PM EDT||Data directory: /var/lib/boinc-client
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT||Processor: 4 GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad  CPU   Q8200  @ 2.33GHz [Family 6 Model 23 Stepping 7]
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT||Processor features: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 lahf_lm
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT||OS: Linux: 2.6.28-14-generic
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT||Memory: 1.46 GB physical, 1.86 GB virtual
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT||Disk: 8.25 GB total, 1.31 GB free
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT||Local time is UTC -4 hours
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT||No coprocessors
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT|World Community Grid|URL: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/; Computer ID: 922063; location: (none); project prefs: default
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT|boincsimap|URL: http://boinc.bio.wzw.tum.de/boincsimap/; Computer ID: 144534; location: (none); project prefs: default
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT|Poem@Home|URL: http://boinc.fzk.de/poem/; Computer ID: 47818; location: (none); project prefs: default
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT|FreeHAL@home|URL: http://www.freehal.net/freehal_at_home/; Computer ID: 15772; location: home; project prefs: default
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT|rosetta@home|URL: http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/; Computer ID: 1056045; location: (none); project prefs: default
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT|QMC@HOME|URL: http://qah.uni-muenster.de/; Computer ID: 144725; location: home; project prefs: default
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT|orbit@home|URL: http://orbit.psi.edu/oah/; Computer ID: 19227; location: (none); project prefs: default
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT|lhcathome|URL: http://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/; Computer ID: 9849984; location: home; project prefs: default
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT|yoyo@home|URL: http://www.rechenkraft.net/yoyo/; Computer ID: 44880; location: (none); project prefs: default
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT|Einstein@Home|URL: http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/; Computer ID: 1919156; location: home; project prefs: default
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT||General prefs: from http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/ (last modified 06-Sep-2009 18:07:44)
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT||Host location: none
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT||General prefs: using your defaults
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT||Reading preferences override file
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT||Preferences limit memory usage when active to 599.53MB
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT||Preferences limit memory usage when idle to 1049.18MB
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT||Preferences limit disk usage to 0.67GB
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT|QMC@HOME|Restarting task qasino_b3lypqz-E10_iso34.7204_0 using qasinoAlpha version 501
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT|World Community Grid|Restarting task c4cw_target02_032156235_1 using c4cw version 613
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT|World Community Grid|Restarting task faah16358_ZINC04723609_WT2md01450CTP_01_1 using faah version 607
Sun 17 Oct 2010 09:59:13 PM EDT|QMC@HOME|Restarting task qasino_b3lypqz-E11_iso34.3886_0 using qasinoAlpha version 501
Sun 17 Oct 2010 10:00:20 PM EDT||General prefs: from http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/ (last modified 06-Sep-2009 18:07:44)
Sun 17 Oct 2010 10:00:20 PM EDT||Host location: none
Sun 17 Oct 2010 10:00:20 PM EDT||General prefs: using your defaults
Sun 17 Oct 2010 10:00:20 PM EDT||Reading preferences override file
Sun 17 Oct 2010 10:00:20 PM EDT||Preferences limit memory usage when active to 599.53MB
Sun 17 Oct 2010 10:00:20 PM EDT||Preferences limit memory usage when idle to 1049.18MB
Sun 17 Oct 2010 10:00:20 PM EDT||Preferences limit disk usage to 0.67GB
Sun 17 Oct 2010 10:00:58 PM EDT||General prefs: from http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/ (last modified 06-Sep-2009 18:07:44)
Sun 17 Oct 2010 10:00:58 PM EDT||Host location: none
Sun 17 Oct 2010 10:00:58 PM EDT||General prefs: using your defaults
Sun 17 Oct 2010 10:00:58 PM EDT||Reading preferences override file
Sun 17 Oct 2010 10:00:58 PM EDT||Preferences limit memory usage when active to 599.53MB
Sun 17 Oct 2010 10:00:58 PM EDT||Preferences limit memory usage when idle to 1049.18MB
Sun 17 Oct 2010 10:00:58 PM EDT||Preferences limit disk usage to 0.67GB
3) Message boards : Projects : Project TANPAKU (Message 22890)
Posted 5 Feb 2009 by rhb
Post:
I just looked at the TANPAKU site again:

http://issofty17.is.noda.tus.ac.jp/

It is now available in Japanese only. Google can attempt to translate it:

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://issofty17.is.noda.tus.ac.jp/&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dissofty17.is.noda.tus.ac.jp%26num%3D100%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Dactive%26client%3Dopera%26rls%3Den%26hs%3DOqE

Although the translation is poor, it is clear that they had a serious problem and that they do not plan to reactivate the project soon. They say something about using the data. At the bottom of the page is a link which translates as "page of results". If you click on that link there is an English version. The English version (original, does not need translation) has some graphical results:

http://issofty17.is.noda.tus.ac.jp/doc/Results.html

Apparently, most of the data has or will serve some scientific interest. It also appears that any results still waiting to be reported will never be accepted.

My best wishes to the Japanese scientists who set up the project. I will be pleased to contribute more time to them when and if they ever set up the project or a similar one again.
4) Message boards : BOINC client : Dual Booting Linux/Windows, share BOINC data? (Message 12766)
Posted 27 Sep 2007 by rhb
Post:
I experimented with Boinc under wine. I did get the manager working. It apparently saw the client that was already active. It showed all the messages and projects, and might have been able to control them also.

I do NOT recommend anyone try it the way I did, unless your system is well backed up. I messed up some configuration settings, in Linux, not just in wine, but fortunately only until I rebooted. Nevertheless, here are my notes on what I did:

An experiment in running Boinc windows client with Linux, using WINE.

* Used IE 6.0 to fetch Boinc; the download page offered me version 5.10.20

-- got stuck because it needs ie installed. I use ie4linux, which hides it.

Ran the ies4linux installer, using the .wine directory
-- I do not recommend this. I had major problems, which rebooting may have alleviated.

Unable to save the downloaded installer in a known location then find it again.

* Opened the program (saving to temp), and the install started
chose single-user installation (walk before we run)
-- hey, later I might give each of them one cpu
Chose no default screensaver, and no auto-start

It came up in simple view, which I've never seen before.
All views worked. It has my projects all listed!

This needs to be tested on a machine with no Boinc installed, I think.

Apparently it sees the Linux Boinc client installed. Probably I could view and update things without creating a problem, but have not tested the client nor any apps.

Conclusions: The network design probably could allow Win manager to control Linux client, or vice versa, if it could be set up. Possibly the remote management feature could be used to set up two independent hosts on the same physical machine. I would suggest investigating how to set up independent Boinc accounts using a VM first, find procedural problems and degree of slowdown in that environment, then maybe think about using wine again.
5) Message boards : BOINC client : Dual Booting Linux/Windows, share BOINC data? (Message 12755)
Posted 27 Sep 2007 by rhb
Post:
Talking about it here, what if:

I would point Wine to the BOINC directory under Windows, tell it to run BOINC there. Would that work, or would that still make a new hostID? And additionally, would it need to be a FAT32 directory, or can Wine write to an NTFS directory?


According to wine appdb
( http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=3910 )
Boinc 5.8.8 has been tested in Feb 2007. There aren't many details though, such as whether or not he successfully processed workunits. I suggest we try to run it independently at first, then consider the wisdom of sharing the work with real windows later. I would suggest that to share work, adding a new partition with the fat32 file system would be safer.

I would like to hear feedback on this. If the idea is not likely to be detrimental to projects, I may try it, probably with extremelab or test projects at first. I will probably not try sharing workloads with real Windows, but might run some of the windows-only projects with it. Each application would need to be independently tested, as each depend on wine for all OS calls.



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